A GThing Science Project

Firefox froze/crashed on me for the last time, and I decided to make the leap over to using Safari. I thought that the password manager was the only thing keeping me with Firefox, but I soon realized a bunch of other features that I took for granted in Firefox that I would now need to figure out in Safari.

Here are a few things I've figured out to give Safari the kind of features I'm used to in Firefox. All the solutions I outline here are free unless otherwise noted.

Search Shortcuts

In Firefox, I have made several search shortcuts that simplify accomplishing common tasks. For example, in the location bar I could type "gg hotdogs" to automatically do a Google search for hotdogs. This is one of the most useful features of Firefox. There is no way to do it in Safari.

Enter Sogudi.

Sogudi provides this functionality in a very similar way to Firefox.

I can type in any of those shortcut words and insert my terms into the URL where you see the "@@@." I've migrated over my most used terms from Firefox, but there are more to go. For example, one I really liked is using the shortcut "801" to perform reverse phone number lookups. I simply type "801 5552504" and I can see who owns a number very quickly.

Tabbed Browsing

Tabbed browsing is not enabled by default in Safari. I can't imagine why. It is easy to switch on, though. Just hit the preferences and turn it on under the "Tabs" tab.

After it's enabled, it acts much like Firefox. Cmd+T will open a new tab, middle clicking a link will open it in a new tab, etc.

Plugins

Although Safari does not natively support plugins, there are ways of accomplishing the same thing as many Firefox plugins. To unlock a lot of this power, I use a program called Creammonkey. It is basically an implementation of the popular Firefox plugin called Greasemonkey.

I actually like the Safari version better because it is less obtrusive and easier to use. it sits right up in your menu bar next to the File and Edit menus.

Creammonkey is a general purpose plugin that allows you to run customized scripts in your browser. Browse around userscripts.org for a few minutes and you'll get an idea of how useful this can be. There are scripts for making myspace look good (well, better anyway), blocking different types of ads, and all sorts of goodies. Search for websites you use a lot and see what other people have cooked up for those specific sites.

This script tells me the pagerank of a site that I am visiting. This is a replacement for the Firefox livepagerank plugin.

Another script I use numbers Google results for me.

There's all sorts of useful things you can do. Creammonkey opens the door to a lot of Firefox functionality.

Find As Your Type

One great feature in Firefox is the ability to search the contents of a webpage very easily with the find-as-you-type feature. You just hit cmd+f and type away and the results of your search are highlighted.

Although Safari 3 supports this feature (in a really awesome way, no less), Safari 2+ does not. It still uses the old school "Find" window.

Acidsearch fixes this.

The main purpose of acidsearch is to pimp out Safari's search box. But as an afterthought, they included find as you type functionality as well. I'm still getting used to the different keystroke for invoking search "/" but I definitely enjoy also having a keystroke to move through the results "\" - something Firefox doesn't have (at least I could never find it or it wasn't easy to use).

Your search appears as you type it down in Safari's status bar. It seems a bit buggy but it does the job.

Auto Open

This is one place where Safari totally beats Firefox - but it took some coercion to make it happen. Safari can be enabled to automatically open downloads that are known filetypes. It even goes one step further and will do things like automatically starting the installation of downloaded programs and installing widgets. Unfortunately the list of acceptable filetypes is hard coded into Safari.

I regularly download .nzb files (for newsgroup downloads) and want them to open up in my new reader automatically. While trying to solve this problem I found out about folder actions. Basically, OS X can execute scripts any time various things happen within a folder. So for my purposes, I wanted to automatically open files landing in my downloads folder.

I found a script at Gelsomini.org to do it. Beware, however, the install instructions on that page are crap. You will need to put the script in your Folder Action Scripts folder (/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts), then attach it to the folder by right clicking on your downloads folder and turning on folder actions. You then need to right click on your downloads folder once more and select "Attach a Folder Action." It should look something like this:

The script can be edited at any time to add filetypes to open. I went one step further and modified the script to include a list of filetypes to delete after opening them. So on my computer, an .NZB file will be automatically opened and then deleted (you don't need it after you've opened it in your new reader).

You can download my modified script here.

I've never done applescript before, so I was naturally amazed when my new script worked on the first try! You can add whatever kind of files you want to be automatically opened or deleted to the appropriate list at the top of the script.

Potentially, you could use this for a lot more. For example, you could have movies and audio files automatically moved to your "media" folder, etc.

Passwords

Safari includes a password manager similar to Firefox's that uses OS X's keychain as its back end. The problem is that I've never found a way to export my Firefox passwords to the keychain so they could be used by Safari.

There is a program called 1Passwd that integrates with both Safari and Firefox and allows them to share a common passwords database. I don't like it though because it doesn't work with the browser's existing systems, it makes its own system and it just feels a bit clunky. Also, it costs $30.

For now I've just relegated myself to the task of looking up my passwords in the Firefox password manager and inputing them into Safari as needed. I guess in a few months I will have everything of even remote importance transferred over.

Tab Switching

Firefox allows you to switch between tabs by hitting cmd+# - # being the number of the tab you want to switch to. Trying this in Safari, however, will open up the bookmark on your bookmarks bar that corresponds to the number you hit.

So the way to switch between tabs is to hit cmd+{ for back a tab or cmd+} for forward a tab. Note that you're hitting the shift key in there to get the { rather than the [.

I don't keep my bookmarks toolbar visible, but I have replaced the first three bookmarks with javascript snippets that resize my browser window. So now when I hit cmd+1 my window will go to 800x600, cmd+2 for 1024x768, and cmd+3 for full screen. It works pretty well, but I need to get used to the different keystrokes.

Other Stuff and Resources

There are some things that will always keep me opening up Firefox. Firebug and the web developer toolbar come to mind. But at least now I can separate my work and leisure browsing from my "hacking" browser.

A few other things still seem unfamiliar and annoying about Safari. For example, there is no warning when you close a window with multiple tabs. I've actually relied on this feature to keep me from accidently closing my browser (cmd+q) when I'm just trying to close a window (cmd+w). Tabstop looks like a possible solution, but I haven't tried it yet.

I also miss the ability to reopen recently closed tabs and to have target=_blank windows open up in a new tab rather than a new window.

Saft is a program that provides a whole laundry list of functionality to Safari - some of which I mentioned above. You can check it out, but I didn't mention it above because it is also a pay solution (cheap, though - under $10). I also feel like it does a lot more than what I want.

If you're interested in further customizing Safari, or just finding out what is possible, check out Pimp My Safari. There you can find a big collection of Safari add ons.

So How Do I Like Safari?

So far the conversion process has been easier than I expected. Every once in a while I'll hit a wrong keystroke and get an unexpected result. Also, although Safari is much more stable than my Firefox build, it's certainly not bulletproof. Adding extensions and hacks probably doesn't help, so I try to keep it to a minimum.

But overall I feel like Safari is a faster and more reliable user experience. To me, opening Firefox feels like getting into some big leaky Russian monstrosity of a car while using Safari feels more like driving a slick german sports car.

It's sad that Firefox has stopped improving as a browser. It's plagued by slowness, memory leaks, and instability. Granted, more Firefox problems are caused by bad plugins than Firefox itself, but its a catch-22 because one of the main attractions of Firefox is its plugins.

Overall I think the conversion will stick. Firefox has been a great browser and really helped me get through some hard browsin' times on my old PC when the alternative was Internet Explorer. It helped me when I transfered over to using a mac because it was a familiar face, so to speak. But now it's time to move on, at least until Firefox improves.