Filed under: Software, Beta Beat
Beta Beat: More great Safari 3 features
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.)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
dinesh said 5:11PM on 6-13-2007
Awesome!
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paul said 5:15PM on 6-13-2007
What about the wonderful New Spotlight driven find tool? apple + F
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BurntNine said 5:18PM on 6-13-2007
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...
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Gianni said 5:26PM on 6-13-2007
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).
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Tom said 5:31PM on 6-13-2007
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
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Roflgoat said 5:39PM on 6-13-2007
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.
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Elliot Levin said 5:41PM on 6-13-2007
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.
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Adrian said 5:51PM on 6-13-2007
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.
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olivier said 5:52PM on 6-13-2007
what about the resizable input boxes (the big ones, like when you post a comment here)?
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Noel said 2:06AM on 6-14-2007
#4- doesn't CMD+Click work for you? Works for me!
And what's the fuss about setting your desktop from a web graphic? Seriously- is this a feature that people actually use? I'd rather download a good file to my HD to the place I want and set it from there. (Or better yet- just create my own!) What gives?
-N
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Phil said 5:55PM on 6-13-2007
"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.
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olivier Peyre said 5:55PM on 6-13-2007
hop, jyst to save my password in keychain.
(sorry)
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Dan Defenbaugh said 5:59PM on 6-13-2007
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?
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gareth Burleigh said 6:10PM on 6-13-2007
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
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basscadet said 6:14PM on 6-13-2007
mmmmmm, it will take a lot more than that to pry my claws off Mozilla + its addons...
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Greenline said 6:16PM on 6-13-2007
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!
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Rafik said 6:30PM on 6-13-2007
Very nice. Merge all windows definitely needs a keyboard shortcut. That's been something I've wanted for a long time.
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chadmoore said 6:30PM on 6-13-2007
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
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John said 7:04PM on 6-13-2007
Try the find feature (⌘F). The functionality appears to be the same. but visually it's been updated.
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Terrin said 11:20PM on 6-13-2007
In OSX, the Keychange stores all passwords, and is accessible to Safari, Omniweb, Firefox, and Camino even if the current browser you are using isn't the one that saved the password. Not sure how that works in Safari for Windows.
Not sure what was meant by not being able to add a bookmark to the menu, as I do that all the time by dragging the book mark to the menu bar. There is also a add bookmark button that isn't not seen by default. Instead, you have to select customize Toolbar under the view menu to activate that button.
As far as features go, I believe too many built in features can be a bad thing as the browser's performance takes a hit. I prefer to expand function through plugins. Like Firefox, Safari has many available plugins, although admittedly not as many as Firefox. However, in my view many of Firefox's plugins are pretty useless.
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