An end to Browser pimping?

Thanks go to Doug March, who pointed me to an article on Ars Technica on Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5). In particular, it was this paragraph that Doug wanted to draw my attention to:

“One more tip we got regarding Leopard, is that InputManager plugins are no longer allowed. That’s right… no more little hacks from anybody besides Apple. No more Apple menu hacks. No more Safari plugins.”

Oh shit! No more InputManagers = no more useful plugins like Saft or Inquisitor. OK, the use of the word ‘plugin’ is up for debate (Haxie is maybe a more appropriate term), but these are little caffeine boosts to apps with no plugin API, and I for one love them.”

The article continues:

“Apple isn’t really broken up about it since InputManagers were often used for nefarious purposes anyway,” our sources said, but the loss of InputManager control will break a lot of shareware and commercial software that currently makes use of that control.

It was news to me, but apparently InputManagers are a security risk. I was well aware of the chance of crashing and sluggish performance, but not malware using it to do BadStuff™ to your Mac.

What isn’t clear at this stage, is whether this applies to SIMBL, a method of applying hacks to a specific app. InputManagers load for every application, whether it’s intended for it or not, although not necessarily being active in those apps. SIMBL got around that and could be more targeted. I’ve asked Mike Solomon if he knows, but I guess until he gets his hands on Leopard, there’s no way to be sure.

It does mention that “InputManager is not exactly the same as APE, by the way”, so perhaps Unsanity’s APE (Application Enhancer) system could be used? I must say though, I’ve not had the greatest experience with their APE modules.

There is another way of course. Apple could develop a proper plugin API for their apps (Safari in particular), but something tells me that ‘giving up control’ is not something they’d want to do, and for good reason. As the Camino developers experienced recently, 3rd party plugins/hacks can really screw with day to day bug tracking and resolution.

Somehow, I can’t help feeling optimistic that someone somewhere will find a way, and a good way at that…

Tags: browsers, osx, plugins, security

Skinning sites in Safari with PithHelmet

It would easy to to think that Firefox is the only browser with cool extensions, and overlook the excellent ones available for Safari, such as Saft, Stand and PithHelmet. Here’s how to alter individual sites css using new features in PithHelmet.

Tags: browsers, css, plugins, rss, safari

Sage on OS X

So far, Sage is the only thing that’s tempting to use Firefox over my Omniweb 5/NewsFire combination. More playing and fiddling ensues…

Tags: firefox, osx, plugins, rss, sage

New Safari Stand features

The free Safari plug-in ‘Stand’ is updated to work with v1.2.3 (v125.9), and has added some rather nice new features.

Tags: browsers, osx, plugins, safari, software

Extending Safari 3: Stand

I’ve recently discovered another plug-in for Safari, called Stand. I can’t tell you a whole lot of detail about it, as the site is written in Japanese. What I can tell you is that its free, and it allows you to do the following slick actions:

• Allow syntax colouring in viewed source (no control over colours used though)
• Specify a font and size for viewed source (I like this – I have a thing about using Lucida Grande for source view).
• Search your bookmarks and history (very nice, although I tend to use Quicksilver to find bookmarks quickly, this is even faster).
• Specify that all links to a ’_blank’ target open in a new tab instead of a new window. This is nice.
• Save tab layouts as workspaces alá Omniweb.
• Assign categories, colour labels and comments to new bookmarks
• Create search shortcuts (as in Sogudi and Saft)
• ‘Site Alteration’. This allows you some basic preferences on a per site basis, such as what encoding to use, and whether images, pop-ups, plug-ins or javascript are to be allowed.
• Remove favicons.
• Set a time delay for auto-closing the downloads window after completion.
• It also seems to add ‘Copy Link HTML Tag’ command to the context menu when ctrl-clicking links. (I’ve only just noticed this though, so it could’ve been there all along!)

This is a beta, so although I could save windows as workspaces, I couldn’t find a way of reopening them. There is also a window called the ‘Stand Bar’, which includes searchable bookmarks and history again, plus 2 other menus which haven’t been ‘hooked up’ yet.

Tags: browsers, plugins, safari, software

safari sidebar - beta screenshots (updated)

That’s right. I’ve just received a new Saft beta, with the sidebar that I’ve been bellyaching about for months! To be honest, alhough I pestered Hao for this feature, I never really thought it would be possible, but hey, it never hurts to ask. Hao seems to like a challenge however, and he’s been kind enough to allow me to post screenshots here.

This version works the same as other releases of Saft. The plug-in goes into the Library>InputMangers folder replacing the previous version. Once launched, Safari then has the ‘Show Sidebar’ command in the Safari menu (this is a temporary position).

Tags: plugins, rss, safari, software, themes

Saftari

Saft has been updated yet again. It was only a week or so ago when Hao Li added the ability to save and restore windows and tabs on quit. Now, check out these new additions:

• New feature: Customizable HTTP timeout
• New feature: Separator in bookmark menu
• New feature: Control-1 to 9 to popup bookmark menu or open bookmark
• Improvement: Saft contextual menu items for shortcuts grouped in sub-menus
• Improvement: Open new tab for shortcut searching from contextual menu when holding down the option key

Look at that second one. Separators! I wrote to Hao Li asking for this feature, but never thought he would actually do it. How good is that?! The guy is putting Apple to shame with his development speed.

Tags: osx, plugins, safari, saft

extending Safari 2: saft!

One of my niggles about Safari is that I’ve always felt it’s a little short in features. As mentioned before, Pith Helmet (Advert blocking), Sogudi (Address bar searches) and Safari Enhancer go someway to improve it. I want to use Safari – I love its clean, elegant interface and speed, but sometimes it feels a bit lacking.

Tags: osx, plugins, reviews, safari, saft, software

Edit CSS in Firefox

Quick tip if you haven’t come across this before. There is an excellent web development extension available for Firefox called Edit CSS. Quite simply, it allows you to view all style sheets for the current page in the sidebar, make edits and see the result as you type. The amount of time this saves is amazing.

A problem with many firefox extensions is that they break in current and mac builds, and this is the case here. The useful option to save the css once edited doesn’t work. Even with this bug, its a worthwhile download.

Tags: css, firefox, plugins

Extending Safari

Just wanted to share with you my favourite apps for extending the capabilities of Safari – There might be one here you haven’t tried…

Safari Enhancer – Does a whole variety of tasks, but I use it to enable the debug menu (contains a spoof user agents menu), remove the metal skin (looks great in Panther!) and deactivate the cache.

Sogudi – creates search shortcuts to use in the location bar. For instance, to search for ‘skEdit’ on Versiontracker, just type ‘vt skEdit’ into the location bar. Comes with some preset searches, and the ability to add your own.

Tags: browsers, mac, osx, plugins, safari, software