All Things Customized – Web Browsers

This is my first week here at Small Dog (it’s great to be here, by the way!), and as expected, we wasted no time getting down to business. Ed and I were chatting about the Windows incarnation of Safari, and what that means for the Switcher.

My feeling was that many Windows users are not clamoring to use Safari because when compared to Firefox (as an extremely worthy replacement for Internet Explorer), it lacks the plugins and extensions that the latter handles so well.

[Side note: So, here’s my chance for full disclosure: my husband is a PC user (yes, we’re still married). As such, he keeps me on my toes as to what a potential switcher would look for in a computer; to keep things short and sweet in the interest of time, we’ll stick to the issue of web browsing today.]

In all fairness, it should also be noted that I love All Things Customized, so I hold my browsers to a pretty high standard. I know that not everyone out there cares about this the same way that I do, but it’s safe to say that a vast number of people have grown to love the functionality of Firefox and its integration with websites.

Anyway, I figured I’d research this a bit, so a Google search for “Safari extensions” promptly the top hit of Pimp My Safari (Jimmy told me that was a good one, too.) Two of my favorites that are featured on the site are Saft and Forgetmenot.

Saft adds all kinds of beneficial features to Safari, but here’s a brief list of my favorites: additional bookmarking options (such as searching, exporting selected, group support, etc.), one-page PDF exporting (awesome), and tab rearranging and search.

Forgetmenot is perfect for those with trigger fingers—it offers major “undo” support (if you’ve ever deleted a tab before it’s time, you know what I mean). Simple and effective.

There are some plugins that are featured that do not have a Windows version, nor do they support the Safari 3 Beta, so this is definitely a work in progress. However, it’s also evidence that the demand is there for these types of add-ons. Hopefully, that will result in more Safari support on the web… and I’ll be waiting.

Note: This article is based on my use of Safari 2, since the newest version is still in beta form… I’m not going there just yet.