The top row of controls in the Safari window is the Address bar. It contains the basic tools you need to move between Web pages, as well as a few tools to make your use of the Internet easier.

Earlier, you were introduced to the Add Bookmark button in the Address bar, which allows you to add the current page to a list of bookmarked pages. The Bookmarks bar holds links to sites you want to keep close at hand.

You can add sites to the Bookmarks bar by clicking the icon in front of the address in the Address field and dragging it into the Bookmarks bar. A sheet window appears where you can enter a name to identify the site, as shown in Figure 12.3. Remove a site by dragging the address outside the Safari window. If you drag addresses within the Bookmarks bar area, you will be able to rearrange them.

Figure 12.3. Keep the page’s official title or enter one you’ll remember better.

Because only a limited number of items will remain visible in the Bookmarks bar, there is also an expanded Bookmark view where you can store and organize favorite addresses. This is where addresses go when you click the Add Bookmark button. You can open it by clicking the icon that looks like an open book at the far left of the Bookmarks bar. We’ll talk more about managing bookmarks later in the chapter in the section “Working with Bookmarks.”

Tabs are an option in Safari that allows you to have several Web pages open at one time without all the clutter of extra browser windows. The Tab bar shown previously in Figure 12.2 has three open pages that you can click between. We’ll talk about this morein the section “Using Tabs” later in the chapter.

The Status bar, which you can choose to include at the bottom of the Safari window, displays information about a page as it loads. For example, in Figure 12.2, the page has been reloaded, so the Status bar reads “Contacting ‘www.apple.com.’”

The Status bar also provides information about hyperlinked elements on a page as you move your mouse cursor across them. For example, if you run your mouse across a text link or a linked image, the address to which the link goes appears.

As you use Safari, you may notice an icon displaying a “return” arrow in an orange circle at the far-right side of the Address field. That’s the Snap-Back button. It appears in any page you navigate to through links within other Web pages. If clicked, the Snap-Back button takes you back to the last address you physically typed in the Address field.

You can also manually set a page to be the one to which Snap-Back returns. Simply choose History, Mark Page for Snap-Back from the menu, or use the keyboard shortcut Command-Option-M. This is a convenient way to mark a specific page while you continue following links.

As you saw previously, Safari’s tabs allow you to have several Web pages open at one time without the clutter of extra browser windows.

If you want to use tabs, choose Preferences from the Safari menu, open the Tabs pane (shown in Figure 12.5), and the Enable tabbed browsing box. You can also decide whether tabs containing freshly loaded pages will automatically be selected or whether they will wait for you to click them. Finally, you can choose whether to show the Tab bar even when only one tab exists.

Figure 12.5. The Tabs preference pane contains a few options as well as a list of keyboard shortcuts.

After you’ve enabled tabs under the preferences, you’re ready to try them out. Tabs are easy to use. When you want one, simply choose File, New Tab from the menu (or use the keyboard shortcut Command-T). You then see a row of boxlike buttons, or tabs just below the Address bar. Each tab is labeled with the name of the Web page it contains, as shown in Figure 12.6, so you can easily click between them. If you want to close a tab, click the close icon on its far-left side.

Figure 12.6. A row of tabs, each representing a Web page ready for view.

Figure 12.7. You can also create tabs through a contextual menu, opened by Control-clicking a link.

In addition to viewing Web pages with Safari, you can also use it to download files linked from Web pages.

When you click a link for certain types of documents, Safari automatically opens a Downloads window, as shown in Figure 12.8. Depending on your preference settings, this window may list other files you’ve downloaded as well as showing status of the current download.

Figure 12.8. See the progress of a file as it downloads.

When the download is complete, the file will be on your local computer. By default, Safari stores downloaded files on your desktop, but you can change these preferences options in the General pane of the system preferences, which we’ll discuss in the “Safari Preference Options” section later in this chapter.

Earlier, you learned to drag a Web address from the Address field into the Bookmarks bar to quickly store it for later reference. As useful as that feature is, there’s limited space for all the pages you want to keep. However, there is plenty of room in the Bookmarks window, shown in Figure 12.9, which you can open by clicking the Show All Bookmarks button in the Bookmarks bar.

Figure 12.9. A special window to view and organize lists of your favorite Web sites. (When opened, it displays the last section you visited.)

By default, Safari comes with several common Web sites already stored as bookmarks, but you can add your own simply by clicking the Add Bookmark button in the Address bar when you are viewing a page you want to add. (If the Add Bookmark button is not visible, go to the View menu to select it.) Safari displays a sheet window, shown in Figure 12.10, where you can name your bookmark and select a folder in which to store it.

Figure 12.10. Name and categorize the site.

To return to a page you’ve bookmarked, open the Bookmarks window and choose the folder where you stored it.

If you decide another category would be more appropriate for something you’ve already bookmarked, you can drag it from one folder into another. If you want to remove a page all together, select it and press the Delete key on your keyboard. (You can also drag unwanted items to the Trash in the Dock.) Be careful when deleting folders and bookmarks, however, because you don’t get a second chance to confirm your choices.

Although Safari’s preset category folders are straightforward, you may want to rearrange them or add new ones. You can move a folder by selecting it and dragging it to a new location in the list. An insertion bar appears to show you where it will be placed.

You can create more specialized folders (or even a folder within a folder) by clicking the Create a Bookmarks Folder button at the bottom of the Bookmarks window. Use the button at the bottom-left to add a main folder and the one at bottom-center to add a subfolder to the current folder. An untitled folder is added where you can type your new category, as shown in Figure 12.11.

Figure 12.11. A new bookmarks subfolder has been named.

The Safari menu contains many options typically found in an application menu. You can view information about Safari or open the Preferences window as well as access available services (mentioned during our tour of the menu bar in Chapter 1, “Introducing Mac OS X”) and hide or quit the application.

From the Safari menu, you can also report bugs to Apple or easily activate and deactivate the option to block pop-up windows. To keep others from using or viewing your settings, choose Reset Safari from the Safari menu to erase your browsing history, cached files, list of downloads, Google search entries, any cookies set on your computer, and all the data saved for used by the Autofill feature. Choose Empty Cache to delete the Web pages and images saved by Safari.

The File menu contains the basic options to open and close new windows or tabs. As in most other applications, the Page Setup and Print features are also located here. The Open Location option simply places the mouse cursor in the Address field, ready for you to enter a Web address. Open File allows you to navigate to Web page or image files on your computer that you want to view in Safari.

The Edit menu contains the standard Copy, Cut, and Paste commands as well as Select All and Delete.

Undo and Redo options are also found under the Edit menu. They pertain not to moving between pages—we have Forward and Back buttons for that—but rather to changes you make to your bookmarks. Find can be used to quickly locate a word or phrase of interest on a page. For example, in a long list of names and addresses, you can choose Find to go immediately to the entry for the person you want to contact.

Autofill, like the Autofill button mentioned earlier, helps you fill in online information.

The Spelling option won’t check the spelling in Web sites so that you can recognize when they are poorly proofread. Rather, it allows you to check any text you enter in a text field on a page. For example, if you type a search term in the Search field on the Google Web page or in the Google field in the Safari Address bar, you can check its spelling before running a search. You can choose the Check Spelling as You Type option to see a wavy red line under any term your system doesn’t recognize.

You learned earlier that you can choose which interface options appear in the Safari window in the View menu. You can also control the more advanced options for text encoding and view source. You may know that Web pages are written in HTML. View source allows you to see the HTML that the browser is using to display a given Web page.

The Text Encoding option lets you tell Safari in which format to display character sets used in Web pages. There is a default setting in the Appearance pane of the Safari preferences, but you can make temporary changes using this Text Encoding menu option.

The History menu contains duplicates of the basic controls for moving through pages: the Back, Forward, and Home items work the same as the buttons typically found in the Address bar. Also in the History menu are the settings to mark a page for Snap Back and to snap back to the currently marked page. Finally, the History menu displays a list of addresses for pages visited in the past week and the option to clear the history.

The Bookmarks menu provides an alternative way to view and add bookmarks in Safari. (See the “Working with Bookmarks” section earlier in this chapter.)

The Window menu contains options related to viewing Safari windows—including the download manager—and tabs. It also includes the standard “minimize” and “zoom” window controls for covering or uncovering your desktop.

The Help menu gives you access to Apple-created instructions for using Safari and to the acknowledgements and user license agreement for the software. It also allows you to view which plug-ins recognized by Safari are installed on your system. Figure 12.12 shows an example.

Figure 12.12. See what plug-ins are available on your computer for Safari to use.

Options under General preferences, shown in Figure 12.13, include many common settings related to how a Safari window is launched and how pages and files are accessed.

Figure 12.13. Choose your default Web browser and default home page in the General preferences pane.

The first option is a choice of your default Web browser, or the Web browser that launches automatically whenever you click a link received in email or through another program. The drop-down menu lists any application recognized as a Web browser by your system.

You also have the option of choosing whether new windows that open come up with a specific home page that you’ve chosen, as an empty page, with any page currently open, or in Bookmarks mode. (We discussed setting a default home page in a note in the “Address Bar” section earlier in this chapter.)

The next three options pertain to downloading files. You have the option to save downloaded files to the Desktop or to choose another location using the standard OS X file browser. You can also decide how items will be removed from your Download list: manually, when Safari quits, or upon successful download. (Note that removing items from the list doesn’t affect files that have been downloaded.) If you like to keep a record of what you’ve downloaded, set it to Manually; if you prefer a clean slate, choose one of the other options.

The third download-related preference is the Open “safe” Files After Downloading check box. Safe files, by Safari’s definition, are files unlikely to cause harm to you system, including media files, such as images and sounds, PDF or text files, and disk images. If this option is checked, any “safe” files automatically become active when they are downloaded; otherwise, you need to double-click downloaded files to launch or uncompress them.

The final setting relates back to how Safari reacts to links you open from other applications. You can decide whether to open links in a new window or in the current window.

The Appearance pane, shown in Figure 12.14, contains the Web page display settings over which the viewer can have some input. You can choose any font on the system to be used on Web pages where another font is not specifically specified.

Figure 12.14. Choose fonts and character encoding preferences.

You can also choose a fixed-width font, a font for which all letters take up the same area in a line of text, to be used when the specified font needs to align in a specific way.

You can also decide whether to load images in a Web page, in case you’d rather not wait for them to download. Finally, you can set default character encoding, which tells your browser how to interpret characters in a Web page. For example, if you regularly read Japanese Web sites, you would only be able to see the correct characters if your character encoding and the Web page used the same setting.

Choose whether to include Web pages listed in your Address Book or available on your local network in the Bookmarks bar or Bookmarks menu.

You can also choose to synchronize your bookmarks across computers using .Mac, as discussed earlier.

As mentioned earlier, the Tabs pane, shown previously in Figure 12.5, allows you to control preferences related to tabbed browsing. You can enable tabbed browsing and choose whether the tab bar will be visible even when only one window is open. You can also set whether to open tabs as they are created, or allow them to open in the background and wait until you choose to open them.

In the Autofill pane, shown in Figure 12.15, you can choose whether to allow Autofill access to information stored in your card in the Address Book, based on sites and passwords you’ve entered for it to use, or based on data from other forms you’ve filled in. After each option is an Edit button. Clicking the Edit button allows you view or remove any information stored for use by Autofill.

Figure 12.15. Set limits on where Autofill gets its information or edit what’s already stored.

The Security pane, shown in Figure 12.16, contains settings for how Safari should respond to different elements it encounters as you visit Web pages. The first group of options are common elements of Web pages employed mostly for benevolent uses but can be abused.

Figure 12.16. Security options include how your browser interacts with Web sites.

As you learned earlier, plug-ins are supplemental programs that allow you to view content from Web pages created in a format other than plain HTML. If you don’t want to allow this content, you can choose to disable plug-ins. Keep in mind, however, that the elements created for use with plug-ins will not be readable.

Java is computer programming language used to write interactive Web pages or even downloadable applications that run outside a Web browser. You may choose to disable Java to prevent such applications from running on your computer.

JavaScript is a simple programming language often used to make regular Web pages show some interaction. For example, JavaScript is often used to make images change when you move your mouse cursor over them. If you find motion onscreen distracting, you can disable JavaScript. However, be aware that some pages are more difficult to understand and may even have content that is visible only to people who have JavaScript enabled for their browsers.

Another common use of JavaScript is to open new browser windows on your screen—sometime whether you want them or not. Pop-up ads are a common method of Web advertising, but Safari gives you the option to block these additional windows. Although this can be a good way to eliminate annoying ads, keep in mind that some sites open additional windows containing important content in the hopes of getting people’s attention. Those who block pop-up windows may miss real content.

Cookies are another common tool used by Web developers. Cookies are small pieces of data stored on your local computer by the computer that hosts a Web site. This is done so that the site can identify you as a unique visitor.

Mostly, cookies are used so that a Web site can provide better service. For instance, if you purchase books at Amazon.com and then return to the site, you will be welcomed by name and shown a list of books that may interest you because the site identifies your account with your computer. Use of cookies also allows a person to move freely between pages in some types of secure systems that require user login. Cookies often are required in these situations because the server hosting the Web site needs to know on every page within the secure section that you are the person who logged in, and not someone who’s simply skipped over the login page without authorization. In the first example, the cookie would be stored for a long time—perhaps a year or more—so that the site would be able to welcome you. In secure sections, cookies may last only until you quit out of the Safari application.

Although many sites use cookies for benevolent visitor tracking, there is the potential for cookies to be used to track people’s habits on the Web even outside the site that issues the cookie. Many people find this an invasion of privacy. For this reason, Safari give you the option to always accept cookies, never accept cookies, or to accept cookies only from sites you purposely navigate to. You can also click the Show Cookies button to view any cookies currently stored on your computer and to delete any you want to remove.

The last option on the Security pane is a check box to ask before sending a nonsecure form to a secure server. Activating this feature alerts you when you may be sending sensitive data over the Web through a server not designed to ensure privacy.

The Advanced pane, shown in Figure 12.17, includes settings most people won’t need to change.

Figure 12.17. The default settings of the Advanced options should probably be left intact.

The first option allows you to set your own style sheet, which is a specially formatted description of how text on a page should be displayed. For example, with a carefully written style sheet, you could have text in Web pages that is coded as a heading appear in extremely large type, or even change its color, or reset the background of a page to another color to increase or reduce contrast. (Although this feature can be useful, writing style sheets is outside the scope of this book.)

Changing settings for Proxies is another topic outside the scope of this book. Proxy servers are computers that serve as intermediaries between a user’s computer, such as yours, and the computer that serves a Web page. The proxy server may be used to manage the flow of data over a network due to requests from many users. If your computer is part of a local network with a network administrator, you may want to ask about any proxy servers and settings that may be recommended.