Yesterday I blogged about the Safari toolbar. If you read that post, hopefully your toolbar contains at least a few extra icons.

Another thing that I see as I work with client's computers is the default Apple homepage. While it is not terrible, it is pretty useless. Your homepage should be something that you WANT to read when you open Safari.

For many years, I used a page from Excite. Other similar pages include Yahoo.com and iGoogle, These can be personalized to include things that were of interest to the reader.

Recently I have been using Google News. Once again, it can be personalized and its content changes frequently throughout the day.

Some of my clients prefer a large newspaper such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, or the Houston Chronicle. Other favorites include the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle or even the San Jose Mercury News. Still others prefer the Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times.

For the real geek, you might enjoy MacDailyNews, The MacObserver, Macworld, or The Loop. Let's not forget Macsimum News, TUAW, ArsTechnica and CNET. A great page that aggregates these and even more is MacSurfer.

If you have a favorite hobby or special interest, think about a page with daily new content.

First, open the page that you have chosen. Open the Safari > Preferences > General menu to make your choices.



Click the "Set to Current Page" button to change the page.



Some Mac users would prefer to use something other than a homepage. Click the "New Windows open with" button if you would prefer something else:



The nice thing about being a Mac user is that there are lots of different choices available--and you can make new choices easily.

Happy Web Surfing!

--Pat

iCalSafari

I see lots of Macintosh computer users using Safari. And I see lots of them using the Safari toolbar just the way it came.

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

iCalSafari

I gave our old PowerBook to my 90 year old aunt several months ago. This has been a true adventure for her as she had never really used a computer before. Actually, I gave her the computer, an older AirPort Extreme, a printer and even an iSight camera. Aunt Lee lives in California--and I am in Virginia, so we have used iChat screen sharing many times as I teach her more about her computer.

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.

Being a new computer user, Aunt Lee did not know much about blogs. She did not realize that blogs often show several different articles on one page. To see each article or post on a separate page, just click on the title for an article. Your browser will then load just that page.

In the case of Bakerella, there are often lots of photos along with a recipe, so we have only fixed half of the problem. Printing out all of the photos along with the recipe would just be a waste of ink, so now we need to isolate the text.

One way to do that would be to use the preview function of Safari. Go to the Safari File menu and select Print…:

The Print dialog box will open. It may appear like this one:

This is called a simplified dialog box--and I detest them! The little arrow button that I have circled is a called a disclosure triangle. Whenever you see a button like this that points downward, click it and you will have a more detailed and much more useful dialog box:

In this one, you can scroll through the web page using the arrows under the preview to find just the part that you will want to print. Then enter those numbers in the right side of the dialog box using the “From” choice instead of All. Enter the number of the first page you would like to print. Then move to the second or “to:” box. The number that you typed into the first box will automatically appear. If you would like to print more than one page, simply erase the number in the “to:” box and enter the desired page number.

There is no way to skip a few pages. If you wanted to print page five and page seven, you would have to first print page five, then use the “Print…” command to choose page seven. Using this method you can print out just the pages you want.

If you would like to save the pages, click the PDF button at the left bottom of the dialog box:

Choose a location for the file. You may also want to give it a specific name:

While there are many other ways to print and save specific parts of a web page, this is probably the easiest method. If you would like to learn other ways of working with web pages, consider booking a tutorial session with us at Dr. Mac Consulting! The cost is $60 per hour and we will tailor the session to meet your needs and interests. We use our special screen-sharing software to see your screen and we can even control your keyboard and mouse if you need an extra hand!

Happy recipe hunting!

Pat

iCalInternet, Safari, PDF

Do you know where the nearest Starbucks is? I don’t -- I am not a coffee drinker, but when out of town friends arrive, that is a frequent question.

To find out where a particular store or restaurant is located near you, type in its name and your zip code. Google will return a map the addresses of locations near you, and even telephone numbers. Click here to read more...

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Click here to read more...

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Sometimes it is not the whole site, but just a particular section: Click here to read more...

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There are several things that can cause a link to break: Click here to read more...

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