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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard Apps
If you're running Snow Leopard, one of the more important things that breaks is support for Input Manager-based plug-ins, such as (amongst many others) SafariStand, PithHelmet, Chax, MailTags, Mail Act-on, etc. In the long term, authors of these plug-ins are going to have to find another way to make their plug-ins work. For instance, both 1Password and Chax already have Snow Leopard-compatible solutions available.

In the short term, however, if you're willing to change the way your plug-in-using applications run in Snow Leopard, you can continue to use the Input Manager-based add-ons. To do this, quit the program in question, then click on it in the Applications folder and press Command-I to open the Get Info window. In the General section of the Get Info window, you should see a checkbox labeled Open in 32-bit mode. Check that, then close the Get Info box and reopen the application.

This should let any Input Manager-based add-ons work with the program in question, though I haven't done enough testing to claim it works for everything. I've chosen to run this generic hint about Input Managers in Snow Leopard, as opposed to a series of very similar hints on enabling each given Input Manager-based add-on. If you can further clarify the usability of this solution for specific add-ons, please feel free to do so in the comments.
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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard | 22 comments | Create New Account
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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: stephenr on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 9:58AM PDT
Apple is trying to give you a hint: InputManager "plugins" are bad Mojo.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: corienti on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 2:13PM PDT
Well then here is a hint in return for Apple: we need some form of plugin ability in Safari. Badly. We run crash-prone InputManager add-ons instead because we are so in need of plugins.

I myself can and will not use a web browser without adblocking. End of story. If I can't have Pithhelmet any more, I will have no option but to switch to Firefox, despite how vastly, vastly inferior it is to Safari. Most people I know have the same stance.

NB - if it goes another step further and there is no adblocking in web browsers, I will install a adblocking web proxy server on my Linux router.
Alternately, I might do that instead of switching to Firefox (that's how much better Safari is). Either way, the ads must be blocked.


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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: stephenr on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 6:43PM PDT
There is already an "Ad Blocker" package for OSX that works as a proxy.

The thing is, because Ads are just part of the web page content, I don't see any reason this couldn't be handled as a proper webplugin. It's when the thing needs to do something outside the bounds of a page that webplugins don't work..

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: johnsawyercjs on Sat, Sep 5 2009 at 6:36AM PDT
Try GlimmerBlocker. It works with ALL browsers, under OS 10.5 and 10.6.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: marook on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 10:27AM PDT
Ahh, no: The Input Manager plugins are 32-bit only.. ;-) and then ofcourse does not load if the app is run in 64-bit.. :-)

---
/Marook

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: interlard on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 10:35AM PDT
Sadly, the first Intel Macs are all 32-bit. They don't show that option and the Input Managers don't run.

Seems to me they all should run if the 32-bitness is the cure. Any ideas on why not?

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: Sesquipedalian on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 5:24PM PDT
On my Early 2006 iMac, all of my input managers work just fine.

Perhaps you upgraded straight from Tiger to Snow Leopard, and thus have your input managers stored in ~/Library/InputManagers instead of /Library/InputManagers. As with Leopard, input managers must be stored in the latter to work on Snow Leopard, whereas Tiger worked with both locations.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: Guid0mcman on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 11:38AM PDT
I"ve just tried it with glims which seem to install everything fine except the preferences. Just a lot of blankness. Still, it's better than nowt.


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10.6: 32 bit mode? Rosetta?
Authored by: robertv on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 1:33PM PDT
I checked info in Spell Checker and found the option:
Open using Rosetta
Perhaps this is what the hint is referring to as 32 bit mode.

Still no change in the program. Perhaps after my next boot . . .

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10.6: 32 bit mode? Rosetta?
Authored by: monkeyboyone on Fri, Sep 4 2009 at 4:31AM PDT
32 bit mode is not the same as Rosetta. Rosetta is the name of the PowerPC emulation software Apple created for backward compatibility with older PPC based systems. if you don't see a checkbox for 32 bit mode, your computer is not 64 bit capable and therefore everything is running in 32 bit mode already.

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10.6: 32 bit mode? Rosetta?
Authored by: DistantThunder on Fri, Sep 4 2009 at 8:16AM PDT
Well, it depends on the app. Some apps won't show the 32-bit mode check box. For example, on my system, AppFresh does not.

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10.6: 32 bit mode? Rosetta?
Authored by: mat79 on Sun, Sep 6 2009 at 12:35PM PDT
because AppFresh is only available as a 32Bit App.

(or the checkbox wouldn't be present if it is a 64bit only app, too)

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: houplagrundle on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 2:30PM PDT
Working with Safari Stand here. Which is good - I'd have missed that.


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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: bill10d on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 5:07PM PDT
The hint should be to set SAFARI to open as 32-bit. This will allow 1Password, AdBlock, Evernote, etc to run as usual.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: robg on Sun, Sep 6 2009 at 9:31AM PDT
No, because the hint works for apps other than Safari that use Input Manager add-ons.

-rob.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: tabuny on Thu, Sep 3 2009 at 5:48PM PDT
MailTags and Mail Act-on are not Input Managers. They are Mail Bundles, which are sanctioned by Apple. SL-compatible versions of both have just been released.



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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: eaganj on Fri, Sep 4 2009 at 5:21AM PDT
MailTags and Mail Act-on are not Input Managers. They are Mail Bundles, which are sanctioned by Apple.
That's not really true. Mail plugins are indeed Mail Bundles, and they use a plugin mechanism specifically builtin to Mail, but it's not necessarily true that they are sanctioned by Apple. They use a private, unreleased plugin API that has been reverse-engineered/inferred by code signatures.

Mail plugins can probably best be described as officially tolerated and unofficially accepted.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: Bodoggy on Fri, Sep 4 2009 at 7:16AM PDT
I used the 32-bit workaround for a while until I stumbled across GlimmerBlocker. It does exactly what Saft + AdBlock did before, but for free and instead of an InputManager, it uses a proxy. Much better solution IMO, while still allowing you to run in 64-bit mode.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: interlard on Fri, Sep 4 2009 at 3:51PM PDT
Thanks for the pointer to GlimmerBlocker! It even includes rules for keywords, so I'll get by until KeyWURL is updated.

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10.6: How to use Input Manager add-ons in Snow Leopard
Authored by: raider on Fri, Sep 4 2009 at 9:36AM PDT
I use Safari Adblock (for blocking ads):
http://burgersoftware.com/en/safariadblock

And clickToFlash (for blocking flash):
http://github.com/rentzsch/clicktoflash/tree/master

They both work fine. Of course I am in 32 bit mode because I have an old intel box that does not support 64 bit mode...

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10.6: Google Earth Internet Plug-In also 23-bit only
Authored by: Steve Hoge on Fri, Nov 13 2009 at 7:11AM PST
After updating to Snow Leopard the sites I visit that use the Google Earth plug-in for Safari quit working for the same reason as the InputManager addons mentioned in this thread.

The symptoms were somewhat obfuscatory: on these sites, instead of the Earth display I got a message in the browser frame that the Google Earth Plug-In wasn't yet compatible with Safari but that the Google team would have it working "real soon."

The Google Earth API pages describing current version compatibility don't yet address the issue and it took some more intensive Googling to uncover the problem.

It turns out that the existing Google Earth Plug-In will run perfectly fine when Safari is re-opened in 32-bit mode. Other incompatible Internet Plug-Ins like AdobePDFViewer will start working again as well.

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performance impact?
Authored by: Jensen on Wed, Dec 2 2009 at 11:05AM PST
Does turning an application from 64 bit to 32 bit make any kind of performance difference in that application or have any other impact besides allowing the input manager to run?

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