Create a visual web history for Safari
All these webpages we are visiting, all this information we see in just one day sometimes can be a bit overwhelming. Almost everybody has probably already thought something like “I saw this on a web page, but where…?”.
Then you try to use your browser’s history, trying to find out… quite impossible to say, which page it was, when the only thing you are presented is the title.
Today this is over. We will create a true, visual web history.
To accomplish our goal, we will make use of the QuickLook and CoverFlow features of Finder.
QuickLook gives you an instant preview of a selected item, only by pressing the space bar and CoverFlow let’s you flip through files and folders, like album covers in iTunes.
For this exciting new way of browsing your web history, we will need two things. First, the the SafariStand plugin, described in this tutorial.
The second thing we need is the so-called QuickLook generator. This is a plugin for QuickLook, enabling us to preview a history item with QuickLook.
Setup
Luckily, this plugin comes with SafariStand. So open up the SafariStand folder in your Downloads Stack again (click here to download it again). In there you’ll find the directory HetimaWebThumbnail 0.1, open it up and locate the file HetimaWebThumbnail.qlgenerator.
To install it, do the following:
1) Click this file once, press command-C to copy it.
2) Go to the directory Macintosh HD > Library > Quick Look
3) Paste the file there, by pressing command-V.
Usage
For every page, you visit, Safari saves a file, including the address you visited. SafariStand creates a preview of each page.
These two things together, make the visual web history possible. So you need to have SafariStand enable while surfing the web for this to work.
First, some navigating - let’s find the web history files. Don’t worry, it’s easy.
Go to your home folder (the one in the Finder Sidebar with the house icon). From there, navigate to the following folder:
Library > Caches > Metadata > Safari > History. There you will find all lot of files - according to your internet usage.
But navigating to this folder every time you want to browse your web history is quite a pain in the neck.
So, go back on folder level. You now see two folder - Bookmarks and History.
Now, simply drag the History folder to the Sidebar in your Finder (to the Places section). Make sure, you drag it between two items and not on, say, the Applications folder.
Of course, you can do the same thing with your Bookmarks folder.
Visual Bookmarks - also not bad, huh?
Now you can access your Safari history right from your Finder’s Sidebar. For every page you visited with Safari and SafariStand enabled, you’ll see a preview of the page. The image quality is not the best, but it sufficient enough to tell the difference between two pages.
What’s more important is the filename: It’s not really user friendly. You can bring up the “real” title of the history item. Simply press the space bar, to invoke QuickLook on the current selection.
This brings up the QuickLook window, including a preview for the web page plus it’s page title. Now use the arrow keys to navigate - the QuickLook window is automatically updated.
You can move around the QuickLook window (so you see the Cover Flow behind it, too). To do so, click and hold at the top of the QuickLook window (where you see the item’s title) and drag it around, it will always represent the currently selected item.
Great, huh? Enjoy (and impress you non-Mac-using friends) with your new visual web history.
Note: Since the development of this QuickLook plugin is in very early stages (version number 0.1) it might happen, that for some history items no preview is available. Please bear with it - maybe a donation to the developer might speed things up. A donation link is on the webpage.
Did you like this post? Help to keep Mac Kindergarten up and running.
Email This Post
Tags: CoverFlow, eye candy, QuickLook, Safari, visual information, web history
Related posts: