In Safari, hold down Command+Shift and then drag a Java applet to its own window.
Here's a simple Rubik's Cube applet to try it with. You'll notice when you press the keys an enclosing window appears, which can then be moved off on its own.
[crarko adds: It's actually pretty slick, how that works. I'm in Safari 5.1.1; I couldn't say how long this has been available.]
Not really a hint as much as an observation, but 'Show Downloads' is back in Safari.
In the most recent Safari update, 5.1.1, the Show Downloads menu item is back with its original shortcut, Command+Option+L. The only strange behavior is that it will be unavailable if your download history is empty (and of course that it is stuck to the Safari window). Otherwise it works like in Snow Leopard.
Thanks unnamed Apple hero!
[crarko adds: I guess I didn't notice it was missing, but it's good to have it back. Now Apple heroes, let's please have that modest iCloud support for Snow Leopard. :) ]
If after upgrading from Safari 5.0.5 to 5.0.6 in (Snow) Leopard are you stuck with no live HTML links when printing with OS X internal PDF engine?
You can downgrade to 5.0.5 using Pacifist (you can search for it easily) and then use the following links to direct downloads of Safari's previous versions.
I tested this in 10.5, hence the title of the hint.
Open the package with Pacifist, select 'Contents of…' file, click install, give your admin password and confirm overriding the previous version. Reboot your Mac.
AFAIK the link issue is a problem with the changed Webkit.framework.
Post in the comments how this works for you, be your OS version Leopard, Snow Leopard or Lion. Since I'll upgrade from Leopard to Lion in a few weeks I'd like to know how it handles HTML links in PDFs.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one. The links are still good and point to what they say. Pacifist is a tool for extracting and installing files from within packages, and has been mentioned here frequently before.]
I usually find myself in need of hitting the back button to pick a word from the previously visited page. That's easier now using Safari in Lion.
To peek at the previously visited page just slide back the current page using two fingers and hold your fingers right at where you desire. The sliding threshold is very sensitive, so you just have to get used to it. The finger gesture is easily done when Safari is in full screen mode.
[crarko adds: I eventually got this to work with the Magic Trackpad, but it's really touchy and takes practice. I didn't look to see if this could be made available in Safari 5.1 in Snow Leopard. If you make that work let us know in the comments.]
This is kind of a stripped down version of Read It Later or Instapaper, but functions perfectly for my workflow. It allows me to star/favorite/email links in several web applications or on my iPhone and have them added to Safari's Reading List automatically once my laptop is on and checks e-mail.
I've set up actions in ifttt that forward Links I favorite in Twitter or Google Reader, to my personal e-mail account and prepend the subject with the keyword #ReadLater.
Next I constructed a Mail Rule that acts on all messages who's subjects begin with said keyword. The Mail Rule will invoke an Applescript, mark the message as read and move it to the trash.
Here's the script:
using terms from application "Mail"
on perform mail action with messages theSelectedMessages
tell application "Mail"
repeat with eachMessage in theSelectedMessages
set mailbody to content of eachMessage
set theUrl to paragraph 1 of mailbody
tell application "Safari"
add reading list item theUrl
end tell
end repeat
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from
For some pictures and a few use cases, read the article on my blog.
[crarko adds: I haven't tested this one, but the script compiled cleanly in AppleScript Editor. The ifttt service looks potentially useful, and it is free, but the site is clearly optimized for a small screen, so don't panic when it looks horrible when viewed from a Mac.]
When Apple added the Reading List feature to Safari I wasn't too impressed as I didn't use any of the applications such as Instapaper before and I still don't. Then I realized their was another use for Reading Lists.
Instead of just using Reading Lists to save, lets say a news article you were reading and couldn't finish, you can use Reading Lists as a way to temporarily bookmark a page without making a true bookmark. Since the Reading List feature just saves the link to the page it can be very useful.
An example is doing research and instead of making bookmarks and folders and what not holding the links to the research and then later having to delete it from your bookmarks just add the links to the Reading List. Since the links will remain in the reading list until you clear it out they won't be added to your bookmarks and when you're finish using them just clicking the 'x' on each one or clicking clear all will remove them, make it easier to manage links to pages for research and so on.
[crarko adds: This is one of those things that seems so obvious once you know about it, but is a little subtle if you don't. I have lots of unorganized bookmarks from old searches for projects and I'm going to try this idea in the future.]
Safari 5.1 is now more thorough in maintaining your browsing history when re-opening tabs or windows. In the past, restoring previous tabs or windows did not include the browsing history in the Back/Forward buttons. Now, when you restore tabs or windows that had been closed, Safari maintains your earlier tab/window history. This applies in at least two areas:
When you restore windows following a quit/relaunch of Safari, whether using the Lion feature that automatically restores windows or History » Reopen All Windows From Last Session, or if you close a tab and use Command+Z (or Edit » Undo Close Tab) to re-open it.
This feature is available to all users of Safari 5.1, so people running Lion or 10.6.8 can use it.
[crarko adds: I tested this, and it works as described. Very nice. It appears enabling Private Browsing prevents this from happening, as you would expect.]
Safari Reader is a useful feature for making many websites more readable, but Apple doesn't provide any preference settings for Reader. Fortunately, it is easy to customize by editing the file Reader.html.
In Safari 5.0 it was easy to edit a file in the Safari.app package to set the preferences. In Safari 5.1, the file was moved to a non-obvious place:
You can simply edit the stylesheet in this file to change the appearance of Reader. Any changes will apply to tabs that Safari Reader has not yet been used in, just open a new tab to see the new style. As always, be careful when editing system files, and make a backup of Reader.html first. Be aware that some of the styles appear to be overwritten before you see them. For example, changing the size of the body font has no effect. If you want to change the size of the typeface, you can use the zoom trick.
Since Apple is likely to continue overwriting Reader.html with each update, I created a patch file for my changes. This can be applied using the patch command, as explained in the full version of this hint from the link above.
[crarko adds: I'm not a big user of Safari Reader, but it's good to have the ability to customize it. As the author points out on his site, Readability is also still an option for Safari 5.1, if you're not comfortable making the changes for yourself. Definitely read the examples of changes to the stylesheet if you haven't done this before.]
Recently, the Mozilla folks decided to change the organization of their apps reducing the (large?) number of jar files to just one. I've updated my page at http://bloodnok.net/MacOS/ with additional instructions plus a new version of the 'here' script.
My experience on two machines is Thunderbird 5 is totally busted on Lion, so your mileage may vary.
[crarko adds: Given the new release model for Firefox, it's difficult to forecast how quickly things will change. But if you used that older hint, you could try updating to the newer XML file from the hint author's site.]
Just like the Option-3 (or 4) finger swipe brings back back/forward navigation in the Finder history, it also brings back back/forward navigation in Firefox (at least for version 5 -- the one I have).
For those who like the Magic Trackpad 2-finger back/forward navigation swipe in Safari and wish this would be implemented in Firefox, this is the next best thing.
[crarko adds: It's a good bet that over time many applications will incorporate gesture support, beyond the kind of generic type described here.]
