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.
Being a Firefox user (I know, I know, and it crashes on me all the time, but still I run back to it ashamedly), I had no idea that there was a gap in the functionality of StumbleUpon (a handy little link-finding and sharing browser plugin) for Safari users -- it only works with IE and Firefox. But Eli K tipped us off that he's trying to bridge that gap with Stumbi, a StumbleUpon plugin for Safari.
It's the very definition of no-frills: it just creates a menu option for StumbleUpon that will let you access the most basic of functions from the Safari browser. And unfortunately, it's not exactly completely easy to get working -- you've got to make sure to install SIMBL (which, helpfully, comes with the binary download), and then the binary also requires a reasonable $2 purchase after 100 stumbles (or, for the more technically inclined, you can download the source and do it all by yourself for free).
But if you just can't live without StumbleUpon, and can't bring yourself to use Firefox to do it, this might be just what you're looking for.
Here's a very handy plugin for Address Book. PostCheck does two things. First, it fills in missing Zip Codes for when you've only got a contact's city and state. It's super simple. Just right-click on the empty Zip Code field and select PostCheck from the contextual menu. In my testing, it accurately provided the accurate 9-digit code across several cities and states. It also works when you've got the Zip Code but need the city and state.
PostCheck's other trick is to format your addresses so that they meet the US Postal Service's exacting standards. As everyone knows, it's not a good idea to tick off the mail carriers. It's called "going postal" for a reason, folks.
PostCheck requires Mac OS 10.4 or higher, is universal and costs $10US. It's definitely a useful tool to have around.
Personally, I'm an Adium user at heart -- iChat is super nice (especially for a built-in chat program), but it just doesn't have the features and customizability that that Adium does. But if you have to use iChat for whatever reason (easy video conferencing comes to mind) despite your love for Adium, then this mod, sent to us by reader Philipp, will probably come in handy.
It's called iChat Pro, and it basically simplifies your iChat window, squeezing out the borders and cutting the buttons at the bottom. I don't think you can change the colors and design of the display the way you can in Adium (it's been a while since I used iChat, and a quick browse through the preferences didn't reveal any options for that), but at least it looks a little more professional than the, let's admit it, a little goofy, default iChat GUI. iChat Pro is a free iChat mod from Infinise Design.
Is your Address Book full of web-savvy friends who know what a Gravatar (or a Pavatar) is? Avatars is a freeware plugin for Address Book that searches for, displays, and adds your contacts' avatars to their cards. It installs with a package installer as a SIMBL plugin, and it looks to me like SIMBL is in the package, too, just in case you need it.
It's simple, useful and has the right amount of eye candy to be visually interesting without being intrusive. Now I just need more friends with avatars.
Well slap my Safari and call me Susan-- it seems that the rumors of Inquisitor's demise (like so many things nowadays) were greatly exaggerated. Apple Reporter points out that Inquisitor, the Safari search plugin that everyone likes so much, has been "repackaged" for Leopard. Originally, we were told that the fact that InputManagers were being discontinued in the new OS would kill off Inquisitor and other Safari plugins that used them, but Inquisitor works.
Of course, as we've already noted, noone knows for how long. But it seems that instead of deleting them whole hog, Apple just reined InputManagers in, and Inquisitor was able to stay in business. Good news.
Videochatting has finally come to Adium-- kind of. They report on their blog that a company called MeBeam has been working on a cross-platform Flash solution, and they've hooked up Adium to use that service. On their site, MeBeam seems a little aloof about what Adium is (they haven't actually ever used it), but they seem excited to have Adium users flying through their servers.
To get it up and running, you'll need to download the plugin from Adium's Xtras site, and then of course have a camera (and they recommend a headset) ready to roll. Unfortunately, it seems all the plugin does is break open a link to MeBeam in your web browser, and connect the two users up, so it's definitely not a native solution. However, Adium's Eric Richie confirms in the comments that this is not meant to be an end solution-- it's simply a side project "in the meantime." Adium is still working on native video implementation, and so we can still expect to see native video chat sometime in the future.
I run my personal site using WordPress, and one reason I like using it so much is that (although this is hardly exclusive to WordPress as a content manager) is all the great plugins available for it. On another site I ran under WordPress, I loved using the WP-Print plugin-- it automatically creates a "printable" version of each page on your site. All of the printer compatibility, none of the actual work.
And now, someone's cooked up an iPhone version of that same plugin, where you simply install the WP plugin on your blog (for WordPress 2.2.1), and instantly you can see all your posts formatted specifically for the iPhone. Instead of creating a whole other, "mobile" version of your site, you can simply put in this plugin, and you can get a link that will reformat your content for the iPhone or iPod touch. Very excellent.
If you run a WordPress blog or site and were thinking about creating a version of it for the iPhone or iPod touch, your work is done. Download the iWPhone plugin from Content.Robot, install it, and you're set.
Powerful is the plugin that makes me wait until it is ready before I upgrade to Apple's latest and greatest. Connected Flow's FlickrExport is one such plugin. It makes uploading photos from iPhoto to Flickr, Yahoo!'s photo sharing site, a breeze. Tag pics, upload them, add them to groups, create albums; it does it all.
Luckily, it was recently updated to address an with iPhoto '08, that issue being it wouldn't work with the latest version of iPhoto. FlickrExport 2.0.12 adds only one thing to this indispensable plugin: iPhoto '08 compatibility. This update is free for registered users, while a full license costs £12.
TextMate has a basic, built-in blogging bundle that provides some decent features. You can use a variety of syntaxes (HTML, Markdown, etc.) to pen your next digg-worthy post, and the bundle also has rudimentary support for retrieving posts from your blog to edit. It's not bad, but it isn't stellar either.
Todd Ditchendorf's BlogMate plugin, however, is stellar.
As a blogging interface for TextMate, the first thing you'll notice is that BlogMate isn't simply a bundle - it's a full-blown plugin, offering a palette with all sorts of control over your MetaWeblog-compatible blog (for now BlogMate has only been tested with WordPress, but in theory it should work with any of these blogging systems). As you can see, BlogMate can keep track of a configurable number of past posts, hook into your categories and even display previews with pictures of your posts. BlogMate can also handle multiple blogs for those who can't stop at just one (I'm looking at you, Scott McNulty).
Setting up BlogMate is a breeze, though I should probably mention at this point that it is a beta product, so I echo Todd's sentiment of backing up your blog's database just in case. Creating a new post is as easy as opening a new TextMate document and typing away, but there's a major difference from the Blogging bundle here: you don't need to insert a post title; you do that when you actually finish the post and click BlogMate's 'Send Post' button.
Managing posts is one area where BlogMate really shines, as editing a post is as easy as writing one - simply double-click any post in your list (and you can configure BlogMate to pull down more than the default 10 posts) to open it with all formatting preserved. Deleting a post involves nothing more than selecting a victim and pressing delete.
While you don't get some of the finer features of other blogging clients, BlogMate is already a pretty powerful plugin for the rocking swiss army knife text editor that is TextMate. Todd has done a great job here, and I hope enough interest builds to help make BlogMate worth everyone's while. If you're done reading and you're itching to get blogging, you can grab a copy and peruse more instructions and details from Todd's site here.
Regular readers know we here at TUAW love Quicksilver. Indeed, I think it is my single favorite application (and that it remains free is just mind-boggling to me). Anyway, despite a ton of built-in functionality and plethora of plugins to add more, you may still find there are a few things your best Mac buddy can't do. So why not write your own plugin? If, unlike me, you can get over the hurdle of not actually knowing how to code, there's still the issue of the lack of adequate documentation for writing a Quicksilver plugin. And so the "Vacuous Virtuoso," Ankur Kothari, comes to the rescue with an on-going series devoted to writing a Quicksilver plugin with Xcode in Objective-C. So far, only the first two parts are available (an Introduction, and an Anatomy of a plugin), but three more parts are planned. So all you developers out there fire up Xcode and get to extending and expanding our beloved Quicksilver!
I'm normally not a huge fan of iTunes plugins– I was scarred on the whole idea of media player plugins back in my Windows days, but iConcertCal might just get me to re-evaluate that opinion. The free plugin scans the artists in your music library and presents you with a calendar of upcoming concerts in your city by those performers.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to get iConcertCal to work perfectly on my machine– the calendar only fills the bottom-left 2/3 of my iTunes window, the calendar over-flows the bounds of the visualizer area a bit, and there is something wrong with the mouse rollovers that causes me to have to mouse about an inch above the item I want to see information about. Your results may vary.
Technical note: Now I'm no programmer or expert on the intricacies of iTunes plugins, but it seems to me that having a plugin that essentially uses the visualizer as a browser is a bit of a hack.
Keyword Manager from Bullstorm scored a license purchase from yours truly the day we found it, and the feature-packed iPhoto keyword plugin recently had an unassuming but handy upgrade to v1.1. Clicking on the "What's New?" heading at Bullstorm's site reveals a strong list of new features, including:
Address Book auto-completion
Share keywords between photo libraries
Alphabetic sorting of keyword lists
Preferences windows
Built-in software update
If you've been looking for an easier-to-use and more powerful way to wrangle your iPhoto library, I highly recommend giving Keyword Manager's full-featured demo a try. One of its most useful features, besides highly streamlining the tagging/keyword assigning process, is its ability to filter keywords in a search. This is something iPhoto is sorely lacking, but Keyword Manager makes it easy to pick keywords to both search for and exclude. This feature alone is easily worth a good portion of the plugin's $19 USD (€19 in Sweden and EU) for a single license.
I'm an iTunes user of simple tastes. There are only two plugins that I've stuck with over time: the delightfully trippy G-Force visualizer (gone nagware in the current version, but worth the $20 to upgrade) and the dynamic audio booster Volume Logic from Plantronics. With VL, if I wanted to listen to podcasts in the car, I was able to skip the static-filled search for an open iTrip station and just jack up the PowerBook speakers to audible levels.
Unfortunately, VL had not been updated for the Intel transition or for iTunes 7, leaving me out in the cold and the quiet on my MacBook Pro... until now. The beta of VL for iTunes 7 is available (signup required), and it's chock full of Universal Binary goodness. Once released, it'll cost $20 for new licenses, $10 for previous owners who bought before 5/1/2006, and free for anyone who bought after that. Participants in the beta will get $5 off new licenses to boot.
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. 
Being a 
Here's a very handy plugin for Address Book. 
Personally, I'm an 
Is your Address Book full of web-savvy friends who know what a 
Well slap my Safari and call me Susan-- it seems that the 
I run my personal site using 
Powerful is the plugin that makes me wait until it is ready before I upgrade to Apple's latest and greatest. Connected Flow's 
TextMate has a basic, built-in blogging bundle that provides some decent features. You can use a variety of syntaxes (HTML, Markdown, etc.) to pen your next digg-worthy post, and the bundle also has rudimentary support for retrieving posts from your blog to edit. It's not bad, but it isn't stellar either.
Regular readers know we here at TUAW love Quicksilver. Indeed, I think it is my single favorite application (and that it remains free is just mind-boggling to me). Anyway, despite a ton of built-in functionality and plethora of plugins to add more, you may still find there are a few things your best Mac buddy can't do. So why not write your own plugin? If, unlike me, you can get over the hurdle of not actually knowing how to code, there's still the issue of the lack of adequate documentation for writing a Quicksilver plugin. And so the "Vacuous Virtuoso," Ankur Kothari, comes to the rescue with an on-going series devoted to writing a Quicksilver plugin with Xcode in Objective-C. So far, only the first two parts are available (an 
I'm normally not a huge fan of iTunes plugins– I was scarred on the whole idea of media player plugins back in my Windows days, but 
I'm an 
