In November 2010, Apple officially introduced extensions to their popular browser Safari. It was one of the most requested features and with the release of version 5 of the browser, customers were finally able to add functionalities to their favorite browser. Apple provides Safari Extensions Gallery for users to browse extensions which can be easily installed in a few clicks.
Here are my top 5 extensions that I use regularly:
Delicious
If you use Delicious bookmarking service, then you need to install this immediately. This plugin by jeveaux.com will add a button on your toolbar and with a single click, you can save web page you want to bookmark. This plugin is hosted on Github and can be downloaded here.
ScribeFire
ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser, Google Chrome Web browser, Opera Web Browser, and Apple Safari Web browser that allows you to easily post to all of your blogs. Once you have set up your blog properly, you can will be able to start writing and posting right on your browser without requiring to open and login to your blog admin panel. Pretty cool.
Awesome Screenshot
With Firefox, you can find dozens of web capture plugins. In Safari, Awesome Screenshot is one of the best and most simple one. It also gives you extra features like to annotate and share.
1Password
While it does not fall as a pure Safari extension, it is only one of the so many awesome features from 1Password, it is almost impossible to pass a single day without using it. 1Password itself is a cross-platform password manager and generator. Currently it is available for Mac, PC, iOS and Android. It also works with DropBox to make it super easy for you to sync across different machines.
The year is coming to an end. How many real posts I published in 2010? Only about ten, and the last one was almost 7 months ago. Where is my motivation to publish more stuff? Well now I just found a new web service / browser extension called Scribefire. The Idea is I can publish post more easily right from my browser and start writing right that minute. Will this encourage me to post more often? We’ll see….
By the way, ScribeFire works in Firefox, Chrome and Safari.
This has been one of the best Apple Mail tips that I found from the web.
All you need is some basic knowledge of (X)HTML and CSS and the rest is very well explained on the tutorial. Do not let that long and very detailed steps discourage you, it is actually very easy to do!
Create a fancy signature for your Apple Mail
Read the tutorial (by All Forces)
More than three years using Mac, I have always been frustrated when I need to type non-regular characters. On Windows I usually had this huge list of ASCII characters list then entered them by pressing ALT + (ASCII code number).
On Mac I think it cannot work that easy, but I maybe wrong. Anyway, just today I just find the better way to do this by accident. Turns out all you need to do is press alt+command+T and it will open the Characters window.
Not all the characters I use are there, but still need to check it more.
Everybody loves Firefox. Even if I use Safari as my main browser most of the time, Firefox’s expandability is still irreplaceable. With so many available themes, plugins and extensions, you can personalize your browser according to your browsing or work behavior.
Firefox toolbar with Web Developer extension
So, what’s my favorite? Since switching to Mac, I do not test out everything one-by-one anymore but I have to say Chris Pederick’s Web Developer extension is one of the best of productivity purpose. It provides you with almost every tool you need as a web developer like customize how the CSS should be displayed, window resize, display outlines (tables, links, frames) and so much more.
For me this is perticularly important and makes everything easier to learn how a site or webpage is built.
This extension is available for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Chris Pederick’s Web Developer page link
If you use a Mac, you would probably use OmniGraffle to replace Visio as a tool to create diagrams, flowcharts and other similar documents. The coolest thing with it is you can add a list of graphics called stencils from the originally provided ones to make a wider use of the app.
Just today I stumbled on Graffeltopia, a site dedicated to give OmniGraffle users a huge range of free stencil add-ons. These are contributed by users, so expect for the number to keep on growing.
Check it now to start adding your stencils or look for the ones you need for your projects.
Renamer4Mac, batch file renamer for Mac
Price (older version): free, link
Price (newer version): $26, link
Renamer4Mac is a simple tool to batch rename your files. All you need to do is drag all the files to its window and set the rules. On the older version you can rename the files based on Search & Replace, Insert/Overwrite, Remove Characters, Number, or Uppercase/Lowercase. This tool is very handy if you do a lot of repetitive file renaming.
While I am writing this post I just realized that this app is no longer maintained by its original developer. So you need to spend an extra $26 (with 10 days free trial) to get the latest version. I am sure more features have been added, but you can still get the one I have been using all this time here.
AppCleaner by freemacsoft
Price: free
Link
If you always look for small Mac apps that you hope they can make your everyday tasks easier and cannot resist to try them one by one, then you will need AppCleaner. It is a small app which allows you to thoroughly and easily uninstall your apps.
I used to leave so many small preference files scattered on my Mac because I would download, install and uninstall apps that did not really work for me. With AppCleaner, it makes everything more simply and safe.
For all of you who ever use other than Safari as your primary browser, you might notice that Safari is lacking the feature to disable/enable CSS on a page/site. So it is always enabled.
We can use something called Safari bookmarklets to solve this. Here’s how:
- From Safari, CMD+right click then choose ‘Copy Link’ this link.
- Add the previously copied link as one of your bookmark, you may name it ‘Toggle Linked CSS’ or anything.
- Now, everytime you browse just click on that bookmark during a visit of a page and you can see it with its CSS disabled.
- Confused? Just try to test it by clicking on the link above or the added bookmark on this site first then.
Note that this trick does not work 100% on every site, but more than enough as an alternative.