Merged many good pull requests for you

This PR is an amalgamation of the merging of many of the good pull requests that have been submitted but not merged. I've compiled and tested them and they all work together.

Anyone who wants an app package with all these changes can download one here (not signed sorry):
<http://thume.net/downloads/Slate.zip>

@jigish if you don't want to look at individual PRs you can just merge this one.

Creators of PRs in this one: @josh- @napcae @jpsim @mattr- @wincent @georg