8 killer Safari 5.01 extensions

Apple's new Safari extension gallery looks a lot like the iOS App Store, populated with colorful icons that hold strange and wonderful things. In case browsing the 100 extensions Apple offers for Safari 5.01 is too much effort, here are eight good ones to get you started:

TrueNew

Gmail users who can't keep up with their inboxes should appreciate TrueNew, which shows not only the number of unread messages, but the number of messages that came in since you last took any inbox action. Ignorance of unread messages is bliss. TrueNew is also available for Google Chrome.

DeFacer

Facebook's "Like" button seems ubiquitous, and it's only been around for two months. If you're sick of all those little blue thumbs, DeFacer wipes web pages of Likes, Recommends and Shares, so you'll never be reminded of how Facebook is dominating the Internet.

MLB.com Toolbar

One of the extensions Apple is promoting heavily, MLB.com Toolbar creates a strip of baseball scores across the top of your browser. For games in progress, you can click buttons to watch highlights or view the pitch-by-pitch summary.

Turn off the Lights

Taking a queue from Hulu's "Dim the Lights" feature, Turn off the Lights darkens everything around a Web video. It can also do the same for Flash, coming in handy for games and animations that can't go full-screen. You can also get it for Chrome.

Flickr Original

Flickr is not friendly to folks who just want to view full-size images quickly. First you've got to click the thumbnail, then go to the "all sizes" page and finally click the original size. Flickr Original creates contextual options when you right-click on a thumbnail, letting you download or view the full-size photo directly. It's also available for Firefox.

InvisibleHand

When shopping online, retail sites usually don't tell you there's a better price available elsewhere. InvisibleHand does it automatically, raising a discrete message when the item you're looking at can be had for cheaper. It's also available for Firefox and Chrome.

Ultimate Status Bar

Nothing fancy here. Ultimate Status Bar just displays the kind of details you want to see when rolling over a link, such as the full URL if it's shortened and the size of non-HTML files. You can even customize the status bar's look with a handful of themes.

Franker

The problem with Google Translate is that it doesn't teach you anything. Franker lets you learn by showing the actual text alongside the translation. You can translate an entire page, or just a snippet through a contextual menu.