Many people love the redesigned and ‘cleaned-up’ UI of Apple’s Safari 4, which had its Beta tag removed during Phil Schiller’s WWDC Keynote. I, for one however, just hate two things: the unnecessary “Add Bookmark” plus button attached to the left of the URL bar, and the relocation of the stop/reload button to the left of the URL bar. Not that it is a fundamental design flaw, but after years of being used to Safari 3’s button arrangement, change is hard.
Just yesterday I published a post to a link on macosxhints.com that allows you to get rid of the “+” button. So that problem is solved. What about the reload button then? Sure, you can still do a “Cmd-R”, but for those who prefer navigating with their mouse alone, here’s a cool tip to somewhat solve your problem!
I’m sure I’m not alone in this respect, and so I figured, “Hey, what about the bookmarks bar?” That’s close enough to the old positioning of the reload button, and simple javascript bookmarks act well as faux browser extensions. So, drag any of the following buttons to the far left of your bookmarks bar, and you’ve got a simple javascript reload button just half an inch away from where the old one used to be! I’ve even been nice enough to create different designs using the “Special Characters…” dialog box in all Cocoa applications.
If anyone is curious, the javascript I used here is the blindingly-simple:
javascript:location.reload(true)
I apologize if anyone has already come up with this, but I thought it was a simple temporary workaround until Apple tweaks it, or someone reverse engineers the toolbar NIB file in the Safari package. =)
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:21 am
thanks a lot! I hated not having refresh on the left!!!
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 am
Awesome! Thanks!!
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:00 am
Cool. Thanks.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:24 am
Thanks, this is really appreciated !
Not having the refresh button really bothered me.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:08 am
Thanks! I have many of these for folders and javascript-lets to take up less room, don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this too. – It is amazing how hard it is to retrain yourself after years of moving your mouse to the same location for a reload. It is maddening being forced to go the other way.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:12 am
Nice! I used a little unicode “recycle” symbol on mine. ♲ It’s not legible, but it amused me.
Now if only we could get back the “address-loading progress-bar.” That really bothers me.
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:45 am
I don’t know what my HI engineers have been thinking. To put ONE button on the opposite of the window is completely stupid. I have to wonder if their college diplomas are legit.
You take some time off to get a new liver and look what happens…
I apologize for the inconsistencies. But don’t worry, I’ll get things fixed up ship shape in no time.
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:07 am
To put the old reload/stop button back in Safari 4’s toolbar download this: http://rapidshare.com/files/251157788/saf4reloadhack.zip.html
go to Safari, show package contents. go to Contents/Resources and copy the three reload button tifs included with the zip. then go to /Resources/English.lproj and copy in the toolbaritems.nib (replace the existing item, after backing it up)
It works just like in Safari 3, reloading and stopping a loading website. The only missing ingredient is I couldn’t get the button icon to change to a “stop” while a webpage is loading.
enjoy
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:20 am
oops, uploaded the wrong link. Also make sure you go to customize toolbar, in Safari, and grab the new button. http://rapidshare.com/files/251162891/saf4reloadhack.zip
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:54 am
@elldove Nicely done. That’s what I was talking about reverse engineering the nib file! I’ve been trying that for awhile without success. Well done!
July 11th, 2009 at 1:59 am
Wow! thanks so much, what a handy little script that is
you rock!
August 9th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Thank You elldove
August 11th, 2009 at 4:25 pm
many thanks. Just one more request : can I have more than 1 refresh button on the bookmark bar??? Internet is kind of slow here so I’m going to put it everywhere in the bookmark bar
August 11th, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Yeah, sure you can! Just drag and drop as many as you like. Haha.
August 17th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Thanks man…… your a lifesaver. And to apple ”what can I say but……WTF…….were u thinking ?”
August 25th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Apple Safari takes more resources compared to Opera and Firefox. sometimes it also freezes so i would still stick to Opera.
September 8th, 2009 at 8:06 am
Great hack but it replaces my add bookmark button (+). Any way to keep bookmark button and add refresh?
September 10th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Brilliant – so simple but so effective, many thanks.
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:17 am
@elldove
This is great but unfortunately does not work in Tiger.
There is a separate item called ToolbarItemsTiger.nib and the item does not show up there. I tried renaming your ToolbarItems.nib to ToolbarItemsTiger.nib and then the button did show up in the customize menu, however other important buttons (back/forward most importantly) were now missing.
October 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
An added benefit of adding the javascript refresh button? Safari seems to load GIF animations better. And for those stubborn pages where the gif still won’t animate, a simple click of the newly installed refresh button gets it in gear far better than Apples refresh button.
This is VERY helpful for me, especially when viewing weather page satellite animations which used to load and play properly with Safari 3.x but not with Safari 4.x.
Thanks!
December 2nd, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Thank you!!
February 26th, 2010 at 4:56 am
hi there wow i thought it was the same problem as i have becuase my book marks delete affter 24 hours is there any way in any menu too fix this thanks