Saft: Enchance Safari

Although Safari might be leaner and faster than other browsers, and despite it being the preferred web browser for the Mac, there are still features that are missing. Opera, Firefox and several other browsers, each have a few nice features that Safari doesn't, and waiting for Apple to implement them has so far been mostly in vain. So, like so many times before, third party solutions step in to fill the gap. Saft is a plugin for Safari that will bring a big change in how you browse.

Keyboard Corner Cutting
Saft lets you define keyboard shortcuts for your favorite sites. This is a great time saver since you can access any part of your favorite website by simply typing in a few letters of your choosing. If you are using a shortcut to a URL that launches a search, all you have to do is put %@ in the URL you are assigning to the shortcut, in the place where the keyword usually goes. Then all you have to do is type in the shortcut the keyword or keywords you want to search for.
For example, say you want to search all the pages in Romanian from the huge portal www.deviantart.com, without using the portals built in search engine because you can't access it without paying. All you have to do is assign a shortcut to in Saft. Then, to use that search, you would type your shortcut into the address bar followed by the keywords you want to find. It's as simple as that.

If you are constantly using Command-F to find something specific on a web page you will appreciate the type-ahead search that Saft implements. As long as you aren't focused on a form or field, typing something will take you to the first occurance of that, if it exists, and Command-G will take you to the next. As expected, shift-command-G moves you back up to the previous match.

Mouse Corner Cutting
Any keyboard shortcut added in Saft's preference pane automatically gets added to both the Google search bar and the contextual menu. Personally, I feel the Google search bar is fine as it is, since it is the main search engine for all purposes. However, the contextual menu is a different affair altogether. If you select any word or words, on any page and bring up the contextual menu, you can select a search engine from your shortcuts and have those words searched for using that search engine. If you don't want your current page to be replaced by these search results, you can hold down the Command key to have them open in another tab. And Saft is even smart enough to differentiate between search engine shortcuts and normal page shortcuts, based on the presence of the %@ parameter, so only those pages that actually launch searches will ever appear in that menu.

Another useful feature for those with Apple mice that are not Mighty, is the possibility to scroll in any direction when the Control key is pressed. If you have one of those mice, you probably spend most of the time with your hand near that key so it should be very easy to just hold it down for scrolling. There are no clicks necessary, and unlike normal scroll wheels you can scroll in any direction whatsoever. Although this can be done without Saft, by using the Command key and dragging with the mouse button down over the margins of the page, the two ways are totally different in feel and execution.

Remember Everything

Saft saves the window and tab states every time there is a change, so if you crash or restart or the power drops, the next time you open it, it will be like you never left. If you like to keep five windows open, each with twenty or so tabs, you know how bad a crash can be. Also, if you, for some reason, need to step away from the computer, or have just installed something that requires a reboot, you can now close Safari without any hesitation.

Lets say you actually want to close a window with twenty or so tabs, but would like to keep a note of them so that you don't have to find them all again. With Saft, you can just pull down the bookmark menu and select Bookmark group of tabs and the tabs are all saved to a collection called Bookmarked tabs. Every time you save a set of tabs as bookmarks, a new collection is created just for that set of tabs, meaning that you can keep your saved bookmarks grouped together avoiding the inevitable long jumbled mess of links.
If you find accessing and using these collections particularly appealing, you can use the analogous "Save Browser Window" feature which saves all of the tabs in a single window in a list under the File menu. You can save the window state with your own easy-to-remember label and manage all of your saved windows easily.

The Good
This small plugin adds advanced keyboard and mouse shortcuts, enhances bookmarks and heap of other features I didn't even get a chance to mention.

The Bad
It comes with no real documentation and many features are obscure and unintuitive. Takes a while to understand what everything does and how to use it. Other than that, make very sure you don't turn on the Kiosk Mode on unless you know what you are doing! That warning is there for a reason.

The Truth
Saft adds a host of wonderful features that make Safari so much better. After using it a while you will forget that these features are not standard in the browser and get a nasty shock whenever you use someone else's computer and they don't have Saft installed.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: