Enabling Extensions for Safari 5


Safari 5 was released yesterday, and it finally allows third-party extensions. The inability to extend the browser was one of the things that kept me going back to Firefox, and forced others to switch to Chrome.

So about those Extensions… They ability to add them isn’t turned on by default. (Probably because your average user doesn’t even know what extensions are, what they can do, etc.) But it’s easy enough to turn on:

  1. Open up your Safari Prefences and click on Advanced.
  2. Select the checkbox next to ‘Show Develop menu in menu bar’.
  3. From the newly appeared Develop menu, select ‘Enable Extensions’.
  4. A great place to find extensions is http://safariextensions.tumblr.com/ – It’s not an official resource, but I’m sure that’ll come in time.
  5. Install extensions. Enjoy!

(I’d love to see Chris Pederick’s Web Developer extension – which is available for both Firefox and Chrome – ported over to Safari 5!)