If you switched to Firefox from another browser like Safari that supports in-line PDF viewing (that's the ablity to look at a PDF in the browser instead of downloading it), then you might have been disheartened to learn that Firefox does not support this feature natively. However, you will find Firefox-Mac-PDF to be a useful plug-in.
Firefox-Mac-PDF allows for the same in-line PDF viewing that can be found in Safari. This plug-in requires Firefox 3 and Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) or higher. You can download the plug-in for free from their Google Code page.
To install the plug-in, just open the Add-ons panel by going to Tools > Add-ons. Once there, drag the downloaded ".xpi" file to the Add-ons. You will be asked if you wish to install the plug-in. Once you restart Firefox you'll be able to view all PDFs right within Firefox.
Did you get home only to find that Mac OS X 10.5.3 had been released today? Well, just as some users were unpacking and installing the shiny new update, issues with SIMBL plug-ins were discovered. If you have SIMBL plugins installed, then you may have an error show up when you try to launch an application. Past updates on systems with these plugins installed have been known to run into some issues.
If you are experiencing plugin predicaments, there is a way to fix the problem. SIMBL plugins (or other, non-SIMBL InputManager plugins, which may also be problematic) can be installed in any one of the following directories:
~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/
/Library/InputManagers/
~/Library/Contextual Menu Items/
~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
~/Library/InputManagers/
When you see the error in an application, just jot down the name of the plugin and look in those directories for it. When you find the plugin, just move it to a separate folder or toss it into the trash can. The application launch problem should cease.
Have you experienced plug-in issues since installing the 10.5.3 update? If so, tell us about it in the comments.
Email jockeys, this one is for you (as long as you use Apple's Mail, that is). Adam Tow has updated MsgFiler to version 2.0.1. For the uninitiated (we've written about it before), MsgFiler is a Mail plug-in that lets you sort, search and assign messages to mailbox folders with a few keystrokes. It's very fast (watch the demo movie here) and keeps things tidy.
When a new message arrives (or group of messages), simply press Command-9 to bring up the MsgFiler window. Select the messages you'd like to move, type the name of the destination folder and hit Enter. That's it! You're messages are sorted.
Version 2.0.1 has been totally rewritten in Cocoa. It requires Mac OS 10.4.8 and costs $8US.
Now this is just amazingly cool. iPhone hacker hachu developed a download plug-in for MobileSafari. Once installed and customized, it allows you to download data off the Internet and store it on your iPhone or iPod touch local disk in the /var/root/Downloads folder.
I downloaded the package (it's variously on RapidShare and BadOnGo; see the hackint0sh thread for links) and gave it a whirl. Following the instructions on the thread for modifying the Info.plist file, I told the plug-in to download MP3 files. (I had to disable playback as well in the QuickTime plug-in--so make sure to read the entire thread!) Now back in Safari, when I navigated to an MP3 file and selected it, this green Download button appeared. I tapped it, and the file downloaded perfectly. Before, the QuickTime plug-in would have just played the file back in Safari.
iPhone enthusiast RohitK asked if there was an easy way to play back these downloaded files using my software. As there wasn't at the time, I went ahead and modded my SendFile application to search ~/Downloads as well as ~/Media/Documents. You can grab a copy of the modded app here. This allows you to email, share and play back the downloaded media on demand, whether or not you are connected to the Internet.
I have to be honest, as a browser, Safari, on its own, does very little for me. In my pre-switcher life I loved Firefox, in large part because of its plug-in structure - and although Safari is certainly more stable than FF (on my system at least) - it's not the same. Luckily, a number of good plug-ins for Safari DO exist. Unfortunately, many of those plug-ins have not been updated to be fully compatible with Safari 3 (which was previously in beta) or Leopard. In fact, because of the way Input Manager was changed with Leopard, there was a lot of speculation that plug-in development for Safari would become obsolete.
That's where PlugSuit from Infinite Labs comes in. PlugSuit is a Leopard compatible plug-in manager that will work with many popular Tiger plug-ins like Inquisitor and SafariStand without changing a thing. Infinite Labs also makes the great free plug-in, Twicetab (that allows users to open up a new tab simply by double clicking on the tab bar, a la FireFox or Opera), and users even have the option of downloading and installing PlugSuit and Twicetab together. Plus, it's free! It's important to note that that plug-ins that were not designed with Leopard in mind may still have some problems or not function correctly. Infinite Labs says that most that were developed for the latest Safari 3 beta should work, but double-check with the plug-in developer to ensure compatibility.
Attention all ye Facebook and iPhoto users: you may feel free to begin using iPhoto '08, now that Facebook has updated their Facebook Exporter plug-in. We first found this plug-in back in March, and while I'm definitely not the most active Facebook user or photo uploader, I don't think anything else is new. However, I just noticed a really cool feature that allows you to click anywhere on an image in the well on the right to create an outlining box around it, allowing you to name or tag whatever you're highlighting.
Facebook Exporter for iPhoto is provided for free by Facebook.
Considering the graphical nature of the web, I'm surprised more features and plug-ins haven't appeared to solve the problem of downloading images from sites as well as iPlace does. Operating as a SIMBL plug-in for Safari (including the 3.0 beta), iPlace allows you to specify multiple locations on your Mac for downloading images, but that's not all. It then gives you a contextual menu item when right-clicking an image or a web page that will allow you to instantly download any image to one of your specified locations, or - and here's the kicker - bring up an image downloading window that shows you each image on the page, along with your download locations provided as drag and drop wells in a sidebar on the left. Opening this window on I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER, for example, brings up the long list of images you see above, all ripe for efficiently dragging and dropping wherever I want.
In a word: iPlace is awesome. There are of course enhancements I would like to see, such as the ability to scale these images up and down to make it easier to view more from the page at once, but for a spankin' new product straight out the gate, this is a really handy plug-in.
As I am finally wrapping my head around just how useful Gus Mueller's VoodooPad can actually be, I'm getting more interested in tinkering with how it can be extended and made to do my bidding. Dubbed as a "garden for your thoughts," VodooPad is a great place to jot down ideas, lists and notes with a wiki-like document format that makes it dead-simple to link one page to another. Out of the box VoodooPad comes with a lot of great features, but Gus also maintains a VoodooPad plug-ins page with a number of add-ons for making VoodooPad do everything from adding some handy keyboard shortcuts to more complex abilities like rendering math in your documents and allowing plug-in authors to use Python for writing VoodooPad plug-ins.
At the top of my list, however, is the HTML Tools plug-in which allows you to preview the current VoodooPad page as rendered HTML, Textile or Markdown, as well as copy the text you've written as HTML (with styling attributes and all) or Simple HTML with just the plain markup. It's a handy plug-in for anyone who, like me, prefers to compose blog posts (or of course websites) in desktop software in order to take advantage of all the power Mac OS X has to offer, then simply copy and paste the blog post as HTML into their blogging engine or CMS. This Simple HTML feature needs a little work, however, as it isn't creating entirely proper HTML just yet. Lists, for example, are created simply with <br> tags instead of actual <ul> and <li> tags, but it could do the trick for those who aren't exactly trying to pass every HTML validation test available across the web.
The VoodooPad plug-ins are provided for free, though some of them are still PowerPC-only. Demos of the $29.95 VoodooPad are of course available, with a $49.95 VoodoPad Pro version that offers a few key features for power users, as well as a free VoodooPad Lite version for those who don't need quite as much.
The wait has been a long one, but Flickr superpowers have finally arrived for Photoshop in the form of FlickrShop. As you can see, most of the basics are all available, such as tagging, adding to existing photosets or creating new ones, setting privacy and even specifying dimensions so you don't have to do any of that heavy lifting with the Photoshop file itself. The plug-in seems to work pretty well, though you can only upload one image at a time due to Photoshop's single document UI.
Still, FlickrShop is a free plug-in from PixelNovel so it gets a thumbs up from me. Two versions are available - one for Photoshop CS2 and another for CS3.
Adriaan Tijsseling, developer of the Mac OS X version of the ecto blogging client, has been teasing us with sneak peeks and development details for some time now, but he's just posted another more revealing screenshot of ecto3, along with more details and a basic roadmap. Adriaan has touted ecto3 as a complete rewrite from v2, ushering in a new plug-in architecture that should make the app far more extensible.
Also on the notable changes list is the replacement of the rich text editor by Editable WebKit, a new, more WYSIWYG feature of the engine that is used to power Safari, many other browsers on Mac OS X and even HTML rendering in Apple Mail.
While Adriaan doesn't have any kind of ETA for a shipping version or even a beta just yet, it does sound like development is wrapping up well. Since support for different blogging platforms has moved to the plug-in format as well, he still has to build support for the latest Blogger (yes, it'll be in ecto3) and WordPress. As a final note, it's always nice to hear a developer using their own product, as Adriaan is using ecto3 "heavily" to try and catch as many bugs and problems as he can before unleashing it in one form or another on the masses.
Since I solved a number of the issues plaguing my Mail account setup - including a workaround to kinda use Gmail over IMAP (more on that soon) - I have sunk my teeth back into Apple's excellent email client. Now I'm pretty happy with using a few plug-ins like Scott Morrison's stellar MailTags 2 and Stefan Schüßler's Mail.appetizer (which we have previously mentioned at length here and here), though I am continually surprised by the number of plug-ins that endow Mail with everything from better support for Windows Office attachments, to creating events from messages and even more fine-toothed Smart Mailboxes for your Address Book contacts. One only needs to run a search for Mail at MacUpdate to see what I'm talking about, but I figured I could round up a few of these plug-ins just to give you an idea.
This must have slipped under our radar back in March, but iConcertCal, the both clever and useful iTunes plug-in that scans your artists to find local concert dates, has updated to v1.2. In addition to "greatly improved" concert listings in both the US and UK, iConcertCal can now export calendars to an iCal format (note: this isn't exactly 'iCal syncing.' Hopefully that's on its way). For those shows that might still slip through iConcertCal's fingers, the plug-in allows you to edit its calendar and add shows you just gotta keep track of.
Also on the list of changes is the ability to chose which iTunes library to monitor for artists and show dates, an "easy way" to list shows from artists that aren't in your library and city + date venue info now placed in the header information. Amazingly, iConcertCal is still free and available for both Mac OS X and Windows.
Awkward TV has posted this video showing a custom Apple TV plug-in in action. The post mentions that this is the second known custom plug-in (you can see the first in action here), and that it allows you to play .AVI files located on the main disk (rather than the iPod-esque Media library). For now those files are hardcoded in, as this is primarily a proof of concept. They did not provide a link for downloads, and there probably won't be a public release for a while.
We mentionedBox.net, an iDisk-like online hard drive service, back when we could begin mounting them on our Macs. To simplify uploading files to your Box.net account, Daniel Ryan has created an Automator action that not only lets you upload with a simple right click, but it also takes care of changing any spaces in file names to underscores, making them much more web-friendly. It isn't difficult to set up or use, but be sure to read Daniel's instructions at Automator World, as the action depends on you having mounted your drive with Mac OS X (which creates a Keychain item to store your password). If Box.net isn't much more than a file repository for sharing (perhaps via their blog-friendly widget), this action should streamline your efforts.
Good news for iMovie 6 users. Gee Three has updated several of their Slick plug-in volumes. These plug-ins add all sorts of visual effects to iMovie for the amateur video enthusiast. Apparently, the reason for the updates is that the iMovie/QuickTime interface wasn't too happy handling flash animations. The Gee Three developers created work-arounds for the affected volumes, namely volumes 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10. If you've bought any of these products, you can download the Slick 2.0.2 updates at the GeeThree site.
If you switched to Firefox from another browser like Safari that supports in-line PDF viewing (that's the ablity to look at a PDF in the browser instead of downloading it), then you might have been disheartened to learn that Firefox does not support this feature natively. However, you will find Firefox-Mac-PDF to be a useful plug-in. 
Email jockeys, this one is for you (as long as you use Apple's Mail, that is). Adam Tow has updated 
I have to be honest, as a browser, Safari, on its own, does very little for me. In my pre-switcher life I loved Firefox, in large part because of its plug-in structure - and although Safari is certainly more stable than FF (on my system at least) - it's not the same. Luckily, a number of good plug-ins for Safari DO exist. Unfortunately, many of those plug-ins have not been updated to be fully compatible with Safari 3 (which was previously in beta) or Leopard. In fact, because of the way Input Manager was changed with Leopard, there was a lot of 
As I am finally wrapping my head around just how useful Gus Mueller's 
Since I solved a number of the issues plaguing my Mail account setup - including a workaround to kinda use Gmail over IMAP (more on that soon) - I have sunk my teeth back into Apple's excellent email client. Now I'm pretty happy with using a few plug-ins like Scott Morrison's stellar 
We 
Good news for iMovie 6 users. Gee Three has updated several of their Slick plug-in volumes. These plug-ins add all sorts of visual effects to iMovie for the amateur video enthusiast. Apparently, the reason for the updates is that the iMovie/QuickTime interface wasn't too happy handling flash animations. The Gee Three developers created work-arounds for the affected volumes, namely volumes 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10. If you've bought any of these products, you can download the Slick 2.0.2 updates at the GeeThree 
