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!

Recent Comments