14 Mac Safari Plugins That Won’t Cost You a Cent

Some Mac users love Safari. Others see it as the bane of internet browsers. Some use it out of respect for the Apple brand – it’s what comes on the machine, so it is pure Mac. Some use it because they appreciate its simplicity. Some hate it for the same reasons; with its relative lack of features, they prefer choices like Chrome or Firefox that offer more functionality.

Sure, Safari for Mac doesn’t have 100 bazillion plugins like Firefox. Sure, a good number of the ones it does have are paid, which most people find utterly ridiculous. Why pay for something that ought to be a free, natural part of the software? Whatever the reasons and whatever your preference, Safari exists, and there are some things you can do that will make it a handier piece of software. If you’re one of the millions of people who call Safari their browser, here are some great free plugins that will put a little excitement into the basic program and make your web surfing a little more efficient and under your control.

SIMBL

http://www.culater.net/software/SIMBL/SIMBL.php

Not really a plug-in, SIMBL is something you have to have to make a number of other plugins work. See it as a plug-in for your plugins. Somewhat of a pain, no? At least it’s a tiny download and a painless install, using a wizard to get itself onto your machine. And once it’s done, it’s done.

As the creator describes it, SIMBL “allows you to build hacks for Cocoa applications and apply the code selectively based on an application’s unique identifier.” What that fancy geek speak means to normal people is it sticks the plugins in the right places within Safari’s structure so they work properly. Once SIMBL is in your computer, you’ll throw other plug-in files into its folder and they’ll work when you reboot Safari. Easy peasy, lemon squeezie. Many of the plugins featured in this article will rely on SIMBL, so you might as well pick it up now.

SafariStand

http://hetima.com/safari/stand-e.html

Kicking off is one of the most popular Safari plugins, and one that requires SIMBL to function. If you toss this bad boy into your SIMBL folder, you’re ready to go.

SafariStand adds functions like bookmark/history searching, a sidebar that shows a thumbnail of the tabs you have open, and allows you to view the cookies and css code for sites. It also alters your history page to “History Flow,” which allows you to search through past sites easier.

SafariSource

http://www.tildesoft.com/Misc.html#SafariSource

This bad boy is a SIMBL plug-in that adds syntax coloring to Safari’s source view. Have you ever written a webpage using Dreamweaver or some other HTML editor? If so, you’ll know that in these programs, the HTML code shows up in different colors so you can tell what’s what when looking through it. This plug-in adds that colorization to the HTML you see when viewing a page’s source with your web browser. Handy for geeks who like to peek through other people’s code.

You can customize the colors of different things to whatever you want, which is a nice touch.

Inquisitor

http://www.inquisitorx.com/safari/index_en.php

Inquisitor is a very popular plug-in that takes OSX’s Spotlight idea and applies it to a web browser. It aims to speed up your Safari searching, as websites start appearing instantly when you start typing, along with suggestions to refine your search. Of course, the more you use it, the more it reads your mind and starts tailoring its results to what it think you might want. How conveniently creepy. Inquisitor is also in development for IE and Firefox, and is available for the iPhone.

Glims

http://www.machangout.com

Glims is one of the most respected plugins available for Safari. It takes elements of the popular Inquisitor and Saft (which we won’t look at because it’s $12) plugins and combines them, adds to them, and makes for a really awesome tool. It comes as a .dmg file and doesn’t require SIMBL to execute. The feature list is huge and includes things great like adding inline thumbnails to Google search results, full-screen browsing capability, keyword search, auto-closing the Downloads window, re-opening last session when Safari starts (YES!) and much more.

I appreciate the ability to have all windows open in new tabs, even when the code tries to make your browser open it in a new window. If you have Inquisitor or Saft installed, this will by default overwrite some of their options with Glims tools. For instance, you’ll be using Glims’s search assistant instead of Inquisitor’s unless you turn it off.

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Cooliris

http://www.cooliris.com/product

Cooliris will turn Safari into a picture and movie viewer. “See it all on an infinite wall,” the website says. From Flickr to Youtube to Kodak Galleries, Cooliris can take images and video from basically anywhere and turn it into a cinematic presentation. It allows you to search, turn into a true full-screen layout, share your content, and look at it all on one infinite wall that looks like a horizontal Star Wars story screen.

The program is self-contained so installation is simple.

I really have a lot of fun with this one – it’s one of my personal favorite plugins. It’s a great way to look through your folders of pictures or videos, or discover content from the web. Everything is categorized on the left, and goes between your own files and the web, Hulu and other sites to bring you more media. The interface is very malleable and you can just kind of toss your way through your files, grabbing the ones you want, washing past the others – it’s a good time. Very smart and exceptionally well-developed for a freebie.

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Safari AdBlock

http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock

This self-contained plugin blocks unwanted advertisements when viewing webpages. Ads are something that bother a lot of people, and for them, this is a beautiful plugin. For those who don’t mind ads, it can cause an awkward aesthetic feel when looking at websites with giant blank spaces all over them. It works better than some other plugins in filling the gaps with content you actually want (others leave the ad space there and just wipe it out), but it all depends on the site. Some respond to having the ads removed better than others, and some will look pretty messy without the ads in place.

Anwho, if you are one of those folks who wants to punch advertisements in the throat, this is one of the best received ad blockers available for Safari. It’s easy to use – just install, restart Safari and it’s working.

Take a look at the pics below that show a site before and after AdBlock.

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DeliciousSafari

http://delicioussafari.com

This one is pretty self-explanatory. It adds a menu option to your menu bar with all sorts of Delicious options. You can use it to save the active window, manage tags, and you know… just be delicious.

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Safari140

http://www.newsfirex.com/safari140

Despite the ever-growing number of Twitter applications out there, Safari140 is becoming a very popular Safari plugin for Tweeting. It’s insanely simple, which makes the fact it is a competitor against some very intuitive, in-depth Twitter apps doubly impressive. It adds itself to Safari’s File menu. When clicked, it brings up a simple 140 character box where it auto-generates a Tweet for you with an is.gd shortened version of the URL you are currently visiting. Couldn’t be easier.

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And a few more simple ones…

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ClickToFlash

http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash

This little guy doesn’t allow any Flash things to play on a site until you tell it to. No more auto-starting videos or songs because of a Flash auto-play. You have the power over Flash. Can you feel it pumping through your veins?

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Safari Guardian

http://many-tricks.com/safariguardian

This SIMBL bundle boasts a function that Glims already takes care of, which is tab-opening all links that attempt to open in a new window. It does go one step further, though, disallowing any window to automatically resize itself using JavaScript. Nothing is more annoying than going to a certain webpage only to have your window automatically resized. Safari Guardian will prevent such atrocities from happening. It can be another means to a familiar end if you only want some elements of Glims without the whole sack of beans.

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GreaseKit

http://creammonkey.sourceforge.net

Creammonkey adds Greasemonkey-like support to Safari. Firefox users are huge fans of the Greasemonkey site-specific user scripting, and this would be the Apple counterpart. You can use this to do things like add a download function to YouTube videos so you can save them on your machine, or auto-highlight your favorite programs on the TV guide page. The number of scripts available is always growing, so it’s worth having this installed. Also, many of the scripts used for Firefox are supported by GreaseKit, so it opens you up to a wealth of potential tools.

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AcidSearch

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15495

This little bugger adds unlimited search channels to the Google search field, so you can make it search whatever you want. Simple and handy for those who, for whatever reason, want to use something other than Google. Of course, Glims does this too… but if you want this functionality without everything else, here you go.

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GrowlSafari

http://growl.info

Mac users sure love their Growl support, so why shouldn’t Safari have it too? GrowlSafari will give you Growl support for completed downloads, updated news feeds, disk image status and compression status. GrowlSafari is a SIMBL plug-in that is part of the official Growl package. You’ll have to download the whole package to get it.

There you have it. There is something here that nearly every Safari user will find handy. You may just find yourself saying “Firewhat?”

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