You probably know the drill when it comes to Web browsers. When you click an underlined link (hyperlink) or a picture button, you’re transported from one Web page to another. One page may be the home page of General Motors; another may contain critical information about a bill in Congress; another might have baby pictures posted by a parent in Omaha. Altogether, several billion Web pages await your visit.

Figure 12-1. The Safari window offers tools and features that let you navigate the Web almost effortlessly. These various toolbars and buttons are described in this chapter. One difference that may throw you if you’re used to other browsers: When you’re loading a Web page, the progress bar appears as a colored stripe that gradually darkens the address bar itself, rather than as a strip at the bottom of the window.

Bookmarks bar

Address bar

Title bar

Form

RSS button

Google search

Text link

Graphic link

Some of the other Safari tips that may not be obvious:

Many of Safari’s most useful controls come parked on toolbars and buttons that you summon or hide by choosing their names from the View menu. Here’s what they do:

The Status bar at the bottom of the window tells you what Safari is doing (such as “Opening page...” or “Done”). When you point to a link without clicking, the Status bar also tells you which URL opens if you click it. For those two reasons, it’s a very useful strip, but it doesn’t appear when you first run Safari. You have to summon it by choosing View→Show Status Bar.

The little orange SnapBack button (), which sometimes appears at the right end of the address bar or Google search bar, takes you instantly back to the Web page whose address you last typed (or whose bookmark you last clicked), or to your first Google results page.

The point here is that, after burrowing from one link to another in pursuit of some Google result or Amazon listing, you can return to your starting point without having to mash the Back button over and over again. (The SnapBack button doesn’t appear until you’ve actually clicked away from the first page you visited.)

The world’s smarmiest advertisers inundate us with pop-up and pop-under ads—nasty little windows that appear in front of the browser window or, worse, behind it, waiting to jump out the moment you close your current window. They’re often deceptive, masquerading as error messages or dialog boxes, and they’ll do absolutely anything to get you to click inside them.

If this kind of thing is driving you crazy, choose Safari→Block Pop-Up Windows, so that a checkmark appears next to the command. It’s a war out there—but at least you now have some ammunition.

Sooner or later, you’ll run into a Web site that doesn’t work in Safari. Why? When you arrive at a Web site, your browser identifies itself. That’s because many commercial Web sites display a different version of the page depending on the browser you’re using, thanks to differences in the way various browsers interpret Web layouts.

But because you’re one of the minority oddballs using Safari, your otherwise beloved Web site tells you: “Sorry, browser not supported.” (Will this problem change now that Apple has released a Windows version of Safari? We can only hope.)

In such times of trouble, you can make Safari impersonate any other browser, which is often good enough to fool the picky Web site into letting you in.

The key to this trick is Safari’s Debug menu, which is generally hidden. You can make it appear using TinkerTool, a free program available on this book’s “Missing CD” page at www.missingmanuals.com. It offers a simple checkbox that turns on the Debug menu.

Most of its commands are designed to appeal to programmers, but the submenu you want—User Agent—is useful to everyone. It lets Safari masquerade as a different browser. Choose User Agent→Mac MSIE 5.22, for example, to assume the identity of Internet Explorer for Macintosh.

As you dig your way down into a Web site, you may wish you could have left a trail of bread crumbs to mark your path. Ah, but Safari has already thought of that. See Figure 12-4.

Figure 12-4. If you -click the title bar (centered just above the address bar), Safari displays the “ladder” of pages you descended to arrive at the current one.

Graphics are part of what makes the Web so compelling. But they’re also responsible for making Web pages take so long to arrive on the screen. Without them, Web pages appear almost instantaneously—and you still get fully laid-out Web pages with all their text and headlines.

To turn off graphics, choose Safari→Preferences, and then click the Appearance tab. Turn off “Display images when the page opens,” and close the Preferences window. Now try visiting a few Web pages and enjoy the substantial speed boost. (If you wind up on a Web page that’s nothing without its pictures, return to Safari→Preferences, turn the same checkbox on, and then reload the page.)

If the customer-service comment form on that corporate Web site doesn’t give you enough room to rant properly, you can resize the text box right on the page—a new, very welcome feature in Leopard. Figure 12-5 tells all.

Figure 12-5. This trick works on a Web page’s text fields—comment boxes, forms to send a letter to the mayor, and so on. You can resize such boxes by dragging the three diagonal ribbed lines in the lower-right corner of the text field. The rest of the page adjusts itself to the new text-box size, and you have room to say what you need to say.

You don’t have to be connected to the Net to read a favorite Web page. You can save a certain Web page on your hard drive so that you can peruse it later—on your laptop during your commute, for example—just by choosing File→Save As.

To save the entire page, along with all its images, movies, and so on, choose Web Archive from the Format pop-up menu.

The first Web site you encounter when Safari connects to the Internet is an Apple Web site. This site is your home page. You’ll probably find Web browsing more fun, though, if you specify your favorite Web page as your home page.

To do that, navigate your way to the page you prefer. Google, or its news page, http://news.google.com, is a good starting place. So is your favorite newspaper home page, or www.macsurfer.com, a summary of the day’s Mac news coverage around the world, or maybe www.dilbert.com for today’s Dilbert cartoon.

Then choose Safari→Preferences, click the General tab, and click Set to Current Page (or type the address into the box).

If you can’t decide on a home page, or your mood changes from day to day, use the “New windows open with” pop-up menu to choose Empty Page. Some people prefer this setup, which makes Safari load very quickly when you first open it. Once this empty window opens, then you can tell the browser where you want to go today.

The History menu lists the Web sites you’ve visited in the last week or so, neatly organized into subfolders like “Earlier Today” and “Yesterday.” (A similar menu appears when you click and hold on the Back or Forward button.) These are great features if you can’t recall the URL for a Web site that you remember having visited recently.

To find a certain word or phrase on a Web page, press -F and then type your search word into the Find box. As Safari locates the word or words, it displays them within a bright yellow box and dims the background of the rest of the page. The Find bar also tells you how many times the word or phrase occurs on the page; you can jump to each instance. Click the to start over with new search terms, or click Done to close the Find bar and return to your normal browsing activity.

PDF files are all over the Web as, among other things, forms to download, online brochures, and scanned book pages. But they aren’t always especially readable in a browser window.

Unless, that is, you’re using Safari and its PDF viewing and saving tools. The next time you’re squinting at a PDF in the window, point to the bottom edge of the document; you’ll see a toolbar appear like the one in Figure 12-6. With these four icons, you can zoom out, zoom in, open the file in Preview, or save the PDF file itself to your Downloads folder.

Figure 12-6. If you’re having trouble reading the tiny type in a PDF, move your mouse to the bottom of it to make Safari’s PDF toolbar appear. You can zoom out, zoom in, open the file in the Mac’s Preview program, or even download it from the Web site with a well-placed click.

So how do you sign up for these free, automatic RSS “broadcasts?” Watch your address bar as you’re surfing the Web. When you see a blue RSS button appear (identified back in Figure 12-1), Safari is telling you, “This site has an RSS feed available.”

To see what the fuss is all about, click that button. Safari switches into RSS-viewing mode, as shown in Figure 12-8.

At this point, you have two choices:

RSS is a tremendously flexible and powerful technology, especially in Safari. The fun never ends, as these tricks illustrate.

Creating RSS summaries

If you create a new bookmark folder (Address bar) and fill it with RSS feeds, you can see the total number of new articles right next to the folder’s name. You might create a folder of Mac news feeds, for instance, so you know whenever there’s a important event in the Mac world.

From then on, by clicking the folder’s name (and opening its pop-up menu), you can see which feeds have new articles; they’re the ones with numbers next to their names. If you -click a bookmark folder’s name—in either the Bookmarks bar or the Bookmarks menu—Safari shows you all the feeds, neatly collated into one big, easily digestible list for your perusing pleasure. (If you’re billing by the hour, you can also choose View All RSS Articles from the folder’s pop-up menu to achieve the same effect.)

Tip

To make the merged list more useful, click New under the Sort By heading. Now Safari displays any new articles at the top of the list, regardless of what site they came from, so you don’t have to hunt through the list for new articles yourself.

Tip

If you find RSS feeds completely addictive in Safari, you’ll love them in Mail—where you can display them right in the program’s window or have them land in your Inbox like regular messages.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION: Cookie Control

Help! I’m afraid of cookies! The cookies are trying to watch me!

Cookies are something like Web page preference files. Certain Web sites—particularly commercial ones like Amazon.com—deposit them on your hard drive like little bookmarks, so that they’ll remember you the next time you visit. Most cookies are perfectly innocuous—and, in fact, are extremely helpful, because they help Web sites remember your tastes. Cookies also spare you the effort of having to type in your name, address, credit card number, and so on, every time you visit these Web sites.

But fear is widespread, and the media fans the flames with tales of sinister cookies that track your movement on the Web. If you’re worried about invasions of privacy, Safari is ready to protect you.

Once the browser is open, choose Safari→Preferences→Security tab. The buttons in this dialog box are like a paranoia gauge. If you click Never, you create an acrylic shield around your Mac. No cookies can come in, and no cookie information can go out. You’ll probably find the Web a very inconvenient place; you’ll have to re-enter your information upon every visit, and some Web sites may not work properly at all.

A good compromise is “Only from sites you navigate to,” which accepts cookies from sites you want to visit, but blocks cookies deposited on your hard drive by sites you’re not actually visiting—cookies an especially evil banner ad gives you, for example.

Note, too, the Show Cookies button, which reveals the shockingly complete list of every cookie you’ve accumulated so far—and offers you the chance to delete the ones that don’t look so savory.

iChat lets you reach out to chat partners on three different networks:

Each network generally has its own separate Buddy List window and its own chat window.

You log into each network separately using the iChat→Accounts submenu, but you can be logged into all of them at once. This is a great option if your friends are spread out among different chat networks.

Otherwise, however, chatting and videoconferencing works identically on all three networks. Keep that in mind as you read the following pages.

When you open iChat for the first time, you see the “Welcome To iChat” window (Figure 12-9). This is the first of several screens in the iChat setup sequence, during which you’re supposed to tell it which kinds of chat accounts you have, and set up your camera, if any.

An account is a name and password. Fortunately, these accounts are free, and there are several ways to acquire one.

Once you’ve entered your account information, you’re technically ready to start chatting. All you need now is a chatting companion, or what’s called a buddy in instant-messaging circles. iChat comes complete with a Buddy List window in which you can house the chat “addresses” for all your friends, relatives, and colleagues out there on the Internet.

Actually, to be precise, iChat comes with three buddy lists (Figure 12-10):

When you start iChat, your buddy lists automatically appear (Figure 12-10). If you don’t see them, choose the list you want from the Window menu: Bonjour, Buddy List, or Jabber. (Or press their keyboard shortcuts: -1, -2, or -3.)

Adding a buddy to this list entails knowing that person’s account name, whether it’s on AIM, Mac.com, or Jabber. Once you have it, you can either choose Buddies→Add Buddy (Shift--A) or click the + button at the bottom-left corner of the window.

Down slides a sheet attached to the Buddy List window, offering a window into the Address Book program (Chapter 11).

If your chat companion is already in Address Book, scroll through the list until you find the name you want (or enter the first few letters into the Search box), click the name, and then click Select Buddy.

If not, click New Person and enter the buddy’s AIM address, .Mac address, or (if you’re in the Jabber list) Jabber address. You’re adding this person to both your Buddy List and your Address Book.

Figure 12-10. Click the + button to add a new buddy, either by choosing from your address book or from scratch (by clicking New Person). If you’ve used AIM before, you may find that you’ve already got buddies in your list. AIM accounts store their buddy lists on AOL’s computers, so that you can keep your buddies even if you switch computers. Right: Is your Buddy List taking up too much screen space? Use the options in the View menu to lose the buddy pictures and other chunky icons to streamline the window.

Announce that you’re available to chat, or display your current iTunes track

Choose your own buddy icon

Buddy’s current iTunes track

Status indicators

Control-click for common commands (like “Invite to Audio Chat”)

Capable of audio chat

Capable of video chat

Add buddy

Invite for text, audio, or video chats (or screen sharing)

Buddy’s Away message

Using the pop-up menu just below your name (Figure 12-11, right), you can display your current mental status to other people’s buddy lists. You can announce that you’re Available, Away, or Drunk. (You have to choose Edit Status Menu for that one; see Figure 12-11, left.)

Better yet, if you have music playing in iTunes, you can tell the world what you’re listening to at the moment by choosing Current iTunes Track. (Your buddy can even click that song’s name to open its screen on the iTunes Store, all for Instant Purchase Gratification.)

For some people, by far the juiciest option is a status called Invisible (available for .Mac and AIM accounts only). It’s like a Star Trek cloaking device for your onscreen presence (Figure 12-11). Great for stalkers!

Figure 12-11. Left: Choose Edit Status Menu from the pop-up menu at the top of the iChat buddy list to set up more creative alternatives to “Available” and “Away.” Right: Your edited list of status messages is now available. The most interesting one is Invisible. It lets you see your friends online, but they can’t see you—great when you’re too busy to chat with annoying barely-acquaintances, but want to keep an eye out for a particular pal. You can still exchange messages with anyone on your Buddy List.

In View→Sort Buddies, you can rearrange your buddies as they’re listed in the Buddy lists: by availability, first name, last name, or in a manual order that you determine by dragging names up or down.

As with any conversation, somebody has to talk first. In chat circles, that’s called inviting someone to a chat.

They invite you

To “turn on your pager” so you’ll be notified when someone wants to chat with you, run iChat. Hide its windows, if you like, by pressing -H.

When someone tries to “page” you for a chat, iChat comes forward automatically and shows you an invitation message like the one in Figure 12-12. If the person initiating a chat isn’t already in your Buddy List, you’ll simply see a note that says “Message from [name of the person].”

Tip

If you’re getting hassled by someone on your AIM/.Mac buddy list, click his screen name and choose Buddies→Block Person. If the person isn’t online at the time, go to iChat→Preferences→Accounts→Security and click the button for Block specific people. Click the Edit List button, and then type in the screen name of the person you want out of your IM life.

Figure 12-12. You’re being invited to a chat! Your buddy wants to have a typed chat (top left) or a spoken one (top right). To begin chatting, click the invitation window, type a response in the bottom text box if you like (for text chats), and click Accept (or press Enter). Or click Decline to lock out the person sending you messages—a good trick if someone’s harassing you.

To invite somebody in your Buddy List to a chat:

To initiate a chat with someone who isn’t in the Buddy List, choose File→New Chat With Person. Type the account name of the person, and then click OK to send the invitation.

Either way, you can have more than one chat going at once. In the Olden Days (before October 2007), real iChat nerds often wound up with screens overflowing with individual chat windows. Juggling them all, and keeping them all current, was just part of the fun—and still can be.

But in modern times, you can now contain all your conversations in a single window. If you like the idea of a consolidated chatspace, chose iChat→Preferences→Messages and slap a checkmark in the “Collect chats into a single window” Box. Figure 12-13 has the details.

Figure 12-13. Now, when you’re conversing with several buddies, you can bounce between conversations by clicking the buddy names on the side of the window. It’s not as adventurous as keeping all your chats going in separate windows, but it’s a lot easier to hide when the boss comes your way.

Typing isn’t the only thing you can do during a chat. You can also perform any of these stunts:

If your video chats look like a bunch of cubicle-dwellers sitting around chatting at their desks, you can liven things up with one of Leopard’s most glamorous and jaw-dropping features: photo or video backgrounds for your talking head. Yes, now you can make your video chat partners think you’re in Paris, on the moon, or even impersonating a four-panel Andy Warhol silkscreen.

Here’s how to prepare your backdrop for a video chat:

If you want to clear out the background or change it, click the Original square in the middle of the Effects palette and then choose a different backdrop. (You can also change backdrops in mid-chat by choosing Video→Show Video Effects to open the effects palette.)

If things get too weird and choppy onscreen, you can restore the normal background by choosing Video→Reset Background. (That’s also handy if you suddenly have to have a video talk with your boss about your excessive use of iChat while he’s away on his business trip.)