Unlike other free mail services, Gmail doesn’t inject ads into emails that you send. Like the others, however, it does display ads when viewing your mail. And with Gmail it’s a bit unsettling. Gmail effectively reads your incoming mail and pitches you ads based on its contents. The ads are, of course, algorithmically served, so it’s not like a team of Gmail slackers actually access your mail and decides what ads to show, but it’s weird none the less. Fortunately you can turn them off.

Install GreaseKit for Safari and then install the Gmail Without Ads GreaseMonkey script. The ads will vanish and leave you with a clean replacement for Mail.app.

Before:

After:

The frustration of clicking on the Next link increases with how many times you have to do so in order to find what you’re looking for. My sense is that Google doesn’t need increased page views, so let’s turn it off.

Auto-pagination is a concept whereby content spread across multiple pages is dynamically loaded into the current page. In practical terms this means no more clicking the ‘Next’ link if you’re not satisfied with the first 10 search results. Have a look at the video.

(Dramatic element added by The Dodos.)

To enable auto-pagination you’ll need two things.

GreaseKit

A WebKit version of the popular Firefox extension GreaseMonkey, GreaseKit allows you to run alternative rendering javascript scripts for popular web pages. To install it, you’ll also need to install the SIMBL input manager (okay, I lied. You need three things).

oAutoPagerize

oAutoPagerize is the script which works the magic. There are a few auto-pagination scripts available, but this one works. With GreaseKit installed, click on the ‘Install’ button on the script’s page and it should work the next time you search Google.

Unfortunately not every userscript works with GreaseKit, and perhaps even more unfortunately, the ones that do are not well tagged. You might have some luck by adding ‘Safari’ to your search on Userscripts.org. Good luck and enjoy the infinite scroll.

Safari 4, however, has added some of its own functionality to the Google Search Box by way of ‘as you type’ search suggestions that, if selected, will bring up a Google search page with the selected results. About the new functionality, Daring Fireball writes:

The Google search field now populates the suggestion menu as you type with results from Google’s Suggest feature. For me at least, the suggestions are remarkably, almost spookily, good.

I agree with Gruber that the search suggestions are a significant new feature. But the fact remains that Inquisitor, which, again, let you search user defined engines without detouring through Google, is dead and gone. I’ve been grieving its loss.

Until today, that is. The idea struck me that TextExpander from Smile on My Mac can be rigged to let you search custom search engines from Safari’s location field, rather than the Google Search Box.

What’s TextExpander?

TextExpander is a typing assistant which lets you expand custom text abbreviations into longer, often used text snippets. For instance, if you find yourself replying a lot of emails in the same way, type your reply once in TextExpander and assign it an abbreviation. The next time you need to write that same email again, just type the abbreviation and TextExpander will expand it out for you. The powerful little preference pane will significantly reduce what Merlin Mann refers to as “idiotic typing time.” It’s 29.95 USD.

Using TextExpander to Perform Custom Web Searches

Each time you search a site a unique URL is generated which relates to your search terms. For instance, if you want to search Twitter, go to http://search.twitter.com/ and enter your search terms. I’ll use Mac Mini for my example. A search for Mac Mini will generate the URL http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mac+mini. It’s fairly easy to see how to perform a custom search from the Location bar by looking at this URL – just enter search.twitter.com/search?q= and then type your search terms. But as easy as it might be to understand how to search specific sites from the Location Bar, actually doing so requires an amount of manual labor (i.e., typing) that I’m not willing to complete. Here is where TextExpander comes in.

Go to a site that you often search and search for something. Have a look at the resulting URL. I’ll do a search on Flickr for “snow leopard.”

Next, highlight only the base URL and the search syntax up to your search terms as shown in the above screen shot (in my testing with various sites, everything after your search terms in the URL isn’t necessary to perform the location bar search Update: It is possible set up searches for URLs that have important search parameters after the search terms by using TextExpander’s “Position Cursor Here” command. Please see my response to Patrick in the comments for more details). Now go into TextExpander’s menu bar item and select “Create Snippet From Selection.”

TextExpander’s preference pane will open and from here you can add your snippet title and the abbreviation you want to use to expand it. For Flickr I’m using ’ssf’ (my choice here is motivated by the need to remember a few different search snippets: Google images will be ’ssgi,’ Delicious, ’ssd,’ etcetera). Have a look at the screenshot:

Your new Custom search is now set up and ready to use.

Using Your Custom Searches

The hard part is setting your new custom searches up (and that’s not too hard); the easy part is using them. Open up Safari and select the Location field (Command + L by default). Now type your abbreviation (’ssf’ if you’re following my Flickr example). After TextExpander expands your search URL, simply type your search terms and hit enter. If everything goes to plan, Safari will do the rest of the work (adding %20 between your search terms if your search is multiple words) and open up your results.

Here’s a video of the entire process from Snippet creating to performing your custom searches.

One of the best parts of using TextExpander to perform your custom searches is that you can have your cake and eat it too – that is, you don’t have to give up Safari’s new search term completion in the Google Search Box to perform your custom searches. Moreover, because TextExpander is a stand alone application and not a Safari hack, it should be more future proof and won’t break with the next release of Safari.

What You Need

A free Delicious account. Delicious is an online bookmarking service that lets you tag, share and search interesting or reference pages that you find online. I’ve been using Delicious for over two years now and have posted over a thousand pages to the service. Apart from the social aspects, storing your bookmarks in the cloud has the killer benefit that you can access them from whatever computer you happen to be in front of from where ever you are in the world.

Inquisitor. Inquisitor is a free Safari addon that adds Spotlight-like predictive search to Safari’s Google Search box. I’ve raved about it in the past. What makes Inquisitor so sublime, however, is that you can add custom search engines to Safari and assign a keyboard shortcut to each one. It’s a beautiful thing.

The Quickest Way to Search Your Delicious Bookmarks

To search your Delicious bookmarks from Safari, you’re first going to need a custom URL. Check it out:

http://delicious.com/search?p=%@&u=YOUR_USERNAME&chk=&context=userposts&fr=del_icio_us&lc=1

Replace YOUR_USERNAME with your Delicious user name (see it in the upper right corner of Delicious.com if you’re logged in). Copy your new URL onto the clipboard.

With Inquisitor installed, open up Safari’s preferences and select the new Search tab at the far right of the top pane (it bears the Inquisitor icon). Click on the ‘Edit Sites’ button and add your new custom engine. Assign it a keyboard shortcut if you’re set.

Let me know if you’re having any problems setting it up. If you have a favorite Del.icio.us client that you use, post a link in the comments. Happy bookmarking.

By default, however, Quicksilver’s interface isn’t the most beautiful among Mac applications.

As a utilitarian application, I suppose that looks are not nearly as important as functionality (which Quicksilver has in spades), and thus development emphasis was lain elsewhere. But aesthetics are one of the major factors in both buying a Mac and a strong criteria (for me, at least) for installing applications. And even though I would still use Quicksilver if the default interface was the only option, thankfully it is not.

Here are three beautiful Quicksilver skins from Julius Eckert.

Bezel HUD

Building on Quicksilver’s included Bezel interface, Bezel HUD fits so well with the general feel of Leopard that if feels like an Apple application:

In all honesty, seeing this video of Bezel HUD this was one of the small but numerous reasons that I finally installed Leopard.

Showcase

Again, beautiful Leopard integration and tons of polish:

For me, Showcase feels a little too big. Nevertheless, it was the first to really fit perfectly into the Leopard aesthetic.

Silverflow

The ‘Cover Flow’ version of Quicksilver, this one is still in public beta and doesn’t yet include the stylized list results of Bezel HUD. But the main window looks beautiful and, I think, cover flow is well used in this context.

Quicksilver will change the way you work with your computer. Bezel HUD, Showcase and Silverflow are all available from Julius Eckert for free.

Install Inquisitor

Inquisitor is a plugin that enhances Safari’s built in Google Search field by auto-completing commonly searched for terms and offering you one-click access to top hits. Inquisitor smartly remembers your search history and even allows you to add additional search engines to the search field (to which you can assign keyboard shortcuts). Inquisitor is like Spotlight for the web.

Download Inquisitor.

Install SafariScript

SafariScript puts an AppleScript menu in Safari’s menu bar. The best part about SafariScript, though, is that it lets you assign keyboard shortcuts to any of your scripts that work when Safari is the front application. SafariScript is an excellent add-on if you use AppleScript to get stuff done in Safari.

A great resource for Safari AppleScripts is Nadamac’s script repository. Another excellent source is Mac OS X Hints. (Note: because of the way Leopard handles input managers, SafariScript is a bit tricky to install. Check out this post for the details.)

Download SafariScript.

Install SafariStand

SafariStand adds a ton of features to Safari including a sidebar which displays thumbnails of your currently open tabs and the ability to reopen last-session tabs when you launch Safari. SafariStand also adds color to source code, a download Flash video option, the ability to map tab switching to ‘,’ and ‘.’ and lots more. The newest version of SafariStand also lets you search your browsing history using Cover Flow! (Click on the screen shot to the right to see this feature in action.) This is easily one of the best implementations of Cover Flow that I have seen – both pretty and functional. Give it a try for yourself.

Download SafariStand.

Install GreaseKit

GreaseKit allows you to run scripts built for the popular Firefox plugin Greasemonkey. GreaseKit scripts run custom CSS and add page elements for popular sites around the web. And while not every Greasemonkey script works with GreaseKit, you shouldn’t have trouble finding ones that do. After installing GreaseKit, search Userscripts for scripts that you like and install them by clicking the “Install This Script” button on the script’s page.

Download GreaseKit.

Learn the Keyboard Shortcuts

Most people know and make use of a few keyboard shortcuts in Safari, but there are many less obvious shortcuts that can make you a more efficient web surfer.

Command + Option + W – close all tabs but the foremost one. Spacebar and Spacebar + Shift – scroll down or up one page. Command + Option + F – select Safari’s Google search field. Command + Click on BookMarks Bar Folder – opens all bookmarks in the folder in tabs. Command + Shift + \ – hide/reveal the toolbar for a minimalist browser window. Command + 1, 2, 3, 4, etcetera – open corresponding bookmarks bar bookmarks. Command + Control + D – show the selected word in OS X’s popup dictionary.

These are of course just a few. Find more in Safari’s built in help file under Safari Shortcuts and Full Keyboard Access Shortcuts.

Use the Help Menu to Search Your Browsing History

New in Leopard is the ability to search the drop down menus of any application from the Help menu. If your search term matches something in the application’s menus, then a floating blue arrow appears indicating where to find the command. In Safari you can also access your browsing history this way. When you’ve found the history item that you want to open, simply hit enter and Safari will open the page. You can even access the help menu search field by pressing Command + Shift + ? for mouse-free access to your history.

Add JavaScript Bookmarklets to the Bookmarks Bar

A bookmarklet is

a little JavaScript script that’s intended to be run from a web browser’s bookmarks bar or menu. The reason they work as “bookmarks” is that the JavaScript source code is crammed into the form of a URL using the “javascript:” scheme.

Via Daring Fireball.

Bookmarklets are an easy way to add functionality to Safari. When you find one you like, just drag the link to Safari’s Bookmarks Bar (I have a folder in my Bookmarks Bar to hold all my bookmarklets and save a little space). Many applications also come with bookmarklets which you can often find in the application’s menu bar. Two great places to find bookmarklets are Pimp My Safari and Andy Budd’s site, but you can find many more online via Google.

Set Up a Text to Speech Shortcut

Text to Speech is great if you want to get some online reading done but can’t be seated at you computer for whatever reason. Moreover, the new default voice included with Leopard, Alex, is a huge improvement over Tiger’s default voice.

Text to Speech can be found in the Services menu in Safari. To invoke it, highlight some text and select “Start Speaking.” If you use the feature with any regularity, though, digging through the Services menu can become a tedious process. Luckily, Leopard makes it easy to set up a keyboard shortcut to access Text to Speech. Open System Preferences and select Speech. Check the “Speak selected text when the key is pressed” and then press “Set Key” to add your shortcut (I use Control + Option + K). Alex is now ready to read any page in Safari.

Track RSS Feeds

NetNewsWire is an excellent RSS reader if you don’t want to miss a single article published on your favorite site, but I prefer to use Safari to track RSS feeds that are updated with exceptional frequency (Digg.com’s RSS feed, for example). Safari lets you track RSS feeds via an easy to use interface right inside the browser. To add feeds to Safari’s bookmarks bar, open Safari’s Preferences and click on the RSS tab. Set your default RSS reader to Safari and now clicking on a feed link will open the feed in in your current window. RSS feeds in the bookmarks bar also give you a live update count of newly published articles so you know when to check them out. If you’re not familiar with RSS and how to take advantage of its features, you can read this article to find out more.

Use Private Browsing

You need to buy a birthday gift for someone in your home and don’t want them finding out what you’ve been up to online. Select Private Browsing in the menu bar (Safari >> Private Browsing) and cover you online tracks. In Private Browsing mode, your web history isn’t updated while you surf and no cookies are stored in your browser’s cache. Private Browsing mode lets you surf the web like a ghost.

These tips and add-ons will turn you into a Safari power user in no time. If I’ve left out any of your favorite Safari tricks, let me know it the comments.

But choosing Safari as your primary browser does come with some sacrifices, and the most prominent among which is Safari’s relative non-extensibility. With Firefox you can install any number of plugins or skins and really tailor the application to your own needs, but Safari, although it does have some configuration options, just doesn’t offer the add-ons that Firefox does. Talk with people who use a Mac and you’ll often hear, “I love Safari! But I need –x feature–, so I’m stuck with Firefox…”

Safari may not have a massive plugin listing or even purport to allow them, but there are a few great ones out there. Inquisitor jumps immediately to mind, with SafariStand coming a close second. But my favorite is SafariScript from Nadamac. SafariScript does two things. First, it gives you access to your Safari AppleScripts by installisng a menu bar item that is visible only when Safari is in front. And secondly, it allows you to assign hot keys to any of your scripts for access via the keyboard.

Now that Leopard has changed the way that OS X handles input managers, SafariScript takes a few steps to set up.

First, download SafariScript and mount the disk image. Now copy the SafariScript folder to /library/imputManagers at the top level of your computer (i.e., not the library of your user account, as in Tiger). Enter your password. Lastly, you’ll need to enter these two Terminal commands in order for Leopard to recognize the plugin:

sudo chown -R root:admin /Library/InputManagers

and

sudo chmod -R go-w /Library/InputManagers

Now, your SafariScript menu should appear the next time you launch Safari.

Now for the fun part! Check Nandamac’s sample script page for AppleScript downloads to add to SafariScript. Also search the excellent MacScripter for Safari AppleScripts to install and modify to your needs. I’ll also be posting some of my own favorites here on Mac Membrane in the future, so stay tuned.

With AppleScript and SafariScript you can overcome many of the limitations that come with choosing Safari for your main browser. Download SafariScript and try it out for yourself. If you have any excellent Safari AppleScripts, point them out in the comments!

Afloat from Infinite Labs makes this possible. With Afloat installed, just bring your chosen application to the front of the pack and look in its ‘Window’ menu. Select ‘Keep Afloat’ (or press Cmd + cntrl + A) and now no matter what application you switch to, your chosen application will stay visible. Afloat also lets you adjust the opacity of your floating applications as well, which is great if you want to keep a window open, an Adium chat window, for instance, but still need to see what’s happening behind it. If your on a MacBook Air or new MacBook Pro, you can use trackpad gestures to access Afloat’s features, and you can even have multiple floating windows if you choose.

I’ve been using Afloat for quite some time (mostly to keep VLC windows floating while I read in NetNewsWire), but Leopard’s architecture changed the way the system interacts with input managers, and as this was the method that Afloat (as well as a bunch of other applications) relied on to modify the behavior of windows, Leopard effectively killed the plugin. Afloat now uses a new plugin-manager called PlugSuit. From their website:

PlugSuit uses a different loading method than other plug-in managers, which are predominantly based on InputManager loading, a way of loading plug-ins that Apple will remove. When this happens, PlugSuit will still be able to load your plug-ins.

Obviously, Infinite Labs (the makers of Afloat) were somewhat shaken when Unsanity’s APE (Application Enhancer) caused so many problems when Leopard arrived and decided to design their own. PlugSuit is designed to be ‘future proof’ and makes managing other plugins easy from one central place in System Preferences.

Afloat doesn’t work with all Mac apps, but I have yet to personally encounter one that I’d like to keep on top and have Afloat fail me. Let me know if you find any cool uses for Afloat besides what I have listed here.

Download Afloat from Infinite Labs. It’s freeware.

All of these applications are freeware, but donations are usually accepted.

Update: I have written a second post, 10 Outstanding Freeware Apps for your Mac, as a compliment to the below list. 10 didn’t seem like enough to give a true sense of the range of excellent freeware for the Mac. Make it 20!

Adium:

The most versatile and customizable chat client for the Mac. Doesn’t do video, but whatever the protocol of your preferred chat network, Adium will support it out of the box. Really beautiful interface, too.

Download Adium.

Azureus:

Azureus is the most advanced bit torrent client for the Mac. It’d be difficult to describe the app as light-weight, but Azureus’ feature set can’t be beat. I’ve tried a good number of alternatives, but Azureus has never let me down.

Download Azureus.

HandBrake:

HandBrake is hands-down the best tool to rip DVDs for use on your Mac or iPod. Some of its conversion options are a bit arcane, but the application comes set up with sensible defaults. It’s also a great tool to get your DVDs onto your Apple TV.

Download HandBrake.

iSquint:

The little brother of Visual Hub, iSquint will convert most popular video formats for viewing on your iPod and iPod Touch without hassle. Even if you don’t have an iPod, iSquint can format videos for the AppleTV, too.

Download iSquint.

Senuti:

Senuti (that’s iTunes spelled backwards) lets you download music from your iPod back onto your computer. It’s a great tool to have around should you fall victim to corruption in your iTunes library. It even works with Windows formatted iPods.

Download Senuti.

Flip4Mac and Perian:

Two plugins that allow QuickTime Player to play a wide range of popular video formats that are unsupported out of the box. With these two installed, both DivX and WMV files should play without problem. (Pictured to the right is the Perian icon. I think it’s prettier.)

Download Flip4Mac and Perian.

VLC:

The media player extraordinaire, VLC will play pretty much anything you throw at it, including lossless FLAC audio files. If you ever find yourself confronted with an obscure video or audio format, give VLC a try.

Download VLC.

Skype:

Cross-platform VoIP client. Skype lets you make worldwide audio and video calls to other Skype users for free, and you can call normal phones for a fraction of the cost most telephone companies charge you.

Download Skype.

Miro:

Miro is an all-in-one torrent client and media player that lets you search for Creative Commons torrents from within the app itself. With a bit of effort, you can even set Miro up to automatically download all your favorite mainstream TV shows.

Download Miro.

iStat Pro:

An awesome Dashboard widget that gives you a ton of information about the current state of your Mac. Battery charge, top processes, network usage and lots more. A menubar version is also available.

Download iStat Pro.

Firefox:

A bonus application (Firefox makes eleven, if your counting): I am a Safari user, but it’s bad karma to be running a Mac without Firefox installed. A standards compliant, cross-platform and highly extensible web browser.

Download Firefox.

This list assumes nothing about the user beyond a general interest in music and video and that they have a few friends that they’d like to communicate with online. The list can be easily extended to cater to any individual’s computing needs, but the apps listed above should be a really good start for the majority of users.

But best of all, Inquisitor allows you to add custom searches to Safari’s Google search box. By default, Inquisitor includes Flickr and Amazon, but it also comes stocked with a dropdown list of popular search engines and allows you to add them with a couple of clicks. After installing the plugin, go into Safari’s preferences and select the tab ‘Search’ with the inquisitor icon. Now click on the ‘Edit Sites…’ button and choose the search engine you want from the list. If you want to add a search engine that isn’t already defined, that’s easy too. A favorite of mine that really rocks is SkreemR, which returns playable and downloadable mp3 results. Here’s how to add it.

First go to Screemr.com and search for something. Have a look at the resulting URL. Here’s the URL returned from a search for ‘Famous Blue Raincoat‘:

Find your search terms in the URL and replace them with %@. For most engines, you can delete everything that comes after the search terms. Here’s what you’ll end up with:

Hit the ‘+’ button and add this URL to the proper field in your custom search box. Now you can search for mp3s from Safari’s search box!

As an added bonus Inquisitor lets you add custom keyboard shortcuts to all of your favorite search engines and displays them inside the results box. This is great as you don’t have to remember the shortcuts yourself.

I highly recommend Inquisitor 3 for the power and functionality it adds to Safari’s built in Google search box.

Inquisitor 3 is available from David Watanabe. It is freeware.