I wrote up my review of Firefox 3 about two weeks ago, but I didn’t go into detail about what has been one of Firefox’s best abilities: it’s ability to be extended with extensions and other plugins. Some people like to extend Firefox to the point where it’s more of a swiss army knife than a browser, and others like to go kind of lite on the extensions. I find myself towards the latter side, but it’s nice that Firefox is so easily extensible because it allows me to fix up a few of Firefox’s shortfalls and even throw in a few bonus features that I can find useful. Firefox has a very nice add-ons database that is very cleanly integrated into Firefox that makes it very easy to install reliable add-ons to the browser. I’ve played with a few of these extensions, and here are the ones that I’ve kept for regular use in my Firefox.
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Tags: Adblock Plus, addons, bookmarks, Delicious, developer, extensions, Firefox, Gears, Google, history, Notebook, PDF, submenus, TinyURL, URL, web design

Safari may be Apple’s default web browser, and it may have been announced simultaneously with the new features in Leopard, but strangely enough, it actually isn’t a Leopard-specific feature. Safari 3 has been available in a Public Beta for Tiger users since early June, however it wasn’t in a perfect state and did cause some compatibility problems with other applications because of the new version of WebKit that it installed. However, shortly after Leopard was out, a final version of Safari 3 was also delivered for Tiger users.

And of course, Safari is one of the few Mac applications that is available on other platforms, most specifically (and most controversially) the Windows platform. Larry and I had a 30 minute-long debate about this on PreviewCast #035. Safari 3 is still in a public beta for the Windows platform, unlike both the Tiger and Leopard versions which are now fully stable releases. The lagging of the Windows side could possibly be attributed to the fact that despite Safari’s “focus on security from day one,” the Windows Safari was ripped to shreds by hackers on day two. Oh, and Safari also exists, probably most famously, on the iPhone and iPod touch.

But I’ve upgraded to Leopard, and for me, the guy who threw out Safari Public Beta on day three because of how much it messed up my other apps at the time, Safari 3 is a new feature in Leopard, and so I’m going to review it from a Safari 2 on Tiger to Safari 3 in Leopard point of view. Things that I talk about in this Leopard Feature Presentation may not necessarily reflect your Safari 3 experience on Tiger or on Windows, and most definitely will not reflect your Safari experience on the iPhone/iPod touch. Nevertheless, despite my previous heartfelt love for Camino, I’ve spent the last few weeks giving Safari a whirl, and I’m ready to give it its review.
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Tags: beta, blocking, bookmarks, features, forms, innovation, Leopard Feature Presentation, Mac OS X Leopard, review, Safari, tabs, web browser, WebKit