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.

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.

OS X has a built in system for pulling words out of its dictionary, and showing you a list of those words. While not something I use all the time, it can be handy once you learn how to access it.

The best way to learn this tip is by trying it out. Since you are reading this in Safari, put your cursor in the Google search box in the upper right of Safari.

Type the beginning of a word, such as ‘auto’. Now press option-escape at the same time. You should see a list that looks similar to the image below.

How much utility this feature has is going to depend a lot on the type of things you personally use your computer for. I use it rarely; though on the occasion I do use it, I feel as if I have saved some time.

Do keep in mind; this feature does not work in all Applications. Most all-native OS X applications should be able to use auto completions. Certain third party applications may simply ignore the feature.

They have all bought a used Macintosh. Whether it was from eBay, a friend, or a donation, one way or another, they have a less than brand new machine.

Nothing wrong with this at all, everyone needs to eventually get a Mac. I would like to take this time to explain what you need to do to your newly acquired computer, to make sure it is trouble free.

Check specifications
Figure out what machine you actually have. Sure, you know it is an iMac, but there are many. Depending on what version it is, depends on how forward you can take the operating system, and how much memory you can put in it.

You can look up your computer in the Apple Spec Database.

Get current
According to Apple, in order to run OS X 10.5 Leopard, you need at least:

• Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
• 512MB of memory
• DVD drive for installation
• 9GB of available disk space

As long as you meet those requirements, you are good to go and should buy a copy of OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Your computer very well may have came with a copy already; just look at the DVD it came with, if it says 10.5 or Leopard on it, you are fine, and need not buy anything.

Make sure you have enough memory
While Apple likes to tell you that 512MB of memory is enough, I would say, bare minimum is 1GB. You can certainly buy the RAM and try to install it yourself, however, since this site is targeted to beginners, I would suggest taking it to a local Mac shop. I would strongly suggest not using the Apple Store, as their RAM prices are generally double or more going rate.

Wipe it clean
This is the most important part, and it has nothing to do with Windex or 409. Even if the previous owner claims that they did a new fresh install of the operating system, I would still be inclined to do it again yourself.

Not only will you learn how to install the operating system if you ever need to, you will now know for 100% sure that there is nothing malicious on the computer.

The process is simple, put the installer DVD in, and follow the on screen instructions to perform a full clean installation.

Make absolute certain that any data you personally have put on your computer is backed up in some way. You can use a DVD, a USB thumb drive, or any other portable media.

Once the new installation is done, just copy your personal data back; you now have a truly new computer, at least as far as the software is concerned.

Be good
Sometimes, you will find that the person you bought your computer from left all their data on it. I have found banking information, pictures, and other sensitive data.

Give the seller a call; ask them if they are aware of the mistake, and if they have a backup. If they have a backup, just ignore their data; it will be wiped clean when you do a new operating system install.

The items you have as a default will largely depend on your computer. Laptop users will almost all have an Airport icon, and sometimes a Bluetooth icon.

What many people have not learned is that those menulets can be repositioned, deleted, and customized.

Moving a menulet
To move a menulet, just press and hold the command key and drag the menulet from left to right. The other menulets will scurry out of the way. Once you have it where you want, release the mouse and the command key.

I find myself frequently adjusting the volume, so I move the volume control off to the right. With it at the right, I find it easier to target quickly.

Removing menulets
Of course, what good would moving a menulet around be if you couldn’t also completely banish it from your menu bar. Removing is the same process as moving, with the exception of you drag downward and release the mouse. On release, a poof of smoke animation will appear, to let you know you have removed the item.

Adding menulets back
Now that you know how to arrange and remove icons from your menu bar, it is time to add a few back. Most, such as Airport and Bluetooth are controlled in your System Preferences. If for example, you removed the Bluetooth menulet, and you want it back, a quick trip to your Bluetooth preferences will bring it back.

Each menulet is different, but you should find an option that states “Show (item) in menu bar”, where “item” is the name of the item you are trying to bring back.

Menulet customization in action

Hidden menulets
Some menulets seem to evade all attempts at bringing them back. For example, the “Eject Disc” item has no known preference for adding it back in.

If you navigate to your main hard drive, and open the following folders:
System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Menu Extras
Double clicking on any of them will add that item back to your menu bar. Many will be non applicable to your system, but they are all there for your future needs.

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.