MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

Safari is easily my favorite browser for OS X. It’s clean interface, advanced rendering capabilities and quick load times make it almost painful for me to use anything else. Here are 10 tricks and tips to supercharge Safari and get the most out of your browsing experience.

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.