Safari menu separators / journal / hicksdesign

11/03/04

Safari menu separators

screenshot of the menu separators

I’ve come up with a very lo-fi hack for creating bookmark menu separators in Safari. By combining a grey line favicon, with the most minimal page title I could find (unfortunately, Safari doesn’t allow blank titles) you can get a passable separator. If you like the look of example above, simply go to http://sep.hicksdesign.co.uk/, and bookmark it. Once in your bookmarks it can copied into other folders by alt-dragging.

Updated: As clever clogs Shaun Inman has pointed out in the comments, you can remove the title completely by editing the bookmarks.plist file and changing · to . Safari accepts this and just leaves with the grey line.

Updated again: If you prefer to use a plain-as-possible favicon (a single-pixel of pinstripe colour) then go to http://sep2.hicksdesign.co.uk/ instead.

Technorati Tags Tags: browsers, howto, safari, themes

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Comments are now closed, but you can still have a jolly time reading what others have left:

Dave S. said 1675 days ago:

Sometimes it's the low-fi solutions that are the best.

A very similar idea: dock dividers.

Shaun Inman said 1675 days ago:

You're almost there Jon ;D

Try this: Quit Safari. Open to ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist in your text editor of choice and replace your <string>.</string> with <string></string>. Then open Safari, go to your bookmarks and copy the one with no name to your hearts content.

Since the favicon won't span the entire width I might even chose to have just a transparent favicon.

Then you can let the whitespace do the talking.

Chris Vincent said 1675 days ago:

Hmm... I seem to remember that going into the bookmarks tab on Safari and creating a menu item called "-" would create a seperator. I'm not at home to test it however, and I might be thinking of something else.

Jon Hicks said 1674 days ago:

Shaun - if the favicon is completely transparent, Safari defaults to the globe icon :o(

Thanks for the tip about editing the .plist file - I didn't think it would work (deleting the name in the browser didn't), but it did! Huzzah! This is what I was hoping would happen - other users would have better ideas!

Chris - presumably that would show up a folder or globe icon? I was trying to get away from that so that it was more of a clear divide. Is that what you meant?

Shaun Inman said 1674 days ago:

What if you grabbed the bgcolor of the menu exactly where your current favicon lands and set a single pixel of that color but left the rest transparent? That might work. And even if it doesn't line up on the pinstripe in the same place every time at least it's just one pixel!

Jon Hicks said 1674 days ago:

That should work! Hmm, I might just give it a try...

Shaun Inman said 1674 days ago:

Ah, but that doesn't account for the transparent menus. Bah, it wouldn't be too noticeable. ;D

Jon Hicks said 1674 days ago:

Its fine actually, try this - http://test.hicksdesign.co.uk/.

You only notice it when your hovering over it - which hardly matters.

I still prefer the slight line, but the whitespace looks good too.

Shaun Inman said 1674 days ago:

Very nice. That'll do it for me. (Unless Chris' idea pans out.)

I would never have thought of setting up a dummy favicon and page to get rid of the globe/folder. Right on.

#10

Chris Vincent said 1674 days ago:

Hmm... Came home and tried it. Doesn't work. I could have sworn a dash made a separator, but I could be thinking of a beta (or my days working with ResEdit on Mac OS 7-9).

#11

Nate said 1674 days ago:

You could use ‾ (aka: ‾ ) in the title to make a solid line, though I don't know if this would be preferable.

#12

Veerle Pieters said 1674 days ago:

Wow, your bookmarks are nicely categorized ;-) Mine are in a desperate need for some Spring cleaning and this tip will come handy. Thanks!

#13

Jon Hicks said 1674 days ago:

Nate - you'd have to change the position of the line in the favicon (or use the blank-ish favicon). Also, it wouldn't display equidistant between the bookmarks or folders.

#14

Nate said 1674 days ago:

Yah - never mind my idea because besides the other reasons, it also shows up as a dark black line which is kinda distracting. Maybe an upcoming version of safari will include a way to add *true* dividers, like the ones between a list of links and the "open in tabs" feature, i guess the line-height is what's making the workarounds less than optimal.

#15

Ludvig said 1673 days ago:

I found out that while no kind of space (em-space, thin-space, etc) worked, a "right-to-left override"-char did. You can find it in the ... ehh, what do they call it in the english version of OS X *changing system language* ... ahh, in the character palette. It's on line 02000, 6.