When I load Submit Response in Safari, the text at the top of each page (‘Submit Response is Jack Mottram’s weblog &tc.’) briefly flashes into view, then disappears. All is well in Firefox.

Since my copy of Safari is pretty heavily tweaked with Pith Helmet and Saft (both highly recommended) and a userContent.css file so convoluted I have no idea what it’s doing any more, I’m guessing these customisations are to blame in some way, but it might just be a bug in Safari 2.0.2.

So before I start digging through all the preferences for those plugins, could someone using the latest version of Safari, un-tweaked, let me know in the comments to this entry, or via email, whether they see the introductory text on this page just fine, or whether it appears and dissapears? And if folk using Saft and/or Pith Helmet could let me know what they see too, that’d be great.

(Funnily enough, I actually quite like the way the page looks without that header, and I’m not happy with the lengthy footer, so this problem might inspire a bijoux redesignette to make the site even more stripped down! Also, this is what I use Pith Helmet for:- its Machete feature allows you to make all your favourite sites look as calmly plain/tediously ugly as this place. The web is a very black, white, blue and image-free place for me nowadays. Web 0.1, not Web 2.0!)

Update: After contacting Hao Li, the developer of Saft, it turns out all I needed to do was turn off the ‘Block Ad/Banners’ option that Saft adds to the Safari menu, which I’d never noticed before. (Since Pith Helmet takes care of ad-blocking and I use Saft for it’s type-ahead searching, URL shortcuts and ugly metal window-removing features, I shouldn’t see any more ads than I was. I hope.)

• SafariStand

  This wee bundle adds some fantastic features. There’s type-ahead searching of bookmarks and history, a ‘shelf’ where you can store links (or, better yet, groups of links to be opened in tabs), syntax colouring when viewing source, a host of configurable command key options, and it even saves state on quit. The user interface is a little clumsy, but, in effect, this extension lets you have all the drool-worthy features offered by Omniweb. It’s free, too.

• SafariExtender

  This adds a contextual menu item to Safari that lets you save and load a set of tabs, move tabs around, quickly email URLs and web pages, change the User Agent string Safari sends (handy for sites that deny access to Safari even though the browser can handle them), turn off images (great when you’re on dial up) and, as they say, much, much more. I have a feeling I’ll pony up the measly $10 shareware fee once my 15-day trial period is up.

• SafariNoTimeOut

  I’ve been using this for as long as I’ve used Safari - it does what it says on the tin, resetting the browser’s request timeout (to ten minutes) so that sites that are slow to load actually load, rather than returning a timeout error after 60 seconds. Essential, and free.

• AcidSearch

  Adds ‘search channels’ to the Google search field, which you can switch between using command key combinations. You can define your own sites to search, but I’ve just been using the Google This Site option and the built-in dictionary and thesaurus searches. Handy, but I find it’s easy to forget to reset the search field to Google after using it for something else. Your mileage may vary according to the state of your short-term memory. Again, this is free.

• Whiteout

  This utility rids your Mac of all that distracting brushed metal, giving 10.3 Finder windows and iApps the pinstripe look of 10.2. Even though it’s a system-wide thing, I’m including it here as I just can’t believe how much better Safari looks after the Whiteout treatment. Once again, a freebie, and, oddly enough, one made by Suicidegirls.com, a porn site for people who like looking at naked goths.

• SubEthaFari

  This improves on Safari’s naff View Source feature, opening up a site’s source in SubEthaEdit, giving you all the oomph of the wonderful text editor in place of a plain NSTextView. I’m not actually using this at the moment - it can be slow to load a page’s source, and fails to load some pages - but it’s worth trying out if you regularly rip off code learn new techniques by snooping around well-made sites. You guessed it: this too is free.

Get ‘em while they’re hot!