Safari has long had the ability to pull data from the OS X Address Book, and use only that information to fill in forms. I just submitted an extension to Mozilla that does the same for Firefox: Addressbook.app Form Filler. (As new extensions are considered by addons.mozilla.org to be experimental, you'll have to log in to the Firefox extensions site in order to install it.)
There are a few differences from the way this works in Safari. This extension can find U.S. states and Canadian provinces that are in pull-down lists, and it's triggered by a toolbar button, rather than doing word-completion in the form. Control-click on the toolbar and choose Customize from the drop-down menu, then drag the AddressBook->Forms button to the toolbar. (If anyone knows how the extension can do this on its own during the installation process or during its first run, please let me know.)
For those who are curious, the Address Book access is handled by the contacts Command-line Address Book tool that lets you view and search your contacts in Terminal. Please note this is an early release of the extension, and should be considered experimental; feedback is welcomed.
[robg adds: I've been using this extension for a few days, and it works quite well for basic form handling. For more complex needs, I rely on Autofill Forms, which offers support for multiple profiles, keyboard shortcuts to fill in form data, and more.]
One of the things that makes Delicious (formerly del.icio.us) so useful it that it can integrate, to varying degrees, with all broswers via its JavaScript bookmarklets. Many other sites also use these -- for example, I have bookmarklets for Digg, FaceBook, and more. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to activate these from a keyboard shortcut? You can!
Add a bookmarklet to your Bookmarks menu, not to your favorites bar.
In System Preferences, go to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab of the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel, and add a keyboard shortcut with the exact name of your bookmarklet. You can specify the application as either your chosen browser, or for All Applications if you use multiple browsers. If you choose All Applications, just make sure the bookmarklet has the same name in all browsers.
Now I can post to Delicious by pressing the same keyboard shortcut everywhere. Yay!
[robg adds: This works, of course, and can be extended to create keyboard shortcuts for any site in your Bookmarks menu, not just bookmarklets. It was mentioned in a footnote to this older hint, which covered a possibly quicker (but definitely not GUI-based) method of creating keyboard shortcuts in Safari (and any other program).]
I use bit.ly as my URL shortening service, mainly because I like the way that it links to Twitter and tracks statistics on shortened URLs that I send folks. I am, however, lazy and I don't like to do any more clicking, copying, or pasting than I have to.
So I created a bookmark on my bookmarks bar in Safari which opens bit.ly in a new window and passes the current page I am on as a parameter. The net effect is that most of the work is done for me when the window opens. The JavaScript bookmark is:
It should be well-known that you can option-click a link in Safari to force it to download. This is very helpful for image, PDF, and text file links which would otherwise display in Safari. What about when you get a link in an email or other document? Option-click in Mail doesn't download it; it just loads it in your default browser as if normally clicked.
Try this instead. Select the link in Mail and copy it. In Mail, just Control-click and select Copy Link from the menu. In a text-based apps, you'll have to select the whole link and copy it, unless it provides a similar link discovery feature. Open a new window in Safari and paste the link into the address box, then oress Option-Return instead of a plain Return. Safari will behave like you Option-clicked the URL. I'm sure this could be automated somehow, but I'm too lazy to figure that stuff out!
[robg adds: As noted in this earlier hint, another (possibly simpler) option is to paste the link directly into Safari's Downloads window.]
If you want to clear all favicons from your bookmarks in Firefox 3, edit the places.sqlite database, which can be found in your profile folder, located in your user's Library » Application Support » Firefox » Profiles » random_text.default folder. You then need to use any SQLite editor to execute these two commands on that file:
delete all from moz_favicons
update moz_places set favicon_id = NULL
Quit the editor and restart Firefox, and the favicons will be gone (this works on every platform). Also, if you want to permanently disable favicons, type about:config in the URL bar, and edit these two properties:
browser.chrome.favicons -- set to false
browser.chrome.site_icons -- set to false
[robg adds: You can use the built-in sqlite3 program in Terminal to edit this file. Just cd into the profile folder, then (with Firefox not running) type sqlite3 places.sqlite. I had to change the format of the first command, however, to make it work in sqlite3 -- I had to remove all, leaving just delete from moz_favicons. After running both commands, type .quit and restart Firefox. This seemed to work for me as described in the hint.]
This may be obvious, but now that Inquisitor has been bought by Yahoo, the instant display of web sites matching your search terms only works if Yahoo is set as the preferred Search Engine in the Inquisitor (Search) Preferences in Safari. It's set this way by default (so Inquisitor works out of the box), but if you prefer to use Google for your searches, you'll lose the main benefit of installing Inquisitor.
Just like with the Opera web browser, it is now possible to have nine of your most-used sites as a homepage in Safari, quickly accessible by pressing numbers 1 to 9. But unlike speed dial on Opera, Safari Dial is an online app.
The sites are presented with screenshots of the pages. No registration is necessary, and your unique homepage can be accessed from multiple computers. This online app also works fine on Firefox (and probably other browsers), and makes a good alternative to Firefox's Speed Dial extension.
[robg adds: I use Fast Dial with Firefox, and find it quite useful. For those using Safari, this service seems pretty safe -- there's no registration needed, and you access the start page via a unique code.]
I've created a custom style sheet for Safari (which also works in all other major browsers) that enhances the results listings from major search engines -- it numbers all the results, including any paid advertising, which makes it easier to see how your site ranks while checking out various search results. (It also highlights links and images that use the "nofollow" attribute.)
To use this custom sheet in Safari, save the style sheet locally somewhere; name it something like Custom Style Sheet.css. In Safari, open preferences, click Advanced, then click the drop-down next to Style Sheet and navigate to the Custom Style Sheet.css you just saved. You can read more about this custom style sheet in this entry on my blog -- I think this is a big upgrade for all web/SEO people using Safari.
Flash wasn't working consistently for me in Firefox -- it would for some sites, but not for ComedyCentral.com or some others. Running through my standard troubleshooting list, I finally came up with a solution: I was using the Adblock add-on instead of Adblock Plus (I like it better because it's easier to pull up the blockable elements on a page).
Now that I've replaced Adblock with Adblock Plus, and changed the Options (visible when clicking the ABP icon in the tooblar) to uncheck 'Show Tabs on Flash and Java,' Flash now works consistently again.
Many news sites post the next day's contributor columns several hours before providing a link on the website. Since these typically use a standard, date-based URL, I've created JavaScript bookmarks that automatically update to check if tomorrow's column has been posted.
For example, the following bookmark will check to see if David Pogue's latest State of the Art column has been posted. (Since his feature runs every Thursday, the bookmark will pull up his next column when it's posted on Wednesday afternoon/evening). The standard URL format for his column is:
Create a new bookmark, give it a name (Latest State of the Art) and enter the above code for the URL. For other sites, simply replace the year in the URL with +d.getFullYear()+, the month with +(d.getMonth()+1)+ and the day with +(d.getDate()+1)+. Make sure to wrap the other parts of the URL in quotes, as seen above.
