If you like the idea of the search bar in the Apple Safari web browser but want to use an alternative search engine (some good reasons why you may want to do this can be seen here), with a little work you can change the search engine it uses. There seem to be only two search engines which can interpret Google's query format:
Firstly, you must obtain the IP address of the relevant host for the search engine you want to use. To find their IP numers, open a terminal window and type nslookup www.searchengine.com. Replace www.searchengine.com with the relevant host listed above for the search engine you want to use. The answer will appear like this:
Copy the IP address from the last part (after "Non-authoritative answer:") into the clipboard. Then, type into the terminal (you must have set up a root account) su echo 66.77.74.20 www.google.com >> /etc/hosts followed by exit. Replace 66.77.74.20 with the relevant IP address by pasting the IP address you obtained from the first step.
[robg adds: This method does quite a bit more than changing Safari's search engine -- it basically re-maps google.com to the search engine you specify through the use of the hosts file. This means that any request for google.com is going to get redirected elsewhere. I'm not aware of any specific Safari-only methods of avoiding google, however -- anyone know more on the subject?]
I was looking through MacOSXHints today and I realized that nobody had documented a great feature that I found using Safari.
If you are in the bookmarks window in Safari (you know, the one that appears after clicking the little bookmark button at the far left in the bookmarks bar), you can open any sub-folder (a folder within a bookmark folder) of bookmarks in tabs simply by control-clicking on the folder and selecting "Open in Tabs." This is similar to the option that is shown at the very bottom of any bookmarks bar folder after clicking-and-holding on it in the bookmarks bar (or at the top with a control-click on the folder), but it applies to any sub-folder anywhere in your bookmarks.
Note that this does not apply to bookmark folders in the "Collections" list, but only to folders that appear in the right pane of the bookmarks window.
to ~/Library -> Application Support -> Chimera -> Profiles -> default -> xxxx.slt -> user.js, it will force Camino to display web pages with font settings in the Preference panel, as opposed to the fonts specified by the page itself. To reverse the behavior, change the 0 to a 1.
[robg adds: This hint is another in a long line of hidden preference tricks, previously discussed in this hint (and the search URL in that hint that lists a number of others).]
Have you ever opened up a folder full of tabs in Safari accidentally (ie by Command-clicking on a bookmark folder), which then overwrites any tabs already carefully opened in the current window? Don't sweat about re-loading all the links you were looking at previously.
Simply hit the Back button, and Safari will immediately close any erroneously opened tabs and revert back to the set of tabs you had opened before.
In Safari, the pop-up window blocking is not designed very well, as it does not take into account if the user clicked on a link and so on.
I sometimes use web sites that need pop-ups, and under Mozilla it is OK because it will notice if you click on a link, and load any pop-ups related to that mouse click. However, Safari will not do this. I used to just turn pop-up blocking on and off as I needed it (by hitting Command-K), but found the other day that if you hold down the Command key and click the link, it will force the pop-up to open.
I have tabbed browsing enabled, but I'm not sure if this matters.
I just noticed a really great feature of Safari: If you choose "View Source..." for a page, edit the HTML for that page in another application, and then reload the page, the source window will update with the refreshed source. For web developers, this is a really nice little convenience.
One of the core principles of access for people with disabilities is that information should be understood even if the user can't see color.
Mac-using Web developers can test their pages for color dependence by viewing pages in grayscale. Here's how you do that in Mac OS X:
Open System Preferences and select the Universal Access panel
Select the Seeing tab.
Click on "Set Display to Grayscale." Ta da!
View the pages in Safari or another browser. Change back by repeating these same steps to reset the display.
This technique can also be used by application developers to ensure their apps meet Apple's Human Interface guidelines for color dependence. The Universal Access settings are actually quite useful beyond simply enabling access by people with disabilities.
If you have "Always show tab bar" enabled under the Tabs section of Safari's preferences, you can Control-click on the last open tab and close it through the contextual menu, leaving nothing but a huge, brushed metal window. You then have to open a new tab if you want to resume browsing Websites.
It's completely useless (at least as far as I can tell), but I found it interesting nonetheless.
[robg adds: I would agree that it's completely useless, but it is kind of odd to see!]
I use iTunes 4 and publish some of my playlists via network and internet. The protocol is named "daap" (Digital Audio Access Protocol) on port 3689/tcp (see previous hint on passing it through your firewall).
I type daap://my.host.name/ or daap://my.ip.number in Safari and hit return. Safari launches iTunes and opens up the shared list. I have collected a lot of that kind of bookmarks now, organized them in a folder called "musik" and put the folder in my bookmark list. So I have fast access to all non-Rendezvous music sites.
It was posted in January that you can open Finder folders in Safari. This is kind of a given, but it also means you can make a folder of bookmarks to places on your hard drive in your bookmarks bar, and command-click it to reveal all those places separate Finder windows.
