Expand Safari 5 With Extensions

Safari 5 brought a slew of new features but one of the most exciting features that is yet to be officially unveiled is support for extensions. For Firefox and Chrome users, you may already be familiar with the added functionality extensions can provide to the browsing experience. Safari 5 is jumping on board with the aid of simple developer tools and a sleek interface for extension management. Despite the fact that extensions are still not enabled by default, it’s very easy to enable them and begin to explore the extensions that are popping up in droves online.

Before enabling extensions you might be wondering more about what they are and how they differ from plug-ins. Extensions use functionality that already exists in the web browsing experience and it streamlines it in quick ways. For example, one of my favorite new Safari extensions is Long URL which is a URL shortener that uses the bit.ly, goo.gl, youtu.be and other pre-existing URL-shortening services to take a long URL, i.e. http://code.google.com/p/longurlforsafari/, and turn it into a short URL, i.e. http://goo.gl/n796. With this extension, instead of going to the website for the URL-shortener, one just needs to press a single button in the Safari toolbar and they’re presented with the shortened URL.

Plug-ins, unlike extensions, add additional functionality to a web browser that wouldn’t exist without the plug-in. For example, to watch an Adobe Flash video in a web browser, one needs to install the Adobe Flash plug-in, as Flash is not supported by default in most web browsers. Plug-ins generally are much more difficult to code as they require advanced coding languages. Extensions, however, use languages that most web developers are already comfortable with: HTML, Javascript and CSS. Safari 5 even comes with a built-in Extension Builder which will create a certificate and package the extension components for the developer; there’s even an extension debugging feature to help developers work out the kinks.

As an end-user, you already have the ability to play with many extensions that have been released for Safari 5 (most were ported from Google Chrome as the interfaces are very similar). First off, make sure you’re using Safari 5. Next, go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and check the box that says ‘Show Develop menu in menu bar’. With that selected, you should now have a new menu in your menu bar called ‘Develop’. Click on Develop > Enable Extensions. That’s it; you don’t even need to restart the web browser!

Now, if you go back to Safari > Preferences you should notice a new tab called ‘Extensions’. There’s a nice giant on/off switch to easily turn all extensions off if needed. Once you start downloading and installing extensions, you can use this tab to control specific extension preferences or disable individual extensions. Pretty simple and clean if you ask me.

The next obvious question is, “Where can I get extensions?” Luckily, there’s an entire blog devoted to linking to the Safari 5 extensions that are currently available. It’s aptly named Safari Extensions. Once you download an extension you simply need to double-click it and Safari will ask if you’d like to install the extension; very similar to how widgets are installed in Dashboard. For security reasons, Safari will only install extensions that are signed with a valid Apple certificate.

To learn more about the development process and requirements check out Apple’s Safari Extensions Development Guide.

I’m enjoying the few extensions I’ve installed so far, but am definitely trying to be frugal as I’ve seen many people go a little overboard with extensions. Aside from Long URL, my other current favorites are Facebook Zen (which rids Facebook of ads, ‘Suggestions’, and ‘Get Connected’) and Twitter Image Loader, which loads images linked in Tweets directly on the Twitter website.

I hope you enjoy playing with extensions. I’d love to hear about your favorites!