I upgraded to Safari 5 a few minutes ago. I will add to this later but let me give my first impressions:

Reader is a very welcome addition to Safari. When Safari detects an article, a Reader icon appears in the address bar and, if you click it, you get the article superimposed over the page that you had been in. The article has no extraneous material. If you hover the mouse over the bottom of the article, there are options to zoom in, zoom out, email the article, print the article and close out of it (returning to the original article's page, which can also be done by clicking outside the area of the Reader). Alternatively, you can get into Reader via the View menu or by pressing ⇧-⌘-R.

Reader seems to be a very desirable addition. Also, the Search field now includes Bing as well as Google and Yahoo. I have experimented only briefly with Bing but it seems to work well.

Naturally, Saft doesn't yet work with Safari 5 and I expect that Hao Li will issue an update in the very near future, as is his practice.

Oh yes, one feature seems to be broken. I had set previous versions of Safari to open with my home page when I launched it. It now shows a blank page and I have to manually click the Home icon to get there.

Did you try removing PithHelmet.bundle from /Library/Application Support/SIMBL? As I recall, that proved to be the solution to this problem when you upgraded to Safari 4.

I no longer have PithHelmet.bundle but you got me thinking. I went to /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins and removed Saft.bundle. After quitting and relaunching Safari, the problem was solved. Even though Saft was not loaded when Safari launched (and a message to that effect appeared at launch), something in there was causing problems.

Thanks for the suggestion, dk! As always, you have the memory of an elephant for these things. How do you do it?

For those with NetFlix, see this MacFixit article about incompatibilities with Safari 5.

What happened to Safari 4? It was only at 4.0.5 for heaven's sake! I expected a 4.1 at some point. ???

Safari 4.1 is now available for Tiger.

I installed Safari 5 on Monday. So far, I have the impression it's definitely faster. And where I've been able to click on the Reader button, I like this feature immensely.

Until the release of Safari 5, my main browser was Firefox. My bookmarks in Safari are an import from Firefox.

I installed Safari 5 from the online update, then launched Safari. The first thing I did was open five tabs of online newspapers – heavy with images. Safari was slow and I kept getting spinning beachballs.

So, I quit/restarted, then reset Safari (checking all the boxes). Much better. I don't know if it's faster than Firefox 3.6.3. but the Reader feature is interesting enough that I'm sure to give Safari more of a trial than I have in the past.

(I had a lot of brief slow-ups while typing this...)

jon, didja see this: SnapBack for Safari 5?

I haven't tried it, but then I wasn't a regular Snapback user, but when I saw it, I immediately thought of you!

Thanks for the link, Roger. I downloaded it but haven't installed it because I don't know anything about the developer and I have learned to live without Snapback as a feature. Does anybody have experience with software by this developer?

EDIT: I installed it in my cloned backup as a safety precaution. As far as I can tell, it doesn't work at all (unless I'm missing something). I'll clone it out when I do my next incremental backup.

If anyone else wants to try it, you have to enable extensions via the Develop menu before attempting to install it. This enables the Extensions preference pane in Safari. After installation, Snapback did not even show up in that preference pane.

Re Extensions-

Are they essentially the same (but different) as what Add Ons are for Firefox? If so, does that mean ad blockers and such can't be far away?

It works as expected here.


Forgive me if this is too obvious, but is the OFF-ON switch in your Extensions prefpane turned ON? I see SnapBack listed there as expected, but I note that if the switch is turned OFF, the list vanishes altogether.

AdBlock for Safari.

Note that the developer writes, "It has a few rough edges because I wrote it on 12 hours notice." (I installed it along with John Siracusa's Safari Reload Button, but uninstalled both because one or the other (or the combination) crashed Safari, and I haven't gotten around to methodically determining which one was at fault.)

Many more extensions and associated information can be found at Safari Extensions.

Yes, it was turned ON. That's the first thing that I checked. In case it occurs to anyone, there are no third-party plugins installed (Saft included). I have had problems with bugs in the update to Saft so I uninstalled it, and am awaiting a fix from the developer.

EDIT: OK, I decided to try it again. For whatever reason, it worked. AFAIK, I didn't do anything different the first time so I'll probably never know why.

SnapBack doesn't seem to have exactly the same functionality as Apple's version, way back when. If I start with site A and switch to site B, then go to links from B, SnapBack takes me to A. In Apple's old version, it would snap back to the first page of B. The workaround is to open B in a new tab.

> If I start with site A and switch to site B, then go to links from B, SnapBack takes me to A. In Apple's old version, it would snap back to the first page of B. (Emphasis added)

That always irked me about Apple's SnapBack; I'm happy to hear that SnapBack.safariextz works as I always expected the original to work.

Our preferences are quite different. I liked the way Apple's snapback worked. In addition, you could go to the History menu and set a particular page as snapback, which you can't do with SnapBack. Perhaps the developer will add more options in an update.

What I liked about SnapBack was its (keyboard-centric) command-option-P and command-option-K functionality, but it sounds like this extension does not provide it.

If that's the case, I'm stuck in 10.4.7 until somebody gets it right.

Drat!

Out of curiosity, I tried both those key combos and neither does anything. FWIW, I am so used to opening links in tabs that I don't miss Snapback very much. There are worse things in life than losing Snapback.

> Out of curiosity, I tried both those key combos and neither does anything.

Sighhhhhhhhh!

> FWIW, I am so used to opening links in tabs that I don't miss Snapback very much.

I've been using tabs for a coupl'a years, now, and I still can't begin to remember to hit command when I click on a link.

> There are worse things in life than losing Snapback.

I'm sure there are worse things in life, but in Mac computing...

Here are some MacWorld articles about Safari 5:

First look: Safari 5's extensions
Reload accidentally closed tabs in Safari 5
Benchmarks: Safari 5 shows JavaScript boost

An additional article:

Zooming in Safari 5 maintains page positioning

I've run across a second SnapBack extension (in post #11 here) which "(It) adds a pair of entries to the context menu - one for setting the snapback page and another for reloading that page."

Paired with the previously linked extension it actually surpasses Apple's original SnapBack functionality, but, without the key combos, only cumbersomely well.

(Can key combos can be implemented in an extension?)

I have searched for that contextual menu by control-clicking the SnapBack icon and I can't find it. Has someone else managed to verify that it's there? The only options that I see are Keep Item Visible, Remove Item, and Customize Toolbar. I also tried control-clicking within a page and the desired CM items were missing also.

Jon, I think you may be confusing the two SnapBacks being discussed.

The one artie referred to in his latest post doesn't place an icon in the toolbar; it adds a Mark Page for SnapBack item to the contextual menu (and, if a page has been so marked already, a Page SnapBack item as well).

[Aside to artie: with forums (such as those at MacRumors) using vBulletin software, you can link directly to individual posts by clicking on the post number itself and copying the resulting URL, e.g. post #11 here.]

Maybe I am confused but I still am. I downloaded the SnapBack extension via the link in Post 11 from Artie's link, installed it, and still don't see those CM items. The one that I originally installed is Snapback 1.0.1 by Phillipe Martin and the new one is Snapback 1.0, listed as by 1(?).

OK, I found it. I had to quit Safari and relaunch before the second extension became active. The CM item appears when you control-click within the page, not the SnapBack icon.

Here's another wrinkle: If you use the CM to Mark Page For Snapback, it only works if you use that CM and click Snapback. If you go to the SnapBack icon instead, it goes back to the original page in that tab.

...Thanks.

I don't see any indication as to which software MacRumors uses, but I guess the appearance speaks for itself?

You'd think there'd be some indication that the post number is a link; I don't find it all that intuitive.

Why would you expect otherwise? The two extensions are unrelated entities.

But that's precisely why I said "Paired with the previously linked extension it actually surpasses Apple's original SnapBack functionality [....]

In combination, the two extensions allow you to have two different SnapBack "targets" in the same "chain."

I'll still miss the key combos, but if I try the extensions and like what I see I'll finally make the switch (and save Hal from the agony of waiting for me to report that I tripped over one of the security patches I've been so blithely ignoring).

artie505,
Might your MacBook have a multi function trackpad?

If so, does the extension provided at the MacRumors site meet your needs if you use a two finger tap to bring up the contextual menu for

• Mark Page for SnapBack
• Page SnapBack

In short, might a two finger tap substitute for your desire to use keyboard shortcuts?

> In short, might a two finger tap substitute for your desire to use keyboard shortcuts?

Thanks for the thought, dianne, but, in short... No.

I'll go the two-extension route just so I can upgrade to Snow Leopard, but I won't be happy having to take two actions to accomplish the same thing formerly accomplished by one (although I'll enjoy the added functionality the combination of the two extensions will deliver...if I actually remember to use it).

(I haven't got a multi-function trackpad, but even if I had one I'd go the control-click route, anyhow.)

Three Safari 5 secrets. I just added a refresh button to the toolbar (very handy).

This is different... Apple's SnapBack took me back to my original position in the Forums index page and did not refresh the red, unread post numbers; the contextual menu SnapBack extension takes me to the top of the page (...pain in the neck when I'm going through VersionTracker) and refreshes the numbers.

(It'll take some doing getting used to this new configuration, and it'll never equal the original key command functionality, but... Oh, well; I am finally running Snow Leopard.)

Edit: I just discovered that the CM extension allows me to have a different SnapBack target in each open tab, just like the original; I was afraid I'd be limited to just one target for all of Safari.. Yay!