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Safari tip: Force HTML5 video to open instead of Flash
As more people get fed up with the poor performance and security flaws of Adobe's Flash Player, they are uninstalling the Flash plug-in from their computers. The problem is that even if a site offers up HTML5 video as an alternative to Flash, trying to get to it from Safari on a Mac will pop up the little blue LEGO block. Mac users can now take advantage of the fact that Mobile Safari in iOS doesn't support Flash in any way, by changing the desktop user agent. A browser feature that was first widely used to get websites to serve up non-standard HTML optimized for Internet Explorer, Mac Safari 5 users can change their user agent settings by enabling the Developer menu through Preferences > Advanced. From the Developer menu, the user agent can be changed so that the browser looks like Mobile Safari 3.2.2 on the iPad, which will force sites to feed HTML5 video streams if they are available. There are, of course, some caveats. Unlike some other browsers, changing the Safari user agent only persists for the current browser window instance. Additional browser windows or restarting the browser gets you back to the original agent. John Gruber of Daring Fireball, who originally figured all of this out, provides a Terminal command that will permanently change the user agent, but since that can break other functionality, the temporary route is recommended. For sites that only serve Flash video, users can still go Flash-free in Safari by opening the site in Google Chrome, which features its own built-in Flash player. [via Mac OS X Hints]
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: Minimal Gmail
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. Minimal Gmail is my new favorite Safari extension. It allows you to "clean up" a lot of the GMail interface, including turning off several items that you can't disable any other way. Yes, that means that you can disable ads, although to be honest I really haven't noticed the ads in Gmail for a long time. However, now that they are gone, it is nice to have that space for reading the message, especially if you are on a smaller screen. What's more exciting is the ability to hide things that I never use such as the "Invite" box. I mean, come on, when is the last time anyone invited someone else to Gmail? I'm guessing it was 2005. Also, I never use Gmail chat through the webpage, and never have it enabled, but Minimal Gmail allows me to hide that box completely. Minimal Gmail will also hide the footer and header information. The footer alerts you to other IP addresses accessing your Gmail account, so some may want to keep an eye on that, but for me it was just clutter. Hiding the header means the links to Google Calendar, Documents, Reader, etc which I never accessed using those links anyway. That said, it also hides the links to the Settings and Labs on the right side of the header. I used the Google Lab "Quick Links" feature (which I was already using anyway) to make quick links to Settings and Labs, and then disabled the header as well. There are a lot of other options as well, but that should give you a feel for it. If you use Gmail in Safari as often as I do, it's definitely worth checking out. (Yes, it also supports Google Apps too.) Important note to uses of Minimal Gmail v.1.0: you will have to manually update to version 2, but from now on Safari should be able to automatically update it, if desired. Thanks to the SafariExtensions Tumblr (which is where I learned about Minimal Gmail) for continuing to point out useful new extensions. I use that site more than Apple's official page.
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.
Do you love or hate Safari 5's 'smarter' address bar?
I'll state for the record that the new address bar functionality in Safari 5 is the most un-Apple interaction I've seen come out of Cupertino in a long time. Perhaps adding RAM to my 8500 was more painful, but when a company known for ease-of-use screws up something so basic, it makes you wonder, "who thought this was a good idea?" But Safari 5 is "smart." As in, "I'm smarter than you, nya nya, and you'll go to the sites I say, not what you want!" It goes beyond preferring your history to primary domains. It'll basically get in your way and make a constant mess of things. There's a MacRumors forum thread detailing some specific bad behavior. So here's the thing. In Firefox, you can type y-a-h-o-o, hit Return and the browser is smart enough to presume you meant yahoo.com, adding the .com and whisking you away to the search portal's main page. Safari 5, however, will not give you the top-level domain unless you frequent the site regularly or bookmark it -- even then it won't necessarily pop up top. Instead, it'll presume you meant to search your history for all the instances of "yahoo," and that includes titles of pages. So a post about "some yahoo" on a random site you checked out yesterday trumps the top-level domain, or possibly a page titled "Yah, I love pizza!" that you visited the week before. Even in ancient versions of Internet Explorer you could hit Ctrl-Enter to append .com (and prefix www. for you old-timers) and it worked great. One particularly goofy behavior is redirection. For example (and as noted in the MacRumors thread), if you do a Google search for 'ebaumsworld' and click through to the site via Google, the next time your genius Safari browser sees you typing 'ebaumsworld' in the address bar it will not finish typing ebaumsworld.com, no no. That's apparently dumb. Clearly you meant to access the Google search redirect URL, which is a mass of gibberish to the average person and serves no purpose once you've found the site you were looking for. Why?
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: Safari Access Keys
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. Fellow keyboard jockeys will appreciate this one. Safari Access Keys displays a site's keyboard shortcuts in the browser's toolbar. Many sites like Wikipedia employ keyboard shortcuts, which make navigation faster and easier. However, they aren't always readily apparent or even consistent. Safari Access Keys solves the problem by displaying each key combo clearly. As a bonus, the extension's author explains how to enable the HTML accesskey attribute on your own site. Well done, Dale!
Safari extension highlight: Facebook Photo Zoom
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. Here's one from the "fun" category. As Facebook overtakes the Internet and our collective consciousness, we're spending more and more time there. How else will I be forced to look at photos of people's kids? Speaking of photos, they're small in the timeline and enlarging them means loading a new page. Who has time for that? Facebook Photo Zoom solves the problem. Once installed, you can enlarge any photo you find in Facebook simply by mousing over it. What's really nice is that you can turn it on and off without having to open Safari's preferences. At the bottom of any Facebook page you'll see a small button (right next to the chat). Just click it to enable or disable the extension. Now go and enjoy large photos on Facebook while saving yourself precious seconds.
Safari extensions highlight: A good-looking Google Reader
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. Many of Google's Web apps have been long on functionality but short on looks. Google Reader, the Web-based RSS reader, is a good example of this. Fortunately, Google Reader Mac OS X Snow Leopard + Delicious is a Safari extension that makes Reader look good. Once installed, this extension makes Google Reader resemble a Snow Leopard application (like iTunes). The sidebar is that same faint blue, and the rest is white and gray. Additionally, dialog boxes are the same nearly-transparent black that we've come to expect from Snow Leopard. This extension is simply a new set of clothes for Google Reader, so its functioning is unchanged. There, now doesn't that look better?
Safari extension highlight: SnapBack and Reload
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 we're highlighting two extensions that restore functionality to Safari that's been lost: the reload button and the snapback arrow. Reload Button is a Safari extension that puts a big, healthy reload button back into your toolbar. Safari 5 moved it inside the address bar, and many users (myself included) liked it better in the toolbar. SnapBack adds a button to your toolbar that emulates the old snapback function. It'll let you jump back to the first page in a tab or window's browsing history, or let you designate which page should be the snapback point. Give it a click to jump back, or right-click to bring up a helpful contextual menu. If you aren't an old fuddy-duddy like me who fears "the new ways," you probably won't try these out. But the rest of us will be happy to. Now get off my lawn.
Safari extension highlight: Exposer
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 was recently very glad to learn that I'm not the only one who keeps many tabs open in Safari at once. And I got reprimanded for it. But it's hard to teach an old dog like me new tricks, especially when an extension like Exposer provides a great overview of all open tabs. Once installed, Exposer puts a Spaces-like icon in your Safari toolbar. When you've got multiple tabs open, just click it and a set of thumbnails appear, each representing one of those pages. Mouse over any one to highlight it, and click it to jump right over. It can be a bit slow to load those thumbnails, depending on how many tabs you have open, but it's still quicker than scanning cryptic (or crowded) tab titles. Try it out!
Safari Extension highlight: A Cleaner YouTube
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. Here's a nice extension for those who visit YouTube but dislike its visual clutter. A Cleaner YouTube by 200ok Web Consulting removes all of the ads, sidebar items, comments and pretty much everything else that isn't the video you're watching. Once installed, youtube.com simply shows a search field. Enter your criteria and hit return to review the neatly-presented results. Select a video to watch and it appears centered in a field of white all by its lonesome. Nice, eh?You'll notice that some features are missing, like comments and the embed link, but who needs those, right? The developer says that comments at least are in the works. If you like things to be nice and tidy, check out A Cleaner YouTube.
Safari extensions gallery, Safari 5.0.1 available
That wasn't a very long wait. Apple has finally published the Safari extensions gallery we've been anticipating for a few weeks. There's a large number of extensions available right off the bat, including some from The New York Times, Major League Baseball, Amazon and Bing. There's also an official Twitter extension that looks similar to the Ostrich extension we pointed out yesterday. In fact, extensions are available across several categories, like social networking, news, photos, productivity and security. Root through and find something you'll like; we're partial to Brett's Tablinks extension for copying all the URLs from your open tabs. Note that you'll need Safari 5.0.1, which was also released today (check Software Update). In addition to the extensions support, Safari 5.0.1 includes more accurate top hits results in the address field and improved scrolling through MobileMe Mail. It's also notable that the Safari Extensions Gallery is now an option in the Safari Menu, just below About Safari. A restart is required to complete installation. Enjoy the new extensions gallery and point out any gems you find.
Apple releases Safari 5.0.1, Extensions Gallery now open
Safari 5's extension support just got a whole lot more useful this morning, as Apple's just released Safari 5.0.1, which enables the feature for end users, and opened its official Extension Gallery. Extensions can be installed from anywhere, but you might think of the Gallery as the App Store for browser add-ons -- and it seems decently stocked at launch, with notable entries from Amazon, eBay, Bing, MLB.com, the New York Times, and Twitter. We'd expect that number to grow over time, as extensions are apparently quite simply built in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript. PR after the break. Update: We're also told Safari 5.0.1 fixes that nasty AutoFill vulnerability, so that's good news. [Thanks, Robert]
Ostrich: A Twitter extension for Safari
Oh, the ever-growing mountain of Twitter apps. Not since the Cola Wars has such a fierce battle for commercial dominance been waged. Today's combatant is unique in that it's a Safari 5 extension. It's young, and with a little work could be quite nice. Ostrich is an extension for Safari 5 that monitors twitter while staying out of the way. Installation is easy. First, make sure you've got extensions enabled. From the Develop menu, select Enable Extensions. Next, open Safari's preferences, click Extensions and turn it on. Once that's done, download the extension, double-click it and give Twitter permission to connect when prompted to do so. You'll notice that a tiny ostrich head has been added to your toolbar. As new tweets arrive, a numbered badge appears just above the poor fellow's eye. Click it to reveal the Ostrich UI. This simple drop-down displays up to 20 tweets at a time. New arrivals are tinted yellow. Across the top you see icons for your friends' stream, replies to you and your favorites.
Safari exploit gives your contact info to malicious websites
In a report on security in the first half of 2010 Apple has claimed the top spot in the number of security vulnerabilities in their OS and software. According to a report from the security company Secunia, Apple is followed by Oracle and then Microsoft in the number of security flaws reported. It's worth noting that this report does not weigh the severity of these vulnerabilities, only the overall number of them. Safari itself ranks slightly better in the number of vulnerabilities found in 3rd party applications, taking the number two spot right after Mozilla's Firefox. It may not come as any surprise then that a major Safari exploit was publicly reported yesterday by Jeremiah Grossman, the founder of WhiteHat Security. The exploit lets malicious sites retrieve your personal data from your Address Book in both Safari 4 & 5 if you have enabled the option to allow Safari to AutoFill web forms with your Address Book info. The exploit does not require the user to even see the forms, it can all happen automatically without you having any idea that you just gave the site your name, company, city, state, country, email and other form data you may have added to your Address Book entry. It's important to note that this vulnerability does apply to Safari for Windows as well, but it will only grab the personal information you've explicitly typed into Safari directly. Jeremiah also mentions that he did report this vulnerability privately to Apple on June 17th. [Hat tip Techmeme & Ars Technica]
Mac OS X 10.6.4 is in Software Update
Head on over to Software Update to find the latest OS X dot release.10.6.4 is now available -- and in addition to the usual split between delta and combo updates, and regular/server versions, there's another wrinkle here: the Mac mini released today gets its very own flavor of the 10.6.4 update, presumably because of late changes that couldn't be tracked back into the trunk version of the OS. The size of the update may vary if you pick it up via Software Update -- we saw 315 MB on a MacBook Pro running 10.6.3. The combo update for all 10.6 systems weighs in at a bandwidth-hogging 887.4 MB. Here's Apple's write-up on the matter: The 10.6.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. It includes Safari 5 and general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes that: resolve an issue that causes the keyboard or trackpad to become unresponsive resolve an issue that may prevent some Adobe Creative Suite 3 applications from opening address issues copying, renaming, or deleting files on SMB file servers improve reliability of VPN connections resolve a playback issue in DVD Player when using Good Quality deinterlacing resolve an issue editing photos with iPhoto or Aperture in full screen view improve compatibility with some braille displays For overall details look here, or find security information here.
Join the TUAW team for a post-keynote Talkcast tonight at 10 PM EDT
If you were one of the crowd who listened to the TUAW Talkcast this past Sunday evening, you'll remember that we promised to do a post-WWDC 2010 keynote Talkcast. It was supposed to happen Monday night, but we had all collapsed after the stress of churning out streams of news for our readers all day. Now that we're tanned, rested, and ready, we'll be hosting a special edition of the Talkcast tonight at 10 PM EDT. Topics will include Safari 5 (which I'm using to post this), iOS 4, iPhone 4, and anything else that we happen to think about. To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm tonight. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8. If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Note: For those who want to listen to the show on iPads or iPhones without calling in, you can try this MP3 streaming link once the show begins -- we're not 100% sure it will work, but do let us know.
What's new in Safari 5
Apple released Safari 5 for the Mac yesterday with with both obvious and not-so-obvious changes. Here's what we found while digging around. Reader The biggest change that you can actually play with is Reader. You'll notice that the "RSS" button in the address field changes to "Reader" when it's available. With a click, a new window slides up and displays the current article's reformatted text and images. It's printer-friendly, center-aligned and easy to read. From there, you can make the text larger or smaller, print the article or email it to a friend. It's similar to reading an article on the iPad with an app like Instapaper. Additional stuff on the page, like sidebar items, etc. is eliminated. Actually, the email option didn't work for me. Instead of creating my message, Safari displayed a dialog box stating that I need to install Mail (it's installed). It's also kind of tricky to figure out when the Reader option will be presented. It won't work at http://tuaw.com, for example, but does for individual posts. %Gallery-94714%
