Andrew’s Mac Tips Weblog

I’m always a little nervous when it comes to OS updates. On the one hand it’s always nice to be up to date, but on the other, why risk breaking something that’s so stable in its current state.

When I looked at the specs of the 10.4.11 update the list of fixes looked very arcane, and not particularly exciting or relevant to my situation. But there also was included the final and supposedly stable version of Safari 3; and this was the only way to get a hold of it. I bit the bullet, induced by the prospect of exploring the new Safari.

I installed the upgrade and had no problems at all with the OS side of things; it was Safari itself that caused what grief I had. None of my SIMBL driven hacks liked it; several keyboard shortcuts had been changed — screwing up some of my Butler macros, and to me, it seems slower. Worse still, it was now here to stay (shades of the whole Microsoft IE embedded into the Windows OS brouhaha, but that’s another story).

This is the price one pays for tinkering, I guess. I don’t mean tinkering as in doing the upgrade; I mean tinkering as in having a pimped Safari to be upgraded. When I think back on all the software platforms I’ve used, PC, Mac and handheld, there was always some third party add-on that made each one “just so.”

Speaking of upgrades, have you noticed that Apple is more and more in the habit of adding some gift with each one? All of the iPhone and Touch updates, and the latest revisions to iTunes, have been primarily designed to stomp the latest hack, but they all add some new cool functionality that (probably) should have been there all along.

Here’s one of those situations that takes a lot of time to explain, a little time to set up, and the blink of an eye to implement.

Step 1.

Use Sogudi to create a very short name for a website that you regularly visit. An example might be assigning NY to the New York Times site. To recap how Sogudi works, once you have assigned such a shortcut it’s simply a case of typing NY, followed by a space, in the address bar – then hitting return to go to the site.

Step 2.

In Butler, make a new Keystrokes Smart Item and in the Keys section: Press the Command key as well as L, followed by a delay (from the + menu) of 0.5 seconds. Follow that with the keys N and Y and then hit Return. You now have a little macro that opens the address bar ready for entry, waits a moment, types in NY and hits Return.

Step 3.

Go to the Triggers tab and give it a simple trigger like Opt-N. When you assign the trigger, make sure it’s only valid in Safari.

So, you’re in Safari looking at, whatever, when you decide you want to check up on the New York Times site; Opt-N and BOOM, you’re on your way.

A second here, a second there. It all adds up.