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How to make a Fluid app for Facebook to protect your online privacy
Ad Age reports that Facebook is going to try to use more of your browser history for tracking purposes and for ads. They will not honor the "Do Not Track" settings in the browser for reasons that boil down to "We don't want to and no one else is." As John Gruber put it, 'Google does it' is not exactly a badge of honor, privacy-wise. More and more, the entire advertising industry is turning into a threat to privacy. Advertising should be about attention, not privacy." Companies like Facebook and Google are going to continue to look for ways to "customize" your ad experience by trying to learn more and more about you. Neither company has shown a great deal of respect for user's privacy in the past, so it continues to be up to you, the user, to defend your privacy if you want to use their services. There is an easy way to avoid this (well, two, if you count "Don't use Facebook"): log out of Facebook whenever you aren't using it. Except that I am increasingly suspicious that (for many sites, not just Facebook) "logging out" doesn't actually mean "logging out" unless you also go into your browser settings and delete everything that is left behind by that site. Also, if you use security measures like two-factor authentication, logging back into sites like Facebook can become annoying when all you really want to do is check to see who has tagged you in some picture. Fortunately, there is another way: create a special web browser used specifically (and exclusively) for Facebook. That can easily be accomplished using Fluid. Second, tell your Mac to use that browser for any links to Facebook. That can be easily accomplished using Choosy. Fluid Fluid is a free app, but there are advanced features (specifically: separate cookies from Safari) which we will need for this, so you will have to pay a US$5 registration fee. That is a small price to pay for more control over your privacy. To create a Facebook browser, launch Fluid.app and then tell it to use https://www.facebook.com for the URL. You can give it whatever name you'd like, but I kept it simple and went with "Facebook." Fluid.app will use the regular Facebook icon, but if you'd like something a bit different, you can check Google for some other options. Basically, any square image will work, ideally at least 512x512 pixels. Once you press "Create" Fluid.app will make a "Facebook.app" in your /Applications/ folder. Launch it, and select the "Whitelist Preferences" as shown in the image here. The first two entries for Facebook.com should already be in there, so all you need to do is add the *fb.me* entry by clicking the plus-sign near the bottom left of the window. Once you have done that, click "Show All" (top left) and choose the "Security Preferences" as shown in the next image. The crucial item here is "Cookie Storage: Separate from Safari" (which will only be visible if you have paid your $5 Fluid registration). I also chose to uncheck the box next to "Enable Plugins" because I don't need or want Flash running on Facebook. If you are one of those people who plays Facebook games, you will not want to disable plugins. Now that you have those settings in place, quit your Facebook app (which is required after changing the cookie settings anyway). Brief Aside: "What about Chrome SSBs?" There have been various solutions posted for making Google Chrome based Single Site Browsers, but these all tend to break. Also, they are not officially supported by anyone, and I have no assurance that they are actually using separate cookie stores in a manner that will keep your information separate. Maybe they do, but I'm happy with Fluid. Also, I can't say that I have any real trust that Google's browser does anything beneficial to the user when it comes to privacy. In fact, I use Google Chrome as essentially a SSB for Google-owned sites for two reasons: 1) I assume that Google sites will perform best in Google's own browser, 2) I keep the rest of my browsing habits out of Google's reach by staying always logged out of Google services when I use Safari or other browsers. Choosy Choosy watches for links that you click on your Mac and then sends them to whichever browser you prefer. If you have used Mail.app rules, Choosy works about the same way, except for browsers. Like Mail.app rules, if a link doesn't match any rules, Choosy will just hand it off to whatever browser you tell it to use by default, just as an email that doesn't match any rules will land in your default Inbox. For example, I usually use Safari, but any time I click on a link which uses Google, I send it to Google Chrome. If I click on a link from Tweetbot, it always goes to a special Fluid.app browser that I have made specifically for Twitter links, which is very similar to the Fluid.app I described for Facebook, except I call it "t.co" and have the User Agent set to "iPad". Choosy ($12, free demo available) is installed as a preference panel, which means that you'll need to launch System Preferences to access it. From Choosy's "General" tab, be sure that the following boxes are selected: Enable Choosy for links Start Choosy helper at login The other two are optional. If the button to the right of those options says "Start helper," click it so that it says "Stop helper" (that way you will know its helper app is running). When you are done, it should look like this: Next, go into the "Advanced" preferences and create a new rule by clicking the Plus (+) icon near the bottom left corner. Again, you can title it anything you want, but I stuck with "Facebook" just to keep things simple. Under "Choosy should use this rule when" be sure to change "All" to "Any" and then add six rules using the "Web address" "begins with" options: http://www.facebook.com https://www.facebook.com http://facebook.com https://facebook.com http://fb.me https://fb.me Choosy also has an option to do the same with "matches this regular expression," which could probably do the same thing in fewer lines, but this is simple and clear, so I prefer it. Under "When this rule is used Choosy should" select the option for "Always use this browser..." and then select the Facebook.app that you made earlier. When you are done it should look like this: Safari Even if you don't use Safari, you should launch it and make sure that Choosy is set as the default browser. Go to Safari's "General" settings and set it to Choosy, as shown in this image: If you don't see Choosy as an option, you may have to log out and log back in again. Potential Downsides The only potential downside that I am aware of is that you won't be able to use Facebook "Like" buttons on other websites, or have any other Facebook customizations on other sites. To me this is a feature. Generally I try to avoid Facebook whenever possible, so anything that keeps Facebook from getting its grimy little paws over the rest of my web browsing is fine with me. Also, I have noticed that OS X sometimes likes to set Safari back as the default browser, and so I have to go in periodically (once every few months) and set it back to Choosy. I'm not sure why that is, and it doesn't happen often. Last but not least, unfortunately, you can't use Safari extensions with Fluid apps, which is a shame because there are some nice ones out there for de-crappifying Facebook's UI.
These are a few of my favorite things - 2013 Edition
As 2013 comes to an end, here are a list of my favorite Mac apps that I used over the past year. Now there are a few important things to remember: you'll notice that many of these are not "new" apps because, well, I don't care when the apps were made nearly as much as I care if they're good and I find them useful. Instead, this is a list of the apps that I used or enjoyed the most in 2013, and expect to keep using in the future. All prices listed are in US Dollars, rounded off to the nearest whole dollar (because we all know that 99¢ is just a marketing way of saying $1, right?). If there is no price listed, then the app/utility is free, although most gratefully accept donations. Favorite New App of 2013 Bartender ($15) is the app I never knew I wanted until it existed, and now I never want to use a Mac without it installed. Bartender lets you hide apps on your menu bar, as well as organize the ones you want to remain visible. You can even use it to hide built-in OS X menu bar icons such as Notification Center and Spotlight. I even use Bartender on my Dell UltraSharp 29" Ultrawide monitor which is essentially one monitor as wide as two monitors. Favorite App of 2013 Keyboard Maestro ($36) is my favorite "non-new" app of 2013. Version 6 came out in 2013 and the app is continually improved. The more I learn about Keyboard Maestro, the more I'm impressed with it. I have written about it a lot and posted several macros on Github. I've even done some one-on-one consulting and training. Even after all that, I'm still learning new tricks that it can do. (Peter Lewis, Keyboard Maestro's developer, commented that he's still impressed to see what users come up with to do with his own app!) Keyboard Maestro's cost may seem high in a world where software is often reduced to "fart-app pricing" but it does the work of several apps. It can launch applications, move and click the mouse, execute scripts, insert (static or dynamic/variable) text, manipulate windows, control menus, create/move/copy/rename/delete/trash files, control iTunes, capture images, control iTunes, send notifications, and more. Keyboard Maestro comes with a 30-day trial which is enough time to overcome the initial learning curve and start making it work for you. The developer is very responsive to questions and support requests, and there many others using Keyboard Maestro too, so you're likely to find more tips in the year ahead if you read their sites too. More Automation on the Mac Keyboard Maestro is only the tip of the automation iceberg. TextExpander ($35) and Hazel ($28) both continued to be essential tools in 2013. In case you're not familiar with them: TextExpander inserts text (or images, or runs scripts) on demand when you type a shortcut, and Hazel automatically responds to changes in files and folders. TextExpander is great if you find yourself needing to re-type the same thing over and over. I use it to insert frequently referred-to links, create templates for shell scripts or MultiMarkdown documents, and mail signatures. You can even "nest" snippets within other snippets. A Mac without TextExpander feels broken. Hazel can do so many things I don't know where to start, but here's one set of recipes I use more than any other. All of these are actions taken on files added to my ~/Downloads/ folder: If there is a new archived file (.zip, .tar.gz, etc) then unarchive it and store the original file in ~/Downloads/Archives/ (in case I want to copy it to another Mac). If a new .app file is found, move it to /Applications/ and replace any older version If a new text file is found (.txt, .md, .mmd, etc) is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/txt/ If another kind of document (.pdf, .docx, etc) is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/Documents/ If an image is found, move it to ~/Dropbox/Photos/ (where another Hazel rule then sorts them by date) There are lots of other possibilities, those are just a few to get you started. Hazel is one of those tools that works in the background doing tedious things so you don't have to. It will even keep your Trash from getting taking up space with old files or oversized files. Read more at TUAW All Hazel articles All TextExpander articles Most Taken-For-Granted App I Couldn't Live Without Dropbox. Good lord, I don't even want to think about using a Mac without Dropbox. Unless you have been literally living in a cave, you must have heard about Dropbox by now, right? If so, here's a summary: it's a magic folder which syncs to all of your computers (Mac, Windows, even Linux) which you can access on your iOS devices, and even on their website (unlike iCloud documents). It is supported by tons of iOS devices which use it for document sharing and more. You get 2 GB for free, and up to 500 GB for $500/year. All accounts come with 30 days of versioning so you can go back to previous versions of documents. Other Dropbox articles to check out: Get an extra 1 GB of Dropbox storage by syncing it to Mailbox Keep Dropbox.app up-to-date when the magic fails Finding Dropbox 'conflicted copy' files automatically All Dropbox articles on TUAW This Is Getting Really Long, I'm Going to Have to Summarize a Few of These: Sorry for the bulleted list. These are great apps, but they are either better-known or more easily explained (I hope!). This was the year I switched to Alfred ($0 for most features, $28 for "Powerpack" extensions, or a little over $50 for lifetime updates) from LaunchBar ($35). LaunchBar is still a great app, I just wanted to be able to use some of the workflow features in Alfred. Alfred, LaunchBar, and Keyboard Maestro all have clipboard functionality built-in, but if you want an app just for saving multiple clipboards, get Flycut. Even has Dropbox sync. MailMate ($50) definitely deserves its own review, and I suspect I'll be using it even more in 2014, but 2013 saw me start to move away from Gmail, especially Gmail.com which was redesigned but did not get better. If you use email, you owe it to yourself to checkout MailMate. OmniDiskSweeper ($0) remains my go-to app for finding out what is using all of my hard drive space. I'm still using version 1 of Skitch ($0) whenever I need to quickly take a screenshot then annotate and/or share it. Skitch version 2 has gotten better since its initial atrocious release but "saving" a Skitch in version 2 goes to Evernote instead of just staying locally, and I have no desire, need, or interest in saving Skitch to Evernote. Soulver ($12) is the first 'calculator' that I have really enjoyed using. I've never been great at math, I can't do a lot of calculations in my head. Using a regular calculator always left me frustrated, and half the time I wasn't sure that I had done the calculations properly. With Soulver, I understand regular real-life math a lot better than I ever have. That isn't to say that it doesn't have a lot of powerful options which are useful to people who are good at math. It does. But if you've never struggled with math, you can't understand what it means to have something like this. The word "empowering" has been overused to the extreme, but here it fits, at least for me. I bought the separate iPad and iPhone versions without hesitation or complaint, but I am glad to see that Soulver for iOS is now a universal app (currently on sale for $2). Need to turn a bunch of CDs or audio files into an audiobook? Audiobook Builder ($5). It will not only 'chapterize' it for you, it will also let you easily add cover art using any image file. Want to make sure your Mac doesn't turn itself off for a certain amount of time? Try Caffeine. GIF Brewery ($5) easily takes a video clip and turns it into a GIF. Use your Mac's keyboard for any iOS device (or any other Bluetooth capable device, including another Mac) using Type2Phone ($5). Growl ($4) still does a few tricks that OS X's notifications don't. Use PCKeyboardHack and KeyRemap4MacBook to make a hyper key. If you want to edit, create, or learn about launchd, get LaunchControl ($10, free unlimited demo). Hugely useful. Need to cut up an audio file, maybe to make an iPhone ringtone, or maybe just to trim it for some other reason? Fission - Fast & Lossless Audio Editing. I still haven't learned git but thanks to GitHub for Mac I've been able to fake my way along. If you use a calendar, get Fantastical ($10) for quick "natural language" entry menu bar access, and get BusyCal ($50, 30-day trial) for a better Mac calendar. Print from iOS to your Mac with Printopia ($20). You can save the file as a PDFs (or JPG or PNG if that's what the file was originally), or send them to any printer connected to your Mac. Default Folder X ($35, 30-day trial) lets you quickly jump to favorite folders, or assign specific folders as the 'default' for certain apps. This is another one of those tools that: a) feels like it should be built-in to OS X, b) when I use a Mac without this installed, it feels broken. Trying to monitor your Mac's bandwidth usage and prevent apps from covertly connecting to the Internet? Little Snitch ($35) is the tattletale little brother than those apps wish had never been born. SlimBatteryMonitor is a better battery monitor that OS X's own; MagiCal lets you easily create a menu bar clock that shows the time and/or date exactly as you want it; FreeSpace Tab shows available hard drive space in the menu bar; and I've stopped using all three in favor of iStat Menus ($16, 14-day trial) which also knocked OS X's Activity Monitor off my Dock. Of course I use VLC for most of my video-watching, including Blu-Ray discs thanks to MakeMKV ($0 for some features, $50 for Blu-Ray features, although they are free during beta see here for more info which is also what I use for ripping Blu-Ray and DVDs, almost exclusively via Batch Rip Actions for Automator which are capital-A Awesome if you are ripping lots of DVD/Blu-Ray discs. When I'm done I clean everything up using Name Mangler to get the filenames right and then I can watch my collection in the Plex Media Server. Last but not least I use Mountain ($2) to mount and unmount drives from the menu bar, Flashmount (see previous coverage) to quickly mount DMGs. and DiskWarrior ($100) to check and repair my disks. (By the way, DiskWarrior might be the most expensive piece of software on this list, but it's worth every penny. Get it to help fix little problems before they become big problems.) Looking Ahead Wow. That's a lot of great software. Here are a few apps that I'm keeping an eye on because I suspect they will be on next year's list: Shortcat (currently $16 during beta, planned $24 after): "Keep your hands on the keyboard and boost your productivity! Shortcat is a keyboard tool for Mac OS X that lets you "click" buttons and control your apps with a few keystrokes. Think of it as Spotlight for the user interface." let.ter ($4): "The tiny Markdown powered app just for writing emails." I've been using a send-only email app for 2.5 years now, but I like what I see so far in Letter. Recently released and still lacking some essential features such as multiple account support (which is planned for the nearish future), but I bet this eventually replaces what I've been using. Vellum is the new app that I'm most excited about. Anyone who has tried to make ebooks knows that it's a pain because each device has its own... "quirks." Serenity Caldwell likens making ebooks today to making websites in the late '90s when web standards didn't really exist or weren't implemented by the companies that made web browsers. Vellum bills itself as the tool to help you overcome the madness by letting you import a .docx file and export properly formatted books for iBooks, Kindle, and Nook. This is the next app on my "to test" list and I can't wait.
A better Google search experience with Choosy, Keyboard Maestro and Fluid
There are so, so many things that annoy me about Google: Google can remember everything about me except that I want my search results to open in a new window. Google crappifies search results, so that instead of giving me a link to the site that it shows me, it actually gives me a link to Google itself which will redirect to the site. This makes copying the link a giant PITA as well as being slow.[1] Google insists on showing me all of this "other stuff" that it thinks I want to see, when, in fact, all I really want to see is the search results for what I looked for. Because it is loading all of this other crap, it's slower than it needs to be, and my home satellite connection is slow enough. Google tracks everything you search. Now, my searches are pretty mundane, but I don't necessarily want every search tied to my Google / Gmail account. Sure, I could logout of Google / Gmail but that's annoying too. Then there are two problems which aren't Google's fault, but still annoy me: Safari 6 insists on using SSL to do searches, which often fails on my home Internet connection which is satellite. I cannot find any way to disable that. Safari 6 makes it impossible to see the actual URL for Google searches made from the "Unified Smart Search Field." What I want is a really fast, efficient, anonymous search, where the results will be direct links to the sites in question. And then I want those search results to open in a new window. I realized that I could build exactly what I wanted, using tools that I already own: Keyboard Maestro Choosy Fluid (Spoiler alert: If you want to use a search engine such as DuckDuckGo instead of Google, you can use the same process I am going to describe below.) Fluid Fluid is one of my favorite apps in my "toolbelt" for making a better experience on the web. Fluid describes itself as a way to 'turn your favorite web apps into real Mac apps.' Fluid is best-known for making "site-specific" browsers, but it is also great for making a browser with specific settings, including turning Java/JavaScript/Plugins/Cookies on or off. If you spend US$5 you can create site-specific browsers with separate cookies which is not-essential-but-nice for what I'm going to do here. (There are other features you get for your $5. See the site for more details. It's easily worth $5 even without these bonus features.) Here's what I did in Fluid.app: 1) I created a new browser called 'Google Search' and set the homepage to http://www.google.com. A few seconds later, Fluid told me my new browser was ready, and I launched it. Note: for some reason Fluid.app doesn't find a good icon for Google, so I searched for Google Logo icon 512 and found this one that I like and selected it in the 'Icon' field, shown above. You can change this at any time later, so if you don't want to do it now, or if you forget, don't worry. 2) As soon as my "Google Search" app launched, I changed the "User Agent" to report itself as an iPhone. (Aside: the "user agent" tells the website you are visiting which browser you are using. If you've ever gone to a website on your iPhone and found yourself automatically redirected to a 'mobile friendly' page, it's probably because that site saw your 'User Agent' said that you were using an iPhone. If you want to see what your user agent shows, you can check your browser user-agent here.) I want Google to think that I'm using an iPhone, because Google's search results are much 'cleaner' for iPhones than for regular browsers. In the 'Google Search' menu, I selected "User Agent" and then the iPhone option, as shown here: You might occasionally find that your search results direct you to a mobile version of a website, but that's a minor issue. Often times if you actually click on the link it will redirect you automatically to the 'full' version once it sees the user agent of your regular browser. 3) Under "Whitelist Preferences" I made sure that the only allowed URLs were for www.google.com not any other Google domains: This means that any link I click on will not open in this new browser, but will be fed to my usual browser. Clicking on Google results will finally open in a new tab. In fact, they will open in another browser. 4) Under "Security Preferences" I turned off plugins, Java, JavaScript. Why? Because I don't need any of them, and disabling JavaScript will also disable Google "instant" which I don't like either. I set "Accept Cookies" to "Never" and set "Cookie Storage" to "Separate from Safari" (so I don't have to log out of Google to not have Google associate my searches with my Google account). Changing the 'cookie storage' setting requires restarting my "Google Search" app, which I did. Choosy Choosy lets you create 'rules' for which browser should be used in different circumstances. I've written about Choosy before so I won't go into more detail here. The app hasn't been updated for a few years, but it still works just fine under Mountain Lion. Under Choosy's 'Advanced' tab, I created a simple 'rule' to send all links which contain 'google.com' to my 'Google Search' browser. You can see the rule here: Make sure that Choosy is set as your default browser. The easiest way to do that is in Safari's preferences. You can easily set Choosy's preferences to use your regular browser unless a specific rule is matched, so you'll never even notice that it is installed. (I would just like to mention that I have written about Choosy twice now and not made any Jif-related jokes about how "Choosy Mac users choose Choosy." Wait! Oops. Too late.) Keyboard Maestro My admiration of Keyboard Maestro continues to grow the more I use it. I recently wrote about the automation mindset but this time I wanted something much simpler: a quick way to bring up a Google search window. Previously, when I had wanted to search for something in Google, I would switch to Safari, create a new tab, and then start typing in the "Unified Smart Search Field" which was really only convenient if I was already in Safari. I wanted something better: anytime, anywhere, in any app, I want to be able to press a keyboard shortcut, get a prompt, type, press enter, and have the Google search results come front and center. Keyboard Maestro makes this so easy I can't believe it has taken me this long to do it. 1) Create a new macro in Keyboard Maestro and name it whatever you want. I recommend "Google Search" because I'm extremely creative. 2) Click "New Action" Type 'web' into the 'Action' search area (top left of image, above) and select 'Search the Web.' Notice that the option is not called 'Search Google' – it's Search the Web. It defaults to Google, but you can change that simply by changing the URL. For example if you wanted to use DuckDuckGo you would use http://duckduckgo.com/?q=%Search%. However, make sure that your Fluid.app browser and your Choosy rule are using that domain too. You might also notice the 'color picker' which is used for the background color of the window that Keyboard Maestro will create: I like the default but it's a nice touch to be able to change it. OK, this is my favorite part of this entire tip: I never (intentionally) use the Caps Lock (aka CHOCKLOCK) key. In fact, I only ever hit it my accident. One of my favorite features of OS X was when Apple decided to let us kill the Caps Lock key by going to System Preferences.app » Keyboard and then choosing "Modifier Keys...": Google, Inc. made some headlines when it decided not to include a Caps Lock key in its CR–48 netbook, instead using that key for a 'Search' function. I thought it was a great idea, and so I decided to replicate it on my Mac. The first step is to set to the Caps Lock key to "No Action" as shown above. Then go back to Keyboard Maestro, and click the plus sign (+) next to "New Trigger" and choose "Device Trigger" as shown here: Here's where you have to be a little careful: as soon as you select "Device Trigger" you should press the Caps Lock key, because if you press anything else including the trackpad or mouse button Keyboard Maestro is going to think you want to use that as the trigger. After pressing the Caps Lock key it should look something like this: Note that if you use another keyboard (such as a Bluetooth keyboard connected to your Mac laptop) you should add a second 'trigger' for Keyboard Maestro using the Caps Lock key on that keyboard as well as the "internal" keyboard. Putting It All Together Now whenever I want to do a Google search, I press the Caps Lock key and type into the window. The results open in my Google Browser, and when I click on a link, it opens in my regular browser. If I want to go back to my search results, I just switch back to that app. Although this takes a bit of initial setup, the payoff is well worth it for a better experience in the end. I have not done this yet, but you could also repeat this process for different search engines and add modifier keys (shift, option, control, command) to have Keyboard Maestro bring up different search prompts. I plan to make one of those for Google Images and Google News, both of which I search frequently. Google icon at the top of this article courtesy of YOOtheme. If you want to keep using Safari for Google searches but want to avoid these Google-crappified links, try the Google Direct extension ↩
Mac power tools: charge up your workflow
I recently bought a new Mac, and I decided not to migrate years of cruft over to a pristine Snow Leopard install. I also decided to shed years of stale workflow and adopt a new way of doing things. Enter the power tools: software that augments the power and performance of OS X to do things faster and smarter. I'll examine some general system enhancements and look at a couple of powerful Mac/iPhone app combos that really work well together. Step one was finding a replacement for my beloved QuickSilver. I had abandoned QS well over a year ago due to performance issues on most of my Macs, but after a nagging pain in my wrist surfaced, I realized I had to find more keyboard shortcuts. Enter LaunchBar, which fills in for 90% of what QuickSilver used to do for me. LaunchBar is one Ctrl-Space (configurable, of course) away from Spotlight searching, Google searching, application launching, math calculations and much, much more. LaunchBar is $25 around $35 per seat, and worth taking 15 minutes to learn the basics. Go ahead, hate me for giving up QS, but try LaunchBar before you hurl the insults. Next I needed a better way to juggle 3 Gmail accounts. But I also needed a way to track the metric ton of inbox items that flow through those email conduits. The solution was the combination of MailPlane and Things. I had really dedicated my heart to Toodledo, but there's one trick I couldn't replicate on any setup (The Hit List included): when I get an email in MailPlane, I can select some text and press Shift-Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-0 and the Things HUD pops up and autofills the notes section with a link to the email itself. It is awesome. Not perfect, mind you, but a huge thing for me. Read on for more power tools and tips.
Choosy helps those with Browser Commitment Phobia
Are you the type of person who just can't settle down? Do you find your needs just can't be met by any one of the multiple options available to you? Can you even remember how many different browsers you've been with? If that sounds like you, you should be glad to hear that Choosy has left beta. We've mentioned Choosy before but in case you missed it during the beta cycle, here's what Choosy does for you: Choosy is a preference pane which lets you keep your browser options open. Do you love Safari, but sometimes find that you need to use Firefox for a particular website? Are you a fan of Fluid (which lets you create site-specific browsers), or you want all your RSS links to open in your personalized Google Reader browser?When you select a link, instead of your default browser, a Choosy window will appear; you can configure it to show all of your available browsers, or just the ones which are currently running. Or you can set a default to use except if you hold down the shift key, for example.That latter functionality is what led me to give Choosy another look. I tried it during the beta period and found that most of the time I wanted links to open in Safari, but there were some I wanted to open in Firefox or Fluid. While having to choose a browser for every link proved to be too distracting, the 1.0 version allows you to create very precise rules.For example, I can setup Safari to be my default browser, but if I click a link while holding down the shift/command/alt key, then that link will automatically be opened in Firefox.My favorite rule? If Web address contains constantcontact.com then use Firefox. Constant Contact is a great service, but they are very aggressive about which web browsers they support. Now I can stop thinking about this, and if I come across a Constant Contact link, it will automatically open it in Firefox.Do you have a Fluid SSB for Facebook or Twitter? If so, you can make sure that all of those links open in your site-specific browser.Choosy is shareware. You can try it free and without any limitation for 45 days. In my experience that will be plenty of time to decide if Choosy is the right choice for you. If it is, you can register it for $12 and continue to enjoy surfing the web with multiple partners... err, browsers.
