Download Faviconographer. Enjoy your uglified Safari interface.

PiPTool to the rescue! This nifty little Safari extensions adds PiP functionality to ANY video on ANY site. All you have to do is go to a page with a video you want to watch, click the PiPTool button in Safari’s toolbar and click on the video you want to be PiP’d. You can resize the window and move it from the top right corner by holding the Command key down while dragging the window.

I’ve been using PiPTool for several weeks and haven’t come across a single site it doesn’t work with.

I have to wonder though, why bother? Until you can change the default browser on iOS; something Apple isn’t likely to allow any time soon, you WILL be using Safari at least once per day whether you want to or not. Simply because nobody is going to want to copy/paste URLs from email or text message just so they can be viewed in a browser other than mobile Safari. And let’s face it, Safari on iOS is a pretty damn good browser experience for 99% of users.

So I’m back to wondering what the ‘end-game’ is for companies that make web browsers for iOS. Why bother?

Safari offers default search engine options. Try dropping the Google habit. Just sayin’…

Ultimate Satus Bar is a Safari extension that improves on the built-in status bar in a few ways.

First up is the fact that unlike Safari’s status bar, Ultimate Status Bar only shows up when you hover over a link, saving you around 20 pixels of screen real estate. That’s not a big deal on an iMac, but if you’re surfing on a MacBook Air it can make a big difference.

Ultimate Status Bar places a small Favicon in the corner of the site the link will take you to when possible, as well as an icon for the file type if you happen to be hovering over a downloadable link such as a PDF, TIF, ZIP, etc. And for those downloadable files, it will display the file size if it can be determined – so you can decide if you want to download the file now, or wait until later.

Perhaps the best feature is that short URLs get lengthened and displayed (see the image above). This is not only great for security reasons, but it’ll also help prevent you from getting Rick-Rolled!

Finally, you can customize the appearance of Ultimate Status Bar with the built-in themes.

Ultimate Satus Bar is free, and for the most part works extremely well. I couldn’t get it to display the Favicon for my own site, nor the download size of a ZIP file I hosted (though it was a very large file, so maybe I didn’t wait long enough). But it never failed to show me the link address, expand a short-URL, or hide the bar completely once I moved the mouse.

Topher Kessler has the scoop on Safari 7’s per-site plug-in management over at Cnet.

These are just my favorite shortcuts, but you can view a full searching for ‘shortcuts’ under Safari’s Help menu.

With the release of Mac OS X Lion, I switched back to Safari as my main browser. Almost all the extensions I want are available for it, and it’s much less buggy than Google Chrome was beginning to be. But there are a few things that bother me about Safari, one of which is the way you navigate between open tabs.

With every other browser, you can navigate between open tabs by hitting Command + the tab number (#2 would open the second tab from the left, #3 the third, etc.). But with Safari, hitting Command + a number opens the link number of whatever is in your bookmark bar. Handy if you actually have bookmarks in your bookmark bar, but I have nothing but folders. Hitting Command + Shift + } four times to reach the fifth tab from the left is a pain because it requires both hands.

Thankfully, Olivier Poitrey offers SafariTabSwitching, a SIMBL plugin that brings the Command + number feature to Safari. I’ve been using it so long that I actually forgot where I got it from. It’s quite a nice add-on, and I’ve never had a problem using it. The only foreseeable issue is that it is a SIMBL plugin, which Apple doesn’t condone, and could cease to function at any OS update in the future if Apple so chooses – such as OS X Mountain Lion, due later this summer.

Apparently I wasn’t alone, because a developer has recently released SafariOmnibar (direct download) for Safari for Snow Leopard and Lion. Run the Package installer and you’re good to go. As you can see in the image above, you’ll have the convenience of a single address/search bar.

That’s where Folx comes in. Folx is an easy to use download manager that not only speeds up your normal Internet downloads, but also helps you organize your downloaded files, schedules downloads, and even integrates a full Torrent search and download client.

Folx offers a free version, but readers of The Graphic Mac can get 15% off the Pro version by using the following coupon code at checkout time: GRAPH-MAC-15.

After installing, Folx intercepts your downloads from your web browser (Firefox 4 is not yet supported), and presents a screen in Folx that allows you to tag, schedule, and control the speed of the download. You can also download files directly from within Folx simply by entering a URL, or searching through Folx’s built-in Torrent tracker (Pro version). The ability to set the priorities for individual downloads is a nice touch as well.

Folx speeds up your downloads by splitting the download into multiple threads – it’s sort of like having two different computers downloading different parts of the same file, then joining them at the end – except it does it all behind the scenes. The free version of Folx only allows you to split a download into two threads, while the Pro version allows up to 10 threads. In my testing, large files (500MB and larger) see a substantial increase in download speed when I split it into 10 threads.

The scheduler (Pro version) is a nice feature if you want to download large files, but don’t want to suffer through the inevitable slow-down your Mac will have while you’re trying to get work done. Just schedule the downloads for later in the evening while you’re eating dinner or sleeping. And for those times when, for whatever reason, your download is interrupted, Folx can resume downloading so you don’t have to start over!

Managing your downloads is simple and effective. You can tag your files before you download them and Folx will place the downloaded file in user specified folders. You can have one folder for Applications, another for videos, and yet another for music.

Folx isn’t for everyone. The benefit of any download manager is only realized by those who frequently download large files or many, many smaller ones at one time. The free version of Folx may be enough for the casual user, but the Pro version adds a few very nice and useful features, including:

• Splitting downloads in up to ten threads for much faster downloading
• Scheduling of downloads
• Smart speed adjustments
• Search for Torrent files directly from within Folx

Folx Pro offers a clean and easy to use interface which runs on Mac OS X 10.4 through 10.6., and can be purchase for $19.95 – but don’t forget to use The Graphic Mac discount code (GRAPH-MAC-15) at checkout time to get 15% off. If you’re not sure you need the Pro version just yet, I suggest you download Folx and use it for free until you decide you need the increased speed and other Pro features.

As an added bonus, if you buy Folx now, you’ll receive the upcoming upgrade to Folx 2.0 for free when it’s ready. Version 2 will offer iTunes integration, auto download from RSS feeds, smart groups for downloaded content, and auto-tagging according to file parameters.