OK, last one of the day (sorry, I’ve been a busy beaver). Safari takes a snapshot of websites and uses them as a thumbnail. In rare cases this can cause instability. In order to disable it, set the DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy key in com.apple.Safari.plist to the number 2, as follows: defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSnapshotsUpdatePolicy -integer 2
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The Safari Kiosk
Saft is a tool that allows you to do a number of things in Safari for Mac OS X, but the one likely most often used is to run Safari as a Kiosk. Saft opens Safari, places its preferences into each users com.apple.Safari.plist (in ~/Library/Preferences) and then runs Safari with its own brand of fun. When used in conjunction with the Simple Finder, it’s a pretty powerful way to lock a system in such a way that only a key combination or two can be used to unlock it. Saft can also block adds using regular expressions, provide shortcuts that allow you to invoke sites with a keystroke and perform…
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Safari Command-Clicks & Tabs
Using Safari is like going to In-n-Out for a burger – it’s all about ordering off the menu. But instead of a “4 by 4 animal style” I’m going to order a browser that attempts to open every link I click in a new tab, even if it tries to open in a new window. Even realizing that if I click on it using the command-click it will open a new tab anyway. To do so, we’re going to use the TargetedClicksCreateTabs key in the com.apple.Safari.plist file by using the following command: defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true I have an opposite day situation. I also need to completely disable…
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Sync Bookmarks Between IE, Firefox & Safari
If you are a Safari user and you have a MobileMe account then you can already synchronize Safari bookmarks between multiple Macintosh computers. But what if you want to synchronize to that corporate sanctioned Windows XP machine in the office that runs only Internet Explorer? What if you also want to synchronize to Firefox, running on another machine? All three can synchronize together in one harmonious bookmarking ménage à trois. How is all of this made possible?Xmarks. Formerly Foxmarks, Xmarks now supports more browsers and runs on more platforms. You store a backup of your bookmarks in the Xmarks cloud (which, yes, means that you’ll need to create an account) and then you…
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Safari 4 Beta
The Safari 4 beta has been posted on Apple for awhile and there are people talking about it on the interwebs. So my turn. But rather than wax poetically about browser wars, which seems to be what everyone else is doing, I’ll constrain the conversation to the Safari 4 beta, which you can download from here. If you haven’t moved into tabbed browsing yet, then after you install the upgrade you’re likely not going to notice much of a change. When you open Safari it will look a little like it always looked, with some minor enhancements to the GUI – notably the little picture of a bug in the…
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Open Source Forensics for Safari
SFT (Safari Forensic Tools) is a collection of command line tools that can be used to analyze information from Safari. The tools include parsers for Safari history, downloads, cookies, bookmarks, icon caches, and other information. They’re easy to use and can aid you in learning a bit more about what kind of information you leave behind on your own system… Find out more on SFT here.
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Man Pages in Safari or Firefox
BWANA! Once installed just type man:chmod, or man:sudo and the man page will be displayed in safari. The links work as well. It even has a search bar at the top. http://www.bruji.com/bwana/
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Safari Online
Safari books online is pretty amazing. I can search for anything and then read only the relevant passage in the book as needed. I just can’t read entire IT books cover-to-cover like I used to any more. That seemed to stop when I started to write my own books. But, when I’m googling for something I am getting way more false positives than I’d like and so now I will first go to Safari, and then to the wider world of Google…
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Launch Safari with Tabs
Safari, and the resulting tabbed browsing, can revolutionize the way you work with the web. If you would like to keep the tabs in your browser, even if you don’t have a second tab (ie – if you’d like to test the size or look of your environment) then you can have the browser open with a single tab by default. com.apple.Safari.plist has a number of settings that aren’t exposed in the graphical interface of Safari. The AlwaysShowTabBar key can be used to set this behavior. For example: defaults write com.apple.Safari AlwaysShowTabBar -bool YES You can undo this with: defaults write com.apple.Safari AlwaysShowTabBar -bool NO