It’s safe to assume that you have more than one browser installed on your system. I have five. Though we may not use more than two, all of us suffer from a bit of browser fancy. As soon as developers announce a launch of a browser that promises to speed up the web for us, we click on the download link. That’s not a problem, but keeping the same set of bookmarks across the browsers is.

Xmarks is a nifty solution to migrate bookmarks across the world. But for now, it supports Firefox and IE (with Safari in Mac OS). The one for Google Chrome is in the works. The browser that’s missing is Opera. That leaves us with a job half done. Bookmark syncing using Delicious and its bookmarklet tool is one roundabout. But it’s public by default and you have to log-in to change it to private. So, it’s still not as easy a click.

Transmute attempts to fill the gap by letting us migrate bookmarks across all the browsers.

Why Is it Such a Headache to Migrate Bookmarks?

Not very much so, but every browser has its own way of storing its bookmarks. Most bookmarks are stored as HTML files. Opera uses an .adr format. Firefox 3.5+ too differs in that respect as it stores its bookmarks in a Places.sqlite file which is a database file. The bookmarks.html files that used to hold all the links in the earlier versions had been discontinued from Firefox 3 onwards.

Does this create problems in migration of your bookmarks to other browsers still using the HTML formats? No, because Firefox, just like all the others has an import export utility under the Bookmarks Library that allows you to convert the database format to the HTML one for it to be picked up by the other browsers.

The imported bookmarks also get added to the existing bookmarks usually in a separate folder with the name of the browser that was the source. For instance, imported Firefox bookmarks get located in a folder that’s marked Netscape. Imported bookmarks in Chrome get added under Other Bookmarks. You can then manually shift the bookmarks around into any other root folder.

Next, you have to manually weed out the duplicates by going through each and every link. This is where the headache can start.

Transmute Offers Better (& Quicker) Control Over Bookmarks

Why such a name? Is it because it does the job of bookmark transfer ‘silently’ and without fuss? Perhaps, because the Transmute interface is hassle free.

1. You have two dropdowns – Source and Target. You can use the path field to select the location of the bookmarks file for the individual browsers in case you ever changed the default location.
2. Use the dropdowns to select the respective source and target browsers. There are 12 supported browsers and I am guessing that should cover most of what the world uses. The 13th placed XBEL format (XML Bookmark Exchange Language) covers a few other browsers like Galeon, Arora and Midori which use this one to store their bookmarks.



3. Transmute gives you two more options to migrate bookmarks – Overwrite Collections and Backup Collections.
   • Duplication can be handled if you select the overwrite option as it will plant a fresh copy of the bookmark links (but will also remove the older but unique bookmarks in the target).
   • Backup collections are a safety net in case something goes wrong with the conversion process and you want your old bookmark collection back. By default Transmute timestamps and backs up your bookmark collections before changes are made, providing extra safety.

   

   • To restore the old order, just browse to the bookmark folder location and rename the time stamped backup file to the default file name.
4. Close the source and target browsers and press Start. An alert box pops up and with your agreement the transfer begins. A preview window is the last stop before the conversion starts.

And finishes! That’s it; you can migrate bookmarks across multiple browsers without the hassle of import and export.

Transmute also comes in a PRO flavor giving some extra bookmark selection controls and co-ordination with services like Google Bookmarks and Delicious. But for the simple task of keeping all my browsers with the same bookmarks, the free version more than stands up. If you hate installing things, then there’s a portable option too.

Having the same bookmarks across all your browsers is such a basic need and keeping them all updated with each other is where Transmute steps in with a speedy click.

Transmute v1.63 is Windows only and requires Microsoft .NET Framework. It may also run on Linux and Mac OS X with Mono Framework 2.0 or higher installed.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab (6)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)

Being the native Mac OS X browser, Safari – which should have been a no brainer choice for Mac users – faces a fierce challenge from Firefox – the browser that can be anything you need it to be. Add-ons are Firefox’s ultimate weapon.

But Firefox is not the only browser that can add functionalities using add-ons. The Safari browser also has plugins to expand its ability. While there are far less Safari browser plugins than there are for Firefox, not everybody needs everything.

So for anybody who are still deciding which one of the two should be the main browser, maybe these list of Safari browser plugins can help you choose sides.

Multifunctional

1. Glims is on top of my list of all other Safari plugins. It has expanded the search box functionality of Safari plus some other bonuses such as: re-opening closed tabs, automatically re-opening the tabs from the last session and full-screen browsing.  It’s been discussed here.

2. SafariStand also adds a few helpful features to Safari such as: Stand Bar (for quick access to bookmarks), history, Stand Search with Spotlight support, an Action Menu, option to restore last workspace, a site alterations preference window with the option to put custom CSS layouts on specific sites, and syntax coloring in viewed source. Go to more detailed explanation here.

Please note that you need to install SIMBL 0.8.2 or later before you can use SafariStand.

Searchbar

3. Inquisitor beautifully extends the functionality of the search bar. It auto-completes your search term, gives you search recommendations and lets you quickly see the results for your specified terms on another sites. If you need to have the powerful searchbar only without additional extra functions choose this one over Glims. Inquisitor also supports IE and Firefox. More about it here.

Multimedia

4. CoolIris (Preview and PictLens) will transform Safari into a picture and movie viewer – in style. ‘Nuff said.

We’ve covered CoolIris before, and it’s nice to know that this product is also working fine under Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux; and for other browsers like Firefox, IE 7 and IE 8, and Flock 2. Safari under Windows is not supported though.

Blockages

5. Safari AdBlock and SafariBlock are the ultimate tools to block ads and provide cleaner browsing. Most web publishers would hate these two as parts of the publishers’ revenue come from advertising. But for users, blocking ads means less clutter and more browsing speed.

6. Click-to-flash – will prevent any flash content from automatically loading and will replace it with an empty grey box. Just click on the box to load the content. Anyone with a slow internet connection will find this webkit plugin indispensable.

Social Media

7. Safari140 is the tool to tweet. This plugin will allow you to send direct tweets from Safari, auto filled with the current site while the long URL’s are shortened.

8. DeliciousSafari is self explanatory. This is the tool to create and use del.icio.us bookmark from Safari.

Tools

9. Greasekit is the comparable Firefox’s Greasemonkey in Safari. It gives users the scripting ability to change looks and add new functionality to their favorite sites. Greasekit is compatible with most Greasemonkey scripts.

Just like SafariStand, Greasekit need SIMBL.

10. Firebug lite is the answered prayer for users who want to have Firebug ability – once Firefox exclusive – in other browsers. There are two ways to activate Firebug under non-Firefox browsers: insert the code in the site, or use the bookmarklet.

This one is not exactly a plugin but it is the solution for those who said that the only reason he/she stays with Firefox is Firebug.

More

11. Pimp My Safari – is the place to go to find more Safari add-ons in the form of plugins or bookmarklets. Please note that not all of the plugins are free.

This list is far from complete, but I think it’s a good start. So if you know (and use) other good Safari plugins, please share them using the comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The two week Safari challenge (24)
• Welcome to My Firefox: Extensions, Themes, Setup (14)
• Watch Videos In The Firefox Sidebar With YouPlayer (16)
• View A Multi-Page Article On One Single Page With PageZipper (14)

Apart from using your favorite website (wink, wink), we’ve seen a bunch of services here on MakeUseOf in the past, allowing you to make a personal, dynamic homepage, greeting you with image slideshows, recent RSS updates, and so on.

Although it seems obvious for most computer users, finding out how to set your browser home page is not evident for everyone. Today, we’ll show you how to change your home page in 5 different browsers.

Firefox and Firefox-based Browsers

Firefox is not just the acclaimed geek-browser anymore. These days, it’s the most used browser in the internet market. As such, that is where we’ll start. Note that any menu-names might have to be translated to your own language, but any changes should be obvious.

How to Set Browser Home Page

In the top left of your browser, open the Edit menu and select Preferences.

In the Main tab, you can change your default homepage. You can also configure Firefox to load with a blank page, or to restore your last session.

When you start typing in the text-field, Firefox will make suggestions based on your history. Alternatively, you can also use the address of the webpage currently active in your browser, one of your bookmarks, or restore the default Firefox Start page.

You can add multiple home pages — which will launch in tabs upon opening firefox — by putting vertical slashes between the links. (e.g. “http://www.makeuseof.com | http://www.google.com”)

This will work with Firefox, but also with Firefox-based browsers, like Flock, Wyzo, and many others.

Internet Explorer (IE7 and IE8)

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer might be loathed by many, but one can’t ignore the fact that it takes a worthy second as most used browser. And thus we go on. The differences between Internet Explorer 7 and 8 are superfluous for this tutorial.

Option 1

In the top right of your screen, open the Tools dropdown menu and select Internet Options.

In the General tab, you’ll be able to set the browser home page to one of your liking. Similar to Firefox, you can use the address of the currently active page, the default start page, or a blank page.

If you want Internet Explorer to open multiple pages upon launch, you  need to type the different addresses in the text-box, below each other.

Option 2

There’s a second way to configure your home page. First, surf to the webpage you want to use.

Next, open the dropdown menu next to the Home button, and select Add or Change Home Page…

A new window will pop up. You can choose to replace your current home page by the current address, or to add the webpage to your current bookmarks.

In Internet Explorer 8, you can also use the current tab set (all your open pages) as homepages.

Google Chrome

Chrome’s one of the new guys on the block, but a relatively popular browser, taking in account its short time with us. If you like Google’s browser of simplicity, this part is for you.

In the top-right corner of the browser, open the wrench dropdown menu and select Options. Go to the Basics tab, here you can configure your homepage.

Option 1

Make sure that ‘Open the following pages’ is selected in the startup section near the top of the page.

In the box below, you can add multiple web addresses to be opened upon browser launch. If you want to open a blank page, you’ll have to enter ‘about:blank’, manually.

Option 2

Make sure that the ‘Open the home page’ is selected in the startup section near the top of the page.

In the Home Page section, you’ve got two options. Either use the New Tab Page — which is selected by default — or enter a custom address in the text-field.

Safari

Safari is the default browser on Mac OS X. A while ago it was also ported to Windows. I must say it’s one of the finest browsers around, but sadly underused. If you belong to the Safari-minority, this section is for you.

If you’ve got Windows, open the Edit dropdown menu and select Preferences… at the top-left of the browser.

If you’ve got a Mac, open the Safari dropdown menu and select Preferences… at the top-left of the browser.

Both in Windows and Mac, you can change your homepage in the General tab. You can choose how to open new pages — blank, or with a homepage — and type in the address of your favorite site. Additionally, you can also choose to use the address of the page you’re currently visiting.

While you’re at it, you can also tell Safari what to do upon opening new tabs. Top Sites, one of the best features in Safari, is default, but perhaps you still prefer to use your homepage.

Opera

Opera is – sadly – one of the lesser used browsers, even though it’s got remarkable charms and has introduced numerous innovations in the browser market. If you’re amongst the fine men and women using this slick competitor, this section is for you.

At the top of the browser, open the Tools dropdown menu and select Preferences.

In the General tab, you can configure your homepage. Either type in the address you want to use, or choose to use the currently active page as homepage.

Alternatively, you can configure Opera to launch with a blank page, the startup dialog, or with the tabs of last time’s session.

This is where we conclude this multi-tutorial. I hope you’ve learned something useful today. If there’s anything you want to say, or ask, please refer to the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Safari 4: Is It Time To Switch From Firefox? (26)
• How To Twitter Quickly from Firefox, IE, Opera and Chrome (24)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• Quickly Create Temporary Email Addresses with YopMail (21)

Today, you can see that Microsoft has decided to give a lot more attention to the design of its products. Windows 7 is a testament to that endeavor. It does sadden me that the majority of the UI improvements are derivations or adaptations instead of innovations.

Safari 4 hasn’t suffered radical changes since the beta version – except maybe for the tabs issue which generated a considerable amount of uproar – but it did a fantastic job of polishing rough edges. Safari 4 is fast, usable and has taste.

Let’s dig in a little deeper, shall we?

Unlike earlier versions of Safari for Windows, this iteration integrates beautifully with the default themes in Windows XP, Vista and even Windows 7. Whether we believe that “the new Nitro JavaScript engine that executes JavaScript nearly eight times faster than IE 8 and more than four times faster than Firefox 3” or that it “loads HTML web pages more than three times faster than IE 8 and three times faster than Firefox 3” is up to each one of us and the guys who benchmark milliseconds. It does however feel faster than Firefox and IE8 and about the same as Chrome 2.04.

For many of you running Windows 7 (if you aren’t, what are you waiting for? Here’s how to upgrade), Safari 4 has another surprise – it works with the Aero Peek feature the same way IE8 does. The latest stable version of Firefox 3 does not support this capability.

As for the Top Sites view, I can’t really decide what to think about it. It’s not particularly useful – like the integration with Aero Peek – but it does look good and does not impede my usual browsing habits. Use it for a couple of hours, maybe a day, and the most visited websites will be nicely presented when you open a new tab. And, believe it or not, this Minority Report style interface doesn’t take any longer to load than a new blank tab in Firefox. What is useful is the Cover Flow view for History – it makes finding websites a snap for people with good visual memory.

Another aspect that persuaded me to switch to Safari was the layout of the interface elements – compact, streamlined, bare bones – modifications that I did myself in Firefox. Even the menu bar is hidden to save space. However, I didn’t manage to convince the bookmark list to stay on the side in Safari, a perk for wide screen displays.

Thanks to an AdBlock list and a CSS file designed for Opera by Fanboy you can now disable most of ads. All you have to do is download Element Hider CSS file and go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Style Sheet –> Other. Select the CSS file you just downloaded. Remember though that you’re undermining the revenue model for MakeUseOf and the writers behind it as well as other web publications.

The only thing that’s missing from Safari right now is an add-on similar to NoScript. At that point, Safari is just an upgraded version of Firefox (without getting into a technical discussion about the different rendering engines, Gecko versus WebKit).

All the graphical candy takes a toll on the system memory. While I can’t say it’s a memory leak or something else, Safari with 4 tabs open consumed about 200MB of memory repeatedly. Firefox isn’t far behind with a jump from 90Mb to 160MB – one hour staying in idle mode.

You can also read my review of the Safari 4 beta as well as other posts related to Safari. Tell us in the comments what browser you use, why you like it and of course, your impressions on Safari 4.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• Three Firefox Security & Privacy Add-ons that can Co-exist (23)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• The Ultimate Guide To Speeding Up Firefox 3.5 (131)

If you are a web developer, you sure have to take care of browser compatibilities and ensure that your web app looks and works almost the same, if not entirely the same across different browsers and platforms.

If you have been looking for an easy solution to see how your site looks in different browsers, then check out the new Adobe BrowserLab. Adobe BrowserLab provides you with exact renderings of your webpages as they would look in different browsers and operating systems. The service might remind you of Browsershots which also provides you with screenshots of your site in different browsers. There is however, no waiting required in Adobe BrowserLab and you get to see the results almost instantaneously.

Adobe BrowserLab allows you to preview your work in Firefox 2.X Windows, Firefox 3.X Windows, Firefox 2.X Mac OS, Firefox 3.X Mac OS, IE6.X and IE7.X and Safari 3.X; which is less than what you can get with Browsershots but includes the popular browsers.

You can view the results side by side (2-up) view, or any individual screenshot (1-up view) or compare the renderings with the “onion-skin” view which overlays one screenshot over the other (as seen below).

You can install BrowserLab MXP extensions to integrate Adobe BrowserLab with Dreamweaver CS4, which would then allow you to preview and compare the local files which you are developing for your site.

Looks too good to be true? Well it is true, at least for a certain period of time anyway. Adobe BrowserLab is a limited free preview service. While Adobe is testing the service, they are letting people hop on board. The final product would most likely require you to shell out some bucks. However, with the time most webapps take these days to drop out of beta stages, you might be able to use BrowserLab for at least a considerable amount of time. You can give it a thorough spin and decide if you would like to spend some money to avail its services in the future.

Interested in webdesign? Check out our MakeUseOf posts to help you become a web-designing wizard.

What clever ways do you use to preview your work in different browsers? Virtualization? Or you install all the browsers? Let us know about them in the comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• How To Set Your Browser Homepage in 5 Browsers (17)
• How To Change Default Webpage Source Editor Of Browsers (14)
• How Installing an Active X Control Can Open The Door To Hackers (7)
• 6 Reasons Why Mozilla Firefox Is Safe Compared To Internet Explorer (23)

Well today I’m going to play devil’s advocate and tell you what I actually liked about Safari 4.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong about copying features from competitors – once and for all – we should establish that this actually improves the experience for end-users. It is how the tech industry has worked for years and this ‘tradition’ isn’t about to change anytime soon. Everything from mobile phones to operating systems are being knocked off and implemented and at the end of the day the innovator gets the geek cred; the user doesn’t care. He’s just happy using the Top Sites feature.

Safari 4 brings us improved performance all around, from startup times to page loads and some changes in the user interface. Safari now uses the latest version of WebKit, and improved script interpreter, and puts the tabs in the title bar – a very good design choice that saves space especially on small resolution devices. Why isn’t this better? I can’t understand why people are so upset about a change in design that is clearly beneficial.

The Top SItes feature, as you probably know, was one of the new things Google Chrome brought to the table. Chrome’s implementation of the feature is admittedly barebones – I actually like the curved view in Safari, which brings me back memories of Minority Report; all we need now is the touchscreen.

There are a couple of tweaks they made to the interface since the last iteration: no more grey gradient menus and OS X background for the configuration windows and notifications.

Performance-wise we see an improvement – it uses just slightly more resources than Firefox. You can try this too; I opened Google, Google Reader and Yahoo. 3 tabs for each browser.

Apple haters – close that Gmail window, don’t send me hate mail – but I actually would switch to Safari 4 if I would be able to port 4 extensions I can’t live without: Customize Google, StumbleUpon, AdBlock, and NoScript. I got spoiled – I didn’t see an ad since last year – and I couldn’t take it. An even bigger issue is not having NoScript to protect me from scripting exploits.

As always, I love to read your comments and reply, so don’t be shy and tell me what you think about Safari 4 browser; what’s bugging you, what could be better.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The two week Safari challenge (24)
• Opera 10 Beta ‘Turbo’ – Does It Still Have What It Takes? (85)
• Check Your Website Design In Different Browsers With Adobe BrowserLab (6)
• A Review Of The Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Browser (7)

This time around, I’ll be looking into one of the best Safari plugins out there which has eluded me for a long time. Despite the fact that it was vastly popular, I hesitated to install it because firstly, I don’t like having too many plugins – they could conflict with each other. Secondly, SafariStand’s site is pretty uninviting and doesn’t give the impression that its plugin is actually quite awesome. So, enter my SafariStand review.

SafariStand offers so many enhancements, I don’t know where to begin. To be quite honest, I don’t think that I haven’t tried all of them yet! But there are some features which I think are pretty mind-blowing. Let’s start with those:

History Flow

How many times have you gone through your browsing history, trying to find something and you can’t remember the title of the article or what the site was called? For me, this happens quite often. I have to literally shoot in the dark and re-open all the websites which I’ve browsed before that sounds vaguely close to what I’m looking for. Most of the time, my search ends in vain.

SafariStand solves this problem with something pretty neat. It’s called History Flow and from the name, you probably expect it to be something like Cover Flow and it is literally Cover Flow for your history. SafariStand captures a thumbnail for every site you’ve been to and stores it together with your browsing history to allow you to graphically view the sites you’ve visited.

History Flow can be found within Safari’s History menu. Clicking on it will bring up SafariStand’s History Flow window like in the screenshot :

Like I said, just awesome.

Sidebar

SafariStand brings another innovative addition to Safari: a sidebar with thumbnails of all opened tabs. This is actually pretty useful because if I have too many opened tabs, Safari would collect the tabs together under a double-right arrow (>>). With Sidebar, I can roughly know which sites I have opened in those tabs. I can re-arrange and close tabs in Sidebar and also adjust the size of the thumbnail.

For the sake of exhibition, I enlarged the size of the sidebar but normally it opens much smaller (and less obtrusive) than this.

Workspaces

I do a lot of research online and most of the time, I tend to have quite a few tabs open. However, I can’t always finish reading them at once. SafariStand lets me store all the opened tabs as a Workspace and it can be re-opened with a single click. You might call it Safari session saver. I can also save multiple Workspaces and they can all be managed in SafariStand’s Bookmark Shelf.

Automatic searches

By enabling SafariStand’s automatic searches, there’s no need to press Cmd+F before inputting a search query. It will immediately recognize keystrokes and use them to find whatever it is I’m looking for on that page, provided that nothing (address bar, search field) is focused.

Besides the few really cool features I’ve just mentioned, SafariStand still has an arsenal of capabilities left to explore:

• Automatically close the Download window after a certain period of time
• Switch tabs with the mouse wheel
• Quick search in address bar
• Stand Bar: separate bar for Bookmarks & History
• and many more

SafariStand is a SIMBL plugin and has to be added into /Users/(your username)/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins/. There are also separate versions for Leopard and Tiger so be careful about which you download.

SafariStand was tested with Safari 3.2.1 running on Mac OS X 10.5.5. Because I can’t test this on Tiger and the fact that Cover Flow view was only implemented in Leopard’s Finder, I’m assuming that History Flow might not be available on the Tiger version of SafariStand.

Which SafariStand feature do you like best? Are there any other Safari plugins you’d like to recommend to our MakeUseOf users? Share your wisdom in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The Two Week Safari Challenge: Part II (14)
• The two week Safari challenge (24)
• Safari Search Plugins Showdown: Glims vs Inquisitor [Mac Only] (13)
• Safari 4: Is It Time To Switch From Firefox? (26)

Here are two search enhancement plugins for Safari which will improve its search function by leaps and bounds. Find out which is better!

Inquisitor

I’ve been using Inquisitor ever since I had my Mac and it has proven to be a very handy tool when surfing. It hasn’t completely replaced the regular Google searches but it has definitely enhanced the process.

Searching with Inquisitor is something like using that Google “I’m feeling lucky” button all the time. That’s because by default, Inquisitor uses the Google search engine. So, its first result is most frequently the right one.

In Inquisitor’s results field, you’ll be presented with five websites; each with its own title, one-line description and web address. It will also tag the results which you have clicked with each own time-stamp and the number of visits. That’s quite handy in order to keep track of the sites which you’ve visited and the ones which you haven’t.

Below the website results, you will also be presented with suggestions based on the search keywords which were entered. That will prove useful when you don’t really know which keywords will produce results closer to the item that you’re searching for.

During the time when I was using Inquisitor, I never felt that it had let me down as a search plugin. Most of the time, the results were spot on. Rarely, I had to hit ‘Enter’ to view the Google results page – probably because my keywords were too broad to find what I was looking for.

Glims

Glims sprung up not long ago, masquerading as a search plugin but it does so much more! It adds quite a bit of functionality to Safari which I feel Apple should have had natively. Besides the search function, Glims allows me to re-open closed tabs, automatically re-open the tabs I had during the last session and full-screen browsing. Even Opera has these options by default! But since Safari doesn’t, I’m glad I found Glims.

As for its search enhancements, well, it’s half and half. Glims provides the results in the same format as Inquisitor but without the number of visits and time-stamp tag. In my opinion, that’s quite essential and it’s a big drawback not to have that.

However, Glims makes up for it by the extra functionality it provides. The option to re-open closed tabs comes in very useful, especially for me because I get quite trigger-happy when it comes to pressing Cmd+W and most of the time I accidentally close more tabs than intended. Glims also has more search engines built-in compared to Inquisitor (which only has Google, Yahoo!, Amazon and Flickr).

The only thing which irked me about Glims was the fact that it replaced all the close buttons on my tabs with favicons. I had to delve deep into the preferences to get rid of that.

Conclusion

Purely for its search enhancements, Inquisitor surely shines brighter. But we can’t ignore Glims for the extra useful functionalities which it adds to Safari, and because of that, Glims is better overall.

Glims requires Safari 3.0.4 [Mac only] or greater and is available for free from machangout

Which one do you prefer?   Or do you have another favourite you’d like to nominate?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Tweak Your Daily Searching With These Browser Bookmarklets (9)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The Winners of ‘Extend Firefox’ – Best Firefox Addons (14)
• The Two Week Safari Challenge: Part II (14)
• The two week Safari challenge (24)

You have to take a longer road to be able to tame those wild beasts but the task is still doable. There are several ways you can go to obtain these difficult files. The most common method would be using one of the online services or desktop apps to download online videos.

Or…..

Safari to the rescue!

But if the difficulty level is increased – if the file we want to get is inside a member area and opens in a new-separated window, you’ll need a more advanced method: using Safari’s Activity Window (Menu: Window –> Activity or keyboard shortcut: Command + Option + A).

Here are the steps:

1. Minimize the number of open tabs. The more is usually the merrier, but in this case, I guarantee you’ll be more confused later.
2. Open the page with the multimedia you want to download.
3. Open the Activity Window and look at each item on the list.
4. Find the page which has the multimedia file. You’ll have no problem if there’s only two or three tabs opened.
5. Search for the file with the multimedia extension (mp3, wav, flv, swf, etc.), or the one with the largest size.



6. Double click the file while holding down the Option key (Mac) or Control (Windows).
7. The Downloads window will open showing you the download progress of the file.

Note: You have to rename and add an “.flv” extension for each “get_video” YouTube file.

So far I found that this method is the best, but if you have any better options, throw them all in the comments below.

Extra Tips

Since some of the files we’re talking about here are in the ‘unusual’ format, there’s an extra file conversion step we need to take to be able to play them in an iPod or another portable player. Sure, you could use any file conversion application available out there, but to save time and computer resources – especially for those who run the oldies, why not utilize an online service to do that? My personal favourite is Zamzar.

Alternatively, you can download one of the free video players that can play .flv (Flash) files (common format for online videos). VLC and Media Player Classic have this functionality.

All you have to do is:

1. Right Click (Windows) or Control Click (Mac) the file in the download window
2. Choose Copy Address



3. Paste that address in Zamzar’s window
4. Pick the file format you prefer
5. Provide an email address



6. Click Convert and then OK to confirm
7. Wait for the download link to arrive in your inbox
8. Open the email and download the converted file

Note: Not all difficult files can be converted using online services, and YouTube videos can be downloaded by Zamzar directly.

Combine the power that you get from this article with these posts and you don’t have to worry about not knowing how to spend your spare time!

(By) Jeffry Thurana is a blogaholic who has just started his own self-improvement journal “Supersubconscious” and manages an Indonesian tech blog “InterNeTips“. He actually thinks there are 30 hours everyday.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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About two weeks ago I undertook to stick to Safari all the time, 24 hours a day/7 days a week, while at home. Thank goodness I had an oasis of sanity every weekday when I went in to work. As slow as my office computer is (P4 with 384M of ram) it was a relief to be able to drag my mouse backwards to return to the previous page.

As you can probably tell, I was unimpressed with Safari alone. However, when I added the free Safari Stand plugin I was able to… tolerate it.

Sure, Safari Stand added some functionality, but a lot of it was functionality I couldn’t really find a use for. The two extra bits of goodness in Safari Stand that truly stood out and made my day better were:

• The checkbox that let me “Open Target Link In New Tab.”
• The Quick Search, which acts similarly to Firefox Quick Search.

As for the rest of it? Not all that impressive.

Take the sidebar, for instance. What a total waste of space. The single-function sidebar, along the left side of the browser window, allows you to see your tabs vertically.

Hello? I don’t need to see my tabs vertically, I have them running along the top of my window. At the very least, throw a bookmarks or history sidebar in there. Make it something useful.

There are two promising items in the Safari Stand package called the “Stand Bar” and the “Bookmark Shelf.” Problem is, they just float there getting hidden behind any new window you open or call to the front. What’s the point? Now, if there were a way to dock the Stand Bar and Bookmark Shelf to the sidebar, then we’d be in business. While it wouldn’t be revolutionary in terms of browser technology, it would make Safari a little less unpalatable.

Stand Search? Why do the Safari Stand people think we need MORE open windows on our desktops? Again, the Stand Search opens a new little pop-up window. Sure, it’s a cute little live search of your bookmarks and history, but dock the darn thing to the sidebar or the top of the browser. I don’t need a dozen little floaty windows all over the place!

I was also hoping for mouse gestures.

Not there.

There are dozens of other little additions in Safari Stand and I won’t go through them all, but here are a few:

• A checkbox in the settings allows you to open Safari’s own search, without hitting cmd-f, just start typing your search terms.
• Move through tabs using the “,” and “.” keys.
• Site alteration. This settings page allows you to essentially set your own preferences and add a Stylesheet for any web page. It is set per page, so you can have google.com behave differently from makeuseof.com. Several of the items don’t work at this time. I guess they’re still being written.
• Colorize HTML source makes it easier to find what you’re looking for, if you’re brave enough to View Source.

I have just one last thing to say about Safari Stand: installation sucks. It’s not that difficult, but it’s not as easy as it could be. You’re required to first download and install something called SIMBL. Then you download Safari Stand and manually move a file inside the zipped archive into SIMBL’s plugins folder. Oh, and there’s no Windows version now, and the programmers over at hetima.com say they have no plans to make one in the future.

Will I keep using Safari? No. Not until it includes some of the basic functionality built in to the always improving Firefox or until the Safari plug-in designer community starts putting out some good, FREE plugins. When anything worth installing costs $6, $10 and $15 then what’s the point? Firefox will probably have the same thing either built-in or available as a free add-on. And, once you diehard Safari fans get a look at Firefox 3 and use it a bit, you will be very tempted to switch.

I have one piece of advice for Apple’s Safari team: keep up with the times. We’re way past 2003.

Here’s my rating for:

• Safari alone: 1.5 stars out of 5, solely for its speed. I found no other redeeming value in it.
• Safari with Safari Stand: 2.5 stars out of 5. As the product improves, so will the rating.
• For comparison purposes, I would rate Firefox 3 beta 5: 4.5 stars out of 5.

Jason Mayoff is a radio newscaster and tech geek. If you’re ever in Montreal, Canada you can hear him on CJAD 800. You can also find Jason at Podcasters4Hire.com and pleasantnights.com, where he talks about keeping an organized and clutter-free home.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• The two week Safari challenge (24)
• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
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• Safari Search Plugins Showdown: Glims vs Inquisitor [Mac Only] (13)

I’ve been using a Mac for a little over a year now and while I’ve opened Safari a few times for fun, I’ve never used Apple’s built-in browser for any real length of time. I decided a few days ago to see — just for the heck of it — whether I could use Safari exclusively at home for two weeks. While I certainly do miss Firefox and all it’s great, useful extensions, the challenge is made a little easier because of Safari’s speed. I haven’t done any scientific experimentation, but it is my impression that Safari is faster than Firefox.

Here are my biggest Safari beefs, so far:

1. Safari’s tab functionality is not great. I like to have only one browser window open at any one time, with as many tabs as I need. By default, Firefox opens all pages that ask for a new window, in a new tab. By default, Safari opens them all in new windows. Very annoying. It’s easy enough to get around using cmd-click, but it’s an extra step, and you never really know when a link is going to ask for a new window, so do you have to cmd-click everything?

2. I miss my gestures. Safari does have extension-type plugins, similar to Firefox’s, but unlike Firefox most are not free.The only extensions I miss are my mouse gestures. It’s really hard to get used to not using them, once you’ve had a taste. I only used gestures for Forward and Back, but it was enough to drive me crazy the first few days on Safari.

3. Where’s the sidebar? I did look around for sidebar functionality, since I really like having my downloads list and history at my fingertips. I was surprised to find Safari does not have a built-in sidebar for anything, not even bookmarks. Still, it’s nice to have all that extra horizontal real estate usually taken up by an open sidebar.

4. No Quick searches. I first discovered this great Firefox time saver through this Make Use Of article a few months ago, and I’ve been using them ever since. They’re a great, fast way to search for something on your favorite websites.

So, while there is a lot of missing functionality in Safari, it’s partly made up in aesthetics and speed. Having said that, my next project will be to install the free Safari Stand plugin which promises lots of great extras. I’ll report back soon.

Have you taken a similar Safari challenge? How did it work out for you? Did you end up going back to Firefox?

Jason Mayoff is a radio newscaster and tech geek. If you’re ever in Montreal, Canada you can hear him on CJAD 800. You can also find Jason at Podcasters4Hire.com and pleasantnights.com, where he talks about keeping an organized and clutter-free home.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Transmute – Migrate Bookmarks Between Your Browsers (3)
• The Two Week Safari Challenge: Part II (14)
• 10 Best Safari Browser Plugins (Mac) (21)
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• Useful Widgets for the Opera Browser (11)

1. Organize your Mac

Having a cluttered workspace takes up precious time when you’re trying to find certain documents which you might have misplaced. The first step in using your time wisely to do work is organization – knowing where everything goes. There are several ways to accomplish this.

I’ve seen some desktops with over a hundred files on it. Some people like to show how busy they are by leaving all their documents right where others can see them. A messy desktop can only be more time consuming when you’re trying to figure out which was the last file you were working on, a hassle to look for a certain file and will only increase the tendency to accidentally move things about (especially into Trash). Also, clearing your desktop will indirectly clear your mind psychologically, so you’ll probably think better. For instance, check out the screenshot below.

2. Organizing files into folders and labeling

Most of my important document files are in my Documents folder and within that folder, there are about twenty sub folders. Each one has got a very clear title to describe their content. And since I have so many folders, I add color labels to the ones which I frequently open, so that my eyes zone into them before I know it.

But the thing is, you may have folders within those sub folders. And sometimes it may even be several folders deep before you reach the file you want, making it more of a hassle to get to. Another problem is, not all files can be distributed to only one folder. For instance, if I have a PDF file about Multiple Sclerosis (i am a med-student), it could go into my PDFs folder and also my Medicine folder. In order to tackle this problem, I use tags.

3. Tagging made easy with Punakae

The idea of tagging is to add one or several keywords to a file, making it easier to find files relating to those keywords. It may sound like a hassle to tag every file you have, but trust me it’s easier than it sounds, and more rewarding. Tags can essentially eliminate having multiple folders since files can be found much easier this way. This idea of tagging is not new, even iPhoto uses it and allows you to add keywords to each of your photos.

To find out more about Punakae and how it works, check out this video screencast. But be warned, the guy narrating might not be a native English speaker and it may sound a little funny.

4. Doing more with Safari

Tabbed browsing is extremely useful. Nobody denies this. But if you’re like me and have 15 tabs opened at the same time every morning when I browse through all my favorite sites, it gets a little tedious clicking the X on each tab to close them. Mastering the Safari shortcut keys are very helpful in making your browsing experience a pleasure.

• Command-T: Open new tab
• Command-N: Open new window
• Command-click link: Opens link in new tab
• Command-W: Close tab
• Command-Alt-W: Close all other tabs
• Command-Shift-W: Close window
• Command-R: Refresh current tab
• Command-Shift- { or }: Switch tabs
• Backspace: Back
• Spacebar: Page down
• Command-D: Add bookmark

By default, Google is Safari’s search engine. However I recommend installing Inquisitor. It is a search engine plug-in which extends the capability of searching by giving you suggestions and showing you some possible results even before you hit Return. Clicking on those results will take you directly to that site bypassing Google’s results page.

5. Use To-do lists

Reminding yourself constantly that you have a list of work to be done could be stressful so you might as well forget them! I’m not saying that you needn’t remember anything at all. I’m only emphasizing that thinking about the task at hand will make life easier. Jotting down your list of things to be done somewhere, organizing your thoughts and assigning due dates to each of them is the easiest way to accomplish this.

Getting-things-done applications (GTD) are widely popular so I won’t cover them again. A few good ones have already been elaborated on this site, which are Things for Mac, Remember The Milk, Simple GTD, Task Toy and a few others covered by Daniel.

6. Integrating Apple Mail, iCal and Address Book

There are several new features in Apple Mail 3.0 and a very prominent one is the addition of Data Detectors. Place your cursor over an email address and you have the option of adding that person as a contact into Address Book. It will also highlight dates, times, and certain keywords like ‘tomorrow’, ‘later today’, ‘15th of March’ which can be added into iCal as appointments. Addresses will also be detected and mapped into directions. Since Apple provided us with these features, we might as well make use of them.

7. Use Automator for repetitive tasks

I basically use Automator to save time on little tasks such as batch renaming, automatically sending birthday emails to friends, properly re-capitalizing song titles in iTunes, watermarking my PDF files and batch-resizing images. If you would like to know how I do all this, shout out in the comments and I will consider writing a tutorial solely on Automator.

8. Enlarge your screen estate

The easiest way to do this is to get a larger screen, of course. Or have 3 of them like Al Gore. Another way is to use Spaces. By default, Spaces extends your desktop up to 4 times (4 desktops). However, if you notice its preferences more carefully, you will see that you’re actually able to have up to 16 desktops! That’s a whole lot of estate to play with, and pretty troublesome to maneuver too.

Warp is a preference pane that will allow you to use your mouse to switch between Spaces, rather than using the keyboard shortcut. By moving your mouse cursor to an edge of the screen, you will see a small preview of the neighboring desktop, and clicking on it will ‘warp’ you there. It’s a pretty cool application to help you navigate if you can’t remember what’s running on each desktop.

If you would like to see how Warp works, check it the screencast at the bottom of this page.

That concludes my two-part article on increasing productivity on your Mac. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it.

(By) Jackson Chung is a full-time med student attempting to perform a juggling act with relationship, studies and his future.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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