macosxhints.com web browser tips

Enable the Develop (Debug) menu in Safari 6

Wed, 29 May 2013 07:30:00 -0700

While this isn't strictly a hint anymore, it was back in 2003 and 2009. The Safari Develop menu - formerly called the Debug menu - offers a number of nifty features for web developers. In addition, it's been greatly enhanced under Mountain Lion.

So, to activate this, you no longer need to run a Terminal command; just go to Safari > Preferences > Advanced and check Show Develop menu in menu bar.

Fix PDF display in browser issues

Thu, 02 May 2013 07:30:00 -0700

Some users have issues displaying PDFs in their web browsers. In some cases, when clicking on a link to a PDF, they get a blank black or white page. These issues can be caused by certain PDF browser plug-ins.

Michael Cohen has written an article for TidBITS discussing this issue, and explaining which plug-ins to remove.

I haven't seen this issue myself, but for those having problems, this is a simple fix. It's worth noting that, over time, you may have browser plug-ins that you don't need, so it's worth having a look in ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins and /Library/Internet Plug-Ins to see what's there.

Use emoji within Safari

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 07:30:00 -0800

Safari displays emoji perfectly: on web pages, in tabs, and in the titlebar (if emoji are used in a page title). This makes it unique amongst the main OS X browsers: Firefox displays them in the title bar but not in tabs or on the page, while Chrome displays them in tabs but not on the page. There's a screenshot on my blog where I discuss this in more detail (the blog posting is an example that can be used to test browsers).

I played around a little with encoding settings in Firefox and Chrome but couldn't fix it. Maybe others will have more luck.

One issue I'm not clear about is what's required on the web backend to display emoji. UTF-16 encoding? Does anyone know?

[kirkmc adds: It even works here, with Geeklog. 😄]

View hidden web passwords

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 07:30:00 -0700

Have you used your keychain to store your passwords? Do you wish there was an easy way to see what the password for a specific site is? Here are two different ways to accomplish this task without leaving your browser!

Both of these methods utilize the same functionality: they change the type of text box a password is entered into from a "password" box (masked with asterisks or �) to a "text" box, displaying its contents.

The first method can be done in Safari or Chrome (since they're both WebKit). Right-click or Control-click on the masked password field and select Inspect Element. Within the Inspector, you'll find the input HTML tag is highlighted. One of the attributes there will be type="password". Simply clicking on password will allow you to change it; type in text and, without closing the Inspector window, look at the password field to see your password revealed.

The second method is even easier, and does ...

Safari 6 ".com" shortcut

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 07:30:00 -0700

Before Safari 6, you could navigate to a URL with having to type ".com". The same can be done in Safari 6 with one extra keystroke.

Entering "apple" in the location bar of Safari 6 will yield you Google search results for those terms. However, including a trailing slash will cause Safari to add the .com TLD to a logical location in the address, and take you to that URL. So, "apple/" will take you to apple.com.

[kirkmc adds: This is fine, if you're trying to get to .com sites. If you're in a country and want to get to local sites, it won't help you. It's worth noting that you can enter any number of slashes and still get this to work.]

Update: As per a comment below, here's how to make it work when you type a /. For example, if you type "apple/ipod/" Safari will go to www.apple.com/ipod, if you do the following. Go to System Preferences > Network, click on Advanced, then DNS. In the Search Domains section, click on + and add .com. Click on ...

Fixe Camino 2.1 for compatibility with web sites

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:30:00 -0700

If you use Camino 2.1.2, you'll see warnings about it being an "out of date" browser or that there are incompatibilities with code, even though it uses a recent version of the Firefox Gecko engine. GMail notably displays these warnings. This fix solves the problem without "spoofing" the user agent to look totally like Safari or Firefox.

We want websites to know that we use Camino so they'll continue to support it. There's a simple change that will let you keep "Camino" as the user agent while enhancing compatibility.

In the Camino address bar, type "about:config". If necessary, click OK to be allowed to edit the settings.
In the search bar at the top of the settings list, type "user". This will shorten the list.
Double-click the setting called "general.useragent.extra.notfox". At this point, it probably has the value "(like Firefox/3.6.28)"
Edit that value, changing it to say "(like Firefox/13.0)"
Save, quit and ...

Skip through sections in Safari 6's Location bar autocomplete menu

Tue, 14 Aug 2012 07:30:00 -0700

In Safari 6, when you type into the omnibar - what Apple calls the "address and search field" - the autocomplete menu that shows suggestions for what you typed may be very long. If you want to select your bookmarks or history with the keyboard, you have to press the down arrow many times to get to them.

You can skip sections by holding down the Command key while pressing the up- or down-arrow buttons. So if you've typed something in the address and search field, you can press Command-down arrow to skip past the search engine suggestions, and then use the arrow key alone to select the item you want.

Make Google Chrome use standard print dialog

Tue, 07 Aug 2012 07:30:00 -0700

Google introduced a custom print dialog to Chrome a few versions ago. This adds a step to saving a PDF or using any of the other standard options. Until recently, this could be disabled in chrome://flags/. They have since removed the flag, but they did leave the command line option to disable it.

A workaround is to create an AppleScript applet that launches Chrome with this option. The following script does exactly that, assuming Chrome is located in your applications folder:

do shell script "/Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\\ Chrome --args --disable-print-preview > /dev/null 2>&1 &"

Open AppleScript Editor, paste the above into a new window, then save it as an application. If you run this applet to launch Chrome, you'll get a st ...

Skip to top/bottom of web page

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 07:30:00 -0700

I've been wondering when the 'skip to top' functionality that is now a staple in so many iOS apps would appear on OS X. It seems to be here now, albeit in a limited fashion. As such, this hint only seems valid for Firefox.

In order to skip to the top or bottom of a web page, simply swipe up or down on your trackpad using three fingers.

[kirkmc adds: Yes, this works in Firefox, and in Opera, it moves about 4/5 of a screen.]

Re-enable the backspace key to go back a page in Safari 6

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 07:30:00 -0700

It seems like Apple disabled the "Press Backspace to go back a page" feature in Safari 6 due to users having complained about losing text entered in text fields when they accidentally pressed the backspace key. If you liked this feature, you can enable it again using this command:

defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add Back "\U232b"

If you ever want to disable it, there are two possibilities. The first, if you don't have any other shortcuts for Safari, is to run this command:

defaults delete com.apple.Safari NSUserKeyEquivalents

It will delete all Safari keyboard shortcuts.

The second method is a bit more time-consuming. You need to first create a keyboard shortcut for Safari, for the "Back" command, in the preferences. Then, if you apply the first command above, you'll be able to delete it. If you don't have a shortcut set up for the Back command before running the first command above, it won't display in the Keyboar ...

Set Safari's Activity window to have items collapsed by default

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:30:00 -0700

The Activity window can be extremely useful for quickly finding resources for a web page, identifying which ones failed to load, etc. However, with a lot of pages open, it often shows too much information by default, as each web page's disclosure triangle is expanded. This takes longer to view the page and requires you to scroll to find the site you want to check, if you have multiple windows or tabs open. Fortunately, Safari has a setting that controls this behavior, although it isn't accessible via the GUI.

Simply type the following in Terminal to make the Activity window open with all sites collapsed by default:

defaults write com.apple.Safari ActivitiesStartExpanded -boolean NO

Quit and relaunch Safari for this to take effect.

To reverse the setting, simply invert the last argument:

defaults write com.apple.Safari ActivitiesStartExpanded -boolean YES

Pause animated GIFs in Safari

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 07:30:00 -0700

I'm not certain how far back this goes, but pressing the Escape key in Safari 5.1.5 pauses animated GIFs on a web page. I have an older Mac with Safari 3.2.1 and this functionality is not present there. It would be great if there were a single command to stop these GIFs completely, but this is better than nothing.

It's possible other browsers have a similar capability, but this appears to be a Safari-specifc shortcut. Testing with iCab 4.8, a browser which uses the built-in WebKit frameworks, does not respond to the same command.

[kirkmc adds: Indeed, this does work. In Firefox, this stops the animation entirely, unlike Safari, where it only pauses the animation. In Chrome and Opera, it has no effect.]

Browser wars poll #11: Which web browser do you use most on OS X?

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 07:30:00 -0700

It's been a while, so here's a new poll, asking Which web browser do you use most on OS X? If your favorite isn't in the list, feel free to add a comment.

Automate the download of YouTube videos in Safari 5.1

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 07:30:00 -0800

A YouTube video can be downloaded by Option-double-clicking its video URL in Safari's Activity window. (See this hint.) However, if a lot of tabs are open, the URL can be difficult to find; particularly as now it will often have no "MB" value in the Status column.

This script will find the YouTube video URL of the current tab in the Activity window, and attempt to download it in Safari. You will need to always have at least one download in the Downloads popover to make it available! Otherwise, the script leaves the video URL highlighted for an Option-double-click download. Run the script with your favourite app launcher.

It works by first searching the Activity window for the name of the current Safari tab, then opening the disclosure triangle to find the "videoplayback" URL. Then, if its available, the "Show Downloads" button is clicked and its popover is brought into focus. Finally, the ...

A mouse shortcut for adding a link to the Reading List in Safari

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 07:30:00 -0800

It is well known that one can add a link to the reading list using the link's contextual menu. However, I have found another mouse shortcut for three-button mice. It works at least in Mac OS X 10.7.3 in Safari 5.1.2 and 5.1.3.

Click the link with the middle mouse button while holding the shift key and watch the link jump to your reading list.

[crarko adds: I don't have a three-button mouse handy to test this, but if you have a programmable mouse, you should be able to make an application-specific macro to do this too. If you try this out in 10.6, please post the results in the comments.]

Change Safari's default search engine

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 07:30:00 -0800

This hint describes a way to change one of Safari's built-in search engines (Google/Yahoo/Bing) into a custom one, without the use of any plugins/add-ons/extensions. It involves carefully editing one of Safari's binary (much like the previous hint.)

Go to /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Safari.framework/Versions/A/ and save the file named 'Safari' somewhere safe. If something goes wrong while editing, it's just a matter of copying that back (tested myself).

Do the same for this file /Users/USER/Library/Safari/Configurations.plist.signed.

Open 'Configurations.plist.signed' with any text editor and erase everything in it, making it blank. Save it, and then right-click to 'Get Info,' and tick the 'Locked' box.

Now for the binary I recommend a hex editor, I used the free HexFiend ...

10.7: HTML5 Video Display Sleep Workaround

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 07:30:00 -0800

The just released OS X 10.7.3 has a new Safari version but the old FDisplay Sleep Issue on HTML5 Video was still not fixed, so I started to look around for a solution and it seems that it is a WebKit Bug, and I made a workaround for this.

Go to the WebKit Project home page and download the latest Nightly Build; it has worked for me so far.

Put it into your Applications Folder and launch, and the browser launches as Safari containing all settings and features, so go to Settings and make WebKit your default browser.

Next download and install the RCDefaultApp PrefPane launch it and go under the application pane to WebKit and enable all file associations and actions.

Safari is no longer the default, now go to the Extensions Pane and search for the safariextz Extension, set it to open with WebKit as well, now you are done, Safari is still there a ...

Using an alternative search engine in Safari

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:30:00 -0800

Ever want to change your default search engine to something other than Google, Bing or Yahoo?

I've been very frustrated with the limited search options available in Safari. In addition, I am very concerned about how much information about me leaks out to Google especially now that they are tying in google plus information and the fact that most sites I go to seems to use Google analytics.

I've recently switch over to using DuckDuckGo which has a much more user friendly privacy policy. They provide detailed instructions here on how to set up your browser to use them so I won't repeat them.

I personally edited my /etc/hosts file pointing search.yahoo.com to 184.72.115.86 then selected Yahoo! from the search box drop-down menu. I really love the advanced features and seamless integration this provides. In addition Google ...

A Service for adding shortened URLs to Safari's Reading List

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 07:30:00 -0800

Recently, I was playing around with Safari's Reading List feature, and I was pleased to see that there is a Services menu item to add links to the list from other applications. Unfortunately, it didn't work for a bunch of the URLs that I tried to add.

The link detection scheme is overly strict and it seems to only work with well formed URLs that contain the scheme. This didn't help at all when trying to add links from Twitter where just about every one is shortened and does not contain the http:// cruft.

I have been wanting to learn more about Automator and Applescript so without further ado I present my lax version of the 'Add to Reading List' Service.

To setup the service:

Launch Automator.
Choose the Service document type.
Service receives selected text in any application (default).
Type apple in the search field to find the Run AppleScript action.
Drag Run AppleScript to your workflow.
Replace the ...

One click access in Safari to iCloud mail

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:30:00 -0800

In Safari when I want to check my iCloud mail, it's usually in two steps:

First: I open iCloud.com in Safari. Second: Click Mail icon in iCloud, and I have my e-mail messages.

Now I can do this in just one step:

If I instead bookmark https://www.icloud.com/#mail in Safari's Bookmarks bar, I can go straight to the Mail inbox in iCloud with just one click. Almost like accessing a Gmail account.

This is also valid for Contacts, Calendar and iWork:

https://www.icloud.com/#Contacts
https://www.icloud.com/#Calendar
https://www.icloud.com/#iWork

These shortcuts are great if you need fast access to you favorites iCloud apps.

[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. It seems pretty straightforward.]