Browse in Privacy with Safari

Under normal circumstances, Safari retains records of your web browsing activity. It remembers the pages you visit, the data you download, and your web searches. It may also store your personal data in order to automatically complete online forms.

While these features can save time and help you retrace your online steps, there are occasions when you might prefer to leave no footprints — for example, when browsing on a public computer.

The solution is simple: Before you begin browsing, go to the Safari menu and select Private Browsing. When the warning box appears, click OK. Now Safari stores none of the aforementioned info.

What if you decide you need privacy after you’ve been browsing? You have several options: You can remove individual pages from Safari’s page-view history, erase the entire history, or clear all traces of your activity, including any cookies and cache files you may have accumulated.

To review the pages you’ve visited and delete them as desired, go to the History menu and select Show All History. Here you can select pages and clear them with the Delete key. To wipe the entire Safari history, select Clear History from the History menu. For a completely clean slate, go to the Safari menu and select Reset Safari.

Note that the Private Browsing option does not prevent Safari from collecting cookies (the preference files automatically generated by many websites). The Reset Safari option clears all cookies. If you want to delete only certain ones, choose Preferences from the Safari menu, click the Security tab, and then click Show Cookies. You can select and delete individual cookies from the list that appears. Careful, though — if you’re a frequent web user, this list can be very, very long.

Creating Live Links in Documents

Sometimes it’s useful to create a hypertext link within your documents. You might, for example, make a link that automatically opens a Safari web page when clicked, or one that generates a pre-addressed email message.

Here’s how to create a link in TextEdit, your Mac’s word processing program: First, select the text you’d like to use as your link. Next, go to the Format menu and select Text, then Link. In the pop-up that appears, type the URL you’d like to link to. (Your linking text needn’t be a URL itself. For example, you could link to the same location either by typing: “Get more info at www.apple.com,” or “Get more Apple info here.” Press OK, and you’ve got your link.

You can generate an email just as easily. In the Link destination field, type “mailto:” followed by the email address, with no spaces, like so: mailto:info@apple.com.

TextEdit boasts a new feature in Leopard: Smart Links, which automatically creates links from email addresses and URLs as soon as you type them. To activate it, select Preferences from the TextEdit menu, make sure the New Document tab is selected, and check the Smart Links box in the lower right corner. Now Leopard will automatically generate a link in TextEdit each time you type a URL or email address. (You may need to restart TextEdit to enable this change.)

Leopard also lets you create live links in Mail. First, highlight your linking text. From the Edit menu, select Link, then Add… and enter the desired web address in the popup.

In Pages, the advanced word processing program included in the iWork ’08 package, there’s an extra layer of sophistication: You can forge links by selecting Hyperlink from the Insert menu, or create them via the Inspector window. You can also create bookmarks that link to other locations within a multi-page document, or generate email with the subject field already filled in.

Welcome to Wikipedia!

Your built-in Dictionary application now includes not only an excellent dictionary and thesaurus, but also instant access to Wikipedia. That means you can conduct Wikipedia searches from within any OS X Leopard application that supports Dictionary, including TextEdit, Mail, and Pages.

For the uninitiated, Wikipedia is a revolutionary online encyclopedia written, edited, and revised by its users. Though inaccurate information inevitably creeps in at times, on the whole it’s remarkably reliable. And since it’s continually updated, it’s a great source for updates on current topics that haven’t yet made their way into traditional reference books. (Note that the Wikipedia data is not stored on your computer, but is accessed via the Internet, so you need to be online to use this feature.)

Try it! Open the Dictionary application, type in a search item, and click the Wikipedia tab. Double-click on the entry that best relates to your search.

This takes you to the relevant Wikipedia page.

You don’t even need to open the Dictionary application to initiate a Wikipedia search. In a text document such as a TextEdit file or an email, just select the term you want to look up. (If it’s a single word, there’s no need to select the text —simply place the cursor on top of it.) Control-click the word or phrase (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse) and choose Look Up in Dictionary. This allows you to look up the term in the Dictionary, a Thesaurus, an Apple glossary, or Wikipedia.

Mailing iCal Events

Want to share a calendar event with friends or colleagues? You can send notifications directly from iCal. Here’s how.

Control-click on any iCal event (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse). From the contextual menu that appears, select Mail Event.

This opens the Apple Mail program and prepares an email message with the iCal event attached. The subject line and text field are already filled in, though you may change them if you like.

Enter the email addresses of your recipients, then press Send. When the recipients open the email, they’ll see the name, date, and time of the event. And if they’re using OS X, they can simply click on the attached iCal event to add it to their own calendars. When they do, their copy of iCal opens, and a pop-up prompts them to choose a destination calendar for the new event.

Become a Spaces Cadet!

Become a Spaces Cadet!

Spaces, one of the coolest new features of Mac OS X Leopard, lets you switch among multiple desktops. For example, you might create a communication workspace for Mail, iChat, and Address Book, another for media programs like iTunes and iPhoto, and a third for video games. Then, instead of hiding/showing programs or dragging them around onscreen, you’d simply switch desktops. If you’re the sort of user who tends to have many applications open at once, Spaces is a godsend.

In fact, Spaces and Expose share a control panel. To access it, select System Preferences from the Apple menu and choose Exposé & Spaces. Click the Spaces tab.

This is where you set the key commands for activating Spaces and switching between your desktops. You can also specify the number of desktops and how they’re arrayed in columns and rows. (If you check “Show Spaces in menu bar,” you can switch desktops using the menu bar icon as well as key commands.)

You also have the option of permanently assigning a program to a particular desktop. If, say, you always want iTunes to open in its own window, click the Add (+) button, navigate to the iTunes application, and click Add. Click-hold in the Spaces field to assign it to a desktop. Here, for example, whenever iTunes is opened, Space 4 will automatically be displayed.

Whenever you type your Spaces key commands, you’ll see a translucent overlay depicting the available desktops. Switch between them using the key commands you’ve assigned in the Preferences panel.

If you get confused about what’s assigned where, don’t panic — just press the Activate Spaces key command (the default assignment is F8). This opens a global view of all your desktops. Just click within any desktop to open it. You can also move items from one desktop to another simply by dragging them between windows.

Searchin’ Safari

Safari’s search features are more powerful than ever in Mac OS X Leopard.

To search a web page for text, type Command-f, which opens the Find banner near the top of the browser window. Type your search term. (No need to press Return.)

Safari instantly tells you how many times the term appears on the page. The first occurrence is indicated in your highlight color, and all subsequent ones are framed in white. The remainder of the page dims to gray.

You can advance from one occurrence to the next by pressing the Return key (or typing Command-g). Holding Shift while pressing return (or typing Command-Shift-g) steps you backwards between occurrences. When you’re finished, press the Done button next to the search field, closing the Find Banner.

For Google searches, just type Command-Option-f. This jumps your cursor to the main Search field, ready for you to type a search phrase.

It’s easy to revisit your Google search results. Each time you enter a new search, Safari remembers the search results page. Click through to as many pages as you like — if you want to snap back to the Search results, simply click the orange arrow to the right of the Search field.

Managing Your Login Items

Your Mac lets you decide which, if any, applications open automatically each time you log into your account in Mac OS X Leopard. For example, you might want iChat and Mail to open every time you sign on. These automatically opening programs are called Login items, and here’s how to manage them.

From the Apple menu, choose System Preferences and click on the Accounts button. Click on your account name (if it’s not already highlighted), then click the Login Items tab. A list of all Login items appears.

You can remove programs by selecting them and clicking the minus sign, or add new ones by clicking the Add (+) button and navigating to the desired application. If you check the Hide box next to the program name, the application will open automatically, but won’t be displayed onscreen until you select it in the Dock or via the Command-Tab key command (which cycles you between all open applications).

Login Items don’t have to be applications. You can also choose to automatically open individual documents, folders, or disks.

As you might expect, adding Login Items increases your startup time. Also, note that only a user designated as the computer’s Admin can modify Login Items.