Thank you to all our readers who have been writing in and leaving comments about more great features in the new Safari 3 beta. Here is a quick roundup of our second batch of new Safari capabilities, including window jockeying, tab management, and a nifty desktop picture tool.
Merging Windows. Earlier, we posted about how you can drag tabs off a Safari tab bar and open them up in their own window. What we didn't catch until some readers pointed this out to us is that you can also do the opposite in Safari 3. To join all open windows and tabs into a single Safari window, choose Window -> Merge All Windows.
Opening a tab into a window from the menu. If you don't like dragging off your tabs and just want to use a menu item, Window -> Move Tab to New Window does the job just as well.
Reopening the most recently closed window. Here's another great Safari 3 feature. Have you ever accidentally closed a window when you thought the focus was on another window instead? Safari now lets you reopen the last closed window. No more searching through your history, trying to figure out which window you just closed by accident! And when Safari crashes? (Shall we not pretend that it doesn't?) Use Reopen All Windows From Last Session to pick up where you left off. (Firefox 2 users are familiar with the power of this handy feature.)
Set any Safari as your Desktop background. I don't remember ever seeing this one before so please let me know if it's not actually new to Safari 3--but it was new to me. Right-click any image in a Safari window and choose Use Image as Desktop Picture. Booya!
Accessing the Inspector. After a bunch of readers commented about us not covering the Webkit inspector, I finally broke down and installed Webkit SVN using the instructions I found here. Once installed and with the proper defaults set, the Webkit inspector allows you to investigate the contents of your Safari Webpages. You can access the inspector from the context pop-up. (Right-click or control-click anywhere on a Safari webpage to open the context menu.)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
6-13-2007 @ 5:11PM
dinesh said...
Awesome!
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:15PM
paul said...
What about the wonderful New Spotlight driven find tool? apple + F
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:18PM
BurntNine said...
Re: Setting your desktop image from Safari 3, I'm pretty sure Internet Explorer could to the same thing, but it's been a while since I had opportunity to get my paws on PC - I may be wrong...
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:26PM
Gianni said...
Still no option for opening new window links in a new tab instead. A major feature of Firefox for me. Also bookmark importing works well, but no settings import (e.g. import all my saved user/passwords and cookies from firefox).
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:31PM
Tom said...
If anyone is interested in how the Safari beta compares in a Windows environment, I posted a review here:
http://thesmallwave.blogspot.com/2007/06/mini-review-of-apples-safari-browser-on.html
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:39PM
Roflgoat said...
Every browser has had that "set as desktop image" option for years. Even IE. And other browsers have also had the merging, the movable tabs, and the windowing tabs features for a very long time. It's kinda sad. It doesn't matter how fast a browser is if it severely lacks in features.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:41PM
Elliot Levin said...
RE: Desktop picture. Actually, PC IE has been able to do this since 1996. It was kinda embarrassing at the time that no browser on Macs could. Well, better late than never.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:51PM
Adrian said...
Using Safari 3 in Windows, I don't seem to be getting the option to save an image to the desktop.
The find function is pretty cool - just like find on page but more stylish.
I agree with above I live by the add tab button in firefox, which can be added, i don't like using 'Control' + 'T' as much.
Why does opening and closing bookmarks (from bookmarks bar) reload the open page? weird.
Firefox definately handles bookmarks better in terms of flexibility, in my opinion. why cant i add bookmarks directly to the menu? It saves an extra mouse click.
The tabs need to be differentiated with more contrast. The text looks a little dull. The 'close tab X' also looks like it needs to be contrasted a little bit more from the rest of the tab.
i've gotten used to the different font smoothing though, which i thought would bug me more.
don't like having to highlight www address with 3 mouse clicks!
all in all, lets hope this is just the start. competition is good.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:52PM
olivier said...
what about the resizable input boxes (the big ones, like when you post a comment here)?
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:55PM
olivier Peyre said...
hop, jyst to save my password in keychain.
(sorry)
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:55PM
Phil said...
"It doesn't matter how fast a browser is if it severely lacks in features."
Setting a desktop image and window merging are worthy enough to warrant severity in the feature set of Safari? Wow, you are hardcore.
Can't say I've ever even wanted to set a picture from a Web page as my desktop image. But I can see how not being able to do that would make you not want to use a certain browser.
Personally I'm just as odd, I refuse to quit using Camino because I love that I can keep just a site's favicon in my bookmark bar. Making for a sweet looking icon filled bookmark bar.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 5:59PM
Dan Defenbaugh said...
Anyone else notice that when you edit a form within a page, the Safari window close button shows the window as unsaved, then warns you if you try to close without "saving". Did previous versions do this?
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 6:10PM
gareth Burleigh said...
To the above posters, To open a link in a new tab option click it. To highlight address bar with a single click, click the icon to the left of the address
Hope this helps
Gareth
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 6:14PM
basscadet said...
mmmmmm, it will take a lot more than that to pry my claws off Mozilla + its addons...
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 6:16PM
Greenline said...
Um I am pretty sure I hold Apple then click in Safari to open in a new tab. (I am stuck at work on my PeiceofCrap and I don't even pay attention anymore to what I click on my MBP) I definetly am looking forward to the Merge all windows features. Might have to download tonight!
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 6:30PM
Rafik said...
Very nice. Merge all windows definitely needs a keyboard shortcut. That's been something I've wanted for a long time.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 6:30PM
chadmoore said...
You can also drag tabs from one window to another. It works really well with the tab bar set to stay visible (View>Show Tab Bar).
~c
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 7:04PM
John said...
Try the find feature (⌘F). The functionality appears to be the same. but visually it's been updated.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 7:52PM
awyse said...
"It doesn't matter how fast a browser is if it severely lacks in features."
No, speed is more important for 90% of us.
If I didn't have Safari I'd be quite happy using Firefox but I would miss snapback, the fast load times, and the cleaner/easier approach to bookmarks.
Also, Firefox copied several features which Safari introduced.
Reply
6-13-2007 @ 8:25PM
Galley said...
Ctrl + L (or Cmd + L) also highlights the address bar.
One thing I found was that the Windows version imported IE's history. Weird!
Reply