Using Mahalo with Safari's search bar

Believe it or not, I like Safari. I like the speed, I like the look and feel, I like the integration with .Mac. I have Firefox but frankly it doesn't feel very Mac optimized and crashes for me. Safari has a few shortcomings but nevertheless it's my primary browser. My AJAX developer friends say that Safari is worse that IE6, but I say foo on them.

I'm not alone.

Safari usage on TE has been slowly rising. With the iPhone, iPod Touch and now Android all using Webkit (read: Safari) as their browser I only see Safari marketshare climbing. I also like to try new things. While my default browser for searching has been Google for years I figured it was time for a change.

Jason Calacanis has a new project called Mahalo.com which promises to put a human touch on search results. Sounds intriguing if nothing else, but how can I integrate it into my Safari search bar just like Google? It's actually quite simple, but it will cost you $12.00 USD (well worth it).

There is an extension of Safari called Saft which allows users to extend Safari beyond its original spec. Things like full-screen browsing, kiosk mode, always open new windows in a tab (which is why I bought it) are only a few of the features. The key feature that Saft offers is the ability to change the default search engine in Safari to anything I like. While Saft doesn't come with Mahalo pre-installed, it's possible and quite easy to add it.

Once Saft is installed, open your Safari preferences then go to the Saft tab. Click on 'Shortcuts' and then click on 'Add'. You'll want to use the following settings:

Name: Mahalo

Shortcut: mahalo

URL: http://www.mahalo.com/Special:Search?search=%@&go=search

Once that data is entered hit 'OK' then close your browser and re-open it. Click on the magnifying glass in the Safari search box, choose Mahalo and search away!

There is another way to edit the default search engine in Safari but it's not for the faint of heart. Any new user or users that are not familiar with the command line in OS X should stick to the above hack and not dive in all Leroy Jenkins style. If you are a *nix geek and feel safe in the command line, check out this thread in macosxhints.com but since I already owned Saft for all the other cool things it can do, I did the above. If you use Safari every day as your primary browser, Saft is well worth it, not just for search engines but many other nifty hacks too.

Now that I have Mahalo as my default search engine, it's time to see what it can do. I'll report back in a few weeks, but in the mean time if you have used Mahalo for a while, what has your experience been?

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