Ok, so it really isn't a hint, it's a feature :). If you use Safari and go to Apple's website, you can actually see a little Icon that says "Welcome Safari User" along with the safari icon.

[Editor's note: Yea, I know it's not a hint ... I still thought it was sort of cool, though many of you may disagree!]

Perhaps this isn't new, but I recently noticed that in safari, when you control-click on a link to a MP3 file, one of the options is "Open with iTunes". Perhaps a further iLife like integration? Regardless, very cool.

The Safari secret shortcuts list (see this hint says that you can command-click a hypertext link to open it in a new window in Safari. This is of course smoother than using the contextual menu once you get used to it. You may also hold shift and command-click a link to open a new window in the background.

However, the shortcut list does not say that this principle works on all instances of links in Safari: bookmarks menu and toolbar bookmarks - sweet!

Note: the command- part of this shortcut opens new windows in the Finder as well. Nice and consistent.

My primary browser was iCab. Now I'm on Safari. To get my very extensive hotlist into Safari, I followed the once recommended road and imported them through IE to get them into Safari.

On their way, the bookmarks get corrupted (especially non-English page titles, but also some URLs, which most times get some extra whitespaces). When importing bookmarks from iCab via IE into Safari, this always happens on my machine.

You won't see (all of) this when using Safari's built-in bookmark manager, since the browser loads even malformed bookmarks, but you will see them when editing the associated preferences-file. In my case, there were over 300 errors according to the validator.

After I edited the bookmark XML file by hand to make it comply, Safari was way less instable (crashed spontaneously when organizing bookmarks, sometimes seemingly unassociated) and loaded faster.

[Editor's note: This is the first I've heard of a potential problem with corrupted bookmarks causing Safari crashes -- can anyone add any evidence one way or the other?]

Safari has a nice feature to hilight a part of a webpage when you print it. All you have to do, select the part of the webpage you want to hi-light and print the page.

[Editor's note: This also works in Explorer...]

If you want even faster rendering from already fast Gecko-based browsers, LinuxOrbit has a rendering speed tweak online that can help.

I tried this with Chimera and it worked very well, although I still prefer Safari. Please change Mozilla paths to reflect your own.

[Editor's note: The page mentions that this changes the delay before rendering begins, so it doesn't actually increase rendering speed. But if you have a fast connection, the result may be the same. I have not tested this one myself.]

Auto-completing a web address from the History file is a very useful feature; however, if you're anything like me, you'll often hit Enter before the browser has completed it, and you're taken to somewhere completely different (I've lost count of the times I've ended up at ve.com instead of VersionTracker...).

Of course, every time you now type 've' in the address bar, ve.com will be first on the list - but selecting 'Clear History' gets rid of every site you've visited, so it's a bit of a harsh solution.

In Safari, you can open up your bookmarks by clicking the icon on the toolbar, view the history folder, and delete single entries from the history (click once and hit the delete key). Delete ve.com, and when you type 've,' you'll once again be offered versiontracker.com.

One of my all time annoyances (maybe more than others) are web page ads. Chimera was the only browser that I use (besides my brief stint with Safari last week) that did not have an ad or images blocking feature. Well, I stumbled upon the eFritz Chimera tricks page; it's chock full of good stuff. For the image blocking, I've found that the second option in the "How do I block specific site's ads?" section, which shows you how to add in the images preference pane, works the best for my Dec 20, 2002 build.

This makes me a very happy web camper. The only thing I have left to do is to find a way to block similar flash ads, then I'll be set. Cheers!

[Editor's note: This hint explains how to block Flash ads in Mozilla-based browsers.]

Have you tried the Speakable Items lately - on a Mac, of course? Turn on Speakable Items in the System Preferences (the microphone) in X, and you can ask your Mac the classic question "What time is it?" and it will come back to you with the exact time. There's a whole lot of other commands in the speech commands window, which you open by clicking the little arrow at the bottom of the nifty round speech feedback window. Or you can just say: 'Open Speech Commands Window!' and it will open. But you can also make applications speakable. How?

Open Safari. Say: 'Make this application speakable'. Then say: 'Define keyboard command'. A window will open, and you hit the keyboard combination for a shortcut, let's say Command-left arrow. Write the command: 'Back'. Save. Now you can not only say the default window commands like: Move page up, move page down, move page to top, move page to bottom, but also 'back', and you will see Safari go back to the last page you visited. Now, say 'Define keyboard command' again, and this time hit command-right arrow and write: 'Next, please' (this works for me, forward doesn't). Now you can go back and forth in Safari with your voice.

The urls in the menu bar each have a command+1, command+2 and so on for nine favorite places you often go to. Now make these places speakable! Whoa! Mac rules! Safari rules! And, of course: Command-Alt-P: 'back to basics' (the new Safari command to go back to the mother site). Instead of 'back to basics' you can also say: 'back to the mother ship. It's your choice! And Command-Alt-S: 'back to search' (the new Safari command to go back to the search results you started with). And Command-Alt-B: 'Navigate' (my choice) will bring the bookmarks on/off. Nifty!

[Editor's note: You can, of course, use Speakable Items with other applications ... but people often overlook this feature, so I thought it was worth a mention, and the Safari context seemed timely...]

When I found Safari, I loved the new speed, the features, the whole experience. I was particularly pleased with the way it handled bookmarks -- both importing them from other browsers and then managing them once it imported them. I spent quite a bit of time organizing all my bookmarks. So much time that I thought -- I wish I had this organized list of bookmarks on all my machines.

At first, I played around with the idea of writing a shell script or apple script to copy the files over (the Safari bookmarks are in ~/Library -> Safari). Then, I thought about just pushing them over using file sharing or iDisk. All of these things would work, but I think I have come up with a more elegant solution. This only works if you have a .Mac account, but with that proviso...

I have created a new rule in Apple's Backup software that backs up the Safari bookmarks every day at noon. I have a "dominant" machine that I depend on (my laptop), and subsidiary machines that I use from time to time. The subsidiary machines can restore from the backup when I want to bring the bookmarks back in line.

The first time I used it, and then launched Safari on the new machine, I was so thrilled to have my "familiar" bookmarks there. With some tinkering you could probably bring over your cookies files, too, but I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

And, of course, the FTP / applescript / shell script version would be nice to have, too. I have also submitted a request to Apple for them to include the bookmarks files in their iSync list of things that can be sync'ed. That would be a great thing to share... wouldn't?

[Editor's note: There's another hint in today's hints regarding using .Mac and the Address Book to synchronize certain bookmarks ... this method handles the entire file.]