It’s not only the best URL shortener that defaults to http://goo.gl. It also makes blogging, tweeting and URL sharing super easy. It is also compatible with every modern browser: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and even Internet Explorer.
Get it, 1.5 million downloads is not a fluke.
Could have been better. I wish Safari 5 came with support for more customizations for the toolbars. I don’t want Address & Search bars to appear, I only need the address bar and it’s impossible to make it so that it is the only thing that would appear. This is really annoying.
So far the plugins that I have found are working are Xmarks and Keywurl with this tip. Not bad, these are what I consider to be essential Safari plugins. A lot of the other plugins are too bloated.
Now that extensions are available for Safari, I took the liberty of checking a few of them out. I have kept these installed as they are simply awesome: Invisible Status Bar, Adblock, GReader, IMDb Links, GoMBoX. I’m particularly enjoying the fact that Adblock for Safari is now an extension. Automatic updates ftw!
It’s no Chrome, but since Chrome 5 steadily sips more power now that it is always using the discrete GPU I’m willing to make certain sacrifices. Also some of the things plugins accomplish do not seem to be extensible yet. It would be awesome if one day all of the old plugins find their way to become certified plugins and we can get rid of the SIMBL stuff.
I did notice that HTML5 related tasks are much better on Safari 5. The WebKit engine appears to be of a newer build. Hardware acceleration is also handled better as Safari 5 hands it off automatically and reverts back to IGP without any problems. I do like the fact that it saves more vertical pixel space as well, but that is not new for Safari 5.
Apple has done some things right but I’m not ready to uninstall Chrome just yet. There are certainly some things more convenient with Chrome, such as the private browsing mode. Safari still cannot open two windows, all Safari instances become private when you start private browsing mode.
Safari have been unseated by Google Chrome. Google now need to unseat Firefox and then eventually destroy Internet Explorer.
Don’t worry Apple fanboys. This only means Jobs and company will make Safari’s new Extensions Library perfect when the time is right. Perhaps they will also implement hardware acceleration to Safari 5.1…? o_O
WebKit powered browsers may soon get some true 3D rendering capabilities via WebGL. I like this particularly as it is based on OpenGL and is a standard supported by the same Khronos Group. If you remember games of the past where OpenGL dominated I would love to see a come back of the standard and dethrone Windows-centric gaming a little bit.
I’ve been using Safari AdBlock for some time and I just discovered SafariBlock. It is similar in nature as Safari AdBlock but it emulates the functionalities of the AdBlock Plus that I was used to on Firefox more closely. I was always annoyed by Safari AdBlock leaving blank white places where the ads were on popular blogs such as Engadget. It isn’t the case with Firefox running AdBlock Plus. Good news is that SafariBlock also removes these blank spaces!
Highly recommend, but you must uninstall Safari AdBlock before you can install SafariBlock.