While the debate over Mac versus PC will last for eternity, one of the elements that many “diehard” PC users have thrown at Apple fanboys is the ability to really tweak their experience, through application add-ons and plugins.

Mac users who use Firefox have had a little taste of this with Greasemonkey, a Firefox add-on that allows support for on the fly changes to websites. If you haven’t heard of Greasemonkey, this is a must read for you and if your browser of choice isn’t Firefox, we’ll show you how to install its equivalent, GreaseKit with Safari.

What Is Greasemonkey?

Greasemonkey is an add-on for browsers that allow users to install “scripts” that are fine tuned to affect how different websites function. For example, if you’re a person who uses MySpace and really hates how the login page is full of ads, you can install a script that adjusts the display of the page when it loads and gives you a cleaner experience.

Cleaning up MySpace is just the beginning; there are scripts for just about everything. If you’re not a fan of the default Gmail web interface, you can use a script that declutters it.

But it’s not just about changing the look and feel of a website; there are scripts that remove content like ads and scripts that add functionality, like a script that lets you add notes to entries in your Netflix queue.

Installing GreaseKit in Safari

While Greasemonkey is an easy add-on if you use Firefox, you can also use similar add-ons in Safari. For Safari users, begin by downloading SIMBL and install it. Then download GreaseKit and install the bundle file inside to ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins. If this folder doesn’t exist, just add it before dropping the file inside.

Next, relaunch Safari and, provided things worked well, you’ll see a new menu entry for GreaseKit. Now go find some scripts (see below) and click “Install This Script” to copy it into GreaseKit. You’ll see the JavaScript flash on screen and eventually it should be added to your GreaseKit menu.

Getting Scripts

There are a variety of places to find the scripts that integrate with Greasemonkey or GreaseKit. Userscripts.org is perhaps the largest of these and an excellent place to start. I urge caution though as these scripts can become dated when the websites they affect are updated. Also, because you’re not running the scripts in Greasemonkey on Firefox for Windows (where they are usually tested), the add-ons may not function exactly as described. This is likely to happen in Safari if the script is overly complex, requiring additional interfaces to manage it.

Here are the scripts I’ve discussed in this article:

• Netflix Notes
• MySpace Clean Redesigned Login and Logout
• Simplify Gmail

You also might enjoy the Unfriend Finder for Facebook that lets you know when (and who) has unfriended you. This particular script doesn’t work well in Safari, so I recommend using it in Firefox.

Have you found any good scripts? Feel free to use the comments below and let us know what you think.

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The infamous color picker is present among many of the built-in OS X applications and is quite a powerful tool once you dig into it. With the ability to store your favorite colors in “wells” and use them between applications, the color picker can quickly become an indispensable tool in your daily workflow. Here’s some tips and plugins to supercharge the color picker.

Color Picker Basics

Not all applications support the OS X color picker, but to see if one does, look in Format, View, or Window menus for an entry called “Show Colors.” The color picker is not just limited to the Apple-developed applications, as third-party apps such as Coda, Billings, Daylite and others also include support.

The color picker features “tabs” across the top dividing it into the standard color wheel, color sliders (allowing to you fine tune a color by RGB, HSB, CMYK, or Grayscale sliders), color palettes, image palettes and crayons.

You can pick custom colors by tweaking them in the color picker, or by using the magnifying glass to “pluck” a color from anywhere in the system.

To apply a color, simply highlight text and click the color you want. Or drag the color onto an object.

As mentioned earlier, you can organize your favorite colors by dragging them into one of the wells at the bottom of the picker. If the default amount is not enough, simply click the dot and drag down to allow for a total of 250 places to store your color swatches.

Add Some Kuler

Users of Adobe’s Kuler service are quick to tote how great it is to be exposed to a wide array of beautiful color schemes shared among the Adobe community.

Using a free plugin called Mondrianum by Lithoglyph, users can now add Kuler integration to the standard OS X color picker. With quick access to search color schemes by keyword, browse them via Cover Flow, or quickly set them as your desktop background, Mondrianum is a great tool to add to your color picker.

Want a True Artist’s Approach?

With Painter’s Picker ($19.95, with a demo version here), you can add an artist’s color wheel to the color picker, giving you the ability to quickly choose complementary colors, analogous colors, and the like. More advanced options allow for precision modification of the brightness, saturation and more. As someone who moves between different types of media (web to print), I enjoy the ability to see the nearest CYMK colors and nearest web safe colors when working on projects.

What the Hex?

Developers out there will love the “Developer Color Picker,” a free plugin from Panic that quickly allows users to convert selected colors to NSColor, UIColor, CGColorRef, HTML or CSS declarations. The plugin itself is very barebones in style, but is priceless in terms of functionality.

Shades, Schemes and More

Shades ($18 from Chromatic Bytes) is another great plugin for the standard color picker, allowing users to quickly see related color shades. In the words of Chromatic Bytes, “you choose a center color, a step size and a color coordinate to hold constant. Shades then draws a grid of related colors.” This gives you something more akin to traditional paint chips and is useful for finding similar colors.

Another great application for creating and managing color schemes is Color Schemer Studio. While it does not run as a plugin to the OS X color picker, it is a very powerful standalone tool and a great compliment to some of these other plugins. A great feature of this application that really stands out is its ability to extract a simplified color palette from a photo. That’s just the tip of the iceberg and for more details, read our review of Color Schemer Studio here. This application is $49 and more information (including a demo version) is available from its website.

Color Pickers Everywhere

Most modern OS X applications support the color picker, but for those applications who are in the dark, you can use a little AppleScript trick to run the Color Picker as its own application.

Open up the AppleScript Editor (inside the Applications → Utilities folder) and type in the following code:

choose color

Then save this as an application. Now when you run it, your traditional OS X color picker will appear. Drag and drop colors around to your heart’s content!

If you have any other tips or tricks to share about the color picker, I’d love to hear them!

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Apple’s Address Book is a clean and concise way to manage all of your contacts. It does what it needs without a bunch of frills, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. My use of Address Book is fairly infrequent — and by infrequent I mean that it’s pretty much only utilized around this time of year when I have to send out the annual newsletter or photo card of the kids.

Recently when my younger sister moved into the Big City and sent her ritzy new Manhattan address around to all of us, I entered it into Address Book like a good boy, and promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t long after that my lovely wife wanted to know about the new City digs, but I didn’t know a whole lot. So being a good nerd, I copied the address from Address Book and then copied it into a Google Maps session in Firefox to see what the area looked like. That’s when it hit me — why should I have to go through such a process?!

Following some easy Googling, I found a relatively old solution to my problem. In fact, our own Grand Poobah, Om Malik, was pretty jazzed about the same solution back when he discovered it three and a half years ago! But in internet years, that’s like 2.3 lifetimes past, so what’s old is new — onto the solution! The Google Maps Plugin for Address Book is by Brian Toth, and a perfectly elegant solution to my problem.

The plugin allows you to right click on any address from Address Book, and gives you a few options for how to view it:

• Google Map Directions: Select two contacts in your address book that represent the beginning and ending of your travels, and have it opened in either your default browser or Google Earth (if you have that installed).
• Google Earth: Take a look at the location from the Google Earth application.
• Google Maps: Take a look at the location from your Google Maps in your default browser.

Ok, so really all this does it take away the arduous task of copying the address in Address Book before CMD+TABing to Firefox, opening a new tab, and pasting it into Google Maps. But if I can save 5 keystrokes, I consider it a victory — perhaps you will too. It’s Donationware, so show Brian a little love if you get some use out of it, and while you’re at it, he’s got some other software to peruse too. Happy stalking Google Mapping!

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Today, Davaid Wantanabe announced that Yahoo has acquired the rights to his popular Inquisitor for Safari.

Congrats to David, and a big “what the heck?” to Yahoo. I honestly can’t imagine what Yahoo would want with a plugin for Safari.

It has long been a Safari-only plugin so with the acquisition of it on Yahoo’s end, I’m curious how it will expand. David has said he will not be joining Yahoo as an employee, but he will continue to be the lead developer of the Safari version.

Along with the acquisition announcement, version 3.1 of the plugin was released that “improves performance, simplifies the process for switching search providers, and removes affiliate links from the program”. In lieu of the acquisition, it’s obviously not a surprise that Yahoo is now the default search provider (though you can easily change that in the preferences).

Anyone care to venture as to what Yahoo might do with Inquisitor or how it will benefit them?

[Via Daring Fireball]

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Pre Perian

Not an application, but a Quicktime component, I felt Perian could do with a mention because without it, I wouldn’t be using Quicktime at all. Previous to Perian I relied heavily on VLC for my video needs. I would change all my defaults so my video collection would have immediate access to it. Plus VLC offers unique qualities like network streaming. For basic use however, I felt the need to minimize my Hard Drive foot print and minimize the amount of applications I currently had. In my quest I came across Perian, a total Quicktime lifesaver.

Post Perian

Perian allows you to playback DivX and Xvid, among other formats, with Quicktime. The only issue I ran into was playing full screen. Without Quicktime Pro, full screen viewing is disabled unless you’re using iTunes or Front Row. Thanks to Perian being a component plug-in, and Quicktime being such a deep component of OS X, Front Row obligingly played my DivX files in full screen. Just be sure and keep your DivX in your movies folder, and Front Row will recognize them.

From what I understand of the Apple TV hacks, Perian is the choice for DivX playback. So why not use it on all your computers as well? With Perian installed on multiple computers, I’ve been able to share my DivX through Front Row across my network. Usually that requires sharing a folder or two, but that’s another story. I’m sure Perian is the component of choice for the ultra Mac fan, and probably works best for those of you who include a Mac Mini in your Living Rooms.

So while this may not work for everyone, I encourage you to at least give Perian a go because you’ll still retain DivX playback from OS X, which trust me, is amazing. And if it helps you save even a fraction of hard drive space, well my work here is done then. If you’ve had different experiences or uses for Perian, please share them, I’m very curious to see what else can be done with this digital “Swiss-Army Knife”.

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