safari extensions
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Quickly enable or disable JavaScript in Safari
By using "Disable JavaScript" on Safari's Develop menu, you can eliminate annoyances from some websites, without the frustration of disabling JavaScript altogether. I'll even show you how to make a custom keyboard shortcut for it, so your fingers never even have to leave the keyboard. The initial setup will take a few minutes, but it will be worth it when you realize the power you will wield in your fingers when you're done. JavaScript by itself is neither good nor evil. JavaScript is driving a car. Most people who drive cars are good folks just trying to get from Point A to Point B as easily and quickly as possible. Some people, however, are maniacs, some are drunk drivers and some are just not very good at it. The same is true for JavaScript. Most of the time you don't even notice JavaScript, but it's working in the background to help you and the website work together. Have you ever typed something into a field and the website immediately recognized a problem? That was JavaScript. Unfortunately the analogs of "maniacs" and "drunk drivers" of the JavaScript world all seem to work in marketing. Pop-up windows? Pop-over windows? Ads that suddenly appear or slide over what you were trying to read? Also JavaScript. Those green-double-underline links or other links that show you ads when you hover over them? JavaScript. My favorite is when I'm at a page that won't let me copy text or even right click, thinking this is some sort of "protection." The ironic part is that many of these sites (such as for music lyrics) are posting content they don't own in the first place, and then they try to use JavaScript to block you from using it. On some sites you use Safari's Reader feature, but that doesn't always work. Fortunately, you have more tools at your disposal. Read on for more on taming JavaScript.
Safari Extension highlight: Stop animated GIFs, make your own CSS
Earlier today I was looking for a Safari Extensions that could stop animated GIFs, and another to allow me to override CSS on a particular page. After a fruitless search of the official Safari Extensions page, Google turned up both Deanimator and User CSS. Deanimator takes care of my first request. Namely, it stops animated GIFs dead. Meanwhile, User CSS lets me override a page's CSS. I can use it to change fonts or colors, hide ads and more. Both are quite useful. The next time you're searching for an extension to complete a particular task, consider checking out the Safari Extensions Tumblr site. That's a great site that keeps growing. As an aside: I've got 22 Safari extensions installed, and exactly half of them are designed to make the web less annoying.
Safari Extension highlight: gleeBox
With the addition of the Safari Extensions Gallery to Apple's website, TUAW will be highlighting extensions that we think are special, useful, or just plain fun. gleeBox will certainly delight keyboard jockeys, as it replaces many browser-based tasks you'd typically complete by mousing around with super-easy hotkey commands. For example, you can call on URLs by hitting the proper command and typing the name of the URL in the resulting overlay. In fact, it'll recognize what you're typing so you needn't type the whole thing. gleeBox also executes bookmarklets in the same way, so you can add a long article to Instapaper, for example, without ever touching the mouse. It's not for everyone, but those who like keeping their hands on the keyboard at all times should find it useful.
Safari extension highlight: Add to Reader
With the addition of the Safari Extensions Gallery to Apple's website, TUAW is highlighting extensions that we think are special, useful, or just plain fun. Today's extension highlight is Add to Reader by Richard Käll. Like most of the extensions we've highlighted so far, it makes one aspect of online life easier. In this case, it's adding feeds to your Google Reader account. Instead of clicking a site's feed button and adding the address to Reader, you simply press the little toolbar button and presto! You're done. You're still bumped away from the page you're reading, which is unfortunate. I'd be happier if it worked in the background or by popping up and then closing a separate window the way the Instapaper bookmarklet does, but I still like it. Finally, if the extension just doesn't quite do it for you, the author has made the source code available, too. Have fun subscribing!
Safari extension highlight: Naked Twitter
Here's an extension that's quite at home with Cleaner YouTube. Naked Twitter relieves your Twitter account's homepage of all the sidebar clutter. The only remaining links (profile, replies, direct messages and log out) are represented by small icons at the top of the page. Additionally, there are no pop-up hover tips or lists. Boy it looks nice. It's certainly not for everyone. Like I said, the groups, lists, trending topics, etc. that typically populate the page are gone. If you use those things, don't install the plug-in. However, if you like the clean simplicity as I do, you should definitely check it out. Speaking of YouTube, developer Jacob Bijani has released Naked YouTube as well. Much like Naked Twitter, Naked YouTube removes everything but your video.
Safari extension highlight: Awesome Screenshot
With the addition of the Safari Extensions Gallery to Apple's website, TUAW will be highlighting extensions that we think are special, useful, or just plain fun. Today's featured extension is Awesome Screenshot which lets you capture, annotate and share screenshots to awesomescreenshot.com. The way it works is pretty neat. Once you're at a webpage you'd like to share, simply click the extension's button. A toolbar appears that lets you annotate the page in a variety of ways. You can draw freely or use boxes, circle or lines. There's even a tool to blur out information that you'd rather keep hidden. Once you're done, you can save the image as a local file or get a url to share with coworkers or friends. It's a useful tool that could make far-flung collaboration a little easier, all handled directly within the browser.
Safari extension highlight: Better Geocaching
Although I don't get a chance to do as much geocaching as I'd like to, I still check the Geocaching.com cache maps on occasion to see what's new in the area. Usually, I do this by checking with the US$9.99 Geocaching app, but sometimes I find myself logging into the Geocaching.com website to do my searching. Carlos Fonseca has developed a nice Safari extension that smooths out the rough edges on the Geocaching.com site. Better Geocaching, as the extension is called, adds two features when you're visiting Geocaching.com. First, a click on the View Map link immediately displays a fullscreen map instead of the usual partial page map. The second feature adds a Tweet This button near the cache code on the description page, so you can share your find with friends. The extension is also supposed to revert the map back to normal view by clicking a Better Geocaching button, but no matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find that button. Fortunately, the Safari Extensions Gallery includes links to developer pages, so I quickly determined that that button was simply a small arrow in the upper right corner of the fullscreen map. The extension adds nothing to your toolbar and works silently behind the scenes. If you're a geocacher who uses Safari, you'll definitely want to head out to the Safari Extensions Gallery and install Better Geocaching.
Safari extension highlight: MLB.com Toolbar
With the addition of the Safari Extensions Gallery to Apple's website over the last few days, TUAW will be highlighting extensions that we think are special, useful, or just plain fun. I'm a baseball fan, but other than my beloved Colorado Rockies and the rest of the NL West, I don't follow a lot of other teams. While it would be nice to have a browser window open to MLB.com all the time, my screen is just too cluttered with work for me to be able to keep an eye on what's going on in Major League Baseball and get work done. So what's a Mac-lovin' baseball fan to do? One of the first Safari Extensions I downloaded was the MLB.com Toolbar. Written by the staff at MLB Advanced Media, it adds a tiny toolbar to the top of your Safari page, as well as an icon emblazoned with the unforgettable MLB icon. The extension displays scores of games in progress as well as games that are completed. As with the example above, you can see that the team logos are nicely rendered, the score is easy to see, and the winning (Ubaldo Jimenez 16-2!) and losing pitchers are listed. Each score remains visible for 5 seconds before fading away and being replaced with another. A control on the right side of the toolbar allows you to stop the parade of scores and "fast-forward or rewind" to the next or previous score. If the scores are getting too distracting, you can make the toolbar disappear with a click on the MLB icon. Want to bring it back? Click again. This extension is a perfect example of what a Safari extension should do -- add functionality without being too distracting. Let's hope that the NFL follows the lead of MLB with a well designed and executed scoreboard extension.
Apple collecting Safari extensions for gallery
A marquee feature of Safari 5 is its ability to use 3rd-party extensions. Apple is collecting examples of great ones from registered developers to be featured in a gallery. There's no word on Apple's judging criteria or when the gallery will be launched, but Apple is really pushing this technology so be assured that it's going to get a publicity push. It's also unclear just how Apple will distribute the extensions. A blurb inviting submissions reads "The Safari Extensions Gallery will feature a one-click installation process that allows users to seamlessly install extensions from your website without ever having to leave the Gallery." That sounds like developers will host the extensions while Apple provides the link. Some serious vetting will have to ensure quality. While we wait for Apple's gallery, check out the collection at Safari Extensions. It's a nice collection that's growing all the time. [Via Macworld]
Apple releases Safari 5 with Safari Reader, Extensions and Bing search (updated)
Apple has just outed a press release for Safari 5, which curiously didn't get a mention during the company's WWDC10 keynote, but should be ready to download any minute now. Safari Reader is making its debut, as we'd heard it might, alongside a claimed 30 percent performance improvement over Safari 4 and -- mirroring the iPhone 4 -- Bing as one of the preloaded search engine options. Google and Yahoo are still around, don't freak out. Apple is also adding in Extensions (think Firefox's Add-Ons) to the browser, allowing devs to use HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to pretty up the browsing experience. The Reader feature intrigues us most, as it auto-detects articles within webpages and pulls them out for an unencumbered text-only view. The idea sounds great, but we'll naturally need to see how well it works in practice. Apple's been doing a bit of benchmarking too and boasts that Safari 5 runs JavaScript a whole three percent faster than Chrome 5.0 and over twice as fast as Firefox 3.6. Internet Explorer is presumably still working on finishing that test. P.S. We're hearing the current release might be for devs only, hence the lack of a public download. Update: Okay, now it's available for public consumption. Update 2: We've been playing with Safari 5 for a few moments and here's what we've noticed: Reader is pretty gorgeous -- think Instapaper on the fly. It's hard to tell when it'll kick in and show the Reader button in the toolbar, though -- it works on Engadget posts, but not in Wikipedia articles. Yes, Netflix is broken. It seems like it's doing a browser detect and failing with the new build number, so we'd guess it'll be fixed soon. It's much faster at everything from launch to rendering times. We haven't clocked it yet, but it's noticeably snappier on our quad-core i7 iMac. We're dying to try out some Extensions and see how they work, but we haven't seen any yet. Same with the new HTML5 features -- hit us up if you see anything! Bing Search integration is... Bing search integration. What else is there to say?
