Safari (my new crush)

Note: This post is over 8 months old. You may want to check later in this blog to see if there is new information.

Besides being enamored with all things Leopard, I’ve developed an intense and burning love for Safari. With a couple of exceptional plugins, it’s become my general web browser of choice. The powerhouse that is Firefox+addons may still be hard to leave behind for webdev, but for beauty, ease of use and overall integration (and awesome applescripting), Safari is definitely my new top choice…

Back on Tiger, and Safari 2, I wasn’t thrilled enough with the browser to have an affair behind the back of my loyal companion, Firefox. The first thing that Safari offered me this time around was an alluring plugin called Inquisitor, David Watanabe’s acclaimed search plugin. You kind of have to try it out to fully understand its addictive nature. In short, it gives you suggestions as you type, live search results, multiple search engines, and a visit count on search results so you can see what you’ve already tried. Combine that last one with Safari’s “Mark Page for Snap Back” feature and you’ve got some great tools for web spelunking.

Once Inquisitor drew me in, I quickly began to appreciate a few things that were native to Safari. First of all, it was nice to my computer. If I left it open for a few hours with a few windows and a herd of tabs open, it didn’t send my MBPro’s fans into overdrive as some bizarre rogue processes took my CPU to the max. Second, it was Applescript-able. I didn’t have to use bizarre notation just to grab a url from the frontmost window. And I could get selected text, titles, etc. without breaking a sweat. And last, but not least (in my book), it’s really flippin’ pretty, at least compared to my latest plugin-infested copy of Firefox. I have to admit I’ve developed a bias towards the “gold standard” of Apple UI design, so I tend to favor the native look. And I’m smitten by Leopard (naysayers be damned), so it all boils down to Safari and I running off together.

However, I quickly began to wonder what else I could do with it. What about web design? What about cool tricks and added functionality? I had heard a lot about Saft, so I tried it out. I dug it and bought it. It immediately started crashing Safari every time I tried to download certain files. So it’s sitting in my archive folder now. I’d like to use it again someday, but I’ve found replacements for some of my favorite Saft features.

First, SafariStand is excellent (and free). It’s loaded with features like bookmark shelves and customizable quick searches that are way easier to expand than Firefox’s. Quick encoding changes, page navigation shortcuts and a sidebar with tab thumbnails add up to a better Safari experience. I also found Sogudi, which I’m currently using as my quick search replacement. The one thing that Saft had on both of these in the quick search field was search groups, where entering the short cut for a quick search could search multiple engines in tabs with one entry. I may have to find a way to hack that back in.

Integration with my favorite programs has been fine, and 1password made a pretty seamless transition for me. I found that modifying some of the shortcuts in System Preferences to more familiar settings made my life a little easier. Setting the search field to ⌘K was a good start. And I found out from macosxhints that you can bypass the Private Browsing confirmation dialog in a few ways. The most effective way, in my opinion, is just to assign a shortcut to a new menu item in System Preferences called “Private Browsing” without the …. That gives you a new menu item that won’t trigger the warning, but also gives you a keyboard shortcut to start it up.

As a final note, I don’t know if it’s Leopard only, but the Find feature is sweet. I think it may be because it shows up in other areas of Leopard, but I’m unsure, as I never really explored Safari 3 in Tiger beyond checking web pages briefly. With the right settings you can have find start searching when you start typing (Firefox style) and dim the screen, highlighting all the matches for you to tab through. Nice.

Anyway, just thought I’d evangalize for a moment. For the record, I currently have installed: Camino, Opera, Firefox (and Bonecho), Flock, Internet Explorer 5,6 and 7 (in VMWare), OmniWeb and probably some I’ve forgotten about. They’re all friends and some of them are friends with benefits, but I’m thinking about settling down for a while… Oh, Safari, I think we were meant for each other.

Edit: Oh my God, I totally forgot to mention the Web Inspector and Drosera. But this post is long enough, maybe next time.

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16 Comments

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  1. David Chartier 11.07.07 / 4pm

    Other Safari 3 perks (in both the beta for Tiger and Leopard’s ‘final’ version) include: draggable tabs, not just within a window but between windows and to create their own window (you can find some of these commands under the Window menu), bookmarking multiple tabs at once to create a one-click bookmark to open all in tabs, a “Reopen Windows from last session” option under the History menu, and more.

    One Leopard-only feature is sharing an RSS feed database with Mail. Any RSS feeds you add to Safari will appear in Mail’s dialog when you chose File > Add new RSS feed (though I have yet to figure out if this works in reverse, as in adding a feed to Mail makes it appear in Safari). Unfortunately, item read counts don’t sync between the two; just the list of available feeds (but hey, there’s always 10.5.x to fix that!).

    All that combined with some other nice perks (like syncing bookmarks with my iPhone), Safari’s incredible speed and tight, tight integration with the rest of Mac OS X and third-party apps has won me over too.

  2. Jeppe Utzon 11.07.07 / 5pm

    This isn’t Leopard specific - or even Safari specific, but I LOVE that the first nine items in the bookmarks bar have default shortcuts of cmd+1…9. I have my 9 most frequently visited websites in the first nine places for instant access. The bookmarks bar doesn’t even have to be visible for it to work.Try it out - it’s one of those features that will become second nature.

  3. Sponge 11.07.07 / 8pm

    The only thing keeping me on Firefox is the thin border it puts around the last link you clicked on. This is invaluable when using sites like MacSurfer. If Safari had that, I’d ditch Firefox for good. Anyone know of a plug-in that adds this feature to Safari?

  4. Brett Terpstra 11.07.07 / 9pm

    Well, I’m just guessing, but I know there’s a new greasemonkey style plugin for Safari. It would be not-too-difficult to add a simple css dotted border, but it wouldn’t be as subtle as Firefox’s outline. I guess I always found that “feature” annoying but put up with it because it was good for accessibility… I don’t think I’d personally give up my newfound love for that ;).

  5. Dave Findlay 11.08.07 / 12am

    Any recommendations on an ad-blocker for Safari? That’s what I miss from Firefox the most.

  6. Brett Terpstra 11.08.07 / 12am

    If Saft doesn’t crash on you, it can do it just fine. It comes set up with regex filters for popup blocking and inline ad filtering and you can customize as necessary.

  7. Dave Findlay 11.08.07 / 12am

    Thanks. I paid for Saft back on tiger, but I never wanted to have to make my own blocking lists. Maybe it can be scripted to use the same lists as AdBlock Plus? I hadn’t considered trying something like that.

  8. Jeppe Utzon 11.08.07 / 3am

    You could always use Privoxy for ad blocking. It’s a tiny bit of a hassle to set up, but then when it’s running it’s very nice - especially because it will cover all browsers at once. Also it can do a lot of fun stuff. heh

    For more info, go to privoxy.org.

  9. Bo Link 11.08.07 / 1pm

    I used PithHelmet as an ad blocker with Safari 2 in Tiger. The developer hasn’t updated it yet to work with Leopard, but it should happen pretty soon. That worked great for me in the past, and I’m hoping it will be finished soon.

    PithHelmet @ culater.net

  10. Dak 11.08.07 / 8pm

    I, too, am suddenly developing a crush on Safari. She’s developed a sexy confidence as she’s aged.

    Oh, and one little pet peeve: DON’T BLOCK ADS. Yes, you can block annoying pop-ups and such things, but embedded ads are easy enough to ignore, and they are how we get to experience this amazing thing we call the web for free! If you take away most content providers’ sources of income, they’ll either shut down or go to a subscription model (which means they’ll shut down soon). [/rant]

  11. ben 11.13.07 / 1pm

    Do you know of a way to attach Drosera to Safari 3 (the version that ships with Leopard)? The one from the nightly builds of WebKit doesn’t seem to play nicely with Safari, at least as far as I can tell.

  12. wess 12.06.07 / 11pm

    I’ve never heard of Sogudi (I’m a long time safari lover) - but is there any reason why you wouldn’t just use inquisitor, with it’s customizable searches and shortcuts to do the same thing (or am I missing something)?

  13. brett 12.07.07 / 12am

    Sogudi offers a little more finite control over the search. For example, I just set up a couple of searches for crestock.com. In my location bar, I can now just type ‘cre keyword’ to search for that keyword and it sends parameters for image size and images per page automatically. I can also type crev or crei with a keyword to search for vector images or isolated images, respectively. I use both Inquisitor (love it) and Sogudi, and find they serve slightly different purposes.

  14. wess 12.07.07 / 9am

    Cool, thanks. I’ll give it a try.

  15. wess 12.07.07 / 10am

    Seems Sogudi like it’s down now, his pages don’t seem to be working.

  16. brett 12.07.07 / 10am

    Try this link.

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Safari hates me