I started using Safari again when I got my iPhone, and I've been looking for a way to sync my bookmarks between machines without using a .Mac account. This technique assumes one machine will always be overriding the other. It turns out it's very easy to do using Automator and Transmit. You'll also need access to an FTP server, so you can store your bookmark file.

On the master machine:

In Automator create a new workflow where step one is Get Specified Finder Items from the Finder library, and select the bookmarks.plist file which can be found in ~/Library/Safari. Then add the Upload Files action from the Transmit library. Enter the FTP server, upload path, and select replace. Save the workflow as an application.

On the slave machine:

In Automator, create a new workflow where step one is Download Files from the Transmit library. Set the FTP server (in Transmit, you should create a favorite that automatically logs in and changes the local path to ~/Library/Safari. Save this workflow as an application.

Now when you run the upload application, it will upload your Safari bookmarks to the FTP server. When you run the download application on the other machine, it will download the bookmarks.plist file from the FTP server and replace your local copy. For safety's sake, I have the download application set to ask before it replaces my local bookmarks file.

This is a very basic tip, but one i have been using often since the release of the Safari 3 public beta.

Instead of navigating to System Prefrences, or control-clicking on the Desktop to bring up the desktop image menu, simply drag the image you want to use as a desktop image onto the Safari 3 icon. When the image opens, control-click on it and select Use Image as Desktop Picture from the pop-up menu. I find Safari a lot quicker to load, and I find that this makes for a very quick way to change your desktop.

I like having machine spefiic bookmarks on each machine I work at (home, work, etc.), but also like having a common set available to each machine. I store my shared bookmarks in Google Bookmarks. I wrote an Automator workflow to download my Google Bookmarks and add them to the Safari bookmarks bar (but leave alone the bookmarks I already have there.) Safari automatically notices when its bookmarks file has been edited and automatically updates itself.

NOTES:

• You must be logged into Google services (Gmail, etc.) in Safari to run the workflow.
• The bookmarks are in submenus by label.
• The script assumes that a ':' in a label is a hierarchy separator, so Art:Photography would put a Photography menu inside an Art menu inside the Gmarks menu.
• If you label a Google Bookmark with multiple labels, it will show up in all the corresponding submenus.
• The script includes adding a label for when it was last run (inside the menu), and an item that runs JavaScript to add the current page to your Google Bookmarks.
• In addition to making a new Bookmarks file, the script makes a Bookmarks_no_google.plist file, so you can always go back to the bookmarks you had before running it.
• Tested and working in both Safari 2 and 3.02 beta.
• You may run into trouble if you move the Gmarks menu to other places in the bookmarks bar.

It's available as a disk image [16KB download] on my site.

[robg adds: I created a .zip version (8KB) of the workflow on the macosxhints server, in case the original ever vanishes (but that should be your first choice, in case the code ever changes. I haven't tested this, but you can open the workflow and look at the code yourself -- it includes a perl script that does most of the hard work.]

I ran into this recently, when I needed to save a URL as a text clipping, not as a webloc file. (The situation is too bizarre to get into here, but suffice it to say it involved two user accounts on the same machine that needed to share data, and Lotus Notes.)

I knew that dragging the favicon from the URL bar to the Desktop results in a webloc. This is helpful, and expected. The favicon is the URL proxy, and should act like the object it represents. To get a *text* clipping, I figured I'd drag the *text* instead of the favicon. This should result in a text clipping, right? Nope. The Finder recognizes the http: prefix, and 'helpfully' converts it to a webloc file for you. Not what I wanted, or expected.

Mildly annoyed, I decided to break its helpfulness by prepending a space. Voila. Drag the resulting text from the URL box in Safari, and you get a text clipping you can drop anywhere.

In Safari 3, Apple added a feature to warn you when you close multiple tabs. This is a good feature, and can be turned off if not wanted. But I like to be able to have it on as a safety net, but not be annoyed by it when I know I want to quickly close Safari. So, to bypass the warning just once, hold down the Option key when closing a browser window with multiple tabs open.

Warning: when multiple windows are open, this also closes those other windows without a warning.

In Safari, if you want to copy some text and images from a web page, but the image (even though highlighted) won't transfer if you drag-and-drop the selection into another application. So after you highlight the text and image you'd like to keep, copy it with Command-C, and paste it (Command-V) into an RTF TextEdit document. The picture, text, and any embedded links will all be there.

I've loved clippings since drag-and-drop first appeared (wavy flashback lines -- "wow, os7 is awesome! no more font/da mover!" -- shaking off cloudy haze), and have tons of them, filled with interesting little tidbits. And yes, I also greatly utilize File » Print to PDF, but with all of the extra stuff on web pages, clips are still the way to go for grabbing a little piece of info. It's not exactly a clipping, but almost as good with some advantages. I think this works with older versions of Safari, and you can paste into Stickies (or any other application that supports RTF).

I try to do as much as possible from my keyboard using shortcuts, because I think it's more efficient than using a mouse. As such, I frequently employ the Safari (and Camino, not sure about Firefox) keyboard shortcut Command-(1 through 9) that triggers your Bookmark Bar bookmarks. The problem is this actually slows me down because I can never tell at a quick glance whether a particular bookmark is Command-4 versus Command-5, or Command-6 versus Command-7, etc.

Here's the fix: in the Mac OS Character Palette (under the International icon in your menu bar), select the All Characters view from the View drop-down. Select the by Category tab, and then under the Symbols section in the left frame, select Numbers and Number Symbols. Scroll about two-thirds of the way down and look for the rows of seemingly-normal number characters right below the fractions. The first row of 0-9 are actually superscript characters, and the second row are subscript (I prefer subscript, but either will work):


Switch over to your Bookmarks editor in your browser, set your cursor in the bookmark's name field, and then select that bookmark's corresponding number in the character palette. Hit Insert and that's it! I usually put a space between the character and the name of my bookmark, which makes it more readable. It also helps to make the bookmark name all caps. Detractors will say, of course, that you could just put normal number characters in there, but I like my solution better. They don't take up too much space, but they're still quite readable without being distracting.

[robg adds: You might also try some of the white numbers with black backgrounds, as I found they stand out for easy readability.]

For some reason, the inline find in Safari 3 does not have the feature to follow a link after an inline find. In Firefox, I use this feature a lot to navigate through web pages. A small bookmarklet solves this issue in Safari:


Save the oneliner as a bookmarklet in the bookmarks bar. Now you can follow the link after an inline search by simply using the bookmarklet's shortcut (in my case, Command-1). Note that this code is not perfect and may fail in many cases, but it's good enough for me.

Here's an easy and simple way to get Safari 3 running without ruining other apps that rely on the current version of WebKit. The way the WebKit Nightly builds work is that they are a self contained version of the WebKit framework that feeds itself (instead of the System version) to Safari.app. We can use this behavior to our advantage to get Safari 3 running without altering the system version of WebKit that all your other apps use, and without having to resort to using the Terminal to fix every app that may break.

[robg adds: This previous hint discussed the same general thing as this one, and this method was noted in the comments there. However, I felt it worth running this one as a separate hint as it's a simpler solution to the problem.]

This may be an obvious hint to power users, but I haven't seen it anywhere else so what the heck. Ever since I switched to Firefox, I've been missing Safari's quick and easy auto-fill feature. True, there are Firefox add-ons, but I've found them either to be buggy or way too complicated. All I want is a simple, no fuss, one-click form filler. Here's a way to get it.

Download Google Toolbar, which includes an auto-fill button. It also comes with several other functions that I didn't want and that take up a lot of screen space, especially on a laptop. To keep things nice and neat, go to View » Toolbars » Customize. Drag the Google autoFill button into your Firefox toolbar. Click Done. Go to View » Toolbars and uncheck Google Toolbar, which will hide it (except for the button you just moved).

Now set up auto-fill. Go to Tools » Add-Ons and click on the Google Toolbar for Firefox add-on. Go to Preferences » Features » AutoFill Settings. Fill in your info. The next time you come across a web form, the fields for name, address, etc., will automatically turn yellow, letting you know that they can be filled in with a single click. As I noted, this is a basic form filler -- it doesn't support multiple names and addresses. But I didn't need anything that complicated, and I suspect a lot of other people don't either.