Ever wanted to give Safari 4 a fresh new feel? Or, have you ever wanted to use vertical tabs instead of horizontal tabs?
As MacStories readers, you should probably know how much I’m in love with Mozilla Firefox. Most of all, I absolutely love that addon called Tree Style Tabs, which allows you to display all your open tabs as a “tree” in a sidebar.
Finally, I’ve managed to get a similar result on Safari 4, under Mac OS 10.6.1 (but it should work fine on 10.6 as well). Well, it’s a sort of a workaround, but it definitely works.
All you have to do is download a Safari plugin called SafariStand and install it as a SIMBL plugin (and yes, SIMBL works again on Snow Leopard). Then relaunch Safari and set the tabs sidebar through the plugin settings.
Now, as you may notice, there’s a problem. Despite the plugin correctly displays your open tabs, Safari.app still displays them as well in the tab bar. That means that you have both a sidebar and an horizontal tab bar. This happens because the plugin simply adds a sidebar, but doesn’t force the browser to remove the normal tabs. That’s not good.
But – as I said before – there’s a workaround. I’ve managed to fix this problem by editing with Interface Builder the Browser.nib file located into Safari.app (and it was difficult, I’ll post soon a tutorial about how to edit .nib files on Snow Leopard) removing the Tab Bar View. And, as you can see, it works.
All you have to do is download this file, right click on Safari.app -> Show Package Contents then navigate through Contents->Resources->English.lproj (or whatever language you use) backup your existing Browser.nib file and replace it with the custom one I made. Then, quit and relaunch Safari. You should only see SafariStand sidebar.
Don’t hesitate to leave a comment for any problem you have. Please note that I used Safari 4.0.3 for this tweak.
Enjoy 
#1
That's what Ian said 11 months ago:
Hey, great tip! Thanks for writing a simple guide.
One side effect I have noticed is that some dialogs popup at the bottom of the window (and possibly off the screen). For example, when right clicking the bookmark toolbar and selecting ‘New Folder’, the dialog appears at the bottom of my window.
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jolleyjoe Reply:
October 27th, 2009
@Ian, I am getting the same bottom-dialog behavior… anyway to fix this?
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#2
That's what BIGIO said 10 months ago:
ottima guida, grazie!!!!
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#3
That's what javad said 10 months ago:
I also se that my dialogs popup at the bottom of the window. Could it be that the changes to Browser.nib affected the dialoge behavior?
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#4
That's what jolleyjoe said 10 months ago:
Awesome! Now, if only the tabs could be made skinnier?
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#5
That's what Stefan said 10 months ago:
could you please fix that bug with the popup-dialog? I tried it but don’t unserstand the interface builder… ^^
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#6
That's what Isa said 9 months ago:
I’m still using Leopard, version 10.5.8. Will this also work for that version?
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#7
That's what Ed said 9 months ago:
Great tip thanks a lot! I’m having the same trouble with dialogue boxes appearing out of the bottom of the window. As I have my browser windows stretching to the bottom of the screen this is an issue.
Has anybody managed to fix this yet?
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#8
That's what wax0 said 6 months ago:
Hi, I have tried getting browser.nib, but RapidShare keeps saying that is full, and I should pay and sign up with them to be able to download the file, could somebody else let me know an alternative link to download the file, thanks very much!!
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#9
That's what flosse said 5 months ago:
Great work! Thank You!
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#10
That's what Danny Peck said 2 months ago:
Doesn’t work in Safari5, just FYI.
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#11
That's what Joe Madre said 2 months ago:
works fine with Safari 5 in 10.6.4… except. the damn dialog box issue. we just need someone to do a new NIB file. i did one a while back, so I will try and tinker with this.
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