Will Apple Unveils Safari 5 With Extensions Support at WWDC?

John Brownlee ()

Will Apple Unveils Safari 5 With Extensions Support at WWDC?

Yesterday’s release of Google’s Chrome 5 internet browser made it even more viable a Safari replacement than ever (if you can get over the design niggles, that is), but if a rather sly hint from Daring Fireball’s John Gruber is anything to go by, Apple may attempt to match Chrome and Firefox’s most interesting feature — extensions support — with Safari 5.

Quoth Gruber:

The other big thing that’s missing [in Safari] (compared to both Chrome and Firefox) is a proper extension API. If only Apple had an imminent developer conference where they could unveil such a thing.

This is a big weakness of Safari compared to many other modern browsers , and the ability to easily tweak the Safari experience according to user preference would certainly win Apple’s browser some converts.

The question is: are browser extensions anathema to Apple’s own design ethos, which tries to perfect the user experience through tight-fisted control? As great as Firefox and Chrome extensions are — I simply can’t work with a browser that doesn’t support them anymore — things can get quite ugly and confusing, design-wise, with a lot of extensions installed. Apple can’t be too happy about that prospect.

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Still, at the end of the day, the option of extensions coming to Safari is a win for everyone. My only hope is that Apple will crib some other ideas from Chrome while they are at it: Chrome’s effortless merging of the search field and address field is so brilliant that it makes any other interpretation seem amateurish in comparison.

11 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

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Posted in News, Software |

  • Wolfgang

    Probably Apps for Safari. :)

  • http://www.howiesweb.com Howie Isaacks

    I think that adding extensions will be great, but also a big hassle. It will be great because it will open up another way for us to customize our Macs, but a hassle in that there will be a lot of crapware flooding the market, which will cause support headaches.

  • MacinScott

    I always hear people rave over Firefox or Chrome and when I view their screens, it’s always an abomination with some crappy Nascar or U2 image wrapper on their browser.

  • http://ihbs.co.uk ben

    i like safari because it looks and behaves like every other mac os x application, while displaying every single webpage as it shoudl be displayed, and syncs across my idevices as well.

    chrome is ugly as sin, as is firefox

  • Gazoobee

    “Chrome’s effortless merging of the search field and address field” was first done by Microsoft in Internet Explorer in the 90′s. Not everyone likes it and it’s popularity (it’s been done a couple of times over the years by a few browsers), goes up and down. Just sayin.

  • BoxMac

    Yeah — all those plugins clog stuff up.
    I’ve used PeeCees with FireFox on it and a shiteload of “extensions” added on ….
    What a convoluted, kludgy MESS.
    *yeccch*

    OK — so I hafta use a seperate app to download YouTube videos ….
    So what?

    And GOOGLE’s built in, so that eliminates the need to go to the website itself.

    See?
    Safari’s just fine the way it is.

  • Steve Jobs

    Mac fanboys are so stupid, always valuing style over substance. If Safari doesn’t get addons, it’ll lose market share to FF and Chrome. Most people value convenience and ease of use over things that simply look good.

  • http://www.vvvrm.com James Churchman

    this sounds a great move, though obviously as things like SIMBL show with a tiny bit of hackery os x apps are very extensible at runtime, unlike any other os

    i would really really like them also to add a similar plugin interface for the finder!!!!!!!

    James

  • Chris

    IE did have an address bar in the 90′s but you couldn’t search from it, you had to know the exact URL. That is why the homepage was a search engine.The anything even close to the Chrome address bar was Firefox’s Location bar that only gave you results from history and Bookmarks. Chrome was the first to combine the address bar and search bar into one. I like safari but the only reason I don’t use it is that there is no ad blocking for windows and that there is no omni-bar option. Those are the only plugins that I really use in Firefox.For those who don’t like the Omni-bar (Chrome search and address bar) can have a settings option in safari to use or not use the one bar option. One doesn’t have to use extensions to use a browser plus Apple already controls there iPod and iPhone apps why can’t they control extensions?

  • http://www.delardogallery.com/ NewsGallery

    Via Dscriber: How The War Between Apple and Flash Began: http://bit.ly/AppVSFLDscr

  • fuckoff

    u cant chang the fucking google search in the fucking safari in the fucking mac in the fucking saudi arabia how force the fuckin google to make the fuckin seafe search that u can noooot ever turn it fuckin off so if u search the word fuck it wont search it
    so im gonna use firefox and aol search and fuck safari and google 010