IMDB

Skin Websites, Save Directory Listings and Script your Services Menu

Camino consistently scores in speed and native Cocoa goodness, but often gets left behind by the add-on functionality of its older brother Firefox.

Thanks to an easy hack and tons of user-contributed scripts, you can emulate some of the most popular abilities of Firefox’s most flexible extension: Greasemonkey.

Userstyles.org has a huge repository of css scripts that reshape your favorite websites – from bloglines to IMDB. While these are easily added using a Firefox extension, they can also be added to Camino by pasting the scripts (minus the first namspace line) into a userContent.css in your /Library/Application Support/Camino/chrome folder.

greaderskin Skin Websites, Save Directory Listings and Script your Services Menu

(Above is an example skin for Google Reader that is Aqua-licious)

Java Embedding Plugin

While we’re putting Camino on equal ground with other browsers, we can grab this Open Source plugin to enable newer versions of Java in Camino (or Firefox). While Safari uses the most recent versions of Java are exclusive to Safari, without the above plugin other browsers are left with outdated code. No more!

ThisService

ThisService will turn shell scripts and AppleScripts into system-wide services. You can use these scripts to enter text, transform text or send it to another application. The best example John Gruber’s Markdown (a custom markup language that can be transformed into fully formatted text). For more, see the resources page.

Shindler

Keep directories full of project files that you’d love to catalog? Shindler is a simple application that will create a text file listing the contents of a directory (and its sub-directories). Its as easy as drag and drop. Supported on Tiger, but worked on my Panther machine.

Brian

Safari Clones and Mobile Safari Tricks

Safari Clones

Safari is a pretty good browser, and with WebKit built in to OS X the rendering is fast. While Safari can be customized, it’s always nice to have alternatives.

Shiira

Shiira is probably one of the oldest and most advanced of the Safari clones. In version 2, Shiira added HUD style widgety windows and a “page dock” at the bottom that replaces tabs.

shiira2 Safari Clones and Mobile Safari Tricks

Shiira requires Tiger and includes a mini companion: a browsing widget for Dashboard. Shiira can even take advantage of Safari 3′s new version of WebKit. This Safari alternative has an original interface and cool features, check it out.

Demeter

With version 2, Shiira picked up some new features, but also some weight. In the spirit of a true Open Source project, Shiira 1 was brought back to life as Demeter.

demeter Safari Clones and Mobile Safari Tricks

Demeter includes the 1.2 features of Shiira and is gaining a few features of its own. If you don’t mind the icon, it is a very fast clone of a clone of Safari and includes an iTunes remote and all the goodies of Safari 3 (DOM inspector, spell check, resizable text boxes).

Mobile Safari Bookmarks

Thanks to near-forgotten browser novelties, you can search your favorite sites more quickly and store documents and web pages for offline use on your iPhone or iPod touch.

Search Bookmarklets

These bookmarks launch a pop-up dialog for searching frequently visited sites. Magnesium Studios has a set of ‘Springlets’ that you can add to your Home screen.

springlets Safari Clones and Mobile Safari Tricks

If you’re on your iPhone, use this link to add quick search links for Wikipedia, IMDB and more. If you’re more the home-brew type, check out the Wikipedia search bookmarklet here.

Data Bookmarks

Thanks to a little-know feature of just about any browser but IE, encoded data can be stored in a URL, and thereby a bookmark. This means a bookmark can be created that actually includes the contents of a web page – including images – that can be viewed offline. What’s more, you can even encode another browser-readable file like a PDF. iWebSaver will grab and encode a website for offline browsing on your iPhone or touch.

websaver Safari Clones and Mobile Safari Tricks

If you’d like to encode files, head back over to Magnesium Studios for Filemark Maker. Drag files to this tiny Mac app and it will encode them into a bookmark-able page that you can sync with mobile Safari via iTunes.

Brian