One of the popular names in the browser world is Safari. It’s the default browser for Mac, so it’s only logical that Safari is widely used in the Mac community. But even in the Windows realm, where Safari is not the number one choice, it still one of the top alternatives. If you are a Safari user, or have plans to try it, here are three useful Safari startup tricks that you might not be familiar with.

Please note that the following screenshots are taken from Safari for Mac, but they are applicable to the Windows version as well.

Continue The Last Session

It’s obvious that the ability to resume browsing sessions should be built into modern browsers, so it’s unclear why some major browsers still haven’t implemented this feature yet. Safari has a similar feature, and you can access it by going through the “History – Reopen All Windows from Last Session” menu.

Unfortunately, you have to do it manually every time you restart Safari. To enable this feature automatically, you’ll need help from Safari extensions like Glims or SafariRestore.

If you accidentally close one of Safari’s open windows, you can quickly reopen it – along with all the tabs – using the “History – Reopen Last Closed Window” menu.

Many Ways To Start

One nice feature of Safari that I haven’t found in other browsers is the ability to really customize the way you want Safari to start. You can find the settings inside the Preferences window (Command + Comma on Mac or Ctrl + Comma on Windows).

One common thing between Safari and other major browsers is the ability to set a webpage as the homepage. To do this, type the URL of the page in the “Home page” field, or open the page that you want inside Safari and click the “Set to Current Page” button.

You can set the home page to be opened every time you open a new window by choosing “Home Page” from the drop down list next to “New windows open with“.

Other options you can pick are: Top Sites, Empty Page, Same Page and Bookmarks. But the main course of this option is the ability to open many pages at once. Choose the “Choose tabs folder“, then pick one of the tab folders from the list. Everything inside the folder will be opened whenever you open a new window.

You have a more or less similar option for new tabs, but you can’t choose a tab folder here.

But how can you add and customize tab folders? You can use the “Bookmarks – Add Bookmark Folder” menu to add the folder, and then drag and drop the saved bookmarks into the folder.

Or you could also open all the pages you want to include in the folder and go to “Bookmarks – Add Bookmark for These XX Tabs” menu, where XX is the number of the open tabs.

Then give a name for the bookmark folder, and choose the location where you want to save this folder.

Congratulations, you have just created your own tab folder.

Start At The Top

One of the options you can choose to start a new window or tab is “Top Sites“. This choice lets you quickly pick and open pages, either from Safari’s History or from the list of frequently opened sites.

The History tab will display the page list in a cover flow-like arrangement, and let you scroll to the items from side to side.

The Top Sites tab arranges the frequently opened sites in a matrix. You can choose the small, medium, or large boxes by clicking on the tab on the lower right corner of the screen.

You can customize the Top Sites view even more by clicking the “Edit” button on the lower left part of the screen. Two buttons will appear on the top left corner of each page, giving you options to remove individual item from the list, or pin it to the matrix so the particular item will always be present.

If you are a Safari user, you’ll find these Safari startup tricks to be useful. They will help you work faster and more efficiently. If you are not a Safari user, maybe these tricks could give you a good reason to try Safari?

Are you a Safari user? Do you have any more Safari startup tricks? If so, please share using the comments below.

Diigo sent me an advance preview of iChromy (iTunes Store link) and though there are features I find sorely missing, I am totally impressed by the speed and minimalist user interface of iChromy—so much so that it’s on my iPad Homepage dock alongside Safari. Sadly, Apple still doesn’t allow users to define the default browser for iOS as they do in OS X. Why should you replace Safari with iChromy? Well, let’s compare some of the important features, keeping in mind that this is only the first version of iChromy.

Tabs

First off, the tab feature of Safari iPad simply is not that user friendly. Any app that saves me a tap or two in the process automatically gets a plus-star in my review. With Safari you have to tap the Tab button to get a view of your open pages, and then tap again to bring one of them to the front.

With iChromy, all open tabs sit at the top of the browser, like in the OS X version of Safari—or really like the desktop version of Chrome, which iChromy most resembles.

It would be nice if you could customize the colors of the tabs in iChromy as you can in Chrome, but that’s just a minor issue for now.

Bookmarking

Safari iPad includes the traditional Bookmarks Bar and folders for organizing bookmarks. iChromy doesn’t include folders for bookmarks yet, but you can add bookmarks by simply tapping the Star button in the URL field.

You will have to do an extra tap to edit the name of the bookmark if you want it to be shorter, but the process sure is faster than the three-tap process required for Safari iPad.

ReadLater

iChromy also includes a feature for downloading and saving pages for later reading, even offline. If you’re looking for this feature in Safari iPad, forget about it. The default browser requires you to be Wi-Fi connected in order to read pages.

Sharing Features

Perhaps the best feature in iChromy that is partially missing from Safari is the ability to share or export URLs in other programs and services. With Safari, you can add bookmarks, post them on your iPad Home Screen, email them, or print them out. These features are great, but iChromy offers more.

In addition to the above features in Safari, in iChromy you can send and share bookmarks on your Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, Evernote, Google Reader, Instapaper, Read It Later, and Tumblr accounts. And if you need to, you can send an open page to Safari from iChromy.

Contextual Menu

When you tab and hold on a link in Safari, you get the options to open the link, Open in New Page, or Copy. In iChromy, you get two additional options: Open in Background Tab and Add to Reading List. Both options are very practical when you find yourself opening several links on a page.

If you don’t see downloaded pages, scroll the opened tabs to the left to see the others hidden tabs beyond the screen.

In addition, when you tap and hold your finger on a word in iChromy, you get the option to Copy or Search that selection. In Safari, you can only copy the word.

So far, I find iChromy a great alternative to Safari iPad. The speed of both browsers feels about the same, but the navigation features of iChromy are a little more advanced. There are several features that could be added to iChromy—including hand gestures for navigation, tapping at the top of a web page to fast scroll to the top, and most definitely a bookmarks bar. However, I would only want these extra features if they didn’t slow down iChromy. What it offers for now will probably help make it as an alternative browser on my iPad, though I use the paid app, Atomic Web, for more advanced web browsing.

Future releases of iChromy will include (they will be welcomed) annotation features for highlighting and marking pages, which of course are the unique core services of Diigo.com.

Give iChromy a try and let us know what you think.

But now a simple and highly useful Safari extension appropriately called SendTab is just the solution to this problem. Simply put, SendTab allows you to send a selected webpage to one or more computers on your network. When it arrives on the remote computer, it automatically downloads in your networked web browser. It happens within seconds.

The only downside to the extension is that you can only send URLs from iOS devices, but not to them. The extension works both ways using Chrome, but you can only, for some reason, send URLs from Firefox to Safari – not the other way around. In other words, this extension works best if you’re a Safari or Chrome user.

SendTab Setup

Perhaps I misunderstood the instructions, but I initially had problems setting up the SendTab network on my computers, and I noticed a few other users complained as well. What I figured out is that after you download and install the SendTab extension, you need to create a Network account. The registration page ask for a “Network Name.” It sounds like a name that you need to locate on your computer, but it’s not. It simply means a “sign-in” name – you can put whatever name you like and will remember, and then create a password.

After you have logged into your account, sign in again on your other computer and/or iOS device.

When you link to your network account, your computers – but not your iOS device – should be listed. Otherwise they will not receive the URLs you send to them. Basically your URLs are sent to your account and then forwarded over to your computers on your network.

iOS Bookmarklet

To send URLs from your iPad or iPhone, you need to add a bookmarklet to the Safari web browser on your device. There are instructions for setting up the bookmarklet, but that might be a tad bit confusing as well. Here are the steps to install the bookmarklet on your iOS device:

• In Safari on your iOS device, link to the SendTab page and click on the SendTab link on the left side of the page, right above the instructions.

• Save the SendTab bookmark in Bookmarks.
• Now open the the Bookmarks page and tap the Edit button. Now tap on the SendTab bookmark to edit its existing URL.

• Select the entire SendTab URL and paste in the bookmarklet code and javascript code, replacing the original URL.

• Click the Done button and exit out of Bookmarks.
• Copy all the javascript code in step 2 of the instructions on that page.
• Tap the Export button on your iOS device and select “Add Bookmark”. (in the SendTab website instructions, it says “+” button, but I believe that refers to the older version of iOS.)

Now you can send URLs from your iOS device to your designated computer(s) on your network. A SendTab box will appear after you tap the bookmarklet in your device. You may have to scroll up to the top of the selected webpage to tap the SendTab window.

SendTab works well for what it does, though it could use a few more features. Sent pages automatically open in the computer you send them to. If your remote computer is asleep when a URL is sent, it may take a few seconds for the webpage to download after the computer is awakened. It would be useful if a Growl notification would appear when URLs are sent and received by SendTab. Also, once a URL is sent, there’s no option to keep it from being download in the remote computer it was sent to.

These are just minor issues with SendTab, an extension utility that quite frankly should be built into Safari itself, especially since many Mac users work between one or more computers.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com

Apple has also made it easy to install extensions. You simply click on the install button for an extension and it will automatically get embedded into your Safari browser. In most cases you don’t even have to restart Safari in order to begin using the installed programs. However, if for some reason an extension doesn’t show up or work, just restart Safari and you should be good to go.

You can turn off and on extensions by clicking on Safari > Preferences > Extensions. It’s a good idea to completely uninstall any extensions you’re not using.

All of the extensions described below can be found in the Safari Extensions Gallery.

Duplicate Tab Button

One of my most used Safari extensions is Thiemo’s Duplicate Tab Button. The name says it all. It simply duplicates the currently active tab and opens it in a new tab or browser window. Before using this extension I can’t count how many times I would be on a webpage and wanted to, for example, leave a comment, but at the same time refer to or check a piece of the article as I’m writing.

With Duplicate Tab Button I can simply duplicate the page, move it over to my second monitor attached to my computer, and blast away with my comment. Duplicate Tab Button is a simple but powerful little tool.

GToolbar

If you’re a heavy Google Tools user, BBShare Networking has developed a Google toolbar, similar to the toolbar available for Firefox, that you should probably check out.

Though it grows your Safari browser by half an inch, it provides you with icons for most all of Google’s popular tools and sites, including Google Search, YouTube, Gmail. Google Reader, Voice and a lot more. The toolbar does clutter up Safari a little, but it’s a faster way of accessing specific Google sites.

KeySearch

Another search tool extension is KeySearch. You use it by typing in a keyword for a designated website, such as “youtube,” followed by a topic, and then hit the Return key. KeySearch will navigate to the website and perform the topic search for you. This saves you the trouble of always using Google for searches.

What’s even more powerful about this extension is that you can create keywords for your favorite sites. So for example, to create a keyword for MakeUseOf, simply navigate to the search field of a MUO page, right- or Control-click in the search box and choose “Create keyword for this search” in the drop-down box. You will be asked to give your keyword a name, such as “muo.”

Now instead of first navigating to MakeUseOf.com to do a search, you simply type “muo [followed by the topic you're searching for] and hit the Return key. KeySearch will take you to MakeUseOf and do the search for you. Click on the “Edit Keywords” in the KeySearch toolbar to manage your settings.

ResizeMe 1.0

One of the downsides of web browsing is that you have to keep re-sizing browser windows to view the content on the page. This is especially a problem for laptops and other smaller screens.

Well, the extension ResizeMe may be of some use for this problem. When you click the ResizeMe icon in your Safari toolbar, (after it’s installed of course) it will re-size the frontmost Safari window to the size you set in the preference settings for ResizeMe. These settings are located in Safari > Preferences > Extensions > ResizeMe.

Mindful Browsing

The Internet is a gigantic encyclopedia of information and an amusement park of entertainment, which means that sometimes it can be a huge distraction when you’re constantly visiting Facebook, Twitter, and other sites you can’t seem to tear your eyeballs from.

The extension, Mindful Browsing may well help you with your addiction to visiting specific sites. With Mindful Browsing you will get a warning that you blocked a designated site for certain period of time and/or days. You can ignore the warning if you want, but at least you’ll be reminded that you’re about to feed your addiction yet again. Thus the first step to tearing yourself away from Facebook for three days straight may be downloading and installing Mindful Browsing.

So these are the top five Safari extensions I’ve recently added to my Safari browser. There are others, including the weather extension tool, Cloudy, Facebook Ads Blocker, and the social network sharing extension, YourVersion, that might also be of interest to you.

Let us know about your favorite Safari extensions and how you use them. If you’re looking for reviews of other Safari extensions, check out these MUO articles, here and here.

There are a wide variety of Safari 5 extensions available, of course, but today we’re going to focus on seven extensions that simply make web browsing easier. Some make the web easier to navigate, while others make the web faster and others make it easier to read.

Click To Flash

Apple hates Flash, so shouldn’t you hate Flash as well? Now you can with the Click to Flash extension. This handy Safari 5 extension will automatically hide any barbaric Flash features that may have slinked into the code of your favorite webpages.

Seriously, though – while a lot of pages today do incorporate Flash features that are useful there are also many pages that overuse Flash or use it for evil (i.e. annoying Flash ads).

This extension will be of great benefit to older machines are sometimes slowed by the use of Flash on web pages.

Type To Navigate

This useful extension makes it possible to navigate the web with your keyboard. After you download the extension you can simply begin typing any linked text and then press return to be sent to wherever that link points. A handy prompt showing the words that you’ve typed will appear while your fingers are flying, and you can abandon a link at any time by ceasing to type – the extension will reset in a few seconds.

Ultimate Status Bar

It’s a dangerous web out there. Links, posing as decent members of the community, often hide secrets. File downloads aren’t always what they seem.

But now you can banish all fear thanks to Ultimate Status Bar. This extension adds a pop-up bar in the bottom left hand corner of Safari that shows you exactly where a link leads or, in the case of file downloads, the exact name and size of the file. Since it is a pop-up bar however, the extension never feels in the way – it appears when you want it and goes away when you don’t.

HelveticaTheWorld

When Steve Jobs dreams, the world appears in Helvectica. Now you, too, can enjoy this state of Nirvana.

The Helvetica font is used throughout Mac OS X and iOS and is thought by some to be the most readable font in the world. HelveticaTheWorld does what it says and displays the entire world – okay, the entire web – in Helvetica font. It does have a positive effect on the readability of most websites.

Access Keys

Another keyboard web navigation extension, Access Keys lists the keyboard commands supported by any website that you might be visiting in a toolbar that appears at the top of the Safari 5 browser. Not all websites support keyboard commands – many don’t, in fact – but Access Keys provides yet another easy way to navigate those websites that do.

Shut Up

We all know how annoying web comments can be. It appears as if the word “comment” has somehow become a banner that says it is okay to waive all pretense of civility and intelligence. Unless you’re a MakeUseOf commenter, of course – in which case you’re brilliant!

Anyway, Shut Up makes comments go away. It doesn’t work on every website, but does work on most, including YouTube. That alone is enough reason to install it. Now you’ll finally be able to watch a cute kitten video without seeing ten all-caps comments from people with names like XxXReAlBALLLZERXxX about how much fun it is to drown kittens.

ExifExt

This extension enables the option to view an image’s EXIF data when you right click on the image. This information can tell you the size of the image both in pixels and in kilobytes, the date the picture was taken, and more. This can be particularly handy when trying to figure out if someone’s photo on Facebook was really taken last week. The extension can’t pick up data that isn’t there, however, so you’re only guaranteed to find information about the file size, type, and compression.

Conclusion

Well, that’s it for the web navigation extensions right now. There are, of course, many more available in the Safari extension gallery, but these are the ones I found most useful.

Do you have a favorite that was missed? Let us know!

Now that the official site is alive, what has happened to the unofficial ones like Pimp My Safari and Safari Extensions? It turns out that they are still alive and kickin’ – maybe better than before. The latter site even has a larger collection of extensions than the official site.

Unofficial doesn’t mean bad quality, all the extensions that I tried work just fine.  You can visit these unofficial sites and get some extensions that you need.

To get you started, here are several useful Safari extensions that you won’t find on the official site (at least not yet, at the time of writing).

1. KeySearch

This extension has similar features to the Quix bookmarklet, but without the geek factor. KeySearch uses short keywords to allow you to search any site you want, right from the toolbar. Just press Control-S or click the toolbar button to bring up the KeySearch bar, and type a keyword followed by your search query.

For example, type “youtube classical guitar” to find videos of classical guitar on YouTube, or “flickr sunset” to find images of sunsets on Flickr. You get the picture, right?

Aside from the ready-made keywords, you can easily add your own.

2. Get Hover It!

During my visit to the unofficial galleries, I found two extensions that will enhance your hovering experience. There’s HoverLink which will reveal the link’s URL, and there’s also HoverZoom which will show and zoom in on pictures from Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Picasa, Twitter, Digg, and more.

All you’ve got to do is just hover your mouse over the items (URLs or images/thumbnails) that you want to reveal.

3. WebWatch

To some people, the web is an addictive place where one can easily lose the track of time. Maybe that’s why Side Tree Software created WebWatch.

This extension will track your time on the internet and can be set to give you a reminder after a period of time. Just click on the toolbar item to reset the timer.

4. Gmail CSS

Even though there’s nothing wrong with GMail’s look, giving it a little touch-up wouldn’t hurt either. That’s the goal of GMail CSS; to give (slightly) better and more colorful navigation around GMail.

The changes are not extreme, though. All the extensions do is just highlight hovered rows with different colors, changing icons for attachments, and hiding several elements like Ads and Chat.

Granted, it’s not yet in the same class as Firefox’ Google Redesigned, but it’s a good start.

5. Beautipedia

Wikipedia has become everybody’s main source of information. But unfortunately, it’s not the prettiest gal on the neighborhood. If you use Wikipedia a lot, you’ll appreciate what Beautipedia does. It will make Wikipedia a better environment for reading articles.

Aside from giving the interface a minimalist look, the extension will also hide the links until you hover your mouse over it. Some people might like it, others might not, but in my personal opinion, it does make the look easier on the eye.

There are a lot of Safari extensions out there, and the best way to find the best is by peer recommendation. So if you’ve found and used nice Safari extensions, why not share them using the comments below?

While the list might be short, there are already many good and useful extensions that you can install. All you need to do is just point your browser to the gallery and install them.

Upgrade & Updates

But first things first. Before you can use any of these extensions, you should upgrade your Safari to version 5, and enable extensions from within the “Preferences – Extensions” pane.

The pane is also the place for you to enable or disable individual extensions. Select one of the extensions and check/uncheck the “Enable name_of_extension” box.

If you are one of the early adopters and you haven’t got the chance to peek at your Extensions library for a while, you might find several updates inside.

Click “Install All Updates” button to get all the necessary updates, and check the “Install Updates Automatically” box if you don’t want to be bothered with manual updates in the future.

Finally, clicking the “Get Extensions” button will bring you to the official Safari Extensions Page.

Having Fun With Extensions

After browsing through the list, I decided to list some extensions which I personally think falls into the “fun” category.

1. Everything Facebook

   Despite some recent issues with its policy, Facebook has proven time and again that interacting with friends and family will never be boring. If Facebook is one of your ideas of having fun, you might want to try several extensions dedicated to Facebook, such as: Better Facebook, Facebook Cleaner, and Facebook Photo Zoom.

   

   

2. Everything Tweeter

   But if tweeting is your thing, you’ll be glad to know that there are many tweeter-related extensions for Safari, namely: Echofon It, Nambu, TweetBar, Tweetbeat Firsthand, Ostrich, and the official Tweeter for Safari.

   

   Aside from the official Tweeter extension, my personal favorite is Tweetbeat Firsthand as it will show you the recent tweets from people and groups mentioned on the web page you’re viewing.

3. Rapportive

   This extension will help you to know the email sender better. In the sidebar, you will be able to see more information about the sender like photo, occupation and his/her location on the map.The extension is working automatically with GMail occupying the usual ads spot. It’s also available for Firefox and Chrome.

   

4. FlickrPlus

   Photography is an art that I’ve yet to master. That’s why beautiful photos always amaze me as I know they are not always easy to acquire. Flickr is a place where you can learn so much about taking good photos. But the area is not limited to photographers and the wannabes. Anybody can stroll around the site and enjoy the scenery. The FlickrPlus will show you more than meets the eye.

   

5. Speed Scrabble Notifier

   Care for a little game to spend your spare time? Why not try some word play? You can compete against the computer or versus other players. The number of online players will be shown automatically on the extension button next to the URL bar. Just press the button anytime you want to play.

   

6. Franker

   If you are the kind of person who loves to know more about foreign languages, Franker is the perfect tool for you. This extension is inspired by Ilya Frank’s method of language learning and works a little differently from the usual Google Translate. Instead of translating the whole page, Franker allows you to select only a phrase or sentence and places the translation right after the selected item. Just right click on the selected text and choose “Frankate Selection“.

   

   I tried the tool on Amazon Japan’s site, and here’s the result.

   

As an additional note at the end, I just want to add that the process of installing these extensions is far easier if you do it from the Safari Extensions Gallery page as everything will be done automatically.

And as I’ve mentioned above, the list is based on my personal subjective opinion. Since the term “fun” is different from one person to another; feel free to browse around, pick your own fun extensions, and share them with us using the comments below.

There are several dozen extensions available for the new 5.0.1 update. If you download too many they can easily clutter your Safari toolbar. Sometimes after adding an extension you might decide to get rid of it. There are two ways to do that:

You can open Safari’s preferences and simply uninstall or un-enable it.

A quicker method for getting rid of extensions all together is to simply right or control-click on the extension’s icon and select Remove Item, which will delete it from the extensions library.

You can also re-arrange extensions by ï»¿right or control-clicking on the toolbar and selecting Customize Toolbar. After the window drops down, you can move icons to the left or right of the URL and Search fields.

Now let’s turn our attention to an handful of handy new extensions for Safari 5.0.. These extensions can be downloaded from Apple”˜s Safari Extension Library. Clicking the download button for an extension automatically installs it in the Safari extensions library, found in Safari”˜s Preferences.

However, in my experience so far, extensions might not always work right out of the box. You may have to quit and restart Safari in order for extensions to kick in.

Awesome Screenshot

Diggo Inc’s Awesome Screenshot enables you to capture, annotate, and share screenshots from within the browser. It’s somewhat similar to Diggo’s bookmarking and annotation website and browser plug-in, but with Awesome Screenshot, you can save the screenshots and annotations as PNG files.

If you want to annotate and capture parts of a webpage, it seems better to annotate and then crop the section you want to save. If you try to annotate after you make the crop the annotations don’t act right.

One unique feature of Awesome Screenshot is that you can select and upload a screenshot to Diigo’s server. In turn a link will be created so that you can share it on one of numerous web services, including Twitter, Yahoo Mail and Gmail.

There are a few disadvantages however to using Awesome Screenshot. When you activate the extension, you must close out the webpage in order to quit the extension for that page. There’s no cancel button to get out of the extension.

While there’s an Undo button in the extension”˜s toolbar, you can”˜t select and move around annotations after you use them. So you need to be pretty precise about where you want extensions to be made. Despite these shortcomings, Awesome Screenshot is a useful extension for what it does.

Snapper

A similar extension to Awesome Screenshot is Snapper. It takes a screenshot of only the visible part of a webpage, not the entire page. So you need to re-size your browser window to capture the part that you want. There”˜s no annotation features in Snapper. It creates a JPG file of the capture which can be dragged to your Finder.

While Snapper is not feature rich as Awesome Screenshot,  it’s quick and doesn’t require you to select and draw a box to make screenshots.

Three Handy YouTube Extensions

A Cleaner YouTube

If you’re an avid watcher of YouTube videos, you definitely might want to check out A Cleaner YouTube 1.1. When activated, this extension removes all the typical YouTube distractions so you can focus just on the downloaded video.

When you download and install the extension, there’s no toolbar button for it. It kicks in and works the next time you open a YouTube video. The outcome looks like this:

The only way you can turn it off though is by disabling it in the Extensions preferences of Safari.

Turn Off The Lights

A similar YouTube extension to the one above is Turn Off the Lights. It allows you to darken an entire webpage – most useful for when you’re watching a video. This extension might be the better of the two because you can activate and deactivate it in the toolbar.

YouTubeWide 2.0

And finally there’s YouTubeWide. While there’s nothing unique about watching YouTube videos in wide screen, this little extension automates the the viewing so that every YouTube video watch automatically downloads in wide view. It’s another extension that you enable and disable in Safari Preferences.

Well, that’s it for this round of Safari extensions. We’ll be looking for and writing about others that seem unique or handy for users. In the meantime, which ones are your favourites?

The browser remains our main porthole for viewing the web. It’s also the main entry point for malware, Trojans, and others browser attacks of their ilk. Then there are the plug-ins like Firefox add-ons, Active X controls etc. There are many ways for a malicious code to punch a hole through. One of the worst is the ‘Man-in-the-browser’ attack.

Let’s all be paranoid by default and get ourselves a good anti-virus and firewall to begin with. Then, it’s always a wise idea to keep our software and sundry apps patched with the latest security updates. But most of all it pays to keep eyes and ears open to what’s happening around us. The web may be like the badlands, but it also has heroic sheriffs and town marshals. A few online browser security tools play that role.

ScanIt

ScanIt puts your browser through 19 vulnerability tests. You can run all tests in one go, choose individual tests, or test for bugs specific to the browser (e.g. Firefox has 10 tests). The browser scanning tool supports Firefox, IE, and Opera. The FAQ will give newbies an idea of why browser vulnerability tests are important and the dangers of browser bugs.

Qualys Browser Check

Qualys uses a plugin to check for exploit weaknesses in the browser. Qualys checks Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer for potential vulnerabilities and security holes in your browser and its plugins. It flags insecure and out-of-date versions that put you at risk with color codes like red for “˜Insecure’, or “˜Obsolete’.

For any item that is insecure or out of date, a Fix It button appears. Simply click the Fix It button to download the latest update to fix your security issue.

BrowserScope

BrowserScope to start off is a bit geeky. It is an Open Source online tool to compare your browser against the community and see how it fares on security, rich text implementation, network latency, web standards support, and JSKB tests. You don’t need to sign-in or download any plugins to run the tests.

You can compare all browsers on your computer and see how each scores. The table with the test results can also be used to see which browser in general is doing well. It seems Chrome is leading Firefox at least on security.

Panopticlick

Panopticlick checks if your browser’s configuration is unique. The more unique your browser, the less easily it could be tracked. Web tracking is a privacy risk for users. Online advertisers usually resort to web tracking to collect usage information. Panopticlick collects anonymous data and compares it against its own 5 million strong database to get the score.

Panopticlick is run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation to look into the privacy risks posed by web tracking.

ShieldsUP

ShieldsUP is a firewall monitoring and port scanning online tool. With detailed port testing, the scanning tool displays info on five categories ““ File Sharing, Common Ports, All Service Ports, Messenger Spam, and Browser Headers. You can also test individual ports (or sets) among the 65535 and lookup specific port information.

The real value of ShieldsUP is in the comprehensive information it provides on firewall security and what you need to shore up your defenses. You don’t need to register to run the tests.

PCFlank

PCFlank is a website that tries to ensure that we stay protected on all sides with its range of six tests (and a connection speed test). PCFlank has Stealth Test, Advanced Port Scanner Test, Trojans Test, Exploits Test, Browser Test (for privacy), and a Quick Test that covers the Advanced Port Scanner, Browser and Trojans Tests.

Firefox Official Plugin Check

Our Firefox browser may have more plugins or addons than fleas on a dog’s back. But outdated plugins pose the danger of a bite that’s worse than a flea. In 2008, we had the first news of a password stealing malware disguised as a plugin. Plugin exploit attacks can be because of poorly written extension code or deliberate design.

I am not sure if Firefox verifies the authenticity of each addon, but the least we can do as users is to keep the ones we have constantly updated. Firefox does it automatically, but the Plugin website is a help.

A browser is just one of the bits that make for a weak or strong computer system. From unsecure Wi-Fi to infected pen drives, a computer user has to monitor both the front and back doors. Fortunately the user has help in the form of more advanced browsers with anti-phishing features, pop-up blockers, private browsing, JavaScript disabling etc.

Some more help can come from our rich list of posts covering everything on computer security and safe browsing:

• Top Five Computer Crimes & How to Protect Yourself From Them
• 8 Best Sources To Follow Computer Virus News & Alerts
• The 10 Best Free Anti-Virus Programs
• 10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons
• 4 Quick Sites That Let You Check if Links Are Safe

Know any other browser security test tools? Let us know in the comments.

Image credit: pasukaru76 (away for 2 weeks)

Firefox users can benefit from a Wikipedia toolbar that gives you complete control over your Wikipedia editing and searching needs. Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer users can all benefit from plugins that allow you to perform Wikipedia searches from any website you happen to be browsing. Take a look at the following list for the best in Wikipedia plugins for Firefox, Chrome, Safari and IE.

Firefox

Wikipedia Toolbar

The first obvious choice for a Wikipedia plugin is the Wikipedia Toolbar. The toolbar gives you easy access to performing searches directly on Wikipedia, and if you have an account, gives you access to every aspect of your interaction with the website itself.

From the toolbar, you can look up random entries, add and remove specific entries to your watch list, access that list, and edit pages on Wikipedia. You also have quick access to the What Links Here page, and can navigate to your own user page.

QuickWiki

If you want an easy way to look up words directly from the website you are browsing, QuickWiki is the perfect plugin to enhance your browsing experience. Highlighting any given word and right-clicking will bring up a menu which allows you to look it up in Wikipedia or Wiktionary. There are two ways the search results can be displayed, either in a window overlaying your current page, or you can open the results in a new tab.

Alternatively, you can configure QuickWiki to work with specific shortcuts to pull up your results at the click of a button.

If you want to perform a quick search, the shortcut, Shift + Space will bring up a small search bar overlaying your current window.

QuickWiki’s additional features include support for English, French, German, Spanish and Portuguese and the ability to adjust the appearance of the overlaying window. For an indepth review of QuickWiki, check out Saikat’s post.

Googlepedia

Googlepedia integrates Wikipedia search directly into Google dividing your search page into two columns. The first column contains the original google results, while in the second, the relevant Wikipedia article is displayed. Googlepedia does have its shortcomings. If you do a search directly from within Google, sometimes Googlepedia’s search results will not be displayed. On the other hand, if you do the search from Firefox’s inbuilt search bar at the top of the page – the results are always displayed. Googlepedia is currently being ported to other browsers and is already available for Chrome.

Chrome

Wikipedia Companion

Chrome users will appreciate the Wikiepdia Companion which gives them easy access to search and browse articles on Wikipedia from the extensions menu.

All results are displayed in a small window overlaying the browser.

Wikipedia Companion doesn’t come with many bells and whistles. It simply serves as a mini browser that is handy for people who tend to look up a lot of information on Wikipedia. If you would prefer to have easy access to a search bar that opens up search results in a new tab, then Wikipedia Search will be sufficient for your purposes.

Wiki-It

Safari users can install Wiki-It, which can be best described as a simplified version of QuickWiki. Installing the extension allows you to right click any given word as you are browsing, and it will add an option to the menu to look up that word on Wikipedia. Search results are opened in a new tab on the Wikipedia website.

You can also choose to open the search results in a new window, in the current tab, or in a new tab in the background.

In order to install Wiki-It, make sure you’ve updated to Safari 5, and take a look at Jeffry’s article on how to enable extensions.

Internet Explorer

Define with Wikipedia

Internet Explorer users can also add a quick link to look up words in Wikipedia using the right click menu when highlighting a word. Using Define with Wikipedia allows you to do just that, with search results opened in a new tab on the Wikipedia website.

Wikipedia Visual Search

Wikipedia Visual Search adds Wikipedia to the search engines included in IE’s inbuilt search bar. If you enter a search term and press Enter, it will take you directly to the related Wikipedia page. On the other hand, if you enter the search term and do not press Enter, it will display a list of suggested pages from Wikipedia, with thumbnails where applicable.

What are your favourite Wikipedia browser addons? Let us know in the comments.