Lion and Safari 5.1 support is here. With this release, we wanted to make sure to take full advantage of the improvements made in Safari. Glims has a new loader, and we made sure the existing features work better on Lion.

Good news. I'll be testing this out this week.

Source: machangout.com → | ∞ Permalink

There's a new version of Glims available as of today, version 1.0b26, aka "build 26" Glad to see these guys cranking out the updates.

In short, there are a number of bug-fixes, though I must say, I don't think anything that was particularly bugging me.

The big changes are aThey've added a number of features around the preferences so that it is easier to figure out what Glims can actually do (excellent decision to treat the noobs better!)

Full list of updates and some before and after pics of the preferences after the break...Before...

After...

From the update notes...

This update requires OS X 10.5 (Leopard) or later.

Glims doesn't rely on Apple's session manager anymore which allows us to include history for undo and tab restoring.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if you experience any problems.

Some of the users reported that they had to restart their computer for the update to kick in.

Note: Italian and Korean localizations are discontinued for this version.

Whats new in build 26:

Added - Undo tabs now includes history Added - Restore tabs now includes history Added - Improved preference panels Added - More preference flags to the restore tabs Added - More preference options for undo Added - Google Latvia search suggestions

Fixed - Google Suggestions Links Fixed - Google Suggestions Words Fixed - Tabs not restoring properly Fixed - Wrong results while Google selected as search engine Fixed - Google SSL not showing thumbnails properly Fixed - Undo tabs reopen twice Fixed - Glims Agent log error Fixed - Tabs restore performance improvements Fixed - Commas are stripped from custom search engine URLs Fixed - More Safari5 improvements and more...

Source: shareist.com → | ∞ Permalink

The feature request that came 30 seconds after Tabbed Browsing was a way to save and restore your tabs upon restart. This is particularly useful after a browser crash when you want to get back to all those websites you weren't quite finished with.

I usually have so many tabs open at any given time that reloading them all on startup is a test in patience (and of my Internet connection), so I tend to not use it. But it is a popular feature.

There are no less than six ways to get your Safari tabs saved and restored, some have been around for a long time in the form of plugins. Others are new to the scene running as newborn Safari Extensions.

Safari's Built in Restore Tabs

Some people (including perhaps some extension developers) may not realize that Safari actually has a restore tabs option available as a core feature. You can choose "Reopen all tabs from last session" from the History menu. This won't happen automatically, so you have to choose it manually. But if you don't like to always have your previous session restored, this might be all you need.

Glims

The Glims plugin (see our Glims page) a tab save and restore feature with a few options (see the screenshot). This plugin has some behaviors that I like to see, like a prompt to restore or not if the browser had just crashed, and it saves the window sizes and positions as well as the tabs.

You're probably already using Glims (and if not, why not?), so you get this feature for free with a bunch of others.

Saft

The Saft (see our Saft page) plugin also has an option to save and reload windows. Otherwise, it is very no-frills and it works well enough. If you're using Saft already, look no further. But I wouldn't get Saft just for this.

SafariStand

The SafariStand plugin (see our SafariStand page and SafariStand English Documentation) will restore the previous session or you can configure it to prompt you to specify which tabs to open, and in all one window. When restoring multiple window sessions, window size and position are not restored.

SafariTabs

If you prefer not to have all the other features that come along with Glims or Saft, SafariTabs is a special purpose tab save/restore SIMBL plugin that does the job. It restores tabs and windows, but doesn't restore the window locations like Glims does.

SafariTabs, like SafariStand, gives you the option to choose which tabs you want to open.

Glims, Saft, and SafariTabs have been saving and restoring Safari's tabs for years. Now that Safari has extension support, a few other tab savers have appeared on the scene.

SafariRestore Extension

The SafariRestore Extension came out pretty quickly after Safari 5 hit the streets with extension support. It has a few options in its bag of tricks such as opening all tabs in one window (if you open multiple windows, it does not preserve their locations) and an option to prompt before restoring.

Tabs Safari Extension

Finally we have the most recent extension to appear on the extensions scene, aptly named Tabs. It will automatically or manually open all tabs, though it doesn't preserve window position. This extension comes with a bonus toolbar button to duplicate the current tab. And if you speak ?esky (Czech), or just want to learn enough to talk to uh, nobody, this is the one for you.

So there you have it. At least six ways to save and restore tabs in Safari. A wealth of options.

One important note is that extension API doesn't have visibility into whether Private Mode is running in your browser. So the two extension based tools will restore all tabs, including those that were opened in private mode. So if private browsing is your thing (which isn't all that private anyway), stick to the old school plugins for this functionality to avoid the embarrassment of having your old (formerly) private tabs start up for someone else.

Source: shareist.com → | ∞ Permalink

You might think that the new extensions platform available in Safari 5 means lights out for the old school Safari kitchen-sink plugins like Glims, Saft, and Safari Stand.

Not so fast.

Last week the guys at MacHangOut.com updated Glims to fix the issues introduced by Safari 5. It's not dead yet. Here's why.

Quite simply, through backdoor programming access to the browser (via SIMBL apparently not via SIMBL, I was thinking of some other plugin. Thanks for the reader who straightened me out), it can do a good deal more than what can be done through the extensions browser API.

Here are my three top favorite features that make Glims a must-have on the Safari browser, even the new version 5.

More search engines in the search field

Glims allows you to easily configure any search engine you want in the search droplist, adding as many as you want to the default two three search engines provided by Safari. In addition, you can add hot-keys and key modifiers to the address bar.

Even if I don't use the many of the search engines in the drop list, the mere presence of this feature makes it useful to me. The google icon in the search box reminds me to type my searches in that field rather than the address bar, which I do chronically, and en up on the annoying Verizon search page that my ISP injects when it cannot resolve something that I type as a domain.

And if I do find myself typing a search in the address bar, I can just put a 'g' in front of the term and Glims will intercept it and perform a google search. I had to configure this. There don't seem to be any defaults here.

It simply makes the search feature better.

Search Suggestions

Glims adds an enhanced search window that gives suggestions as you type your search term for a set of configurable search engines.

This is configurable so you can choose which search engines supply these results, and how many to show.

Favicons in tabs

Glims adds the favicon for each site into the tab. I don't believe that Safari's new extension architecture allows this level of access to the browser. If it did, an extension would surely exist for this by now.

If this was the only feature in Glims, I'd be using it. Heck, I'd pay for this.

Most of the other features of Glims are being knocked off one by one by new Safari 5 extensions, but they're holding fast with these few killers that can only be implemented with an advanced plugin tool like SIMBL.

It also does appear that some of the old stand-by plugins are dropping off. It seems that Saft and Inquisitor have stopped development.

Get Glims here.

Update: Saft has a Safari 5 compatible Snow Leopard beta version available here. I misread the Saft FAQ page earlier and mis-interpreted the current state of the product. I have purchased an upgrade and will be trying it out.

Source: shareist.com → | ∞ Permalink