If you’ve gotten your hands on Safari 5 already, and you’ve done some poking around, you’ve probably noticed that the application has extension support. While the support for extensions in Safari has been long over-due, there has been plugin support for quite some time now.
What’s the Difference Between a Plugin and an Extension?
Simply put, a Safari extension is based on HTML5, Javascript, and CSS, and a traditional Safari Plugin required developers to know C, C++, or Objective-C. It didn’t make much sense that a web browser would required plug-in authors to use these languages, so we’re pretty excited that web developers can now work in their preferred languages.
Before Safari 5, users would have to install an application like SafariStand to get access to browser plug-ins. Apple’s made the management of extensions alot easier in Safari 5. You can now access your extensions from the preferences in Safari 5.
Getting Extensions Early
While Apple’s official extension library won’t be online for a couple of weeks yet, a handy tumblr website has popped up for those looking to try out some extensions in the interim. SafariExtensions has been keeping track of new Safari extensions already on the market, as well as announcements from companies who are planning on releasing extensions in the future.
Installing an Extension
The first step is turning on the extensions in Safari. Go to Safari, Preferences, then Extensions, and flip the toggle switch to extension.
You may have to turn on Developer mode in Safari. Go To Preferences > Advanced and click “Show Develop menu in menu bar.” Now from the new develop menu in Safari, click “Enable Extensions.”
Then download an extension from SafariExtension.
The installation of an extension is quite simple. Download an extension (the file should end in .safariextz), open the file, and then you should be met with an installation window asking whether you want to install the extension or not. It’s really that simple. You don’t even have to restart your browser.
