07.08.2010

Safari Extensions Gallery Launched with Safari 5.0.1

In our Safari 5 review we mentioned that Apple would be taking the welcome step of enabling support for third-party extensions. That day has arrived and the Safari Extensions Gallery has been launched at http://extensions.apple.com (also accessible from the 'Tools' dropdown in your browser).

These Apple-approved extensions have digital certificates to verify that they are genuine, and are also 'sandboxed' to prevent them accessing information on your system. To get an extension, just click to install from the gallery. Once installed, you can then manage it from within your 'Preferences' dialog.

We've had a look through the available extensions and there's a good mix of search, shopping, social and browsing functions. Here's a quick list of those that caught our eye, organised by type:

Search

'CustomSearch' means you can highlight text on the page and perform a search in one of eight engines including Google, Wikipedia, Bing and Amazon. Use 'Mini Google Maps' to open Google maps in a popup window, and 'Bing Highlights' to allow access to maps, translations and search related to the text you highlight on the page you're viewing.

Social Media, Email & Blogging

'Better Facebook' allows you to customise your feed in various ways (for instance, hide posts you've read, alert you to new comments). Twitter extensions include 'Tweetbar' (which incorporates your Twitter feed into Safari) and 'Tweetbeat Firsthand' (which allows you to see recent tweets from individuals or organisations mentioned on the page you're viewing). There's also the official extension which shows users and tweets related to the page you're on, and allows you to tweet what you're looking at with a built in url-shortener.

'YourVersion' allows you to share pages you view on Twitter or Facebook - or email them to a friend. For those using, Google Mail, 'Gmail This' allows you to email the page you're viewing to a friend, and will prefill the title of the page and insert the link. 'GMail Counter' shows you the number of unread emails in your inbox.

There are also plugins for Reddit (allows you to view any comments for the page you're on and, if there are none, auto-starts the submission process for you), Delicious and StumbleUpon. RSS extensions include a one-click add to Google Reader / iGoogle, and an app that renders Google Reader in the style of Snow Leopard.

Shopping

'My eBay Manager' means you are always securely signed in to eBay so you can easily stay up to date with any sales or auctions, and 'eBay Spy' will search eBay for the best prices on the product you are viewing, filtered by country, with shipping costs converted into your currency and time left indicated. 'Add to Amazon Wish List' (an offical extension from Amazon) means that you add the product you're viewing to your wish list with one click.

Others

'Access Keys' will automatically populate a toolbar with keyboard shortcuts when you visit a site that supports them. To use each shortcut just hold Ctrl and Alt, then hit the key indicated. There's an ad blocker, and two extensions to help you track your online activity: 'Safari Restore' which restores your last session (handy if a site crashes or you can't remember what you were last doing); and 'Sessions', which also allows you to take a snapshot of all open windows and tabs.

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