Keyboard Driven Safari Update

Since writing Keyboard Driven Safari I’ve updated my list of extensions that make Safari my browser of choice.

• Shut Up
• YouTube5
• uTube
• Incognito
• Beautifier
• [Optimize Legibility][7]

  update: Optimize Legibility seems to have some performance issues. My Thanks to Dominic Evans for pointing this out.

• Beautipedia
• Type-To-Navigate
• Invisible Status Bar

The combination of shutup.css, YouTube5, and uTube makes for a great experience viewing videos on YouTube. No comments, a very nicely centered layout, and high-quality 720p h.264 video. Beautifier and Optimize Legibility are both very small, and insert some simple css into each page to enhance typography and font rendering for a better reading experience on sites that may not think of these things on their own.

When reading a Wikipedia article on my MacBook, the experience is similar to using Instapaper on my iPad, thanks to Beautipedia. Absolutely gorgeous. I’m not entirely sure I need Incognito, but the idea of being tracked by some gigantic, faceless corporate entity just feels wrong. Incognito blocks Google Adsense and Google Analytics, as well as Facebook tracking.

The next two extensions are new to the list: Type-To-Navigate and Invisible Status Bar, both by Daniel Bergey. Type-To-Navigate lets me type the characters in a link, and hit the return key to “click” the link. Previous to installing this extension, I would use the Safari “find” feature to quickly find a specific link on a page, and then click on the link with the mouse. Type-To-Navigate removes two steps from the process, and the results are fantastic.

Invisible Status Bar borrows from Chrome, and allows me to hide the status bar, while still being able to hover over a link to see the full URL. Very nice to have when reading through long text, and deciding if a link is worth following or not.

The last extension I use is the fantastic 1Password. 1Password is the one of the first three apps I install on a new Mac, and the first I install on a new iOS device.

Dropped from the list is Google Search Cleanup. I’ve switched most of my search to DuckDuckGo, thanks to outstanding keyboard navigation (it supports vi keyboard bindings for navigation). DuckDuckGo is a very small operation taking on giants, I can’t help but root for the underdog.