Safari Pinboard Extension

This is the Safari 5 extension for pinboard.innot in active development.

Current version: 2.78 (Mac and Windows) | 2.91 beta (Safari 5.1 only)

Features

  1. Toolbar, Buttons, Context menu – can be separately enabled/disabled
  2. Add to Pinboard, read later, view/search your bookmarks, unread items
  3. Configurable keyboard shortcuts
  4. Show number of unread bookmarks as badge
  5. Open links and Add to Pinboard: In same tab/new tab/new window/popup
  6. Add via drag & drop (on the pinboard toolbar)

Download

 Download Pinbar 2.78 »

 Download Pinbar 2.91 beta (Safari 5.1+ only!) »

Quick Overview & Screenshot

Pinbar overview 2.5

Usage

You should be logged in at pinboard.in of course. The extension doesn’t access your personal information.

2.6 uses now the Pinboard-API for Number of unread links:
– You have to login to api.pinboard.in (with your usual pinboard username/password).
– Click Save to Keychain so the login only appears once.

How to install

  • First enable Extensions (disabled by default in Safari 5.0): Enable “Develop menu” in the Advanced pane of Safari Preferences, then “Enable extensions” in the Develop menu.
  • Download above & double click to install — or at extensions.apple.com)
  • The toolbar can be disabled in the “View”-menu, the buttons can be added or removed by customizing the Safari toolbar.

Settings

Extension settings

Go to Safari Preferences and click on Extensions, choose Pinbar from the list of extensions.

Show context menu – Turn the context menu on or off (shown if you right-click on a page)

Show number of unread bookmarks – Shows a badge with the number of your unread bookmarks on the “Unread”-button in the toolbar.

Use https for Pinboard – Opens Pinboard pages via https.

Use reduced skin for toolbar – Displays the toolbar in an alternate style.

Reuse existing tabs if possible – Opens your Pinboard, Unread Bookmarks and Search always in the same tab/window if the page is already open.

Window Handling – choose if “Add to pinboard” opens on the same page, in a new tab, a new window or a popup. Same goes for the links to your pinboard, recent, unread etc.

Keyboard shortcuts – A modifier and a set of keys can be chosen. The keys are responsible for “My Pinboard”, “Add current page”, “Read later”, “Search bookmarks” and “Toggle Toolbar” (in that order).

If the Pinboard toolbar is shown, you can see the keyboard shortcuts immediately on the respective buttons.

Toolbar

Pinboard Toolbar 1.8

You can show or hide the Pinboard Toolbar in the “View”-Menu of Safari.

Buttons – should be self-explanatory: Save current page to pinboard, read later .. and so on.

Search – Enter a term in the search field and press “Enter” to search in your bookmarks. The result is shown in the browser.

“?”-Button – Short help

Drag & Drop

You can also drag the favicon onto the toolbar to bookmark the current page.

Drag & Drop Explanation

Buttons

Toolbar buttons

Right click on the Safari toolbar and choose “Customize Toolbar” to remove or add buttons.

Context Menu

Enable/Disable in the Settings

If you right-click on a page you get these two additional entries. When over a link, you can add/unread the link target.

Context Menu 1.9

Notes

This is my own work and is not affiliated with pinboard.in. If you have problems, wishes, suggestions- use the comment function below.

Like this?

Leave a comment, visit the ads or donate.

And you can add it to your apps at iusethis.com ».

Planned features

  • Configurable keyboard shortcuts for Add to Pinboard, Read Later, View Pinboard — in current beta)
  • Unread items (Simple button)
  • Link to this page (aka Help)
  • Search bookmarks (Result in the browser)
  • Maybe and cool: Add to Pinboard via layer
  • Context menu – and make it configurable
  • Soon: Try to bypass “extensions can’t open popups” – I’ve got a plan..
  • Okay, let’s be honest, no one reads all this here – integrate a short documentation (layer or a page)
  • Drag & drop of URLs (from the address bar) onto the toolbar the bookmark button if this is possible
  • Check if drag & drop on toolbar works. Works, only buttons don’t.
  • Option to reuse existing tabs/windows for pinbar/unread
  • Better Handling of esc when using search
  • When right clicking on a link, bookmarking the target would be cool
  • Red Badges look nice – maybe the number of unread items on a button
  • Configure skin
  • Improve context menu handling of links: In Google Reader the title is not correct. (should work in the current Beta)
  • Check out new Safari 5.1 features (and bugs…)
  • Use the API to search/add bookmarks/handle tags and find a good UI concept for this.

What’s new? (Changelog)

2.78

Improvement: Description can be up to 2048 chars long (more is not possible, because the URI gets too long otherwise). Thanks Andrew Rosen!

2.76

Google reader support

Certificate update

2.7

Save tabset added

Icons improved

2.6

Use API for number of unread bookmarks

Code optimization

2.5

Alternate toolbar style

2.4

Number of requests greatly reduced (for the unread badge)

Prepared new features: API call, alternate toolbar design

2.3

https-Support (Enable in the preferences)

2.2

Bugfix for the bugfix for unread badge in new windows..

Dismissed the idea of alert-windows

2.1

Bugfix for unread badge in new windows

2.0

Unread button with optional badge (number of unread items)

New option: Reuse existing tabs/windows

New shortcut: Toggle toolbar

Context menu: Adding a link now add its target

Add to pinboard via keyboard or context menu now uses the selection (if present) as description.

Toolbar somewhat reordered.

Search field now uses selection and is cleared when pressing escape.

Alert if you’re trying to enable unread badge but the button ain’t visible.

Code minified + performance

1.91

Small fix

1.9

Shortcut for unread

Drag & Drop

Open in popup

Context menu (enable/disable in settings)

1.8

Search field + shortcut

Unread button

Code cleanup nr. 4879

New icons, cooler CSS

Help button

1.75

Configuration for Shortcuts

Dynamically enable Toolbar buttons

Bugfix for links not respecting setting

1.7

Keyboard Shortcuts

Code cleanup

1.6

Add to pinboard icon improved

1.5

Choose where you’d like the pinboard-links to open (same page, new tab, new window)

New toolbar icon

1.4

Now includes a custom icon

The “Add in new window/tab/same page” buttons have been replaced by a single button (“+ Pinboard”), which can be configure via the Extensions pane (Safari / Preferences / Extensions

The toolbar design has improved a lot thanks to Ian Soper (iansoper.com)

129 Replies to “Safari Pinboard Extension”

  1. Thank you for making this extension! It’s very helpful. I really like the ability customize the buttons on the toolbar up next to the website address field. You’ve done a wonderful job! Keep up the good work!

    1. Hi –

      good idea, but I think this should be implemented at pinboard – then for example plugins for other browsers could use this feature.
      You could suggest this in the pinboard-users group at google.

      mario

  2. I’d love it if the “+note” feature used your selected text to pre-populate the notes field. Is something like this possible?

    1. Hi –

      yes, it seems that’s possible by adding parameters to the URL. Currently I’m a bit busy with other stuff, but I’ll include this in the next update (probably in 1 or 2 weeks :)

      1. Thank you, I’m looking forward to this. And thinking about this further, it could be useful throughout your extension, not just for the “+note” feature. This could be used to pre-populate the “description” field when adding a bookmark. Perhaps you could add this functionality there as well.

        1. Already there, but due to restrictions within the safari extension API this is not always possible. it is already implemented if you select a text and add a bookmark via right clicking.

  3. Good morning,

    I’m quite jazzed about my experience with installing this extension. I’ve recently migrated all my bookmarks into Pinboard from multiple services, and now have the job of wrangling/deleting/editing them into something usable.

    I installed the extension, and began playing with it. I clicked on “random” and the first result was a link that I had spent 30mins trying to hunt down the night before! (Linked to an app page a long time ago but didn’t add any tags/info and I couldn’t remember the name) I pressed random a few other times to make sure it really was random, and I got the (expected) assortment of misc links from my account.

    Great extension! – no matter how much you try to deny it, I’m sure there’s some secret voodoo stuff going on under the hood.

    1. Nice to hear!

      About the secret voodoo stuff I’m not allowed to talk of course. It might pose a severe threat to the fabric of our universe, which I’d like to avoid.

  4. Hi,

    love your extension! Are you planning on supporting 5.1’s popover features? I really hate Safari popping up a new window when I press read later or add.

    The Google Chrome extension got that right.

    Cheers,
    Martin

    1. Hi –

      yes I already had a look on how to use popovers. The disadvantage is that I’ve got to write the code twice (for 5.1+ and before). But that should be possible of course. Currently I’m waiting for some API functions (notable: tab sets) – as soon as they’re implemented at pinboard I’ll continue. But if that takes much longer I’ll put a release in between online.

      BTW: The Google Chrome extension API is unfortunately completely different to the one Safari uses..

    2. Addition:

      I played around with the 5.1 features and the first thing I integrated are toolbar-menus (which appear when you click and hold a toolbar-button) – this works nice and reduces the number of toolbar buttons.

      Regarding popovers: This also works, but only if you use the toolbar buttons…
      So if you use a keyboard shortcut *or* the context menu to add the current page to pinboard and have the appropriate button removed from the toolbar, there’s no way to display a popover.

      I’ll have a look if popovers can be integrated without messing up everything (=making the code unmaintainable), I’ll be happy to integrate them.

      So as soon as I finished a usable beta-version for 5.1 I’ll put it online..:)

  5. Is there a way to turn off the keyboard shortcuts? I don’t use them and want those keys available for other things.

    1. Currently not.
      You can choose a set of keys + modifiers you aren’t going to use otherwise like ctrl + shift + F8..F13.
      But I’ll add this possibility in the next release. I’m waiting for the pinboard API to support tabsets, but maybe I’ll put a new version online in between.

      Hope that helps.

      1. Thanks for getting back to me. I’ll be looking forward to the option. Ya, I can easily change them to something unused, but the OCD in me hates that. LOL!

        Thanks again!

    1. Hi –

      yes, that’s a restriction of safari extensions, because when viewing pdf-files the html-engine is not active. But if that’s a link on another page you can right click on that link and choose Pinboard: Add Link in the context menu.

  6. I don’t understand what pinboard is by your page description. Features does not automatically equal benefits, especially when you keep referring to the product name as if we know what it is already and there are insider technical terms employed.

    My real concern is that I DO NOT HAVE it on my computer, never downloaded it, and yet I keep being asked to log into api.pinboard 443 to see the page I’m trying to access when Safari boots (my home page).

    What do I do to get rid of it, and how did it get there?

    1. Hi –

      this is a safari extension for the website http://pinboard.in – an online bookmarking service.

      To remove it:
      In Safari go to Preferences, choose the Extensions tab, click on Pinbar (in the list of installed extensions). There’s an uninstall button on the right side:

      Uninstall pinbar

      (This is the same for all Safari extensions).

  7. Hi. There seems to be a little bug in Pinbar 2.78, at least in Safari 5.1. Often, when I use the “add” Pinbar button or keystroke, the “Save a Bookmark page comes up with the wrong title filled in. It seems to be using the title of the **previous** page in the browser, rather than of the current one that I want to bookmark. (That title is often, but not always, “Untitled”.) If I simply close the Pinboard tab and then choose “add” again, the right title is used this time.

    Unfortunately, I’ve put a whole bunch of mis-titled bookmarks into my Pinboard account before realizing this…

      1. Latest Snow Leopard: 10.6.8. I’ve reproduced it on two different iMacs (work and home). I just reproduced it with this very page!

        1. Okay, so..

          ..you open a page, click on a link, then click “Add to pinboard”-button or use the shortcut (and the resulting window shows the wrong title) – right?

          1. If I open a page by telling Safari “new window” (which brings up the Top Sites display), type a URL, let the resulting page load, and then click Pinbar’s “add” button, the title of the resulting bookmark will be “Top Sites”.

            Same thing happens if I click on one of my “top sites” rather than typing a URL.

            If I open a page by clicking on a link in an email message (which brings up the linked-to page in a new Safari window), and then click Pinbar’s “add” button, the title of the resulting bookmark will be “Untitled”.

            If I open a page from one of my Safari bookmarks, however, and then click Pinbar’s “add” button, the title of the resulting bookmark is correct.

            BUT: From that page, if I then click my “Top Sites” toolbar icon, and then click one of the top sites displayed, and then click Pinbar’s “add” button, the title of the resulting bookmark is for the page I was on BEFORE I went to “Top Sites”.

            Very odd, indeed!

            1. Hi –

              I had a look using Safari 5.1, OS X 10.6.8 and.. could not reproduce any of this.

              So, in order to find out what’s happening:
              Could you check if another extension maybe makes trouble by deactivating them temoprarily?

              thx!

              1. Alas, no luck. I turned off all extensions but Pinbar, and the problem still occurs. (I’ve got a screen shot of Safari showing two tabs, one the page I’m trying to bookmark and the other the Pinboard create-bookmark page. The title of the first tab is clearly “Duckling Care”, and the title filled in for the bookmark is clearly “Top Sites”. Happy to send that screen shot if you’re interested.)

                Toggling the Pinbar extension off/on didn’t help, nor did toggling off/on the Extensions master switch.

                1. Okay, I’ll put together a version with debug output to find out what’s happening.

                  Let’s continue this via email, just send me the screenshot: mario at chipwreck dot de.

  8. Excellent Extension. I plan on donating as soon as a I’m able.
    I was wondering if there was a way to add a button to hide and show the Pinboard bar via a button?

    1. Hi –

      well there is a keyboard shortcut (by default cmd+shift+o) to hide and show the pinboard toolbar, you can also close it with the (x) on the left side and show it via the “View”-menu in Safari.

      But you probably mean a button for the main toolbar/addressbar, right?

    1. Hi –

      yes, this might be possible.

      I had a look at the new Safari 5.1 extension API (which looks promising) – but the API documentation is not yet published.. As soon as this happens, I’ll have a look at the new features.

      In the between time I’ll have a look at the bug and as soon as I find some time to fix it I’ll release an update.

      mario

  9. You really did a wonderful job. You thought of everything. But I’m torn because the new Firefox is so great… don’t know what to do.

  10. Thank you for this. Ironically, it is useful to me precisely because I hate toolbars. The “normal” buttons let me forgo the bookmark bar.

    Now, a feature request! :-)

    I would love some auto-tagging based on source. When I read-later a YouTube or Vimeo video, I want the bookmark to be tagged “video”.

    I imagine this being implemented via map of URL patterns so, say, “*//www.youtube.com/watch\?v=*” maps to a value of “video”. With a power-user option to adjust that map (even if only by directly editing the extension).

    Also related to read-later, it’d be great to copy the magic of the Instapaper bookmarklet, which detects currently-selected items in Google Reader.

    1. (Yes, the toolbar is of course only one option – you can also do nearly everything via keyboard or with the buttons..)

      Your feature requests might take some time. Here’s why:

      Auto-tagging

      Currently the plugin uses the default pinboard.in-web form. As far as I know, it’s not yet possible to add tags in the URL. I tink there was a similar request some time ago in the pinboard group », but I’m not sure currently.
      The other and better option is the API – there it’s no problem. In the current beta the API is already used for fetching the number of unread bookmarks. Adding links via the API is on the todo-list, but this also means: Tag auto-complete (via API), showing if link is already bookmarked, error-handling etc… So this might take some time.

      Google Reader support

      I just had a look at the instapaper bookmarklet: Very cool and the google reader handling is quite sophisticated.. not easy to create something similar.

      But you can do the following:
      – Right click on the article headline (the link) in Google Reader and use the context menu: “Add link” or “Read link later”.
      – The title is not yet correct (always “Google Reader”), but the linked article is saved correctly..

      1. Thanks for the speedy reply. Looks like I have a while to wait before I can use Pinboard as a “watch later” tool for multiple reasons: no URL support for tagging means I can’t use custom bookmarklets (I tried and was hoping you were using the API already), and I can’t even get a list of unread bookmarks by tag anyway!

        1. Okay.. as soon as I find some time for the Safari plugin, API integration is the next step.

          But the pinboard-team is also very open to feature requests (and probably even more busy :) So just ask in the pinboard-dev group – if you haven’t already.

          1. Now that we have API, and Pinboard lets us sort unread by tag… I’m itching for source-matched autotagging again ;-)

            (Also, is Lion/Safai 5.1 breaking “save tabset” for everyone, or just me?)

            1. About further API integration: That’s definitely planned – as soon as I find some time I’ll begin with it :)

              Lion/Safari 5.1 tabset bug: This is a known problem in Safari (see comments below) Fixed now.

              mario

  11. hello
    thanks for this!
    feature request for a ‘starred’ button so i can see the links with a star??
    that would be so useful
    :)
    regards
    from australia

      1. either?
        or both!
        i would love to be able to have a tagged button too which i can configure to show a particular set of bookmarks with a specific tag
        :)

        1. I’ll have a look for the next version, the “star”-button is no problem is not easy to realize, unfortunately.

          The downside of a configurable tagged button is that I think the extension will become somehwat overloaded with features and configuration settings. I’ll think about that :)

  12. Maybe I’m missing it, but if you have some text selected in the current page when you click the “Add” button (or read later, etc), can it put the selected text into the “description” field on the pinboard add page? I usually copy & paste a summary paragraph from the page and this would save a step. I thought it did this at one time, but doesn’t seem to now (I’m using the pop-up window).

    Great extension, btw, thanks!

    1. (See below)

      it works if you either use the keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Shift+A usually) or the context menu (right mouse button: “Add current page”).

      It does *not* work if you use the buttons on the toolbar. That was somewhat difficult (as far as I remember.. :), but I’ll have a look for the next release.

    2. Hi again,

      I had a look, check out the beta version 2.6 (just updated);

      Now it works if you either..
      ..use the keyboard shortcut (Cmd+Shift+A usually) or ..
      ..the context menu (right mouse button: “Add current page”) ..
      ..or the toolbar button (on the main Safari toolbar).

      Only the “add”-button on the Pinboard-Toolbar doesn’t check it, this is might become difficult because of the messaging system in Safari extensions.

      Hope that helps:)

    1. No problem:
      In Safari go to Preferences, choose the Extensions tab, click on Pinbar (in the list of installed extensions). There’s an uninstall button on the right side:

      Uninstall pinbar

      (This is the same for all Safari extensions).

      1. Figured it out. Pinboard has a command for Read Later and says nothing about it. I more or less lept to the assumption it was to Instapaper. It’s not. Saves to a list of unread bookmarks within Pinboard. Which is fine.

        With kind regards,

        Morley

  13. In fact it nagged me 2 times – but with about 17 alerts each.

    Nice to have the developer next to me, so I yelled … eehhhm … filed the bug report instantly with an enormous amount of swear words ;)

  14. Thanks very much for adding the toolbar toggle shortcut. However, it only seems to work every so often. Anyone else get this? Sometimes it will not work for the current window, but if I open a new window or tab, it works. Anyone else get this?

    1. Hi –

      that’s a Safari drawback, you have to focus the current page (and a page has got to be loaded).

      So please try this: Click into the webpage and try again. Does this help?

  15. Can you add a keyboard shortcut for showing/hiding the toolbar? I’ve tried adding a keyboard shortcut in the system-wide keyboard shortcuts, but they don’t work.

    1. Two good news :)

      First – that should be no problem, since it’s already halfway done: If you close the toolbar and press cmd+shift+f it is being opened (and closes after you search for a bookmark or press escape). So another keyboard shortcut is very easy to implement in the next release (probably in a few).

      And second: System wide keybord shortcuts do work, but you have to add the same shortcut twice – once for “show”, once for “hide”. Here’s how it looks for the German Safari:

      1. I look forward to seeing that. The second solution does not seem to work in English. I copied the menu item precisely (it says “Hide Pinboard Toolbar bar” on my system), but the shortcut never works.

        1. Strange that the shortcuts don’t work (did you copy the 2nd item also and didn’t accidentally use a shortcut that’s already in use?)..

          Nevertheless the next days I’ll put the update online.

  16. And now the keyboard shortcuts are perfect. Thank you so much for making the perfect delicious safari replacement. Have more of my money! yayyy!

  17. If you make the commands menu items, we can create our own keyboard shortcuts using the OS X keyboard shortcuts pref pane. Then they’re user configurable without any extra effort on your part (aside from adding the menu items).

    1. Yes, already thought about that – but I assume, extensions only have the possibility to add items to a context menu, not the main menu.

      And I *think* it’s not possible to create shortcuts for context menu entries in OS X.

  18. Something occurred to me when I went to set this up on my macbook… I have no number pad! Any way the hotkey can be configurable by the user? I’d love to be able to use command-Y, and I’m sure other users have their own preferences.

    1. Yes of course – that was only a first, quick solution. The next version will have at least another set of shortcuts (which are usable on a small keyboard).

  19. I’m not sure if these is even possible, but the one thing that would make this extension absolutely perfect for me are hotkeys — in particular, a hotkey that would bring up my save-to-pinboard window. I’ve usually got my hands on the keyboard while I browse, so having to click a button is a drag.

  20. Hi, I’ve been using it and its really useful. One suggestion: an option in the settings to not show the toolbar. For me the buttons are enough.

    Thanks for your work!

  21. what do I use as a login name and passwor d? Clicking on read later takes me to a login screen. DO I USE MY FACEBOOK LOGIN INFO? sorry for the upper case I’m not yelling really. Thanks for making this ext,

  22. A little suggestion: could you change the button design of the pin, so only the pin is obscure gray and the background light gray?

    It would fit more with the design of the other Safari icons.

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