• facetime://myfriend
• facetime://myfriend@somewhere.com
• facetime://5558675309

OS X Lion FaceTime desktop and Dock icons

The useful trick is to create a clickable desktop icon that will launch FaceTime for Mac and connect to your friend automatically.  One way to do this on OS X is to type the URL into Safari’s address bar, and before hitting return, drag and drop the typed URL onto the desktop.  Once it’s on the desktop, you can edit the icon’s image, replacing it with a photo of your contact if you want. Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. Launch Safari in OS X Lion and enter your contact’s FaceTime URL (as described at the beginning of this article) in the address bar.
2. Before hitting return to launch to the URL, drag and drop the URL onto the desktop.
3. Right click on the desktop shortcut you just created and select “Get Info.”
4. Use preview to copy the image you want to use into your clipboard.
5. Select the default image in the Get Info dialog until it is outlined blue.
6. While the default image is selected, use Command + V to paste the image.

As an added bonus, the shortcut you just created can even be added to the Dock.  You just have to add it to the far right side of the Dock, where all of the folders are located. You can’t move it to the side of the dock left of the divider, which is reserved for applications.

iOS FaceTime Bookmarks and Favorites

Things get a little more tricky when it comes to iOS Home Screen icons.  The problem is that Safari needs to be viewing the URL in order to save the URL to the Home Screen. This isn’t possible in this case, because Safari launches FaceTime immediately once the custom URL is entered.

But all is not lost. You can always add a contact’s FaceTime ‘number’ to your list of Favorites in the Phone app. But it’s also possible to create a list of Safari Bookmarks with URLs for your FaceTime contacts.

1. Launch Safari in OS X and select “Show All Bookmarks” from the Bookmarks menu.
2. Manually type in the FaceTime URL(s) to your list of Bookmarks.
3. Use iCloud to sync your OS X Safari Bookmarks with your iOS device.
4. Alternatively, use iTunes to sync your OS X Safari Bookmarks with your iOS device.

This can be handy if you prefer to manage your list of favorite FaceTime contacts separately from your list of favorite Phone contacts. Something else to keep in mind is that since this is a valid URL to Safari, anywhere you embed or type this URL can become a launch point for FaceTime. So you could keep a list of FaceTime URLs in a document stored in your Notebook, or even add your own FaceTime URL to the signature of your email. Pasting your FaceTime URL into iMessage will also give the person you’re chatting with a quick and easy way to start a FaceTime with you.  You can go one step further by creating an iOS keyboard shortcut for “ftm” (short for FaceTimeMe) which will expand to your FaceTime URL. So now through FaceTime, everyone has their own dial-in number for quick and easy video chat.

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1. Disable zooming in mouse preferences

If this is really annoying you, simply disable this feature entirely. You can do this by unchecking the Smart Zoom feature on the Point & Click settings in the Mouse section of System Preferences.

2. Install a better preference configuration tool

On the other hand, if you do want to use your touch sensitive mouse to its fullest potential, consider installing either MagicPrefs or BetterTouchTool. Even if you’re not having problems, you may find either of these two tools very handy.  Both tools are free and have recently been updated to allow the user to take much more fine-grained control over their touch experience on OS X Lion.  For example, with BetterTouchTool, you can control the sensitivity of the Magic Mouse, and how it registers touch events.

3. Replace your mouse with a Magic Trackpad

Finally, it may be time to just get rid of that antiquated input device called a “mouse” and get a Magic Trackpad.  Even if you have a MacBook, you may find the location of the Magic Touchpad to either side of the keyboard more ergonomically comfortable than to have it sandwiched in the middle front of the keyboard.  Personally, I’ve found that I use my Magic Trackpad far more often in OS X Lion than I use my Magic Mouse, even though the situation was reversed when I was using Snow Leopard.

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New owners of the latest Air and Mac mini will find fixes for issues related to flickering screens, booting problems when the power cord is attached, and slow running SD cards. Specifically, Apple says the update will:

• Address an issue that may cause the system to become unresponsive when playing a video in Safari
• Resolve an issue that may cause system audio to stop working when using HDMI or optical audio out
• Improve the reliability of Wi-Fi connections
• Resolve an issue that prevents transfer of your data, settings, and compatible applications to a new Mac running OS X Lion
• Resolve an issue where MacBook Air may boot up when MagSafe Adapter is attached
• Resolve an issue causing intermittent display flickering on MacBook Air
• Resolve an issue that causes the SD card slot in Mac mini to run at reduced speed with SD and SDHC media

If you have Lion, but not on one either the Mac mini or the Air, you’ll get a separate update that only pertains to the first four issues listed above.

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There isn’t a specific timeline for when the update will be released, but when it does arrive, it’ll also shut down the ability to jailbreak iOS devices using the most recent JailbreakMe browser-based method. The jailbreak takes advantage of the same exploit which poses a potential security threat and involves the way in which Safari and Mail manage PDF file downloads.

Apple will likely be quick with an update, considering the nature of the German IT agency’s warning. The organization called the flaw a “critical weakness,” and one which is “sufficient to infect the mobile device with malware without the user’s knowledge.” It affects users running iOS 4.3.3, and possibly older versions as well, according to the German agency.

While users await a software update to patch the hole, the best way to avoid any potential security threats is to avoid downloading PDF files from any untrusted sources, either via email or mobile Safari. As mobile web access becomes more popular, it’s generally a good idea for users to practice the same kind of safe browsing that helps avoid malicious attacks on desktop computers as well, part of which means not downloading content when its origin is at all suspect or hazy.

A similar flaw was discovered in August 2010 that also allowed for web-based jailbreak, and also caught the attention of the German government. Apple took about a week to issue an iOS update to patch the problem at that time, so it’s reasonable to expect a similar timeline for release with a 4.3.4 update.

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1. Setup Facebook and Flickr albums in iPhoto

This is actually a tip for your Mac, but it makes it much easier to share photos to Facebook and Flickr if you set up Events in iPhoto ’11 that you can dump content to in bulk. Using uploading apps on the iPhone itself usually works best if you’re only doing one photo at a time, and if you’re on vacation, that can get annoying very fast. Connecting your social accounts in iPhoto will make it much easier to create organized albums on Facebook and Flicker with only a couple of clicks.

To set up your services, just go to iPhoto’s Preferences and click on Accounts:

2. Add bookmarklets to mobile Safari for social sharing

Soon you’ll be able to tweet right from within Safari using the native iOS share button, but for now, tweeting links while browsing on a mobile device can be a frustrating procedure if you’re using a standard copy/paste method. Instead, you can use bookmarklets (which are basically bookmarks that perform a function) in mobile Safari to share on Twitter, or on Facebook and Tumblr, too. Check out those, and many other useful bookmarklets, complete with full instructions, over at Digital Inspiration.

3. Get all the primary apps

The iPhone is well-represented when it comes to social network apps. The Facebook app just got a small update to fix bugs and improve performance, and the Tumblr app was updated earlier this week, and now has a completely redesigned interface that’s perfect for mobile sharing. Twitter on the iPhone is a solid client, but there are many third-party options available, too, like the uniquely designed Tweetbot. There’s also a Flickr app , and of course Instagram, which is quickly becoming the default network for sharing pictures on an iPhone. You’d be surprised at how much more likely you are to use these services just by having their native apps on your device.

4. See content recommendations from Facebook in Safari

Want so see some content reading and viewing selections from your Facebook friends without ever leaving your browser? The Recommend browser extension (really a bookmarklet like those described above) by Bob Hitching will let you call up a window that shows you what people in your network on Facebook are recommending most. It can be a little hit or miss, but it does surface some interesting content.

5. Use cross-service sharing apps

You can use Dropico, a service that provides one-stop shopping for photo sharing across networks like Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, Twitter and Tumblr, to cut down considerably on the time it takes to participate in multiple networks, and even apply effects prior to sharing. Likewise, Gowalla can check-in to multiple location-based networks, including Foursquare, Facebook Places and Gowalla itself, all through one app.

iOS 5 will really up the game for iPhone social sharing, and it looks like Google+ might help as well, although initial reaction appears to be split, likely because of Google’s spotty track record with social services (remember Wave?). But if you want your device to be a better tool for engaging with others, there’s no reason to wait when so many choice tools are available right now.

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The latest version of Mozilla’s browser includes a lot of new features, including tabs-on-top (a feature many people missed when it was removed from the Safari beta), App Tabs (similar to Google Chrome’s pinned tabs) and a new full screen mode. All are features which aren’t present in Safari, and ones that have me eager to stick with Firefox 4 for the long haul.

Firefox's Full Screen mode offers distraction-free browsing.

Of course, there are some features of Safari which Firefox doesn’t offer; the Reader view for one, but I rarely use it anyway, and there are plugins that can take its place. I also like the fact that Safari is based on WebKit, which enables some pretty nice effects on the web such as fading and other animations, but these aren’t yet widely implemented. So far, the benefits seem to outweigh the pitfalls.

One of my favorite new features is the App Tabs part of Firefox. This allows you to pin a certain tab to the tab bar so that it has a permanent place in your browser. This is great since you can have a bunch of these open and they take up hardly any space in the tab bar.

Another new feature is the Tab Groups, which takes a bit of time to set up, but is incredibly useful once it’s done. You can organise your tabs into groups, and then those groups can be manipulated as one, letting you do things like close an entire group of tabs simultaneously. You can resize and drag groups to arrange them however you like. I find that looking for a specific tab is much easier when I have 10 or 15 tabs open if I can look in these groups. It’s nowhere near as easy as this if you’re using Safari.

Mozilla claims that Firefox 4 is significantly faster than the previous version, but I haven’t noticed much difference. However, I have noticed that scrolling in webpages seems to be a lot smoother in version 4. There are also a lot of UI effects which add to the experience; new tabs ‘slide’ into existence rather than simply appearing. Safari doesn’t offer such a smooth experience, in my opinion.

Even though Safari 5 introduced Extensions, the Firefox Add-Ons library is a lot larger and offers a greater range of add-ons than you can get for Safari. For example, the Tab Badge add-on offers something unavailable to Safari users: a badge in the tab bar alerting you to new content, such as a new message on Facebook.

Overall, I’ve found that so far, Firefox 4 offers a better browsing experience than Safari. Unless Safari gets a major update, I won’t be switching back anytime soon. Which browser do you prefer?

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Flash 10.2 requires an Intel Mac with a 1.33 GHz Core Duo processor or better, at least 128MB of graphics memory, and OS X 10.4 or above. Supported browsers are Safari 4, Firefox 3, Chrome 2, and Opera 9.5 and above. According to Adobe, a two-year old Mac mini used less than 8 percent of the CPU playing “smooth full HD 1080p video.”

That sounds like it would be a Mac mini using the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M. Conveniently, I have a unibody 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo MacBook with the same integrated graphics solution, so I looked forward to a precipitous drop in CPU usage when playing HD video with Flash. To my surprise, I got it; not 8 percent, but 16 percent playing 1080p video, which is still a big improvement from punishing CPU usage of the past. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of a MacBook Air from 2008 using Intel GMA X3100 graphics card. Even taking into account the difference in CPUs, the same video used 125 to 150 percent the CPU usage of the 1.6GHz Core Duo machine.

The takeaway here is that if your Mac supports hardware acceleration for Flash, Flash 10.2 can provide real gains in performance and better battery life for mobile Macs. Those using Flash 10.1 can test their performance before and after upgrading using test videos from Adobe. It should also be noted that performance gains won’t materialize unless websites update to take advantage of Stage Video, but some sites, like YouTube, already have.

For those who don’t want to tolerate Flash ads, there’s always the blocking plug-in ClickToFlash for Safari. For those with Macs that can’t take advantage of hardware acceleration in Flash 10.2, or for those who just hate Flash, there also a “dual browsing” option. Get rid of Flash on your operating system, use Safari or Firefox for normal browsing, and just use Chrome (which has the plug-in built-in) when you absolutely need Flash.

Steven Frank explains how to remove Flash from Safari. In both your root directory and your home directory, go to “/Library/Internet Plug-Ins” and remove “Flash Player.plugin,” “flashplayer.xpt,” and “NP-PPC-Dir-Shockwave,” (if it’s there). You can create a folder for them like “Internet Plug-Ins Disabled.” Rebooting Safari, you will now see “missing plug-in” where Flash used to play. For workarounds for still being able to play Flash video in Safari, there’s the excellent Safari Extension YouTube5.

However, if your Mac supports Flash 10.2′s hardware acceleration, perhaps it’s time to consider letting Adobe back on your Mac.

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Since I know some of you are going to mention Firefox, I’ll tell you right now that I’ve ruled it out. It just doesn’t feel right to me. I’ll use Firefox on Windows, but on a Mac it’s just… weird. Feel free to disagree in the comments.

Interface

I suppose Chrome has an attractive interface, but I do think it looks better on Windows, partly because it feels designed for it rather than OS X (look at Chrome’s bookmarks manager and you’ll see what I mean). It just looks better with Aero.

Some aspects of Chrome’s tabs implementation annoy me. Mostly, I’m pretty happy with them, but there are two drawbacks. One being that, because the tabs take up the title bar, there’s less room to drag the window. This isn’t a problem for people who maximize their browser windows, but I like to keep my windows a certain size and I move them around a lot, since I’m always dragging images onto my desktop.

Another side effect of having the tabs in the title bar means that Chrome’s title bar doesn’t really function like one; you never actually see the full title of a web page unless it fits within the tab, which seems like a small complaint, but it’s still annoying.

Features

There were several features I missed from Safari when I switched to Chrome. Probably the one I missed most was Safari’s Reader view, which lets you reformat a long passage of text in an attractive drop-down that cuts out the clutter.

Fortunately, there’s an extension for Chrome that mimics Reader, and actually surpasses it in some ways. The extension’s called iReader and is available in the Chrome extensions gallery. When you hit the arrow keys to scroll through something in Reader for Safari, the cursor doesn’t disappear like it does in normal web pages, but it does in the iReader extension, which is less distracting for me.

Speaking of extensions, there aren’t any extensions I’ve come across for Chrome that aren’t available for Safari, or that I absolutely can’t live without. The opposite isn’t true. In fact, one of the unofficial Safari extensions that I love, ClickToFlash, isn’t available for Chrome, and it looks like that’ll be the case for some time.

Performance

It’s almost a crapshoot here. I can tell you that using Chrome feels faster than using Safari, but only a little. They both use the same rendering engine, WebKit, but they use different JavaScript engines, and from what I’ve learned about both Safari’s Nitro and Chrome’s V8, V8 is superior, but the difference in speed is also small.

On the interface performance side, I’ve noticed that when I have about six tabs open in Chrome, dragging the tabs around gets laggy. I don’t experience this lag with Safari, which I think has the best implementation of tab-dragging in any browser.

Bugs

I can generally say that I’ve experienced more bugs in Chrome than I have in Safari. For instance, in Chrome, almost every time I go back to a Google search result from, say, a Wikipedia page, the page doesn’t display and I’m left with the cute little dead tab face, then I have to re-enter the search in Google. It’s almost a deal-breaker for me.

There are other bugs, of course, but none that are as annoying or pervasive as the above.

Security

Chrome wins here, bar none. Safari is notorious for being a vector of vulnerability attacks, having famously been hacked in just 10 seconds at the annual Pwn2Own contest in 2009, while Chrome was the only browser that wasn’t hacked. However, security isn’t enough to make me switch to Chrome, as there’s very little chance I’d get a virus anyway, since there aren’t many viruses developed for the Mac and I’m a pretty safe surfer.

Will I stay with Chrome?

After using Chrome for a couple of weeks and getting accustomed to all its quirks on the Mac, I’ve decided to switch back to Safari. There just isn’t enough reason for me to stick with Chrome, and the Google search bug mentioned above is a huge annoyance, one that outweighs the poor performance of Safari on the one page that had me considering a switch to begin with.

Did I make the right choice? How’s your experience with Chrome been?

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This also works in the Finder:

So, how is this useful? Well, say you’re really deep in the hierarchy of a website and the designer of the website hasn’t provided a link back to the homepage. Rather than clicking the back button a bunch of times, you can just command+click the title bar and scroll down to the root, which is a lot faster.

You probably won’t need to use this that often, but it’s still a neat trick to learn, and, as far as I know, this only works in Safari and Finder. If you know of any other applications where this works, tell us in the comments.

• Fixes an issue that could prevent users from submitting web forms
• Fixes an issue that could prevent web content displaying correctly with Google Image results when Flash 10.1 is installed
• Establishes an encrypted, authenticated connection to the Safari Extensions Gallery

Two of the three security issues affect both Safari for OS X and Windows. As usual, the exploits can occur when “visiting a maliciously crafted website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution.” Beyond that, the WebKit flaws relate to floating point data handling and run-in styling.

The third security issue is for Windows and sounds a lot like DLL load hijacking, “opening a file in a directory that is writable by other users may lead to arbitrary code execution.” HD Moore of Metasploit explains it more clearly.

Essentially, if you open a file type associated with [a vulnerable app] from a remote network share, the application will also try to load one more DLLs from the share, Moore explained. Even if the file that the user opened is completely safe, a malicious DLL can be supplied that will lead to code execution.

Because no user interaction is required, other than questionable web surfing choices, it’s strongly recommended Safari users update as soon as possible.

Apple has also released Safari 4.1.2 for OS X 10.4.

I’ll be testing Safari 5.1, Safari 4 beta (thanks to its tabs-on-top design), Chrome 5, Firefox 3.6, Firefox 4 beta 3, Opera 10.6, Camino 2, Shiira 2.2, Sunrise 2.1, and iCab 4.8 .

Testing so many browsers presents a problem: Not all browsers use the same UI conventions. For example, Opera doesn’t have a bookmarks bar; its bookmarks are contained in a sidebar. To remedy this, I’ve broken the tests into two sections, showing different parts of the browser chrome. Section one will be with the bookmarks bar hidden, so only the tab bar and toolbar are showing, so I’m able to include Opera. Section two will be with the bookmarks bar shown, so Opera will be excluded from it. I’ll also include a third section that shows the data overall. I omitted testing status bars because Chrome doesn’t really have one, and I’d argue that most people don’t use them.

Tab Bar and Toolbar

I’ll go ahead and say that there are two winners here: Chrome 5 and the Safari 4 beta. But why is Chrome also a winner when the Safari 4 beta so clearly trumps it? My reasoning is that Chrome is a current browser, and that I had to go through a strange rigmarole process to even get the Safari 4 beta running, and it still crashed every time I opened a new tab, so it’s not really usable.

The loser here, by a large margin, is iCab. This was using the default configuration, so I messed with it a little, used small icons and hid the text beneath them. It still came in last, right behind Shiira with 91 pixels, only beating itself. iCab developers, if you’re reading this, please make iCab less space-hungry.

What’s interesting about the comparison between Firefox is that tabs-on-top actually uses slightly more pixels than tabs-on-bottom. Also, using small icons will save you eight pixels.

Here’s a screenshot comparing the top six browsers in this section:

With Bookmarks Bar

Unsurprisingly, the winner here is the Safari 4 beta. However, I was surprised to find that the second winner was Safari 5. Yes, Safari 5 narrowly beats out Chrome by just one pixel. iCab is last in place, by a large margin, again.

I also figured out that, on average, you can save about 20 pixels without the bookmarks bar.

Here’s another screenshot showing the top five browsers in this section:

Overall

I’ve made two graphs that show the data overall: the first by number of pixels in ascending order, the second by browser. I’ve also included a couple of bonuses: I measured Internet Explorer 5 for Mac and Netscape 9. IE doesn’t have a tab bar, so I just measured it with the bookmarks bar. It makes a good watermark for big browsers. And yes, iCab still comes in last, even behind IE. Netscape was surprisingly small, with the minimum being 83 pixels, just behind Sunrise.

Is pixel-friendliness important in a browser? Does it affect which browser you use? Sound off in the comments.

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AdBlock

Firefox users should recognize this popular extension. This one’s an offshoot of AdBlock for Chrome, which itself is an offshoot of AdBlock Plus, the original Firefox extension. AdBlock does what its name implies: block ads. I installed it just to block that obnoxiously huge banner ad on YouTube’s homepage. If you’re not the type to ever click on ads anyway, then why not cut down on the visual (and sometimes audible) clutter?

Type-To-Navigate

[inline-ad align="right"]Type-To-Navigate is a mouse-hater’s dream. It lets you navigate links by simply typing the name of the link. So say I wanted to view the About page of a blog, I’d just type “about” and Type-To-Navigate will highlight the link and display an attractive popup of what I’d written (“about”). The only places where this extension doesn’t work are in text fields and when the link is attached to an image. However, it should find any text link with no problems. Another neat thing you can do with it is to press certain shortcuts while the link you’re searching for is highlighted. You can type ⌘G to find next, ⌘C to copy the URL, and ⌘I to send it to Instapaper.

Invisible Status Bar

Another neat extension from the developer of Type-To-Navigate, Invisible Status Bar gives you a Google Chrome-like status bar that pops up when hovering over links, and even tells you how big a file is when you’re hovering over a download link.

MouseGestures

This feature was originally pioneered by Opera back in 2001, and it’s kind of amazing that it’s taken this long to get it into Safari (at least officially). If you’re unaware, mouse gestures are where you hold down a button on the mouse (normally the right or middle button) and move the mouse to perform a gesture. Gestures can do things like go back a page, or reload. MouseGestures only offers four gestures right now: up, down, left, and right. Assignable actions run the gamut from going back a page to closing the active tab. Unfortunately, there are no customizable gestures like in Opera yet.

WOT (Web Of Trust)

Another popular Firefox extension, WOT offers better security when searching the web by ranking pages based on their content, with other WOT users providing the rankings. The green WOT symbol means the site is safe, and the red means it’s unsafe, with several degrees of safety in between. The only annoying thing about it is that it pops up a little indicator in the top left of the window whenever you visit a new site, but fortunately, it doesn’t popup when you visit a site you’ve already visited.

Gmail Counter

For those who don’t use anything other than Gmail’s web-based interface, this extension is rather useful. It adds a new toolbar icon that shows how many unread messages are in your inbox. Clicking on the icon also takes you to your inbox, so you can get rid of your Gmail bookmark, if you have one.

Reload Button

This one was made by the venerable, and über-critical, John Siracusa, to address his annoyance with the location of Safari’s reload button since version 4. It adds a reload button to the toolbar that’s freely movable, unlike the default reload button. There isn’t much else to say about it, unless you like Safari’s default reload button, in which case, what’s wrong with you?

You could install most of these from the Extensions Gallery, but I’ve elected to link directly to the developers websites, as Apple doesn’t have individual pages for extensions yet.

Have you been playing around with Safari extensions? What are your favorites so far?

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It’s a good bet that the average user probably doesn’t know anything about the extensions yet. We’ve compiled a list of 25 of our favorites, but Apple’s gallery will open up extensions to a wider audience, much like its downloads page did for third-party Mac OS X apps.

If you are a developer, submitting your extension is fairly simple. Apple has a form to fill out in the Safari Dev Center, and it’ll send an email to let you know when you’re extension has been received. When we walked through the submission process, Apple sent us this email:

“Thank you for submitting your Safari Extension.

Apple reviews all submissions and reserves the right to omit, edit, or reject any submission. Please note you will not receive any further notifications.

We appreciate your interest in Safari.”

Based on this reply it seems like the extensions Gallery may be subject to the same approval process as the App Store. Firefox has a similar review process for hosting addons at addons.mozilla.org, similar that is in that there is a process. Mozilla has been handling extensions for a long time, and has the process finely tuned. When submitting an addon for Firefox, the addon is available immediately and labeled “experimental,” and requires the user to acknowledge and accept the risk of using an addon that has not been reviewed by an editor. Mozilla has clear rules about what is acceptable and what is not, and has a page that addresses the review process directly. So far, I have not found the same for Safari.

Google Chrome also has extensions, but in a much looser, less controlled environment than Firefox or Safari. According to Google:

Most extensions won’t go through an approval process before being listed in the gallery. The exception to this rule are extensions which utilize the NPAPI interface, or extensions which access file:// URLs

Google’s rules are loose, but at least they are not vague. I hope that as development on Safari progresses, and the extensions gallery matures, the rules defining what is allowed and what is not are more clearly defined.

If you are interested in developing your own Safari extension, check out our beginner tutorial which walks you through creating a very basic “Hello World” extension.

It must be “beat up on Apple” week. Not only has the company come under fire for new license terms in the iPhone OS that appear to block Google’s AdMob service, but some are crying foul over a new feature in the latest version of Safari, known as “Reader,” which strips out advertising from web pages. The complaints over the licensing terms for the iPhone actually have some merit, but the howls of outrage over the Safari feature — which one commentator described as “dropping a nuclear bomb on the entire web economy” — border on the ridiculous.

Just to recap, the Reader feature (which is only available on certain web pages) is triggered by a small icon in the browser address bar, which when clicked pulls up a separate window within the Safari browser that contains just the text of the page, with graphics but without any advertising. This is the source of the outrage, as it’s seen by some as a dagger aimed directly at the heart of web publishers that rely on advertising. Wired magazine says the feature was designed to push publishers into designing apps instead of just letting readers browse their content, while Ars Technica calls it another “evil genius” plan from Apple.

The feature is hardly a brand-new Apple invention, however; it’s based on open-source code from a feature called Readability, which does exactly the same thing and is available for multiple browsers. And there are (and have been for some time) plenty of other services that do similar things: one popular one, called Instapaper, saves a version of a web page that can be viewed later without any images or advertising. Another very popular web extension or plugin, known as Ad Block, does exactly what it says on the package: blocks all advertising from every web page a user visits.

Do these extensions and plugins remove advertising? Yes, although in the case of Safari Reader, Readability and Instapaper, the user downloads the entire page and presumably sees the ads before they decide to implement the feature. So are they killing the advertising-based content business? Hardly. The fuss over the Safari feature seems particularly absurd, since the browser has less than 5 percent market share (although it is much higher on mobile devices like the iPhone and iPad, for obvious reasons). As for the new feature being a surreptitious attempt to push content companies to develop apps, that seems a little Machiavellian, even for Apple — especially since only a fraction of readers are ever going to use the Reader feature.

As a writer for The Guardian put it, the best thing about these kinds of features and plugins is they force media outlets to recognize just how broken the reader experience is on a lot of websites, with giant ads everywhere and other design choices that are made for purposes rather than readability. As he notes, if Safari Reader and other features like it do nothing else, perhaps they will remind content sites that appealing to readers should be their primary goal.

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To learn more about using Safari, check out our Safari 101 screencast on TechUniversity (subscription required).

Web & Utilities

AdBlock

The AdBlock extension is a great way to remove unwanted content from your browsing experience. Download the extension and load your web pages without as many intrusive ads. There’s even beta options to remove Google ads and YouTube ads.

BuiltWith Analysis

The BuiltWith Analysis extension provides an insider look into a website with one click. You can see what JavaScript libraries a site uses, who provides analytics as well as other nitty-gritty details that are totally public, but often obscured in tons of HTML source code.

Invisible Status Bar

Google’s Chrome browser does away with the status bar at the bottom of your window and only shows it when you hover over a link. The Invisible Status Bar extension does the same thing for Safari!

Live CSS Editing

The Live CSS Editing extension provides a quick way to load up a page and test modifications to the CSS in real time.

Bit.ly Shortener

The Safari Bit.ly Shortener extension makes it easy to shorten a URL with Bit.ly. Simply load the URL in your browser and then click the button!

PageSaver

The Svay.com PageSaver extension will, in one click, save the visible portion of a web page as an image and automatically download it into your Downloads folder.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire is an extension for using a centralized place for posting to all of your blogs, supporting a variety of typical blog features including formatting, categories and tags. ScribeFire’s Safari Extension brings support for this right into Safari.

Snapper

Similar to PageSaver, Snapper also saves the currently viewable portion of a website as a PNG and automatically downloads it for you.

Type to Navigate

The Type to Navigate extension is pretty darn cool. If you’re browsing a page and there’s a link you want to follow, just start typing any word that’s contained within it. It’ll highlight the link and then you just press Return to load it. If it’s not the right link, press Command + G to move to the next one.

E-Commerce

Amazon.com Search Bar

If you frequent Amazon.com, you’ll want the Amazon.com Search Bar extension. It’ll add a new Amazon.com bar to Safari giving you one-click access to your shopping cart, wish list, the latest deals and a quick way to search Amazon.com.

InvisibleHand

The InvisibleHand extension will subtly let you know when it finds a cheaper price to a product elsewhere on the Internet. The list of supported retailers is fairly decent for the U.S., UK and Germany, but more are being added frequently.

Social

FaceBlock

The FaceBlock extension blocks all of the annoying ads on Facebook. I always feel a little sadness for the advertisers that are paying for impressions that I never have to see. Oh well.

safari140

This gem of an extension allows you to post directly to Twitter from within Safari. Links are automatically shortened by is.gd.

Share with Facebook

The Share with Facebook extension gives you one-click access to share your current URL with your Facebook account.

Webbla

If you use Webbla for managing your bookmarks, take a look at the Webbla browser extension, which allows you to quickly add or modify them.

YouTube Full Screen

This extension is a great way to enable full-screen support of YouTube videos if you’re using YouTube’s HTML5 player instead of its Flash player.

Productivity

Background Tabs

The Background Tabs extension will allow you to open a new tab in the background by simply pressing the V key.

Gmail Checker

The Gmail Checker extension will give you an icon and badge in your Safari toolbar to show unread messages on your Gmail account. Keep an eye on their website for updates because the next version will support Google Apps users.

GoMBoX

The GoMBoX extension transforms your Google Images experience by showcasing results in a Lightbox overlay, allowing you to see larger versions without having to leave your search results page.

Instapaper

If you love Instapaper, check out Instafari, a simple one-click way to save an article to your Instapaper account.

InstaPaper Greystyled and Article Tools

The Greystyled and Article Tools extensions provide you with a cleaner style for your Instapaper.com account. Once the extension is installed, just visit instapaper.com to see the changes.

Google Reader – Simplified

If you’re a fan of Google Reader and the GreaseMonkey scripts that give it a simplified look, check out Lucidica, an extension that’s based off Helvetireader.

Safari Reload Button

If you’ve ever wanted to move the reload button for Safari out of the URL window and into its own button, the Safari Reload Button extension does just that.

Search Preview

With the Search Preview extension, you can preview the web pages that show up in your search results. This extension works with Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Toodlethings

If you use Toodledo for your task management, the Toodlethings extension re-styles the web interface with clean buttons and easier to read fonts.

For more great extensions, check out the Safari Extensions blog and keep an eye on Apple.com for its showcase that’s scheduled to premiere later this summer.

Have you written your own extension or found others? Share them in the comments below!

To learn more about using Safari, check out our Safari 101 screencast on TechUniversity (subscription required).

Safari 5 also boosts JavaScript performance with Apple’s Nitro engine, (formally known as squirrelfish). Stats on Apple’s site claim JavaScript performance gains up to 30 percent faster than Safari 4, 3 percent faster than Chrome (really Apple, 3 percent?), and twice as fast as Firefox.

Safari’s Reader feature has been available for a while to users of Instapaper and Arc/40′s Readability bookmarklets. Reader takes the text of the web page and presents it in a larger font, uncluttered by other parts of the page, allowing you to concentrate on reading the article. I’ve been a big fan of Readability, so I’m happy to see such a great feature added to Safari. Finding the Reader button took some time. It shows up next to the RSS button in the address bar, and only when Safari detects a page that has an article with a lot of text in it.

Apple has taken another swing at Google by adding support for Bing in Safari. This move shows just how much the tech industry landscape has changed, and how rapidly it continues to change. While Google remains the default search engine, adding Bing as an option means that Apple could flip the switch on which search engine is selected by default at any time.

Firefox users have been able to extend their browser with add-ons for years, and several users have cited the lack of extensibility of Safari as a major reason for choosing Firefox on the Mac. However, it took Google’s Chrome browser supporting extensions to push Apple to support the same thing in Safari. In typical Apple style, it seems that the extensions will be signed, and a certificate to sign the extension will only be available by joining the Safari Developer Program. The extensions will also run sandboxed, further protecting the browser.

Safari extensions are build using HTML 5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Safari 5 packages a tool called the Extension Builder to help with packaging and distributing the extension into the Extensions Gallery. Expect a bunch of long awaited favorites to show up in the gallery soon.

As of this writing, no extensions are available yet. Safari 5 ships with extensions disabled by default, but to enable them, enable the Develop menu in Safari preferences, then select “Enable Extensions.”

Auto-complete in the address bar has also been enhanced. In the short time I’ve been testing it, the suggestions are not only faster, but more relevant. This is because Safari is now searching not only the beginning of the URL, but the entire string for matching characters. So far, this is honestly my favorite new feature, and speeds up browsing significantly. Oh, and address bar progress indicator is back.

Another huge bonus for me is hardware acceleration in Windows. Since I work in an office and use an XP laptop during the day, this means that Safari 5 should be a big performance boost over 4.

If you weren’t sold before, are the additions enough to bring you back to Safari? What other thoughts do you have about the new changes? Let us know in the comments!