Simply press Command+Control+D while hovering your mouse over any word, and a little window pops up with the definition. No need to hold down the keys, as it has already been activated. However, if you do continue to hold the keys, you can move your mouse over another word to see its definition as well.

As I mentioned before, this is a separate application than the Dictionary App, and works on most applications in OS X, however not all. Older applications, most from the OS 9 era, were developed with a technology called Carbon. Newer applications use a technology called Cocoa. The pop up dictionary should work in all Cocoa applications such as Safari, Mail, iChat and TextEdit, but it will fall short in a few like iTunes and Word. I find it to be a lot quicker than copying and pasting the word in question into the Dictionary.app to look it up. Hope you all like it as much as I do.

With all the power iTunes offers, it can become overwhelming. iTunes desires to be your default player for near all media types. An amusing audio clip from Family Guy or The Simpsons ends up getting imported into iTunes. This audio clip then relentlessly follows you around and makes its way to your iPod and iPhone on your next synchronization.

Let’s see what we can do to keep iTunes clear of cruft, and only contain the data you want imported into it.

iTunes auto import and hijack of all media files
Every file has a default application that will open it when you double click on it. In the case of audio files, that default application is iTunes. Let’s take an example case, and step through how the process will work.

A friend emails you an mp3 to check out. You download it, and double click on it. Immediately, iTunes is launched, and the file is imported into iTunes. iTunes has now become the method by which you listen to this mp3 file.

If you have not made any changes to the default settings in iTunes, you now have a copy of the mp3 in your downloads folder. In addition, a copy of the file has been carried into iTunes as well. What most people do not know, is it is more than safe to delete the file from your downloads folder, as iTunes has made a copy of the file.

The trouble is, in many cases, users will not want to keep the file at all. They delete the file from the downloads folder, and a copy still remains in iTunes. You now have to delete the file from iTunes to get rid of it. This is an awful lot of work to just sample an mp3 a friend thought you would be interested in.

For me, this is even worse, as iTunes was launched, which takes time, and now I am burdened with cleaning up iTunes as well as the local copy in my downloads folder.

A much better default media player
OS X comes with a second media player, you know it as QuickTime. The good news is, if iTunes can play the file, so can QuickTime. What would be nice, is a method that allows you to open your media files in QuickTime, and bypass iTunes. QuickTime can provide this feature, and act as a small, simple, and fast player for you to sample you audio and video files.

If you decide you like the file, then you can take the steps to drop the file into iTunes and import it. 99% of the time, I do not want that 10 second clip of Homer Simpson saying “mmmmmmm donuts” ending up in my iTunes music library.

Forcing a new default media player
The solution is simple. The next time you download an mp3, or any audio or video file that would otherwise get opened in iTunes, hold off on the usual double click you are used to performing.

Instead, select the file and press command-I on your keyboard, or select the file and go to the File menu, and navigate down to Get Info.

This will bring up an information window as seen below:

If you look at this information window, you can see, the “Open with” section is set to iTunes.app. This means, that any time you double click on the file, it will open in that application by default.

We want to change that, from iTunes.app to QuickTime Player.app. Once you change the menu, click “Change All”. Now, any time you download a file of the same type, and double click on it, it will open in QuickTime.

QuickTime is a slim and fast player, which will allow you to evaluate your file before making the decision of wanting to keep it, or toss it.

You will only have to perform this change in the get info window once per file type. So, if someone sends you an mp3, you will need to make the change, and the next time, if someone sends you an aiff file, you will want to make the change for that file type as well.

There really are only about four or five types of files, once you set them, you will no longer need to worry about it, as QuickTime will now be the default player for testing files you download.

Saving your files back into iTunes
If you decide you do in fact want to keep the file and manage it within iTunes, it is a simple matter of dragging and dropping the file right into the iTunes window. You can also drop the file onto the iTunes icon in your dock and it will be imported.

If you have not changed your iTunes preferences, your files will be copied into iTunes. Since the file is copied, you are now safe to delete the original file you downloaded, as iTunes has stored it’s own internal copy of the file.

I find this method of managing audio files very useful. iTunes tends to get a good deal of junk imported into it, much of which cannot even be played on an iPod or iPhone. If you want to just use iTunes as a media player for data you want to save over the long term, this method of changing a files default launching should alleviate most of your organization issues.

We had a few rounds of email, over the course of a few days, in the end, I was unable to help. A solution was found, but not by myself, rather the user figured it out on their own. The solution was simple, and one I usually try as a first step, as should everyone. This time, it never crossed my mind, as I wrongfully assumed the user would also try this method as a first step.

The short story, his software was out of date, and simply needed to be updated. Never crossed my mind to even ask. Sometimes I get stuck in a troubleshooting bubble, this happened to be one of those times.

My first step was to have him try a hard coded DNS server. Second was to use OpenDNS servers. Third was to try to load websites by IP address, ruling out DNS issues entirely. Finally, we plugged his computer directly into the DSL modem, thereby ruling out any wireless or networking issues.

None of those methods worked. At the least, we narrowed it down to software issues, and not hardware or network related.

A few days later, I received an email from the reader telling me he got it working. A simple software update to Virtual PC and he was good to go.

If your software is not working as advertised. Look at their website, and see if they have an update that addresses your issues. I should express caution to the idea of running wild and updating all your software; often is the case a software update will fix one thing and break others.

Read the website, or email their support department, asking them about your specific issues. If all else fails, and you still can not get it working, update your software and see if that does the trick.

In the case above, the reader was using Virtual PC. I doubt any emails to Microsoft would have even been replied to, so his only chance was to run a software update. The good news is it worked, the bad news is we wasted three days because I did not think to ask if his software was up to date. The best news is the reader ended up working it out on his own, and learned something about the troubleshooting process along the way.

My gut tells me new users have no idea what RSS is, let alone the value it holds. I suspect that since there are links to RSS feeds on nearly every site, people are curious, but just have no idea where to turn to for good advice.

A Google search will show you nice definitions of RSS. You may walk away understanding that it is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. Even knowing that, to this day, those three words do little to help me in knowing what the heck RSS is good for.

Let’s fix that right now.

The basics of what RSS is
RSS is nothing more than a way to deliver information. You currently use a web browser to view web information. That information is on demand, meaning you have to ask for it. RSS removes some of that burden, and has a built in notification system.

Take note, it is a notification system, not a nag system. RSS is very non-intrusive; it will not get in your way, and will only help you once it is front-most and being used.

RSS is analogous to bookmarks
Understanding what RSS is, actually turns out to be pretty easy. Think of RSS as a way to bookmark a site. At its core, that is all a site that offers RSS is going to give you. Since you already know how to bookmark sites, you should be wondering what else RSS brings to the table.

Bookmarks are static and hidden. If you want to come back to OS X Help, you will have to locate the bookmark, and then visit the site. This implies you remember to do so. Making it even worse, you have no idea if there have been any new posts to the site at all.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all your bookmarks could in some way tell you if a site has new data on it since the last time you checked? This is the second core of what RSS can do for you. When a site is updated, you are alerted in an unobtrusive way.

If you have ever spent time on a site, hitting the refresh button on your browser to see if there is anything new, RSS will help alleviate that. If you have ever checked in daily on a site to only see nothing has changed, RSS will make it so you know exactly when to visit the site.

In summary, RSS, if supported by the site, it is a notification system to alert you when a site has new content for you to read.

Determine what sites support RSS
Not all websites support RSS. A site like Amazon has little reason to. Since Amazon is more of a shopping system, getting notification every time new content is posted would be overwhelming.

News sites, blogs, job listing sites, and pretty much any website where readable data is posted on a regularly changing basis, should have RSS support.

Safari makes it rather simple to tell. Load any website, and look in the upper right corner of Safari’s URL bar. If the site supports RSS, you will see a small blue rectangular icon that has white letters spelling out RSS. This means the site is offering what is called an RSS feed.

Viewing an RSS feed
If you click on the blue RSS icon, Safari will load the RSS feed. The page you now see, in general, is a slimmed down version of the main website. In most cases, it is sans nearly all graphics, and in plain text. This is just the RSS view mode of Safari. Since we have not saved any RSS feeds, the view has no real benefits other than being a more simple view.

Some RSS feeds contain full posts. Others, like ours, contain only a summary. The length of the data in the RSS feed is determined by the website creator. There are ways to see less data in your feeds, however, if the site owner decides to only show summaries, that is something beyond your control.

Now that you know how to view an RSS feed, let’s start to learn how to use it as a notification system. If you follow along to the end, you should get to a point where your top day to day sites are all part of an RSS system; and you know just which ones have been updated. You can then ignore the rest, since nothing has changed.

Setting Safari to show you unread RSS feeds
There are a few ways to manage RSS feeds in Safari; I am going to show you the way I feel is most accessible to new users.

Step one is to create a new folder on your bookmarks bar. The easiest way to do this is to control-click on the bookmarks bar and select the “New Folder” option. You will be asked to give it a name, I chose RSS. It will be placed at the beginning of your bookmarks bar. I moved mine to the end, but feel free to put yours wherever you want.

Now that you have an empty bookmarks bar folder called RSS, we need to put some items in it. I suggest you follow along with my examples. At the end, you can delete any sites from your RSS feed folder if you no longer are interested in them.

A good place to start is with this site. Click on the blue RSS icon in the URL bar, and you will see the slimmed down RSS version of our site. You should also see the URL change to “feed://osxhelp.com/feed/”. To the left of the URL, right to the left of the “f” in “feed” is an icon. Not all icons on every site will be the same. Drag that icon into the RSS bookmark bar folder. You will be asked to give it a name; in this case, keeping the default of OS X Help should be fine.

Follow through to the below sites, click on the RSS icon, and drag the feed icon into the RSS bookmarks bar folder.

• Google News
• CNN
• Apple

You should now have a total of four items in your RSS bookmarks bar menu.

Safari’s RSS notification system
It is a bit of a stretch to call the way in which Safari tells you new content is available to your RSS subscriptions a notification; nonetheless, Safari does notify you in several ways.

First, right next to your RSS bookmarks bar item, a number will show. (See above image) You may not see it just yet, but as new content makes it’s way to your RSS subscriptions, your RSS bookmarks bar icon will change from RSS to RSS (23) where 23 can be any number that reflects how many unread articles there are for you. This is a cumulative summary of all the articles for all your subscribed sites.

If you click once on the RSS bookmarks bar item, each site listing will get a number next to it. This represents the total number of articles on each specific site that has not yet been viewed by you. Sites with no new content will have no number listed.

I suspect by now, you are starting to see how great this is. No more stepping through your bookmarks to check on all your daily sites. A quick glance at your RSS button and you know which ones deserve your time.

Almost done… Don’t give up yet… A few more tips and tricks.

You can pick one RSS item at a time, and read the articles that you have not read in the past. Once you click on one, it will be removed from the running count in your RSS bookmarks bar item. The article listing will still remain, and expire from your view over time. This expiration time can be changed in your RSS preferences.

In the RSS bookmarks bar item you created, you will see one item labeled “View all RSS Articles”. Selecting this will show you on one page, every single site you are subscribed to.

I know, a bit daunting isn’t it?

As daunting as it appears, this is the item I select most often. The reason I use this most is it gives me full access to Safari’s RSS reader’s tools.

On the right of Safari when in RSS reader mode, are links and a search box. The search box allows you to filter out the listing and distill it down to just what you are interested in.

There are also options to change your sorting order, and even toggle between specific RSS feeds. You can even force a refresh so that if there are any new RSS articles to download, they will come in immediately. By default, RSS feeds are only checked every 30 minutes; this is something you can change in your RSS preferences.

I have not covered all the features in Safari’s RSS reader view, none are harmful, so click around and experiment.

Safari RSS preferences
If you navigate your mouse to the Safari menu, and down to Preferences, then click on the RSS tab, you can change a few options about how your RSS feeds are presented.

The Default RSS Reader should be set to Safari, only change this if you know why you need to change this setting.

The next two options define where Safari looks to automatically update your articles. I suggest checking both the bookmarks bar and the bookmarks menu. Even though in my sample case here, we only use the bookmarks bar, at a later time, you may want to put RSS items into a special bookmarks folder.

I am greedy, and tell Safari to check for new article updates every 30 minutes. You can change this to a less frequent interval if you are easily distracted. For me, being on top of what new news is out there is important. To be honest, 30 minutes is not soon enough.

The second to last option defines how articles are marked as read. When you have not read an article, it will have a small blue dot, as well as a blue outline around it. In one case just clicking on the article summary will mark it as read. In the other case, simply viewing the RSS page will mark all those articles as read. For clarity, I would suggest you leave this set to “After clicking on them”.

The last setting in the preferences allows you to define how long an item will show up in your RSS feed. I set mine to one week. If you use your computer less frequently, you may want to up the time. If you are pretty quick to read your RSS articles, set it to a lesser time frame.

Third party RSS readers
I suspect part of the confusion surrounding RSS readers is there are so many out there. Many of you wrote in asking how to get Google reader to work. Others mentioned I might want to cover NetNewsWire.

The point you need to understand is that Safari is not the only way to read RSS feeds. There are dedicated desktop applications like NetNewsWire, there are web-based tools like Google Reader, and there is even a way to use Apple’s mail.app email application to read RSS articles. Firefox also has strong tools for RSS reading as well.

In a future post, at the very least, we will talk about NetNewsWire and mail.app as a different way to read RSS articles. At this point, I think Safari is a great RSS reader for the beginner. Safari offers a no frills, yet simple way to get the job done. Gone are the days of remembering to go back and read part two of an article you were really interested in. Now, Safari will remind you in a gentle unobtrusive way.

To me, the greatest thing about RSS is that it allows my web reading to be done on my own terms. At a glance, I know what sites have new articles, and I can deal with it when I have free time. I do not need to worry about a sites article getting buried under other newer articles, as the RSS system keeps track of what I have and have not read.

If this is a bit much to digest all at once, please post a question in the comments. I strongly urge all of you to post your questions, or suggestions in the comments so everyone can learn as much as possible about how to benefit from RSS.

If you find yourself frequently pressing the back button in Safari, the SnapBack tool may save you a bit of time. Users that frequent large sites, such as Amazon.com, or Apple.com, or perhaps Ebay.com will find snapback to be valuable.

What does SnapBack look like?
Snapback presents itself to you as a small orange icon, with an arrow on it. You can see it in two places, either the far right of the URL bar, or the far right of the search box.

The snapback icon does not show up at all times, instead only under certain conditions. If you visit a site, perhaps our very own OS X Help, and then click on any link within the site, the orange icon will appear.

Clicking on the snapback icon in the URL bar will take you back to the first page you visited on the site.

SnapBack in use
Imagine you learn of OS X Help, and start reading it. You have clicked a few links, and are now several pages deep in the site. In order to get back to the first page you visited, most would click the back button a few times. While the back button does indeed work, it is slow.

Clicking the SnapBack button once, will take you back to your first visited page in an instant.

SnapBack for search results
Safari also will show the snapback icon at the far right of your browser, in the Google search box. It works the exact same way, with the exception that it applies to searching only.

For example, if you were to search for “OS X Help” in the search box, Google will show you a page of many results. Clicking on any of them will take you to that website. If at any time you want to get back to the main listing of search results, just click the orange snapback icon.

Force marking a page for SnapBack
It is also possible to force a page to be marked as your snapback page. Simply go to your History menu, and select “Mark Page for SnapBack”. While I rarely use this method, it may be useful to some of you.

Snapback is a small feature, and one that may go undetected to the casual user. In the beginning, I rarely used it. While I do not use it all the time, there are times I find it speeds up my web browsing a great deal.

Next time you notice the small orange icon, give it a click, it is one of the simpler Safari features to learn.

Today’s web browsing experience is as much driven by beauty and design as it is by putting out information. People have been pushing the limits of design in a web browser since the old days of modem connections and slow internet speeds.

While a browser is rather flexible in what can be displayed; all browsers do have various nuances in how they display a site. A well designed website should look near identical in every browser you view it in, whether it be Safari, FireFox, or Internet Explorer. The great news is Safari and FireFox both do a great job at trying to follow standards and give you a high quality viewing experience.

Today’s tutorial will cover one of Safari’s preferences that gives you a small amount of control to over-ride how a site is displayed. In general, these Appearance preferences should be reserved for those with eyesight disabilities. However, many people will at times find a site has type that is too small to read; Safari has you covered, and provides simple tools to make your reading a little more pleasurable.

Enlarging and shrinking fonts
While in Safari, navigate to the view menu, you will see three items, “Make Text Bigger”, “Make Text Normal Size”, and “Make Text Smaller”.

Selecting the larger or smaller option will do as you would suspect. If a website is difficult for you to read, select the “Make Text Larger” option, and it will bump up the font size. If the type is too large, and you would like to be able to read more of a site in one glance, you of course can make the type smaller. Finally, the “Make Text Normal Size” will bring everything back to how the website designer intended you to view the site.

While these options can make a site easier for you to read, it is important to know the layout, or the design of the site may suffer. Not all sites can gracefully shift their layout to accommodate the extra, or lack of space that a font size change may cause. As long as you are aware that you inspired the change, and an ill placed image is the cause of your font size adjustments, you should be fine. Also remember, it is very simple to change the site back to its original format by selecting “Make Text Normal Size”.

Changing fonts with the keyboard for efficiency
Many people will use these settings often, making them a perfect case for keyboard shortcuts. To make text larger, just press the command-plus keyboard combination, smaller is command-minus, and to bring it all back to normal, command-zero.

The Appearance preferences
Selecting the Safari menu, and down to Preferences, will bring up a palette that has numerous options. Over time we will cover them all, for now, I would like to concentrate on the Appearance portion.

Safari’s standard font
The first option of the Appearance preferences is setting of the “Standard Font”. By default, it is set to Times 16. You are free to change this to anything you like. In most cases, you will be best serves to leave this setting as it is.

“Times” refers to the name of the font, and “16″ refers to the size. This should not be confused with the font being 16 times larger.

When a developer makes a website, it is designed around a browsers default settings. Safari’s default of Times 16 is taken into consideration when the developer is building the site.

If you make this larger or small, all websites will be shown either larger or smaller in regards to the fonts. This can wreak havoc on sites that have strict design structures. At times, it can even make a site more difficult to navigate, as the larger fonts can push graphics elements off the page.

If you are burdened with a vision impairment of some form, I would go against my recommendation of leaving the setting as is. People with vision disabilities should do whatever it takes to make their internet experiences as comfortable as possible.

Safari’s fixed width font
In the same area is a setting to control Safari’s fixed width font settings. This has the same effect on fonts as the standard font setting with one exception. It only affects a certain type of font. A fixed width font is one in which the width of every character is identical to that of another character. For example, a skinny letter “i” will take up the same width as a fat letter “m”. I am again recommending this setting be left alone, unless you have a specific need to change it.

Display images when page opens
In the past, people have written in and asked how they can speed up their browser when they are on a slow internet connection. This setting is one such way. Un-checking the “Display images when page opens” will disable all images from loading.

In general, a page will load much faster with this setting off. If a site only has superfluous images, and they are of no use to understanding the content, you can turn this setting off.

The trouble with this setting is it is indeed valuable, but the difficulty in accessing it makes it near worthless to use. There are many sites I would not mind reading without images. The downside is it takes longer to visit the setting and locate it in the preferences than it does for me to sit patiently and wait for the website to load. Worse, when I want to turn it back on again, I have to repeat the same steps. Time wasted if you ask me.

Safari character encoding
The last preference in regards to Safari’s appearance has to do with character encoding. If you read English text, this should be left alone, and set to “Western (ISO Latin 1)”. If you read in a foreign language, set the character encoding to what is most logical.

Keep in mind; this is a default character encoding. Websites can and do over-ride this setting and force the encoding they feel is most appropriate for the language the site is written in.

The Safari Appearance preferences are pretty mundane and simple. In most cases you should leave them as they are. I wanted to point them out as there are people with disabilities, and it is important they are not treated like second-class citizens. Everyone gets old, everyone’s eyes wear out to some degree, and the Appearance settings may help you tolerate this inevitable problem.

The problem as I see it, with bookmarks, is you end up with an unmanageable list of links to sites. Over time, this list will grow to the point that it becomes easier to simply search Google for the site. If your bookmarks menu has gotten somewhat out of control; this tutorial will teach you basic organizational tactics allowing you to tame your bookmarks.

The bookmarks menu
The bookmarks menu, as shown below, has all the basic features you can access in regards to bookmarking. You have quick access to your bookmarks bar, the ability to add new bookmarks, see all your bookmarks, or even add a folder to help organize your bookmarks.

The bookmarks manager
If you select “Show All Bookmarks” from the “Bookmarks” menu, Safari will drop you into the bookmark editing area. It is here you have full control over all your bookmarks, as well as the bookmarks bar.

You can also access the bookmark manager by clicking on the small book icon on the left of your bookmarks bar. Of course, you need your bookmark bar set to visible, which was covered in Mastering Safari’s bookmarks bar.

Making a bookmark
Making a bookmark is simple, simply select “Add Bookmark” from the Bookmarks menu, or press command-D on your keyboard. A small sheet will pop down asking you what to name the bookmark, as well as where in your bookmark structure you want it saved. The name should default to the title of the site you are bookmarking.

One nice feature of adding a bookmark is that it will be saved to the same location as the last bookmark that was saved. I plan on exploiting this feature to a degree.

Exploring the Bookmark Manager
The bookmark manager has two sections, Collections and Bookmarks. You may not see a section called “Bookmarks” at first. If you have never dragged a bookmark to the side of the bookmark manager, this feature will not be visible.

Starting with the Bookmarks section, you can drag a URL out of the URL bar in Safari, and store them here. To me, this seems counterintuitive, as this section is not accessible from any other area than the bookmark editor. As far as I know, you cannot get to these bookmarks from any menu in Safari.

If you want to store items in the Bookmarks area of the bookmark manger, by all means do so. I find it takes too long to jump from Safari’s browser view, into the bookmark manager, locate which bookmark I want to use, and then double click it.

Collections
Collections are where I spend most of my time in Safari when managing my bookmarks. We already covered the Bookmarks Bar section of collections. Today, let’s focus on the Bookmarks Menu.

Designing a workflow
The following are all suggestions. This is how I work in Safari, and how I manage bookmarks. This may or may not suit your workflow. My hope is that you can take these general ideas, and adapt them to your personal needs.

As you can see, I set up my bookmark manager with a few simple folders, and one subfolder. When I am making a bookmark to a site, I want to do so quickly, and get on with what I’m doing. In order to accomplish this, I have built a structure of folders to store bookmarks in. While it takes a second to pick where to store a bookmark, in the long run, I feel like I am saving time.

At the very least, I end up with a collection of bookmarks that are simple to manage. This method will allow you to easily know which bookmarks are safe to delete, and which you may want to keep around for a while longer.

Starting with the Temporary folder. This is where I will put a bookmark to a site I know I will only visit once. I may be surfing around, and decide I need to come back to something, but it is not highly important that I do return. Temporary acts as a trash can for various site URL’s that are interesting, but ok if I forget about. Once a week, I delete everything in this folder.

Check Later, as you can see, has a sub folder in it called Done. The Check Later folder is perhaps the most valuable to my workflow.

In the example image above, I have three items in the Check Later folder. One is a forum post where I asked someone a question. The second is a link to a post here at OS X Help, as I wanted to follow the comments. And the third is a link to a bug report I filed with another software developer.

Every few days I will check in on each of these, and see if there has been any progress or updates to the bookmark. If there has, and this issue is resolved, I simply move the bookmark to the Done folder. In general, I leave the Done folder as is and allow it to fill up. Maybe once a year I might be inclined to clean it up. I certainly do not manage it daily, as that would waste too much of my time.

Check Later can hold anything from eBay auctions you want to keep an eye on, to forum posts you are following. Any website that has something I will be interested in for a short period of time, ends up in the Check Later area.

The Daily folder is pretty self-explanatory. Sites that I visit once a day, end up here. Before the more advanced users cry foul, this would indeed better be served by using RSS. We have not covered RSS yet; I feel this is an acceptable method in the meantime.

Below that you can see I have folders for Work, Shopping, Banking, and Research. These are what suit my needs. You will of course want to create folders that work for you.

Perhaps you spend a lot of time on a photography website, you may want to make a folder for all the sites you visit in that category.

Setting up your bookmark structure
If you want to create a similar folder structure, it is relatively simple. Select the “Bookmarks Menu” item on the left, go to the Bookmark menu, and select “Add Bookmark Folder”. At that point, you can move them around, move one into another, delete mistakes, or change the name. The entire area is built on dragging and dropping items around; organize them as you see fit.

Putting it to use
Now that you have this structure all set up, it is time to make a bookmark. If you are like me, the Temp bookmark folder is where most of your bookmarks are going to go. Next time you decide to bookmark a site, select that folder from the pop down sheet. All future bookmarks will have your last used bookmark folder as the default selection.

Eventually, you can quickly press command-D and then return. In one quick motion, you have now added a bookmark and can get back to whatever you were doing. Next time you have a spare moment of free time, you can peruse your Temp bookmark folder, and see what you wanted to follow up on. Some you may want to keep, in that case, move them to the appropriate folder in Safari’s bookmark manager.

Alphabetize your bookmarks
In a past post, a reader asked how to alphabetize your bookmarks. Bookmarks are interesting in that they are entered in the order you make them, so your oldest bookmarks will be near the top, and your newest near the bottom. The name of the bookmark has no relevance on how it is sorted.

The only way I have found to accomplish this is to take the folder of bookmarks you want to put into alphabetical order, and drag it to your Desktop. This will make a copy of that folder. Now drag the folder back into Safari’s bookmark manager.

At this point, you will have a duplicate folder in Safari. Delete the folder that is not alphabetized; leave the one you just dragged in as it is. Finally, you can also delete the folder of bookmarks you put on your desktop.

Share your ideas
This is by no means a definitive set of rules to managing your bookmarks. Merely a suggestion to get you started. Please share your own organizational tips in the comments below.

First is whether the site you are connecting to is trustworthy. This can often be difficult to determine. Second is the data your browser collects as you browse the web. Safari has built in tools to help you keep your experience as safe as possible. With a little foresight and education, you can protect yourself from being taken advantage of.

Secure websites, SSL certificates, and the little lock
If you are performing any transaction online, where the data you are sending in is important to you, the website should be secure. I draw the line at bank data, credit card data, and social security numbers. If I am being asked that data, I insist the site is secure.

The simplest way to tell if a website is secured, is to look in the upper right corner of the browser, if you see a padlock, it is secure.

You can also look at the URL and see if it starts with “https“. Either of these identifiers, in most cases, will let you know the site is secure.

What does secure mean?
If you see the padlock icon, or the URL starts with “https”, the data you are transmitting can be considered encrypted. You can click on the padlock, and a sheet will pop down, showing you even more detailed data about the security of the site.

In all of my purchases on the web, I am yet to find a site claiming to be secure that is not. Spoofing, or tricking Safari into showing the padlock on a non-secure site is also a non-trivial task. Not to say there cannot be problems with the security, but you should be rather safe in knowing your data is being transmitted from your browser, to the remote website in a secure and encrypted method.

Security alerts
From time to time, you will visit a site that pops up a security alert in Safari. As you can see in the image below, this very alert pops up with an Amazon site.

What is important to know immediately, this does not mean the site I am about to visit lacks security. I will still be transmitting encrypted data. It simply means there is a problem in some way with the certificate that generates the encryption.

Two things can and will go wrong here.

In order to have a secure site, the website owner must purchase an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate. Many companies sell these, but not all are known by Safari. These certificates come from what is called a CA, or Certificate Authority. In the case of the above example, if you click on “Show Certificate”, you can verify this.

As you can see, Safari tells me in red “The certificate was signed by an unknown authority”. In this case, I know to trust this site, so I can click continue. If I plan on coming back often, I can click off the checkbox to “Always trust” this site.

At other times, you will run into the same error, but Safari will tell you the certificate has expired. SSL certificates are valid for one year and onward. Sometimes they expire and the site webmaster has not had time to renew.

In either case, it is important to know, the data will be secure and encrypted, it is up to you to judge whether or not the site really is who they say they are.

Not all cases are safe
Seeing a padlock only means data is sent securely, it does not guarantee the site is who it says it is. In the image examples above, if the web address in the URL bar of Safari does not match that on the certificate, you know something is fishy.

A scammer will go to great lengths to make a website look like the real site you last remembered. They will even use URL’s such as e-b-a-y.com to try and confuse you. If you have any suspicions, ask someone before you proceed.

Personal security
Your computing environment will dictate how rigorous you need be with securing Safari.

Every page you visit in Safari is remembered for some period of time. You know this as your history. Small bits of data are stored in what are called cookies. Your entire past web browsing habits are being recorded by your browser, be it Safari, FireFox, or Internet Explorer.

Maybe you have a secret crush on Bill Gates. You of course want to keep this a secret. However, anyone who shares your computer with you could simply look in your history and trace the sites you visited. Possibly worse, you may have left yourself logged into your bank. This leaves you vulnerable to someone making changes to your bank account.

Safari has a very handy feature called “Private Browsing”. Everything from history, cookies, auto-fill entries, downloaded items, and even searches, are cleared from Safari as soon as you close the window, or quit Safari.

You enable this feature in the Safari menu, by selecting “Private Browsing”.

A window will pop up that explains in detail, just what this feature is doing.

This does not mean you should enable this feature all the time. I personally use it when I am at a friend’s house, borrowing their computer. Or perhaps on a laptop when in travels. I generally trust the people I live with, and feel it is not needed at all times.

Private browsing is a feature of tradeoffs. Turning it on will certainly slow down Safari by a small degree. I only notice this slowdown on older computers. It definitely will inconvenience you, as Safari will have a very short-term memory about what you have been doing.

Consider Private Browsing a feature to use in cases where you personally feel it is warranted. I would not consider turning it on at all times unless you have a very specific reason to.

The web has all sorts of nasty back alleys. About the best advice I can give, is if you are at all suspicious, stop what you are doing, and ask around. You can come back here, ask in the comments, ask a more experienced friend, or do some online research. I assure you, nothing you are trying to do online, or purchase online, is worth the trouble of fixing a stolen identity.

Today, we will explore a subset of Safari’s bookmarking feature, the Bookmarks Bar. The bookmarks bar has so much utility to it; I do not know how I managed to get around without it.

Think of the bookmarks bar as an always-visible short list of your most visited places. Rather than digging through a large and unwieldy list of bookmarks, the bookmarks bar affords you quick access to your most frequently visited sites.

Enabling the bookmarks bar
Turning on the bookmarks bar in Safari is relatively simple. Just go to the “View” menu and select “Show Bookmarks Bar”.

Once you have enabled the bookmarks bar, just below the URL bar in Safari, you should see a row of words. Apple has been kind enough to get you started and include bookmarks to some more popular sites. Simply clicking on one of the words will bring you to that website.

I personally do not have much interest in any of the bookmarks that Apple supplies. I suspect you as well will have different sites you visit on a daily basis. The good news is, customizing the bookmarks bar is dead simple.

Customizing the bookmarks bar
Take any of the links in the bookmarks bar that you do not want, click and hold, then drag them off the bar. As you do this, you will see the other bookmarks slide to the left to accommodate the space. Simply release your mouse somewhere away from the bookmarks bar, and in a poof, they will disappear.

Safari will not warn you that this removal is about to happen, so make sure you are removing the bookmark you want to remove. If you accidentally remove one, do not fret, adding it back in is quite simple.

Adding links to your bookmarks bar
There are three ways to add a link to your bookmarks bar. Probably the simplest, is to simply drag any URL out of the URL bar, down to the bookmarks bar, and release the mouse button. As you do this, you will see a small green plus icon to let you know you are adding to the bookmarks bar.

You can add it anywhere you like; Safari will gracefully slide your other bookmarks around to accommodate the new position. As soon as you drop it in place, you are given an opportunity to name it. By default, it will inherit the title of the page. I tend to find this to be a bit long, and make the names of items in my bookmarks bar as short as possible.

The second method for adding an item to your bookmarks bar is via the “Bookmarks” menu. Select “Add Bookmark” or press command-D on your keyboard. Upon making this selection, a window will pop up, give the bookmark a name, and select “Bookmarks Bar” as it’s location.

I find using this method a little less convenient, as I do not have an immediate way to put the bookmark in exactly the location I want. To change the location, you need to go to your bookmark editing area in Safari, which is the third and way to add an item to your bookmarks bar.

Customizing within the bookmark editor
Either select “Show All Bookmarks” from the Bookmarks menu, or click the small icon that looks like an open book. This icon is located to the very left of your bookmarks bar. You will be put into your bookmarks editor, where you can further customize your settings.

Once in the bookmarks editor, you will see a listing of “collections” to the left. For this tutorial, we will only focus on the area labeled “Bookmarks Bar”. By selecting that collection, you should be presented with a list of all items in your bookmarks bar.

It is here that you can click and drag them to a new order, change their title, and also adjust the URL if need be.

Adding a bookmark folder
From within the bookmark editor, you can also enable a nice organizational feature. As you can see in the image above, there are two folders, “News” and “Popular”. Folders can contain more than one URL, which is very nice, as you will quickly run out of room on the main bookmarks toolbar.

To make a new folder, select “Add Bookmark Folder” from the Bookmarks menu. Give the folder a name. Now you can start to group your URL’s into logical categories. Maybe you spend a lot of time in Google groups, Google maps, and Google docs. Creating a folder called “Google” and then adding links into that folder would be one method of organizing these URL’s.

You may have noticed a small checkbox that is labeled “Auto-Click”. This only applies to folders; when selected, you will disable the drop down list of items in your bookmarks bar. Instead, it will be one item, that when clicked on, will open all items in new tabs. I chose to not select this, as you can still manually select “Open in Tabs” from the sub menu of the bookmark bar.

Quick keyboard access to bookmark bar items
Every item in your bookmarks bar is automatically assigned a keyboard shortcut. From left to right, starting at the number one, sequentially up to the total number of items in your list. Bookmark bar folders are ignored.

In the image of the bookmark bar above, pressing command-1 would take you to the Apple bookmark. Command-2 goes to yahoo, command-3 to Google Maps, and so on. If you use Gmail for your email, setting up gmail.com as your first item in the bookmarks menu provides you quick access to Gmail at any time by pressing command-1.

There is a good deal more to cover in regards to bookmarks. I felt this was a good place to start as it has a lot of day to day utility. I find in watching other users that they are quick to add a bookmark, but those bookmarks rarely get used.

Bookmarks tend to become disorganized. Over time, they lose any value as locating a bookmark takes more time than simply searching Google for the site based on what you remember about it.

If you continue to follow along tomorrow, you should be on track for creating bookmarks that are clean, organized, and hold their usefulness over time. Safari has one of my favorite bookmark managers of all browsers, with a little help, navigating and organizing your bookmarks will become second nature.

Now that you have learned this, click, hold, and drag this link: OS X Help, into your bookmarks bar.

All these tricks are useful under certain situations, some more than others. Make sure you have read our tutorial on keyboard shortcuts. If you have not read it, take a second to skim it over, as it will be helpful in understanding some of the terminology.

Quick history hidden in back button
First up, we will need to explore the “back” button in Safari. By now, you are more than likely familiar with the left arrow in the upper left most corner of Safari. As you move around on the web, and want to go back, this button is what takes you to the previous page.

The back button builds a collection of all the pages you have visited, remembers them, and allows you to chronologically step backwards through previously visited pages. The problem with the back button is at times, it can be inefficient. There will be times you want to go back more than one page at a time. This can be slow, as every click on the back button brings with it some overhead while you wait for the previous page to render.

If you click and hold the back button for a few seconds, a “quick history” will appear.

The great thing about this feature is you can now jump back more than one page at a time, to any page you have previously visited. If you use tabs, the back button will only show you the quick history for the currently selected tab.

Hierarchical site navigation from the title bar
The second trick is contained within the title bar of Safari. If you look at the very top center of Safari, you should see a page title. Not all web sites will have a page title, but most compliant web sites will set a page title.

If you have gone to a website that uses a hierarchical structure to navigate, this trick can be useful. A hierarchical structure is one such as:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/apple/

If you look at that web address (URL), you can see there are three parts to it after the main domain name. Part one is “downloads”, part two is “macosx” and part three is “apple”. You can manipulate the URL into three new URLs, each loading a page higher up in Apple’s structure.

If you hold down the command key and click on the title in Safari, each of those three URLs will be listed for you, as quick shortcuts.

Creating a forced tab in the background
The last small trick I want to point out, now that we have covered what tabs are and how to use them, is creating a forced new tab.

Often times I am in the middle of reading a page, and an idea comes to me. Most will open a new tab, load a new page, or start a search. I find the creation of a new tab to take a wee bit more time and thought than I want. The good news is you can force any action in Safari to spawn its results in a new tab.

For example, type something in the “Google” search field in the upper right corner of Safari. Rather than press return, press command and then return. Safari has loaded that search result into a new tab. You can apply this to the URL bar as well. No matter what website you are viewing, simply press command-L to select the URL bar, type in a new address, and press command-return. The new site will be loaded in the background, in a new tab.

This works on login forms, search boxes, as mentioned, the URL bar, everywhere you can enter text, the resulting page can be forced into a non-obtrusive tab behind your current page. Even your bookmarks listing can have this applied as well. Simply find a bookmark you want to go to, and just before you release your mouse button, hold the command key, and then release the mouse. Your resulting bookmark will open in a new tab.

I personally find these tricks to be huge time savers. They may not seem it at first. Over time, I suspect I am getting more done, and becoming less distracted by using some of these tactics.

Long gone will be the cluttered computer screen, filled with many windows. Say goodbye to clicking the back button ten times over. Say hello to tabs.

Tabs are something common to most browsers these days. FireFox certainly has them. Heck, I think even Internet Explorer has finally caught on. While these steps will not apply to all browsers exactly, in concept, they are very much the same feature.

Enabling the tab bar in Safari
While in Safari, if you select the “View” menu, you will see a menu item labeled “Show Tab Bar”. Go ahead and enable this menu item now.

You should see, directly above the web page, a little grey tab has now appeared. In it is the title of the page you are on. Now, just for fun, lets add a new tab.

Creating new tabs
Go to the “File” menu in Safari, and select “New Tab”. As you can see, a new tab has been created. Depending on how your preferences are set, you will see a blank page, your home page, perhaps the previous page you were on, or even your bookmarks.

No matter what page you see, you are probably starting to see the value in tabs already. Tabs give you the ability to have any amount of web pages open, all in the same window. You can then move through each tab, without affecting the previous page you were on.

Imagine you are reading a recipe for world famous chili. That recipe called for an unusual spice, which you had not heard of before. Luckily they linked to an article specifically about the spice.

Without tabs, you would click on the link, read the new page, and then have to click back. With tabs, you can have the article about the unusual spice open in a new tab. Now you can reference two articles at the same time, and toggle back and forth.

Opening links in new tabs
How do you make a link open in a new tab you wonder? Quite simple, now that you know the value in using keyboard shortcuts.

For every link on a page, simply hold down the command key, and click that link. That link will open in a new tab. If your preferences are as Apple supplied them, the new tab will not be selected, but will open next in series of any other tabs you have already opened.

Setting preferences related to tabs
Of course, you are not locked into this behavior. A quick trip to the “Tabs” preferences in Safari will allow you to alter how tabs behave. Go to the Safari menu, down to “Preferences”, and click on “Tabs” in the floating window that opens.

This preference window lays out in exact detail how tabs are to be interacted with. If you want the tab to be selected as it is opened, rather than stay on the current page, you can change that behavior.

My suggestion, until you get a strong grasp on this, is to allow tabs to open in an unselected state. This seems to be the most logical method to new users just learning how to take advantage of tabs.

If you look down at the bottom of the tabs preferences, you can see there are ways to immediately over-ride default behavior. So while you can set a default method in the preferences, there is a way to change that behavior by holding down more keyboard shortcuts.

As of OS X 10.5 Leopard, tabs cannot be closed without Safari warning you. This is a very welcome addition, as there were times I would close a tab in progress, and have a hard time getting it back.

Reordering and separating your tabs
Also new to Safari on OS X 10.5 Leopard is the ability to rearrange tabs. Just grab a hold of one with your mouse, and move it to the left or right. You will see the other tabs scurry to get out of the way. When you have your selected tab where you want it, just release the mouse.

Just when you thought that was it, there is one more nicety with tabs. There will be times when you want to pull a page out of a tab, into it’s own new browser window. Perhaps you have a set of tabs open relating to one project you are working on, yet somehow an errant page was loaded that is totally unrelated. You would like to pull that tab out of the set.

You could activate the tab, copy the web address, close the tab, and then make a new window and paste the address in. That would be the hard way. The easy way? Just click, hold and drag the tab downward, it will make a small proxy image of the web page, release it, and the web page will grow to full size in a new Safari window.

Special tab pop up window
Finally, in closing, I would like to leave you with one last lesser known, and lesser-used feature. You can right-click, or control-click on a tab, and you will be presented with a number of options for interacting with your tabs. Explore this feature on your own; there are times when it can be handy. It is not mandatory to remember, as every feature in this pop up menu is accessible in the main menus.

The URL bar has a number of useful features to it. Of course, the first useful feature of the URL bar is to let you know what web address you are at, and give you the ability to enter in a new address.

Safari takes something simple, keeps it simple, but adds more value to it than you first notice.

Page load feedback in the status bar

As you can see in the image above, the first thing you will notice is the small Apple icon to the left. Most sites have these; it is called a favicon, or Favorite Icon. This stems from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer calling bookmarks “favorites” at some time in the past. Almost all browsers show this icon, and it is a good visual indicator when digging through your bookmarks.

Notice however, the blue bar that has gone from left to right, and is about half way filling the URL bar. This is a loading status indicator. Rather than waste space in the browser just to show the user the loading status of a page, Apple made a multi-purpose feature.

When a website is in the process of loading, this should be treated as a meter to tell you how far along the page is from finishing loading. As soon as it turns entirely white, you know the site has completed its loading process.

You are free to start to read the site, click on links, or even watch video files, before the page has loaded. This is just a simple visual indicator to let you know exactly what is going on in the website loading process.

RSS notification at a glance
Finally, if you look off to the right of the above image, you will see an icon that says “RSS” on it. In a very simple form, RSS is a way of bookmarking a site, and having that site alert you to when it has been updated.

Not all sites support RSS, or RSS feeds as they are called. OS X Help supports them, and you should see the icon. A future post will explain just how to use RSS within Safari. For the time being, just remember, if you see the RSS icon in the URL bar, it means the site supports an “advanced bookmarking” format.

Drag and drop out of the URL bar
The URL bar is also somewhat interactive, in that you can drag a URL out of it, or into it. Feel free to try it…

Take your mouse, click and hold on the favorite icon we mentioned earlier. You should see a lighter colored proxy of the URL, which you can move around. You can drag it to your desktop, or anywhere on your computer, and it will be saved. You can place it on your dock, and it will create an icon that loads that URL for you at a later time. You can even drop it into your bookmarks bar, if it is visible.

URL bar autocomplete history
The last thing I think the URL bar does is to maintain a link to your history. If you previously visited a site called myfavoritesite.com, all you need to do is start typing the letter ‘m’, and the URL bar will drop a menu down that shows all sites you have visited that start with an ‘m’.

The more you type into the URL bar, the narrower the list of history items it will show you. This can be especially handy if you have visited many pages on one site, and want to get back to a certain page within that site.

If you know any other tips or tricks with the Safari URL bar, please post them in the comments.

Perhaps the reason it is not enabled is that Apple feels it would be too confusing to new users. I on the other hand, think it is a near mandatory option to enable.

Enabling the status bar
If you navigate to the “View” menu in Safari, you can select “Show Status Bar”.

With this now enabled, if you look to the very bottom of your browser, you will see there is a short bar. The right corner of the bar will give you your usual ability to change the size of the Safari window. I also find it is a great way to show some contrast between your desktop and a web page. If you have a black desktop, and load an all black web page, the two tend to blend together.

The above is merely trivial in regards to real utility. The real value comes in what this new status bar can tell you about web pages.

As you load a new page, you will see text displayed in the left of this status bar. It will start by saying “contacting…” and then “loading…”. During the loading process, it will tell you how many items it is loading. For example, “loading 12 of 23 items”.

Just the loading status it gives you is valuable. It gives you a sense of what is going on, rather than trying to guess. At times, you will try to load a slow website. Safari will appear to be doing nothing. The status bar can tell you at a glance, that it is indeed trying to load. At times like this, lending a little patience to the website may not be such a bad idea. Were it not for the status bar, you would have no simple way of knowing Safari was at least trying.

Status bar feedback on mouse hover
The second area in which the status bar is valuable is in mouse feedback. For every link you hover over, the status bar will tell you a little about it. Take the two examples below:

In the first, I was simply hovering my mouse over a link. The status bar told me what link it was about to open.

In the second, I was hovering over a different link. The status bar in this case, told me the link would be opened, but in a new window.

I use this all the time, as a way to tell if a link is trying to take me off to relevant content, or perhaps a new site that is not related.

Sometimes I will be in the middle of reading something, and notice there is a link in the middle of what I am reading. I may be inclined to click on it, only to learn it took me to nothing more than a stock quote, or a dictionary definition.

The status bar saves me from wasting that time, and having to click the back button in Safari. If I am on osxhelp.com, and I hover my mouse over a link, and the status bar says it will take me to sillysite.example.com, I know to not even bother clicking that link.

As a pure safety measure, I suggest you enable this feature. With so many nefarious sites out there, it is a quick and simple way to know in advance, if you should even bother clicking on a link.

Safari is a great browser, even with its default settings. With a few small changes to the settings and preferences, you can custom tailor it to be even better.

New windows open with:
The first time you launch Safari, it will set itself up with some very basic default settings. You will also notice that a page automatically loads. In the case of OS X 10.5 Leopard it is going to load Apples website.

While this is nice, it is important to know you can change this behavior. You have a couple options. You can load a custom web address, or a blank page. This behavior is controlled in your preferences, which you access from the Safari menu item

As you can see, I have set mine to an empty page. While an empty page may seem dull and boring, it does serve a purpose. If you are so inclined, you can set it to whatever you want.

For example, you may like to check your email first thing when you start your browser. In that case, set it to the web address of your web-based email. The only caveat is that every new page window you create in Safari will always open to that page. I tend to find this slows me down.

If I open a new page, I have to wait for my favorite page to load. This then slows down my ability to go to a new page. If a new window starts out blank, it is ready for me immediately.

There are four options to how new windows open:
1) Home Page, which you specify in the Home Page field.
2) Empty Page, which will simply show you a blank white page.
3) Same Page, which will open a new window identical to your current one.
4) Bookmarks, which will let you see all your bookmarks in your browser.

Remove history items:
Also in the General Preferences is “Remove History Items”. This defines how long it will take before past sites you have visited are expired. Safari has a menu item called “History” which keeps track of every single page you have visited.

Your history is a handy tool. Who can really remember the web address of every site they visit? I certainly cannot. As long as you can remember a fragment of the address, you should be able to locate it in your history.

Set the timing of history removal to whatever suits your needs. I find that after about a week, I no longer would ever need to go back to a site I was at sometime earlier. If I do need to do so, I will usually bookmark it, which will be remembered forever.

Some experience Safari getting sluggish over time, and have linked that behavior to excessive history items. One week sounds like a sane amount of time. Visited sites are also “recycled”, so as long as you keep visiting a site, it will be moved back to the top of your history, thereby starting your expire time over again.

Set downloaded files to:
Prior to OS X 10.5 Leopard, your system was not set up with a special folder called “Downloads”. Since most of you readers are on Leopard, Safari should be defaulting to saving your downloads into your downloads folder.

I find this a perfect place to store your downloaded files. About the only other place I ever see people set this to is their Desktop. The idea being that you can see the file immediately as it is being downloaded, and do not have to navigate to a special folder.

Download file location is entirely up to you. Whatever works best for how you use your computer is where you should set it to. I just happen to think the default setting is well thought out.

Remove download list items:
If you go to the Window menu in Safari, and select “Downloads” it will show you a small floating window called “Downloads”.

The download manager window has some very useful functions. For the time being, just be aware that it lists the files you have downloaded.

The preferences for this floating window allow you to define how often that download window is cleared of listings. I have mine set to clear it when I quit Safari. If you do frequent downloading, you may want to set this to clear as soon as the file has finished downloading.

Open “safe” files after downloading:
In the past, Safari would open nearly every file you downloaded, automatically. Recently, some people with ill intentions have found you can exploit this and automatically run malicious software, or even a virus.

While I am entirely unaware of any wide scale situation in which this has been exploited, it is safer to simply leave this setting checked. Safari knows which files are safe, like images and movies, and which could be dangerous. In the case of a potentially dangerous file, you will have to manually open the file.

Open links from applications:
Since we have not covered tabs, and what they are, I only want you to be aware of this setting. When you click on a link, it usually replaces the current site you are looking at, and shows you the new page. Not all links come from Safari. Word files, applications, and a few other non-web browser files can at times have links to websites in them. This setting defines what happens when you click on those links.

Our next post is going to jump from defining what the preferences do, to setting a few options to tweak Safari into telling you a little more about what is going on.

I anticipate this being greater than ten posts in total, with the idea of breaking them up into small sections that are easier to digest and remember. Stay tuned, I have a feeling the next post will reveal some interesting settings.

Keyboard shortcuts are simply a way to invoke a command, without actually using your mouse and digging around in a menu. In most cases, it will result in timesaving.

The one aspect of keyboard shortcuts I would like to stress, is you need not feel burdened to learn them all. Pay attention to your own personal workflow; use the shortcuts that are applicable to saving you time. Not everyone will use the same one’s, all of you will use at least some.

There are basically three keys on your keyboard you need to learn. More than likely you already know some of them. Almost every single person I talk to is well aware of how to invoke copy, paste, and sometimes cut, via the keyboard.

This tutorial will do nothing more than expand on those same keyboard shortcuts. Keep in mind, some computers have full size keyboards, and some don’t, especially laptops, which are missing a few keys. There will also always be differences in some keyboard layouts, try to follow along. If you get stuck, drop a note in the comments and we can help you along.

Let’s start with the Command key.
Some people call this the ‘Apple Key’. This makes sense as Apple has always printed the Apple logo on this key. New Apple keyboards no longer print the Apple logo on the key, so we will for the foreseeable future, call it the command key.

The symbol looks like a four leaf clover: ⌘

There is actually a rather interesting history behind the creation of this symbol. It turns out the symbol is actually used to symbolize a Swedish campground or attraction. If you are at all a fan of Apple history, give it a read.

Next up is the Option key.
Some people will call the option key, an ‘alt’ key. While it does not matter, the point is you know what it looks like on your keyboard. Take a second to look for the second most left key: ⌥

Finally is the Control key
The control key will usually have a small open triangle on it: ⌃

One more key worth mentioning is the shift key: ⇧
It is a simple upwards-pointing arrow. You will often see this symbol in your menus. It simply means to press the shift key, along with whatever other keys you see represented by any of the above icons.

The idea is that pressing one or more of these keys, in combination with some other key, or mouse click, will allow you to perform a menu function. Years ago, as far as I can tell, there were internal Apple documents that mandated that for every set of keyboard commands, there had to be a menu item to select as well.

This seems to be the case most of the time, but not all. This means, there will be times when a keyboard shortcut is the only way to perform some action. These will be hard to find out about, and are usually hidden away in tech notes and documentation.

The important thing is to not become overwhelmed with trying to memorize and learn every single keyboard shortcut there is. What is important, is to notice when you are doing something repetitiously. This is your cue to take a step back and try to learn a faster and more convenient way.

Taking one of the most widely used keyboard shortcuts, which is used to quit an application. Most people will call this “command-Q’.

This means, to quit an application, rather than going to the menu to do so, you can simply press and hold the command key, then press the letter “Q” on your keyboard. This will send the same quit signal to the application as selecting quit from the menu.

If you look close to the menu, you will notice it looks like this:
Quit (Application Name) ⌘Q

If you take only one thing away from this tutorial, remember to look closely at the menus you are selecting. Nearly all of them will show you the equivalent keyboard shortcut.

Sure, you can look them up in a chart, and try to remember them all, or you can take note of them as you use the menu item, then next time, move to using the keyboard command.

If you are the type of person that wants to see all the commands at once, Apple has a document up called Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts. You can also look in your Keyboard and Mouse System Preferences, which has a list. The nice thing about these is you are free to change them to something else.

At this point, I would recommend you not change or customize your system settings. In a future post, we are going to show you the real power of how to change keyboard shortcuts, and even add your own custom shortcuts when none exists.

A final note of clarification. In most cases, a modern two-button mouse will have the right mouse button set to perform a control-click. This is the exact same as holding down the control key, and clicking once on something. Also, as stated before, remember, all keyboards are not printed alike, or even laid out in the same way. In these cases, you will need to improvise.

I know many of you are anxiously awaiting the Safari tutorials. I had to drop this post in first, since so much of the Safari tutorial is going to mention using the keyboard in conjunction with the mouse. Now you know, if I mention command-click, that means to hold the command key, and click once. If I mentioned right clicking, that means to use your right mouse button, and if you do not have one, to hold the control key and click once.

In closing, thanks to everyone. We have received hundreds of supportive emails. A number of great comments. Overall, lots of enthusiasm and appreciation. This is hugely motivating to both Caroline and myself, so keep them coming. Caroline even has a post of her very own, which you will see in a few days.

Thanks again for all the support.

A lot has changed since then, however, we still do not have 100% playback of all video formats. Mac’s can play back most formats, and with the proliferation of sites like YouTube, our odds of locating a duplicate copy of a video we can’t play, are pretty good.

This post will show you how to install two components that will allow almost all video formats to play back cleanly on your computer. The nice part is they are both free of cost.

A short history lesson
Many years ago, The Macintosh platform, along with others like Amiga, was one of the most widely used tools for video creation. This was before the Internet was in widespread use. Content creators eventually moved some of their videos to the web, usually in a format the Mac could view.

After a few years, Microsoft had a dominant lead on video technologies in use on the web. One could argue they were inferior in quality, but the fact remains their formats were more supported than the Macintosh formats. Microsoft had little to no interest in developing software for the Mac to help it play the many video formats they were putting out.

Gaining a wide range of video support on the Macintosh
Video playback requires a small piece of software to decode the video, this is called a codec. In the case of YouTube and other video sharing sites, you already have all the software you need. Every new Macintosh ships with the Flash plug-in installed, which is what enables you to watch videos on video sharing sites like YouTube. Outside of this case, you will need new or additional codecs.

Apple’s default player is called QuickTime. Out of the box, it can play very few formats. You should be fine watching any video file off of Apple’s site, as well as industry standards like DVD video. That is about where it stops though.

If you simply install two pieces of software, not only will you be able to play back near all formats, but most of them will show nicely in your browser as well.

Install Perian
The first piece of software you need is called Perian. This software will get you through nearly all your video playback woes. It is quite simple to install, and they even have a very good video tutorial that shows you how. I suggest you watch the video, and then install it.

Perian is updated often. It is also open source, which means, the code is free and open. This allows other computer programmers to contribute back to the software with bug fixes and features.

Install WMV Components for QuickTime
The second piece of software you need to aid in video playback is made by Flip4Mac, called WMV Components for QuickTime. This is also free of cost software, though it is not free in regards to source code.

WMV Components for QuickTime will help you play some of the proprietary video formats that Microsoft has floating around out there.

With the installation of both of these pieces of software, you should have relatively solid video playback abilities. Those formats that it cannot play back usually can be found in duplicate on a site like YouTube. The nice part is, these components merely give you additional functionality to the already browser ready QuickTime. Meaning, not only can you watch video on your Desktop using QuickTime, you should also be able to see the video’s play in your browser as well.

In the years that I have been using this software, I have not found it to interfere with my system stability at all. It will either help a certain video (or audio) file play back, or it will not. Both come with nice clean uninstallers, if you are in any way not happy with the software.

This post is jumping ahead a bit, as I wanted to cover downloading in general. Downloading and cleaning up after downloads and installs will be covered next. Once those are out of the way, I think I have set the groundwork for new users understanding enough about their browser to start digging into Safari more specifically.

Thanks for reading, as always, we look forward to your comments, and be sure to use the subscription links below so we can let you know when there are new posts to read.

All versions of OS X come with Safari, which in my opinion is a great browser for OS X. You are free to install any number of other browsers, such as Firefox, OmniWeb, or even some of the lesser-known alternative browsers.

Windows PC’s have Internet Explorer as their default browser. Over the years, Internet Explorer has gotten a bad reputation, and most people have moved to Firefox. Many Windows users, who do not know or understand the Macintosh, will tell you to use Firefox. The trouble with this advice is they are assuming the default browser, Safari, is as poor an experience as Internet Explorer.

You do not need to use Firefox. I would not go as far to say it is an inferior piece of software compared to Safari, but it is not a necessity to safe browsing. Apple makes Safari for both Macintosh and Windows, while I cannot comment on how good or bad it works on Windows, I can say for most browsing needs, it is a great application on OS X.

One area where it really shines is in aesthetics. It fits in with the rest of the applications on your Macintosh. It looks like a Macintosh application and works in many of the same ways as other Macintosh applications.

As a new user, Safari will have all the features you could ever want. Feel free to download Firefox and try it out, I do not think you will notice any real difference, aside from its appearance. Cosmetic issues such as appearance are hard to gauge, my opinion being Safari wins aesthetically by a large margin.

Last time I looked, Safari is, and has been, significantly more standards compliant than Firefox. This means, as long as a website is built to standards, you will not have any problems.

Some websites will specifically look to see what browser you are using. In those cases, you have to decide if you want to use that website bad enough to take extra steps to accommodate their terms. Banking sites, certain video sites, and other specialty sites will some times block Safari.

In all the cases I know of, Safari will work just fine, the developers are merely ignorant and want to take the easy road. The easy road being to develop a website that they must only test against one browser, rather than many.

My suggestion, use Safari as your main browser. If you run into a website that gives you trouble, keep Firefox as a backup, for those just in case times.

With that out of the way, our next tutorial will dive in, and deep, on how to become a master of browsing with Safari. We will not cover Firefox, as it is not part of the default application set Apple gives to you. Don’t listen to those users who tell you Safari is inferior to Firefox.

Stop by tomorrow and learn some handy Safari time saving tips.