Take Control of Safari

Are you a Safari user? If not, why aren’t you? Let me guess, Firefox has better plugins that suit your needs. I understand, but what if you were able to give Safari a bit more customization as well. Now don’t get me wrong, these are no Firefox plugins, but they are useful additions to help give you more control over Safari.

UPDATE: This technique does not work with Safari 4 Beta. SIMBL has not been updated yet.

The first step is to install the plugin framework, SIMBL or Smart Input Manager Bundle Loader. SIMBL allows you to then install plugins for hundreds of Cocoa applications, Safari being one of them.

Once SIMBL is installed on your system you will want to take a look at two different plugins that will help you take control of Safari. The first plugin is called Stand. My favorite feature is the ability to set a “close window” timer for the downloads window. I set it to “0″ so that when I finish downloading a file, the downloads window disappears instantly.

Another great feature is the ability to force links to open in new tabs rather than new windows. Safari has this feature built in I believe, but it never seemed to work for me. Stand also gives you the ability to add a visual tab bar to your browser. This is a really neat feature that takes a quick screenshot of the site you are viewing and places it on the new tab bar. This way, you can see all the sites you have open visually, rather than just a title.

Stand has a lot more to offer. So download it here and give it a try.

The second plugin is called SafariTabs. I found this plugin when trying to help out a friend (klein maetschke) who wanted to load a certain page everytime he opened a new tab. SafariTabs gives you the ability to do that and a few other things. My favorite feature is Tab Restore. Have you ever closed a tab by accident? SafariTabs enables your ?Z combo to undo the closed window, GENIUS! My only question is, why isn’t this built into Safari in the first place?

There are a lot of other SIMBL plugins out there so get going and seek out your favorites!

Xbox Live Gamer Status

UPDATED December 1, 2009

Hey guys, just to let you know. If you were having troubles with the source code below, you may want to give it another go. The url for the API had changed and I hadn’t noticed it until now. Please copy and paste the code below into a new php file and give it a whir. Please let me know if you have any other problems. I am currently working on a very cool project that I think many of you will use in the future. Let’s just say that it will be the envy of all your xbox friends who don’t use Wordpress. Enjoy.

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Xbox Live is a super cool gaming platform. Not only that, its a great way to interact with your friends and others on a social level. I have been appalled at the fact that the Xbox development team has not made it easier for us to let our friends know when we are connected to Xbox Live.

Sure you can login to xbox.com or possibly use your iPhone friends list application, but what about a way to display your Online Status anywhere on the web. Well here is your answer. After about of day of research and development I have come up with a solid solution that can be styled anyway you choose.

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Unstyled Code:

It turns out that one of the Xbox developers, Duncan Mackenzie has written a very valuable script that gathers a ton of information about Xbox Live users including: their online status, what games they have played recently and their achievement scores in each game. The problem is, he doesn’t explain in detail how to use his “Gamertag API” feed.

After understanding what all cURL was all about and how to parse through XML files using SimpleXML, I finally came up with my solution.

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Styled Code:

I advise you to take a look at my code and try it for yourself. I have also listed a few small requirements below the source code.

Also, be sure to install the PHP widget if you would like to run this code inside a widget on your sidebar.

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Embed your Xbox Live status with PHP.

<?php

$ch = curl_init("http://xboxapi.duncanmackenzie.net/gamertag.ashx?GamerTag=YOURGAMERTAG");

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 4);

$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

$xml = new SimpleXmlElement($data, LIBXML_NOCDATA);

foreach ($xml->PresenceInfo as $mystatus) 
{
print  '<div id="xboxlivestatus"><a href="' . $xml->ProfileUrl . '">' . $xml->Gamertag . '</a> is ' . $mystatus->StatusText . ' : ' . $mystatus->Info . '</div>';
}

?>

Requirements:

• You must be running PHP 5
• You must have cURL enabled
• Change YOURGAMERTAG to your personal gamertag

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If you have any questions please leave a comment.

Weekly Update | Episode 7

Weekly Update | Episode 7 from Weekly Update on Vimeo.

This week Jordan Pauly and Michael Schultz discuss:
NEW CONTEST! Sign-up for our SMS alert list on our sidebar. 15th person to sign up gets a $10 iTunes gift card. | iLife 09 | New Movie: 9 | Midwestgamerblog

Musical artist:
MGMT – Electric Feel
The Maine – Mr. Winter
Black Violin – Fanfare
Madeleine Peyroux – Lonesome Road

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