Take Control of Safari 6: Get help with advanced features in Safari 6

Take Control of Safari 6

Become a Web-browsing wizard by learning all that Safari can do for you.

Sure, nearly anyone can get around well enough on the Web in Safari. But Apple has been improving Safari for years, and it has a treasure trove of features that most people never notice. No one ferrets out those features—and their shortcuts—better than Sharon Zardetto. She wrote this ebook to help you use Safari faster, smarter, and better than ever before.

You'll start your advanced Safari education by customizing your environment, especially its toolbar, bookmarks, and top sites. Then you'll explore key browsing techniques, including how to access sites you've visited in the past quickly, load multiple Web pages at once, and sync open tabs among your Apple devices. You'll also find advice on how to go beyond the basics for searching both the Web in general and any page you're viewing, fill out forms, automatically, manage stored passwords, keep pages around to read later, and discover the most worthwhile extensions that expand Safari's feature set.

What about compatibility? Safari 6 runs in 10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion, but its feature set is slightly restricted in Lion, and Sharon points out the differences. For 10.6 Snow Leopard or 10.5 Leopard, read Take Control of Safari 5.

Read Me First
Introduction
Safari 6 Quick Start
Customize Your Safari Environment
Navigate to and within Web Sites
Wrangle Windows
Tame Multiple Pages with Tabs
Manage Your Top Sites
Tune Out Page Clutter with Reader
Handle Web-Page Notifications
Work with the Reading List
Share from the Share Button
Set Up and Use Bookmarks
Retrace Your Steps through History
Stealth Browsing
Know Your Search Options
Use AutoFill for Forms and Passwords
Track Your Downloads
Expand Safari’s Capabilities with Extensions
Appendix A: Create a Web-Clip Widget
About This Book

Read Me First

This book shows you how to make the most of Safari 6, a deceptively powerful Web browser with features you may have never even tried. The book was written by Sharon Zardetto, edited by Tonya Engst, and published by TidBITS Publishing Inc.

Introduction

Why do you need a book about Safari? You’ve probably been using Safari for quite a while, and you’re doing just fine.

But you don’t have to settle for “fine.” In all likelihood, Safari does far more than you’ve been asking it to, and those things you have been doing with it you can do more quickly, elegantly, and efficiently when you know Safari’s ins and outs. I can vouch for that because back when Safari 4’s beta version was released, I vowed to finally, finally, explore Safari thoroughly, in order to find the best way to organize bookmarks, learn about tab options instead of using them solely in the most obvious way—oh, and deal with the pesky issue of having dismissed the offer to save a password for a site and never again being asked to do so. Ever since then, I jump on Safari’s newest releases to explore its changes.

Because I devote so much time to this, you don’t have to. You won’t have to learn bits and pieces from various sources, experiment on your own, or click your way through the not-exceptionally-helpful Help system to put together disconnected bits of information.

No matter how you use Safari—for lightweight general surfing or middleweight targeted browsing with (a probably disorganized pile of) bookmarks—this book will take you to the heavyweight division, with toned tabs, a buffed bookmarks bar, ad-free main-article reading, read-it-later-offline storage, and more.

Safari 6 Quick Start

The material in this book is the least linear of any Mac book I’ve ever written: there are few interdependencies among the topics, so you can start with any one that piques your interest or is likely to answer the burning questions you have about using Safari—whether they’re of long-standing duration or specifically about Safari 6. Luckily, ebook links lend themselves to just that sort of approach!

On the other hand, if you don’t want to accidentally miss anything, just follow the advice given to Alice: “Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Upgrade to Safari 6 if you have 10.7 Lion:

Safari 6 is automatically installed with 10.8 Mountain Lion, but is also available—sans a few features—for Lion systems. Choose Apple > Software Update if you haven’t upgraded yet.

Check out Safari’s new features:

If you want to hit the highlights of new features, use the links in What’s New in Safari 6.

Customize your experience:

From top (the toolbar) to bottom (the status bar), you can tweak Safari’s looks and basic behavior—see Customize Your Safari Environment.
For more advanced customization, find out how to Organize the Bookmarks Bar and how to Expand Safari’s Capabilities with Extensions.
If you’re setting up Safari for a child, you can set limits with parental controls, as described in A Different Kind of Careful Browsing.
Set your Safari preferences. Its various preference panes are covered in their topic areas, such as:

Set Your Tab Preferences
Override Window-Opening Links
Set Your Bookmark Preferences
Define Your History Range
Turn On AutoFill Sources
Set the Download Preferences

Learn key browsing techniques:

You know the basics, but you can learn their details in:

Navigate to and within Web Pages
Track Your Downloads
Use AutoFill for Forms and Passwords

See how you can read an “article” without ads distracting you or having to click from one page to the next when it’s split across several pages in Tune Out Page Clutter with Reader.
Juggle multiple sites with finesse by learning how to Tame Multiple Pages with Window Tabs.
Learn about the different ways you can go back to previously visited Web sites in Manage Your Top Sites, Set Up and Use Bookmarks, and Retrace Your Steps through History.
Read how you can store a Web page for later reading, offline, in Work with the Reading List.
Protect your privacy: Store and Edit Your Passwords, and learn about Stealth Browsing and how to Erase Your Tracks with the Reset Command.
Optimize your search techniques in various areas with:

Search the Web
Search within a Page
Search Your History and Bookmarks

What’s New in This Edition

This ebook is effectively the third edition of an ebook that I’ve been writing about Safari, beginning with Safari 4, continuing with Safari 5, and now focusing on Safari 6.

Out with the old, in with the new! That about sums it up. I’ve deleted obsolete material (RIP, RSS!) and added coverage about new features in Safari (see What’s New in Safari 6). In addition, I’ve tweaked some general information that’s system-specific, since we’re two systems (10.7 Lion and 10.8 Mountain Lion) beyond what was current for the last edition of this book. So for instance, using the new-in-Lion Mission Control/Application Windows (Switch Windows) and full-screen mode (Hide Windows with Full-Screen Mode) to control Safari window clutter get their due. Also, the concept of mailing Web links or pages, and how Safari coordinates with Apple Mail isn’t new, but there is a new way to access the options as well as new ways to format the information you send, as described in Email Links or Page Content.

Some things are new to this edition that aren’t new to Safari 6 because of the leapfrogging nature of app updates and book updates:

The Reading List, which was added to Safari 5.1, is new to this book because it came out after the Safari 5 edition did. (But the feature was considerably updated for Safari 6, so make sure you read all about it, in Work with the Reading List.)
Now that extensions are not the Brand New Thing, it’s easier to poll experts about the ones they recommend, which is just what I did, and I’ve added the list for your convenience. I put special notices, like the one below, throughout the book wherever I discuss a feature (or lack thereof) that a specific extension addresses, linking it to the fuller description in Recommended Extensions, where you’ll find links to downloadable versions.

What’s New in Safari 6

Safari 6, released with OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, is another step in the evolution of Apple’s browser. No, it’s not revolutionary by any means, but there are convenient, welcome improvements. In this chapter, I first list what’s new in Safari 6, and then I note which of the new features you won’t find if you’re still running 10.7 Lion.

Here are the new features in Safari 6, and where they’re explained:

The former “smart address field” is now exceptionally clever, and works as a combined address and search field, as described in Use the Address Field to Load a Page.
The Tab View lets you peruse all of a window’s open tabs without having to move from tab to tab.
Work with the Reading List to read Web pages offline.
Share from the Share Button to put email, messaging, tweeting, and more at your fingertips.
When more Web sites get up to speed with this HTML5 feature, you’ll be able to Handle Web-Page Notifications.
Use iCloud Tabs to pick up where you left off on another computer or device with the syncing of left-open tabs.
There’s a new Safari preference pane that lets you Store and Edit Your Passwords.

But, Apple giveth and Apple taketh away: RSS feeds are no longer available, and sorely missed.

What’s Not New in Safari 6 in Lion

The version of Safari 6 that’s available for 10.7 Lion is missing some features that are in the Mountain Lion version (most are dependent on Mountain Lion features):

Notifications.
iCloud Tabs: These are a special syncing convenience that lets you see what tabs you left open on one computer or mobile device when you’re using one of your other ones.
Tab View.
Share button: The soon-to-be (if not already) ubiquitous Share button came to Mountain Lion from iOS. It’s not available in Lion, but some of its commands (it sports a drop-down menu) are available elsewhere. Not, however, the Message, Twitter, and Facebook commands, since those connect to Mountain Lion’s innards.

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Book Info

iPad & Kindle

About the Author

Book Reviews

Reviews of Previous Editions

Author Interviews

Table of Contents

Read Me First

Introduction

Safari 6 Quick Start

Upgrade to Safari 6 if you have 10.7 Lion:

Check out Safari’s new features:

Customize your experience:

Learn key browsing techniques:

What’s New in This Edition

What’s New in Safari 6

What’s Not New in Safari 6 in Lion

What version of Mac OS X do I need to run Safari 6?

Can I read this ebook on an iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, or Kindle?

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From AUSOM News, published by The Apple Users' Society of Melbourne

Update Plans

When a browser plug-in update fails

Sharon and Chuck Talk about Safari 6