Who says you need an application? Sometimes, all you need is a plug-in to make your regular apps run harder, better, faster, and stronger. However, plug-ins don't get the respect and recognition that full fledged apps do. And while there are applications to do most things, who needs an application when a simple plug-in can do everything behind the scenes?

We introduce the ten “Flugins” (free plug-ins) that will make you forget there were ever shortcomings in your favorite OS X apps.

QuickTime Plug-ins

>>Perian Tools

If QuickTime player was a bread bowl, and your video was soup (forgive us, we're hungry), Perian would be the forks, knives, and spoons all in one. You only need one file format to play the video, but it has so many extras that you will never be caught off guard. Perian includes playback support for MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture, all within QuickTime. Yeah, we didn’t know there was a "Fraps" file format either. Technically, you could just download VLC player, but QuickTime integrates much better with other OS X applications, and it's set to be the default media player, anyways.

Perian can be downloaded here.

>>Flip4Mac

Apparently (and surprisingly) there are still a lot of people using Windows Media Player for their everyday tasks. However, there is a glaring lack of support for the Windows media file formats (WMV and ASF) in OS X. To add insult to injury, even though there are third-party solutions that can open WMV files, like the excellent Miro Player, there is no way to play windows media files that are embedded on Web pages. Flip4Mac has a solution, and even though it only does one thing, it does it well. It extends WMV and ASF support throughout the OS X ecosystem, so your compatibility worries can go away. There is a free version that merely allows playback of Windows Media files, which is enough for us, but if you want to convert WMV to QuickTime, export to WMV, or export to HD WMV, you will have to shell out some cash.

Flip4Mac can be downloaded here.

>>Glims

The browser wars are in full swing. Internet Explorer, once the unquestioned king of the Internet hill, finds its market share declining, while Firefox gains momentum every week. And it's no surprise, given its combination of geek-friendly extensibility and basic user-oriented stability. That's not to say it's perfect; it's notorious for being RAM-intensive, a problem exacerbated by its imperfect port to OS X. However, without comparable features, such as saved tabs and keyword searches, using Apple's native Safari feels like using a Honda while a Lexus is parked in the driveway.

Glims, a plug-in for Safari, offers a good compromise. It adds features like full screen browsing, saved tabs on close, auto-complete in search, enhanced form auto-completion, and our personal favorite, mappable keyword search, which allows you to easily query any search engine from the address bar. While Glims’ feature set won’t appease hardcore Firefox users, it duplicates the functionality of some of Firefox’s most popular extensions.

Glims can be downloaded here. However, as of this writing (6/26/09) there is no Safari 4 compatible version. We assume one is in development, but until then, it can actually increase the probability that Safari crashes on launch, so we recommend you don't download it.

>>AdBlock

Firefox users know the power of Ad-Block, the veritable defense against your computer suddenly saying “You have won a free iPod nano.” However, if you are using Safari, the only built in defense is the pop-up blocker, which, while effective, does not prevent obnoxious banner ads. Enter Safari AdBlock, which presumably takes inspiration from the Firefox version of the same name. Unfortunately, Safari AdBlock still has fewer features than its Firefox counterpart. You can’t selectively block ads, and you can’t modify the block list, save for adding exceptions.

Safari AdBlock can be downloaded here.

NEXT: Quick Look Plug-ins

Quick Look Plug-ins

>>BetterZip

Even if you have been living in a cave for the past year, you probably know the sheer awesomeness of Quick Look, the OS X tool that allows you to preview the contents of files rapidly with a press of the spacebar. However, what Apple doesn’t advertise is the plethora of Quick Look plug-ins that allow you to preview many more file formats than the default installation. One of the best is BetterZip, a Quick Look plug-in that allows you to preview the contents of zipped folders. This is especially useful to check suspect compressed folders, because you don’t have to decompress them to see whats inside. It can also be useful if you are searching for a specific file and you don’t want to decompress and re-compress folders to find it.

BetterZip can be downloaded here.

>>Folder

Folder is like BetterZip, but allows you to preview the contents of regular folders. If you want to quickly check the organization of your file browser without having to go through Finder, this is the plug-in for you. There isn’t much more to say about it - it is built for one purpose, and does its task admirably.

Folder can be downloaded here.

>>Honorable Mention: ColorCode

If you work with a lot of code, regardless of language, you know how useful syntax highlighting is. You also know that opening up a full IDE is overkill if you just want to browse some code. ColorCode introduces syntax highlighting to Quick Look, offering support for 140+ languages (most languages that OS X recognizes as source code).

ColorCode can be downloaded here.

NEXT: Spotlight Plug-ins

>>ZipLight

If you love the idea of the BetterZip quick look plug-in (#5), but tend to find files with spotlight instead of finder, check out ZipLight, a Spotlight plug-in that lets you search within Zip files. Of course, when you eventually want to use the file, you will have to unzip the folder.

ZipLight can be downloaded here.

>>Google Importer

If you find yourself searching Google too often and would like quicker access to it, the Google Importer Spotlight plug-in will bring Google’s search engine to Spotlight. It works with regular queries, showing internet results alongside files and folders that Spotlight has indexed. Beware though, it has been known to crash if you try to search too many times in a short period - hopefully the developers will fix this bug in a future release.

Google Importer can be downloaded here.

System Wide Plug-ins

>>NTFS--3G

If you have a Boot Camp partition, you know one of the most annoying things to do is transfer files between partitions. Windows does not have read or write support for HFS Journaled, the OS X filesystem, and most external hard drives that are built for Mac are HFS Journaled. So, you generally have two options: USB sticks, or emailing files to yourself.

NTFS-3G gives you an easier solution. Using the MacFuse SDK, which was developed by a few Google employees, it allows you to mount and handle NTFS formatted drives as if they were native Mac ones. This means you can drag large files from your Mac drive to your Windows drive, and vice versa, just using Finder.

NTFS--3G can be downloaded here.

>>Growl

Growl is so widely used by different applications that you likely have it already installed, without even knowing it. However, it is so critical to the Mac experience that we felt we had to include it. Growl is a system wide notifier, of sorts, that allows different applications, like Adium, Transmission, and Dropbox, to alert you with system messages without bouncing the dock or playing an obnoxious sound. Instead, you see a bubble in a predetermined corner of your screen that disappears in a few seconds. Growl is highly configurable, and you can generally set how it is used from individual application preferences.

Growl can be downloaded here.

Have a favorite plug-in you want to share with the world? Drop the info in the comments section.