PlugSuit: Say Goodbye to SIMBL
Last year there were rumors being spread about the end of InputManagers in Leopard. The rumors contained horrifying details about the end of InputManager and SIMBL. One developer, Emanuele Vulcano, developed PlugSuit, a new way to apply SIMBL InputManagers. This guarantees that these plug-ins would not meet their demise. Although the rumors turned out to be false, this development ensures the existence of application plug-ins for years to come.
While developing PlugSuit, Emanuele decided to not just replicate what SIMBL does, but to add more functionality. Unlike SIMBL, PlugSuit runs as a preference pane to give the user more control over its actions. From here, you can install and uninstall plug-ins. This makes PlugSuit easier to use than SIMBL, because you do not have to transfer the plug-ins to the SIMBL plug-in folder any longer.
PlugSuit also allows its users to exclude programs from being enhanced by a certain plug-in. The exclusion feature is great because over time programs become incompatible with certain plug-ins. Now one can easily stop any problems from ever occurring. Also, this application has an emergency off button. Located in the preference pane, a user can press the “Disable It” button if they feel something is not right with their computer. From here, a user can restart his computer to see if the problem persists. If it does not, he or she will have to uninstall the plug-in causing the problem. With these safety features you can not go wrong by installing PlugSuit.
There is one more feature that I have still not written about; PlugSuit is compatible with all of the plug-ins previously used with SIMBL. This means Mac users can enjoy a lifetime of their favorite plug-ins. There are definitely some plug-ins I could not live without, including Chax, Twicetab, Saft, and SafariTabs. I truly suggest downloading the free PlugSuit plug-in manager today in order to preserve your plug-ins for future use.
I’ve been using PlugSuit for a number of months now, and I find every so often (once every two days now), PlugSuit will disable itself for no reason whatsoever. It’s really odd. Other than that though, it’s quite nice.
I really should spend 15 minutes to figure out why it keeps disabling. Ha.
I recently had huge problems with PlugSuit after mirroring my Leopard installation via SuperDuper.
The backup was bootable but ALL Cocoa apps were crashing instantly. Turned out that it was PlugSuit’s fault and I had to completely wipe it. The good thing is that all the SIMBL plugins are still working so I really don’t miss anything.
Even Afloat is working when you install it, it tells you you HAVE TO install PlugSuit to use Afloat.
@Chris Thomson: The new update should fix that problem or so they say.
SIMBL used to crash my QuickSilver all the time…
[...] This is as a result of using PlugSuit – disabling/deleting PlugSuit eliminates this issue. This guy has had the same issue. __________________ Stephen Stephen Lark [...]
@Patrick: I have had the same issue:
http://forums.mactalk.com.au/33/59083-raid-1-external-hard-disk-bootable.html#post661142
i had the same issue with cocoa apps crashing instantly after superduper restore and i just used the latest version of plugsuit. which means it hasnt been updated untill april, 2009.