Of all the awesome free/shareware written for the Mac over the years and later seemingly abandoned, I lament AcidSearch most of all. Instantly a "must have" add-on for Safari it is another one of those features Apple should just build right into their browser and be done with it.

(PithHelmet, another Safari plug-in based on SIMBL is the other. But at least begging and pleading from the Mac community have seemingly succeeded in arm-twisting the developer into keeping it alive from Safari build to build.)

The latest betas up through 0.7b3 on Pozytron's site are not fully functional in Safari 3.x, constantly misbehaving by not clearing previous search lists, losing channel settings sporadically, menu items that don't function, etc. And development appears to have ceased back in November with nary an explanation-- long before the latest Safari 3.1 came along.

Oh how I wish more of these little Mac gems were developed by a team of folks similar to open source projects. Of course, anyone can (and should) donate to show support to a solo developer but it's no guarantee the development will go forward when life interrupts their ability to stay up all night squashing bugs and fulfilling the endless supply of feature requests from their users. (I'm sure the few dozen donators listed on Pozytron's site can attest.)

Alas, I'm left wrestling with this thing as-is because I can't make myself let go. I'll just carry on until it completely breaks and keeping praying that 0.7b3.1 will appear someday. ;-)