Save time in Safari

Single Click Downloading

safari I was cruising around looking to spruce up my desktop and got to a page that offered many wallpapers and different screen dimensions. All of these dimensions are of course linked to a file that has to be saved somewhere. A simple click on the link causes Safari to open a new window or move away from the page to display the file. This means the user has to then save the file, usually with File-Save As, pick where to save it, and click Save. What a waste of time! Instead of the maddening save dialogue boxes, simply hold down the Option key and click on the link. This tells Safari to download the file to the Desktop (unless the downloads folder was changed in Safari preferences) in one step.

Fill out forms

Safari will take a look at your ‘me’ card in Address Book and fill out web forms with anything it knows. Click on the first field (Name: for example) and press Command-Shift-A. This will fill out the forms in a flash. If the information isn’t spilling in correctly or not at all read this.

Emailing and Saving images

I taught my family how to do this with .Mac and we share a lot more pictures these days. Drag a photo from Safari onto a new email message and Mail attaches the file. However, if the image is dragged to the Mail icon in the Dock, Mail creates a new message but puts the URL of the image instead. Also if you CRTL-Click on an image Safari offers the ability to save to the Desktop (or whatever your download folder is). Hold down option and this changes to Save As…

Links, Tabs, and Windows

Links can also be opened in a new tab or window. To open the link in a new tab press Command and click. To open a new window use Command-Option-Click. Now in Safari 3 Tabs and Windows can be combined, separated, and reordered!

Disable In-Browser View of PDF Files

Safari can render PDF files in the browser using Preview by default or Acrobat if installed. However, Apple put the ability to view PDF’s in Preview/Acrobat in the most unlikely places! Open System Preferences, go to the Quicktime preference pane, and then the Advanced tab. Click on the MIME Settings… button. Under the Still Images category, uncheck the PDF Image box to disable this feature. When clicking on a PDF link, Safari will download the file instead of opening it. If ‘Open Safe Files’ is enabled, the default PDF reader will launch.

Assign a keyboard shortcut to a bookmark

OS X includes the ability to create and override keyboard shortcuts for most applications. Bookmark the URL and put it in the Bookmarks Menu folder. It is better to choose a short name for this bookmark than the suggested one Safari provides. Copy the text of this bookmark name  (i.e. if you bookmark theappleblog.com and save it as TAB, copy ‘TAB’) Then, open System Preferences and click Keyboard and Mouse. Click on the ‘+’ button. Choose Safari for the Application. Paste or type in the title of the bookmark. The key combination has to be unique, so a good practice is to use Control and a letter (like ^T for TAB).  Once that is done, click Add. Quit Safari and reopen. Click on the Bookmark menu to see the newly assigned keyboard shortcut. This won’t work if you want to assign it to a bookmark folder.

Do you have a favorite time saver in Safari? Please comment and share with the rest of the readers!

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