The MacTrack – iPhone, iPod, iPod Touch and Mac News

Emulate Firefox’s type-ahead search in Safari

Fri, Dec 21 2007 at 7:30AM PST • Submitted by johnga1t

As input managers are in danger in Safari 3.0 and later versions, it might be useful to know that a type-ahead search feature that emulates Firefox can be enabled in Safari using a fairly simple hack that involves native OS X tricks.

To do so, quit Safari and go to System Preferences » Keyboard & Mouse » Keyboard Shortcuts. Click the ‘+’ to add a new shortcut, select Safari as the Application, Find… as the Menu Title, and a temporary (and arbitrary) shortcut as Keyboard Shortcut. (Note that this field does not allow a simple entry, such as ‘/’, but instead requires a modifier key like Command or Option.)

Now go to ~/Library/Preferences and edit com.apple.Safari.plist. (You may be able to just double-click and open the plist in Property List Editor if you have Xcode installed.) Find the NSUserKeyEquivalents entry and edit the string entry for Find…, replacing the arbitrary shortcut you entered earlier with /. This will remove the need for a modifier key, and allow / to activate search.

Now relaunch Safari and type /; you should see the Find box appear, emulating the type-ahead search in Firefox.

via macosxhints.com – Emulate Firefox’s type-ahead search in Safari .

Apple’s Safari web browser is built around the open source web engine called Web Kit. This is developed by the open source community and updated each and every day (and is recompiled nightly).

This ensures that the browser’s ‘engine’ is the most up to date possible, supporting emerging standards and compatibility. Additionally you benefit from faster rendering of pages and their content.

Web kit is available for both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems so the vast majority or users are covered (sorry Linux users!). The Web Kit runs Safari as the front-end application but with Web Kit as the rendering engine running “under the hood”.

To quote the Web Kit site:

WebKit is an open source web browser engine. WebKit is also the name of the Mac OS X system framework version of the engine that’s used by Safari, Dashboard, Mail, and many other OS X applications. WebKit’s HTML and JavaScript code began as a branch of the KHTML and KJS libraries from KDE. This website is also the home of S60′s S60 WebKit development.

The Web Kit open source home is at webkit.org to download either the Mac OS X or Windows version click on the nightly builds button:

To test your current browser you can run Acid3 Test <- note: this link runs the test. The Acid3 test puts the Read the rest of this entry »

Update:  A further update has been made to Security Update 2007-009, it’s now v1.1

19th December 2007:  Apple has released it’s latest security updates (Security Update 2007-009) comprising of updates to the following items:

Address Book, CFNetwork, ColorSync, Core Foundation, CUPS (x3), Desktop Services, Flash Player Plug-in, GNU Tar, iChat, IO Storage Family, Launch Services, Launch Services, Mail, perl, python, Quick Look (x2), ruby (x2), Safari, Safari RSS, Samba, Shockwave Plug-in, SMB, Software Update, Spin Tracer, Spotlight, tcpdump, XQuery.

The Security Update 2007-009 may be obtained from the Software Update pane in System Preferences, or by using Apple’s Software Downloads web site

For Mac OS X v10.5.1

The download file is named: “SecUpd2007-009.dmg”

For Mac OS X v10.4.11 (Universal)

The download file is named: “SecUpd2007-009Univ.dmg”

For Mac OS X v10.4.11 (PPC)

The download file is named: “SecUpd2007-009Ti.dmg”

Information is also posted to the Apple Security Updates web site

Full details of the updates in this batch follow:

Read the rest of this entry »

Most of us have a wide range of applications installed on our Macs. A lot of them are self-updating either when you load them or if you instruct them to look for updates using one of their built-in menu options. Additionally, the Apple Software Update service takes care of keeping the OS updated automatically (accessed via Apple Logo menu item located in the far left of each menu bar).

Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that combines all of the above, plus also managing updates to ALL your applications in one place?

Well, now you can with the website iusethis and it’s associated program AppFresh

Simply register with the website, run the application and you get a custom-built report on your applications and if there’s a newer version available. Where possible you can also initiate a download of the updated application.

The site covers Applications, Apple OS, widgets, plug-ins and preference panes.

It’s a great one-stop-shop to keep your Apple Mac as fresh as a daisy

If you don’t like the idea of a 3rd party application examining your system then there’s even a manual version: simply search for the application on the website and add it to your profile.

The BBC iPlayer is now live and available for Apple Mac users

Visit the BBC website to see the new iPlayer