Mac OS X Tiger/Meet the Applications/Safari

Introduction

The original browser of choice among Mac OS X users was Microsoft's Internet Explorer for Mac. However, after Internet Explorer rose to dominate the market, Microsoft grew complacent and stopped updating it. By 2002, Internet Explorer was no longer a modern browser, and Apple began work on its own web browser to replace it.

In January of 2003, Apple's CEO Steve Jobs announced Safari, an all-new, Apple-designed web browser that was designed to replace Internet Explorer for Mac.

Since then, Safari has evolved into a browser to be reckoned with - with the greatest standards compliance of any browser (Mac or Windows), fast performance, and a crop of advanced features like tabbed browsing, RSS, and AutoFill. It's the third most popular browser in the world and the single most popular browser available for Mac OS X.

The Safari Interface

This section looks at Safari's interface and explains how to use it to browse the web. Safari is unique in that it actually has two toolbars (called the "Address Bar" and the "Bookmarks Bar"). Both can be toggled on and off independantly in the View menu. In addition, you can use the view menu to opt for a "status bar" to appear along the bottom of the window. This bar will display page loading progress and will tell you where links lead to if you roll your cursor over them.

Note that there's a third toolbar in Safari, called the "Tab Bar". You'll use it only if you turn on tabbed browsing, which is discussed later on in this chapter.

The Address Bar

This brushed metal toolbar houses all of Safari's basic web browsing controls. Like most toolbars in Mac OS X, the Address Bar is totally customizable. The default, factory-fresh toolbar has the following buttons and fields on it:

• Back/Forward - These two conjoined buttons let you go back to the previous page you viewed, or reverse the action of pressing the back button and return to the page you went back from.
• Stop/Reload - These two Web Browsing mainstays have been combined into one button: when a page is loading, this button halts the page-loading process. When Safari isn't loading anything, the button reloads the current page, in case it changed since you last loaded it or didn't load properly the first time around.

• Add Bookmark - This essential button, marked with a plus sign, lets you add the page you're looking at to your bookmark collection. Bookmarks are covered later on in this sub-chapter, along with exactly how this button works.
• Address and Search - These two text fields are probably the most important items in the Address Bar, and browsing without them would be very difficult indeed. The Address Field lets you type a web address (aka "URL"), and one press of the Return key later, takes you directly to it. It even doubles as a progress bar, filling up with a blue color as a page loads. The Search field, which is pill-shaped and marked with a magnifying glass, lets you perform a Google Web search right from your Safari toolbar. Clicking the tiny arrow next to the magnifying glass lets you review searches you have previously made.

TRICK: You can proportion the two text fields by dragging the small dot between them.

If you want to, you can add other buttons to the toolbar to help improve your web-browsing experience. You know the toolbar customization drill: right-click the toolbar and choose "Customize Toolbar".

The other buttons available are:

• Home - Safari lets you set a "Home Page", which is the first page you'll see when you open Safari. This button takes you there.

• AutoFill - AutoFill, a supremely useful Safari feature, is covered later on in this sub-chapter.

• Print - The print button does the same thing as the File > Print command or the ⌘P keystroke: it opens the standard Mac OS X print box and offers to print a hard copy of a web page for you.

• Report Bug - These days, Safari's standards compliance is legendary. It was the first browser ever to pass the "Acid2" test, a modern benchmark for browser compatibility. But back in the day, when Safari was still in beta (geek-speak for "released for testing") and Apple was just learning the ropes, the Report Bug button let Safari users complain to Apple about websites that didn't work correctly. It still works today, in case you find a site that disagrees with Safari.

The Bookmarks Bar

The thin metal strip of words under the Address Bar is the Bookmarks Bar. It's discussed in the Bookmarks section of this sub-chapter.

Browsing Around

Spell Checking

Safari, like most applications that use Apple's standard Programming API, has access to OS X's built-in spell check service. It can be used several ways. The first, and easiest to use way, is to have OS X check spelling as you type. This method can be activated by first clicking in any web page's entry field, then going to Edit > Spelling then select 'Check Spelling as You Type.' This feature will then underline misspelled words in red and allow you to correct the word from its suggestions by Control-Clicking (Right-clicking with a two-button mouse) the word. If you know you spelled the word right you can have OS X add it to the spelling dictionary by selecting 'Learn Spelling' from the Control-Click menu. This setting may only be active for that session of Safari but once activated only the red underlining may go away on relaunch. Spelling options will still be a Control-Click/Right-click away and easily re-enabled.

Alternatively you can check the spelling of an entire text area by pressing ⌘; or by using the Edit>Spelling>Check Spelling menu command. If you only want to check one word using this method simply select the word you wish to check and then pressing ⌘; or use Edit>Spelling>Check Spelling. Preferences for how spelling is checked can be changed, including what dictionary to use, by using the Edit>Spelling>Spelling… menu command.

Note spell checking will not pick up Roman numerals. (try to spell check cdcdc ). Spell checking must also be enabled per application even though it is a shared program (so Mac OS X Tiger/Meet the Applications/TextEdit, Mac OS X Tiger/Meet the Applications/Mail, and others need their own enabling of spell check.

If a spelling error is added it is put in a file at '~/Library/Spelling/en' if the entry is in English. There is syntax in the file so be wary editing it.

See also Mac 101 on Spell Check

Bookmarks and History

As you browse the web, you may find it convenient to keep certain web addresses handy for easy access. Safari includes many places to keep these stored addresses, called bookmarks.

The first place is the Bookmarks Bar. This brushed-metal strip directly below the Address Bar is something like a Dock for bookmarks: it keeps your very favorite websites within easy reach. To add a bookmark to this bar, navigate to the page you want to add. Click on the "Add Bookmark" button in the Address Bar, type a short name for the bookmark, and choose "Bookmarks Bar" from the pop-up menu. Then click "OK".

The bookmark now appears directly in the Bookmarks Bar. You can now visit the site you bookmarked simply by clicking the name that you chose.

TRICK: You can reorder bookmarks in the Bookmarks Bar by dragging them horizontally.

If the Bookmarks Bar fills up, an >> icon appears at the end. Clicking this shows a menu that contains all the bookmarks that didn't fit. However, this is hardly an ideal solution. For bookmarks that you use semi-frequently but do not want on your Bookmarks Bar, you can use the Bookmarks Menu instead.

This menu works just like the Bookmarks Bar. To add a page, navigate to the page you want to add, click on the "Add Bookmark" button, type a name, but this time choose "Bookmarks Menu" from the pop-up menu. Then click "OK". The page now appears in the Bookmarks menu.

Bookmarks Manager

Folders

Once you start accumulating bookmarks, you'll want to organize them into folders. To do this, you'll use a part of Safari called the Bookmarks Manager. You can get to the Bookmarks Manager by clicking the little book icon in the left side of the Bookmarks Bar. The website you were viewing will be temporarily covered up by the Bookmarks Manager. This screen lets you organize your bookmarks and delete ones you don't want anymore.

The sidebar on the left contains collections of bookmarks. You'll notice that two of these collections are named Bookmarks Bar and Bookmarks Menu. These contain the bookmarks that appear in the Bookmarks Bar and Bookmarks Menu. Click one of these in the sidebar, and the contents pane to the right will display the bookmarks inside.

Let's say you want to add a folder inside the Bookmarks Menu collection. To do this, click the second plus button from the left at the bottom of the screen. The folder appears in the contents pane, ready to be named. Once you have finished typing a name, press the return key. You can then put the bookmarks inside the folder by dragging them onto the folder's icon. Folders like these are great for grouping websites with similar subjects; you could create a folder called "Macintosh" that contains all of your Mac-related websites.

Folders appear in the Bookmarks Bar as pop-up menus, and in the Bookmarks Menu as sub-menus.

If you want to delete a bookmark or folder of bookmarks, find it in the Bookmarks Manager, select it in the contents pane and pressing the delete key on your keyboard.

Collections

There are some other collections in the sidebar besides "Bookmarks Bar" and "Bookmarks Manager". These contain bookmarks that appear in neither the Bookmarks Bar nor the Bookmarks Menu. You actually have to open the Bookmarks Manager and double-click on them when you want to access the site they point to. This is rather inconvenient, so these folders are for bookmarks that you use infrequently.

You can create a collection with the plus button at the far left. Apple gives you a bunch of these collections already stocked with bookmarks to help you discover some websites. But if you don't want them gunking up your sidebar, you can delete them by clicking on their name and pressing the delete key on your keyboard.

TRICK: You can do a Spotlight search for your bookmarks with the search field at the bottom of the Bookmarks Manager.

Tabbed Browsing

Basics

Tabbed Browsing is a productivity feature in Safari that lets you view multiple web pages in the same window. It vastly streamlines the browsing experience, and it's a great idea to learn how to use it.

The first thing you have to do is turn Tabbed Browsing on. To do this, you'll need to visit Safari Preferences. Just like every other application, Safari's preferences can found in the application menu, or can be accessed by pressing ⌘-comma. Once you're inside Safari Preferences, click on "Tabs". The pane that appears contains three checkboxes. The top one is the one you're looking for; the master switch that turns on Tabbed Browsing. However, don't expect anything magical to happen when you check the box. You can now close Safari Preferences.

The magic happens when you create a tab. To do this, press ⌘T. A few things happen. First of all, the third toolbar mentioned at the beginning of this sub-chapter magically appears below the Bookmarks Bar. This is called the Tab Bar. You'll notice it contains two tabs. Try clicking them and watch what happens. One of the tabs contains the web page you were just viewing; the other one is the one you just created, which is blank.

Each tab is now a totally separate entity. You can browse the web in one tab, then click on the other and find it totally undisturbed. If you're in the middle of editing a Wikibook and want to quickly check on Mac news, you can create a second tab for the Mac news site, browse around a bit, and then go right back to your Wikibook editing. Depending on how you browse the web, you might find it convenient to open three, four, or even ten tabs at the same time.

You can close any tab by clicking on the little "X" button inside it.

Tips and Tricks

A few tabbed browsing pointers:

• You can opt to have the tab bar displayed even with only one site open by checking "Always show tab bar" in the Tabs pane of Safari Preferences.
• You can still open multiple windows when tabbed browsing is turned on. Each window can have a different set of tabs inside.
• The keyboard shortcuts used for tabbed browsing change depending on settings. Check the Tabs pane of Safari Preferences for a list of keyboard shorcuts that apply to your current settings.

RSS

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication". It's an emerging web standard that lets website creators make special pages for their websites called "feeds". Feeds have no visuals or layout; they simply provide a list of links with descriptions. It's up to an RSS reader application like Safari to display the links in a feed in a visually appealing way.

Feeds are taking the web by a storm, and you're lucky to have Safari; its RSS functionality is often considered the best of any browser. As you will see if you read this section, there are many unique uses for feeds.

Finding a Feed

Finding a feed is pretty easy. Start by hopping on over to apple.com.

NOTE: Remember to hold down ⌘ as you click the link. Doing so will cause it to open in a new window or new tab (depending on settings), so you can continue to read this wikibook while trying out the feed.