Safari Toolbar - Make it yours
We all know that Apple is a minimalist company when it comes to esthetics--but minimalism doesn't make Safari easy to use. It is bare! There is no home button, no print button, no resize button.

This is my Safari tool bar. Look at all those strange icons. Those strange icons make it so easy to really use Safari.
So, how did I put them in my toolbar? I used View > Customize Toolbar…

This is window you will see:

At the bottom of the window you will see the default toolbar. Above it, you will see lots of icons that you can add to Safari. Drag the icons up to the Safari toolbar. Click the Done button in the lower right corner when you are finished. While you may not want to add all of them, here are several that you may want to add.
First, add the Home button:

Click it and you will return to the page that first opens when you start Safari. That can be any page you like--and that will be the topic of another blog post!
The Zoom button is very useful:

It allows you to instantly make not only the text, but also the graphics bigger (or smaller) on a web page. Now that my eyes are over 40, I find this to be very useful.
Two more icons that I find to be very useful are the Mail and Print buttons:

Since I do most of my news reading on the web these days, and since I frequently want to send a web page address to someone, this Mail button is very convenient. It opens a new message window in Mail with the subject and the web address already in place. I only need to address the message and write a quick note:

The Print button opens the Print window. While I could just print the page, instead, I usually make a PDF of the page and file it away in the appropriate place on my computer.

If your Print window looks different than mine, you need to click this disclosure triangle to see the really useful Print window shown above:

There are lots more buttons that you can add to the Safari toolbar. Do some more exploring. You can always go back to the View > Customize Toolbar… window to add or remove them.
--Pat
Printing from blogs and other long pages
The other day I sent her a link to one of my favorite blogs, Bakerella. If you have not seen it and you enjoy baking or cake decorating, this is a wonderful site. Aunt Lee discovered a recipe for Lemon Bars. Of course, she needed a printout to use while she cooked.
Click here to read more...
How to add custom paper sizes
I hope you checked out a few print dialog boxes. If you did, you probably found that there are lots of papers and sizes that were listed, but your applications did not have them in their list…
Click here to read more...
Just what size is it?
| Paper and envelope sizes confuse me! While I know that US letter paper is 8.5 x 11”, and US Legal paper is 8.5 x 14”, that is only the start of the sizes that can appear in a print dialog box. Of course, just where to select a paper size in a Macintosh application is also undergoing changes. In TextEdit, paper size is selected in File -> Page Setup. The size choice will look similar to this if you have not selected a specific printer:… |
Desktop, Sidebar and Toolbar Printers
Now, that was a pretty cool trick. If you had a document to print, you could just drag its icon over the desktop printer. The document would print without opening the application and choosing the Print command in the File Menu.
The feature is back in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and it is even more useful! It is a great way to deal with documents that you print on a regular basis. For example, directions to your home or office, a favorite recipe, or perhaps some sort of form like a cover sheet for your fax.
Unfortunately, if you are trying to adopt that clean desktop look for your Mac, it is one more thing to clutter it up. There are several alternate things you can do to give you the functionality of desktop printing while keeping the clutter down and we will discuss those after we have made a desktop printer to try out.
Click here to read more...
Printer won't work?
This first thing I ask is "Is the printer turned on?" This is sometimes the problem for clients who have ink jet printers. All ink jet printers should be turned off when they are not in use to prevent the ink from drying out and clogging the printer heads. However, in our days of wireless computing, this means you need to go to the printer to turn it on and off each time you print. If you dislike having to turn your printer on and off, consider a laser printer. These are now very reasonably priced.
If the printer is on, and you still cannot print, the printer may have been "stopped" in the printer utility. Each time you press the command to print, a file is sent to the printer. You can check the status of your printer after choosing Command-P by looking in your dock. You will see an icon that probably looks like your printer. As the file is sent, you will see a picture of a sheet of paper: Click here to read more...
