Glims

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Glims

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

If you've read any of my Software reviews before, you probably know that Safari is my browser of choice, for many reasons. Safari alone doesn't cut it though; Glims, a fantastic little plugin with a ton of uses, is what makes Safari the best.

Reviewer
Brad
Categories
Software

Reviewed by Brad Cook

Glims for Safari

Let's face it, Safari users; Safari 4 isn't perfect. It's definitely lacking features, some more obvious than others. There is a variety of plugins and downloadable software for Safari, but how do you know which is best for you? Well, in my opinion when you have to download, install, and start messing around with SIMBL, you're spending too much effort for such small payout. Luckily there just happens to be one plugin for Safari that adds a myriad of features to enhance your browsing experience.

Glims is fully Snow Leopard compatible (if you're not by now, what's the deal? (I'm looking at you, Keywurl!)), you can download it at Mac Hangout's website. It's simply a .dmg that turns into a .pkg to install the file, then you're done! Just go into Safari's preferences then to the Glims tab to see all the features.

Glims does so much that it has to divide the features up into sections. They are: General, Full Screen, New Tabs, Tab Misc., Search Engines, Search Suggestions, Bookmarks, Misc., and Updates. They're all pretty self explanatory, so just hop in there and start changing things up.

One thing that bothers me about Safari is resizing the window. I've seen people use it where the window doesn't take up the full screen, and that drives me crazy, I have no idea how they can stand it. One option that Glims gives you is the Max Window Size function, accessed in the Safari menu or by pressing cmd+shift+M. This maximizes the window's size and perfectly aligns it in your screen, so even if you accidentally drag the window or resize it, just cmd+shift+M and you're instantly perfectly aligned and sized. Not only that, but if you need those extra pixels taken up by the bookmarks, tab, tool, and status bars, Glims also implements a full screen feature. It's also under the Safari menu, or can be accessed by hitting cmd+ctrl+F. Hitting it again will return the browser to normal.

Glims also allows you to customize Safari's search bar, a fundamental feature that Apple has overlooked time and again. Not only can you add search engines, but you can even add shortcuts so that all you have to do is type something in the search bar and then hit the shortcut, opening a new tab with the query performed on the specific engine. The only thing better than this would be the ability to use the address bar as the search engine, a la Firefox. And there is such a plugin for this, I mentioned it earlier: Keywurl. However, I'm not interested in running Safari in 32 bit mode until it's compatible with Snow Leopard, especially since it's been almost half a year.

Safari's whole tab system gets an overhaul with Glims. You can set tabs to always open to the right of the current tab, and you can have the site's favicon displayed on each tab, which I like because it adds a bit of color to Safari. My two favorite tab features, however, are the "Undo 'Close Tab'" feature and the tab navigation feature. Undo 'Close Tab' is incredibly useful if you're someone like me who often has to go back and look again at a tab they just closed but going through history takes too much effort. When that's the case, just hit cmd+Z to reopen your last closed tab! Glims also gives Safari some tab navigation hotkeys, namely the comma and period keys. Once you're using this feature, you'll cringe at the thought of not having it.

The ever-growing list of features that Glims adds to Safari's interface and browsing experience is simply too good to pass up. It's updated every month or two usually, continually tweaking it to perfect the way it interacts with Safari. If you use Glims already, you know how indispensable it is. If you haven't used it yet, ditch all those other plugins and go for the one that has it all.

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