Feel free to skip this article and jump right into ordering your copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 right now.

Software developers were extremely bound by the speed of the hardware that their applications were to be deployed on. In many cases, 100′s of man hours were put into optimizing the smallest of features, in order to fit a program into a space of memory that is a smaller than an inexpensive thumb drive.

Those days are over. There is significantly more CPU speed available to users than most will need. Casual web browsing, checking email, and other basic computing tasks take only a fraction of the CPU speed we have available to us. As an example, an iPhone has more CPU power than that of the first generation of iMac’s that began Apple’s return from the abyss of a negative balance sheet.

Why then, with all this seemingly extra CPU speed do applications get slower as time goes on, and not faster? Why does your computer feel slower now that in used to? Two words: “Software Bloat”. What will generally happen, is that version 1 of an application is released; created lean, well designed, with attention to performance being a key thought process for the applications development.

Over time, version 2, 3, 4, and so on are released. Each version takes the existing code, and adds new features to it. Not everyone needs these new features, most in general do not, but in order for the marketing departments to be able to continue to create compelling reasons that convince buyers to purchase their software, progress must be made.

This piling on of new features is not always bad. Yet, in most cases, each new feature is only an opportunity for the software to get slower. It is an opportunity for the software developer to add a new feature that pushes the envelope of what can be done. It may not be well executed, it may not be optimal, but the developer knows that in short time, the next batch of CPU’s will come out, faster than the last, making this new feature perform “good enough” for the time being.

Software developers literally bank on the prospect of computers becoming fast enough to run new features with acceptable performance.

Apple, to the best of my knowledge, did something completely unique to the commercial software industry. They decided “good enough” was not acceptable. Apple released an update to their operating system, that in large part, offered almost no new features.

You may be wondering; why would you want to update to Mac OS X Snow Leopard if there are no new significant new features? Because Apple added in the most important new feature of all. Apple looked over their System 10.5 code, and spent an entire development cycle, doing mostly optimizations.

This means you will not see fancy shiny features; you will not see a whole new set of applications coming from our friends in Cupertino. But it does mean you will feel the performance increase of those optimizations. As an added bonus, you gain a new operating system, one which performs better, yet has very little that you will need to learn or struggle with.

This is what Snow Leopard is for the end user. Little change on the surface, great and significant change under the hood.

That Time Machine backup that used to take 10 minutes, may now take only 2. The file that used to take 10 seconds to compress, now takes 1. The HD video that used to stutter and clip, has a much better chance of playing smoothly.

To add to the unique situation Apple created, they released this operating system as a full operating system. This is not just an upgrade operating system. You need not previously own Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard at all.

For the absurdly low price of $24.99, you essentially get a brand new computer out of the deal. A computer that will run faster on the same hardware you have now. (Please look at the Snow Leopard technical specs to make sure your computer does qualify for the update, as not all do.)

If you already are on Mac OS X Leopard, and you meet the requirements for updating to Snow Leopard, there is no reason to skip this update. Enough time has passed that nearly all applications have been updated to run on Snow Leopard. Time for you to take the plunge! Buy the update, insert the DVD, and run the installer. If the only thing you notice is your machine now starts up in half the time it did previously, over the course of a few months, you easily have saved yourself the $24.99 in your personal time.

If at all possible, please purchase the update purchase of Mac OS X Snow Leopard though Amazon, using our affiliate link. This will give OS X Help a small commission on the sale. These small commissions help for us to afford to maintain and pay for this site.

Simply press Command+Control+D while hovering your mouse over any word, and a little window pops up with the definition. No need to hold down the keys, as it has already been activated. However, if you do continue to hold the keys, you can move your mouse over another word to see its definition as well.

As I mentioned before, this is a separate application than the Dictionary App, and works on most applications in OS X, however not all. Older applications, most from the OS 9 era, were developed with a technology called Carbon. Newer applications use a technology called Cocoa. The pop up dictionary should work in all Cocoa applications such as Safari, Mail, iChat and TextEdit, but it will fall short in a few like iTunes and Word. I find it to be a lot quicker than copying and pasting the word in question into the Dictionary.app to look it up. Hope you all like it as much as I do.

With all the power iTunes offers, it can become overwhelming. iTunes desires to be your default player for near all media types. An amusing audio clip from Family Guy or The Simpsons ends up getting imported into iTunes. This audio clip then relentlessly follows you around and makes its way to your iPod and iPhone on your next synchronization.

Let’s see what we can do to keep iTunes clear of cruft, and only contain the data you want imported into it.

iTunes auto import and hijack of all media files
Every file has a default application that will open it when you double click on it. In the case of audio files, that default application is iTunes. Let’s take an example case, and step through how the process will work.

A friend emails you an mp3 to check out. You download it, and double click on it. Immediately, iTunes is launched, and the file is imported into iTunes. iTunes has now become the method by which you listen to this mp3 file.

If you have not made any changes to the default settings in iTunes, you now have a copy of the mp3 in your downloads folder. In addition, a copy of the file has been carried into iTunes as well. What most people do not know, is it is more than safe to delete the file from your downloads folder, as iTunes has made a copy of the file.

The trouble is, in many cases, users will not want to keep the file at all. They delete the file from the downloads folder, and a copy still remains in iTunes. You now have to delete the file from iTunes to get rid of it. This is an awful lot of work to just sample an mp3 a friend thought you would be interested in.

For me, this is even worse, as iTunes was launched, which takes time, and now I am burdened with cleaning up iTunes as well as the local copy in my downloads folder.

A much better default media player
OS X comes with a second media player, you know it as QuickTime. The good news is, if iTunes can play the file, so can QuickTime. What would be nice, is a method that allows you to open your media files in QuickTime, and bypass iTunes. QuickTime can provide this feature, and act as a small, simple, and fast player for you to sample you audio and video files.

If you decide you like the file, then you can take the steps to drop the file into iTunes and import it. 99% of the time, I do not want that 10 second clip of Homer Simpson saying “mmmmmmm donuts” ending up in my iTunes music library.

Forcing a new default media player
The solution is simple. The next time you download an mp3, or any audio or video file that would otherwise get opened in iTunes, hold off on the usual double click you are used to performing.

Instead, select the file and press command-I on your keyboard, or select the file and go to the File menu, and navigate down to Get Info.

This will bring up an information window as seen below:

If you look at this information window, you can see, the “Open with” section is set to iTunes.app. This means, that any time you double click on the file, it will open in that application by default.

We want to change that, from iTunes.app to QuickTime Player.app. Once you change the menu, click “Change All”. Now, any time you download a file of the same type, and double click on it, it will open in QuickTime.

QuickTime is a slim and fast player, which will allow you to evaluate your file before making the decision of wanting to keep it, or toss it.

You will only have to perform this change in the get info window once per file type. So, if someone sends you an mp3, you will need to make the change, and the next time, if someone sends you an aiff file, you will want to make the change for that file type as well.

There really are only about four or five types of files, once you set them, you will no longer need to worry about it, as QuickTime will now be the default player for testing files you download.

Saving your files back into iTunes
If you decide you do in fact want to keep the file and manage it within iTunes, it is a simple matter of dragging and dropping the file right into the iTunes window. You can also drop the file onto the iTunes icon in your dock and it will be imported.

If you have not changed your iTunes preferences, your files will be copied into iTunes. Since the file is copied, you are now safe to delete the original file you downloaded, as iTunes has stored it’s own internal copy of the file.

I find this method of managing audio files very useful. iTunes tends to get a good deal of junk imported into it, much of which cannot even be played on an iPod or iPhone. If you want to just use iTunes as a media player for data you want to save over the long term, this method of changing a files default launching should alleviate most of your organization issues.

First I will start with the basics, customizing the clock, what you can change, and why you may want to. After a small history lesson in how OS 9 was not as smartly multi-threaded as OS X, I can then explain just how you can use your clock as a visual aid to tell you if your computer is stuck.

System clock customization
Unless you have moved your clock elsewhere, it should still be sitting in the upper right corner of your screen. If you click on it, you can select the last item in the list: Open Date & Time.

Once the Date & Time preference pane is open, you should see there are three “tabs” at the top. The first one, Date & Time, allows you to select if you want the clock to set itself automatically. You can also set the date here as well. As long as you have an Internet connection, OS X will poll what is called a time server every now and then. In most cases, you should never have to worry about your date or time being off by more than a few seconds.

The second tab in the Date & Time preference pane allows you to choose your time zone. This is important to do, as we all live in different time zones. Daylight Saving Time has been moved around a bit over the years; the time zone you pick, ensures you never have to think about setting your clock to do the “fall back” or “spring forward” routine.

And finally, the last tab is the Clock tab. And it is this area I will explain how to set in a certain way to help you determine system lock ups. The options here are pretty self-explanatory.

If you use the Analog clock, this tip is not going to be of much help to you.

The key here is to set it to “display the time with seconds”, or at the very least, “Flash the time separators”. Personally, I use both. At this point, just humor me and set your clock to show the seconds and the time separators, which will blink once a second.

A Brief History of Time
Long ago, before OS X, there was Apple OS 9 and earlier. OS 9 supported something called multi-threading. I can say the methods they used to support it were rather crafty, in the end though, less than ideal.

What this meant to a user was that you could do more than one thing at the same time. In real world use, multi-threading on OS 9 worked pretty good, but not perfectly. Using OS 9, you could forget about watching a movie while ripping an mp3. Some applications were written so poorly in this regard, just clicking and holding your mouse would freeze the entire system until you released the mouse.

Those days are long gone, but one of the side effects still remains. On OS 9, your clock would constantly lose time. Because the clock is an application of sorts, if another application got stuck in some way, the clock would get stuck. Over time, day-to-day use, you could lose a few minutes here and there. Not a big deal, because even OS 9 had the ability to reset the clock automatically by asking what the correct time is from a network time server.

Using a stalled clock to your advantage
While not nearly as often, nor as bad, OS X still suffers from the same stalling issues as OS 9. Certain applications can and will stall out your computer. Most of the time, it is for such a short period of time you will never notice. Further, the clock will again get auto reset to a network time server on a schedule.

A perfect example, one of my web servers, has been running for 134 days, in a logged out state; the clock is now 10 full minutes out of sync. Apparently network time servers are not polled on OS X when you are logged out.

Every now and then, my computer will lock up in some way. It could be a single application, or the entire system will freeze. Near all the time, I have mouse control, but I cannot seem to do anything else. Most of the time, I wait it out, and all returns to normal. It is just a badly written application that is stealing all the cycles from my computer, making it appear to be locked up.

And that is the key here, your machine only appears to be locked up, but you have no way of telling. Some of these stalls can last longer than I have patience. Most would reboot. Rebooting is bad because we all forget to save our data, and losing hours of work is no fun at all.

The trick here, if you can call it that, is to glance at your newly customized clock. If you see the seconds ticking by, or the time separator pulsing, more than likely, your machine is not locked up. Wait it out, and things should come back to normal.

If you look at your clock, and the seconds are not moving at all, your machine is locked up hard. You are, in 99% of the cases, going to need to reboot.

I know this seems rather trivial, but I have been using this tactic for years now. Mail.app is a known culprit, and will stall out for thirty seconds or more at times. I cannot switch from mail to another app, or force quit the application, as I am locked into this stall. I just look at the clock, notice the time is still ticking by, and know to at least wait it out.

It is sort of a last resort, but takes nothing more than a glance. At times, you may think your computer is frozen; the system clock is generally a very good indicator that your computer is still able to perform actions. The truth is any application that has constant animation to it is a good candidate to use as a tool like this. I find the system clock is always there, is one of Apple’s single most reliable system applications that provides, and has served me as a lock up detection tool for many years.

The internets were quite upset about this “feature”. In my opinion, rightly so.

Luckily, so much noise was made about the change, that as long as you have ran your software updates, you can finally turn this “feature” off.

Why is it a problem?
I think the image below is a case where a picture tells a thousand words.

If you use the default Apple desktop image, certain applications, such as iTunes, will get a white dot, or a star, in menu item words. This makes it ugly at best, and difficult to read at worst.

Depending on your desktop image, it may not be as apparent, or it could even be worse.

Fixing the translucent menu bar
This one is really simple. Just open your System Preferences, click on Desktop and Screen Saver, look near the bottom, and select the checkbox for “Translucent Menu Bar”.

This may not apply to your hardware configuration
According to Apple support article # 306894

The translucent Leopard menu bar appears on most computers that are equipped with a graphics card which is compatible with Core Image.

Some graphics cards, such as an NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200, may not have the necessary OpenGL capabilities to display a translucent menu bar even though they are compatible with Core Image. Those cards should render most effects, but not the translucent menu bar.

I am sure there are a small handful of you out there who like this feature. That’s ok too. If you recall, one of our first posts was Experiment, modify, customize, so by all means, make your computer look how you want it. I for one am happy Apple was responsive enough to give us an option to change the setting on our own accord.

We had a few rounds of email, over the course of a few days, in the end, I was unable to help. A solution was found, but not by myself, rather the user figured it out on their own. The solution was simple, and one I usually try as a first step, as should everyone. This time, it never crossed my mind, as I wrongfully assumed the user would also try this method as a first step.

The short story, his software was out of date, and simply needed to be updated. Never crossed my mind to even ask. Sometimes I get stuck in a troubleshooting bubble, this happened to be one of those times.

My first step was to have him try a hard coded DNS server. Second was to use OpenDNS servers. Third was to try to load websites by IP address, ruling out DNS issues entirely. Finally, we plugged his computer directly into the DSL modem, thereby ruling out any wireless or networking issues.

None of those methods worked. At the least, we narrowed it down to software issues, and not hardware or network related.

A few days later, I received an email from the reader telling me he got it working. A simple software update to Virtual PC and he was good to go.

If your software is not working as advertised. Look at their website, and see if they have an update that addresses your issues. I should express caution to the idea of running wild and updating all your software; often is the case a software update will fix one thing and break others.

Read the website, or email their support department, asking them about your specific issues. If all else fails, and you still can not get it working, update your software and see if that does the trick.

In the case above, the reader was using Virtual PC. I doubt any emails to Microsoft would have even been replied to, so his only chance was to run a software update. The good news is it worked, the bad news is we wasted three days because I did not think to ask if his software was up to date. The best news is the reader ended up working it out on his own, and learned something about the troubleshooting process along the way.

My gut tells me new users have no idea what RSS is, let alone the value it holds. I suspect that since there are links to RSS feeds on nearly every site, people are curious, but just have no idea where to turn to for good advice.

A Google search will show you nice definitions of RSS. You may walk away understanding that it is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication. Even knowing that, to this day, those three words do little to help me in knowing what the heck RSS is good for.

Let’s fix that right now.

The basics of what RSS is
RSS is nothing more than a way to deliver information. You currently use a web browser to view web information. That information is on demand, meaning you have to ask for it. RSS removes some of that burden, and has a built in notification system.

Take note, it is a notification system, not a nag system. RSS is very non-intrusive; it will not get in your way, and will only help you once it is front-most and being used.

RSS is analogous to bookmarks
Understanding what RSS is, actually turns out to be pretty easy. Think of RSS as a way to bookmark a site. At its core, that is all a site that offers RSS is going to give you. Since you already know how to bookmark sites, you should be wondering what else RSS brings to the table.

Bookmarks are static and hidden. If you want to come back to OS X Help, you will have to locate the bookmark, and then visit the site. This implies you remember to do so. Making it even worse, you have no idea if there have been any new posts to the site at all.

Wouldn’t it be nice if all your bookmarks could in some way tell you if a site has new data on it since the last time you checked? This is the second core of what RSS can do for you. When a site is updated, you are alerted in an unobtrusive way.

If you have ever spent time on a site, hitting the refresh button on your browser to see if there is anything new, RSS will help alleviate that. If you have ever checked in daily on a site to only see nothing has changed, RSS will make it so you know exactly when to visit the site.

In summary, RSS, if supported by the site, it is a notification system to alert you when a site has new content for you to read.

Determine what sites support RSS
Not all websites support RSS. A site like Amazon has little reason to. Since Amazon is more of a shopping system, getting notification every time new content is posted would be overwhelming.

News sites, blogs, job listing sites, and pretty much any website where readable data is posted on a regularly changing basis, should have RSS support.

Safari makes it rather simple to tell. Load any website, and look in the upper right corner of Safari’s URL bar. If the site supports RSS, you will see a small blue rectangular icon that has white letters spelling out RSS. This means the site is offering what is called an RSS feed.

Viewing an RSS feed
If you click on the blue RSS icon, Safari will load the RSS feed. The page you now see, in general, is a slimmed down version of the main website. In most cases, it is sans nearly all graphics, and in plain text. This is just the RSS view mode of Safari. Since we have not saved any RSS feeds, the view has no real benefits other than being a more simple view.

Some RSS feeds contain full posts. Others, like ours, contain only a summary. The length of the data in the RSS feed is determined by the website creator. There are ways to see less data in your feeds, however, if the site owner decides to only show summaries, that is something beyond your control.

Now that you know how to view an RSS feed, let’s start to learn how to use it as a notification system. If you follow along to the end, you should get to a point where your top day to day sites are all part of an RSS system; and you know just which ones have been updated. You can then ignore the rest, since nothing has changed.

Setting Safari to show you unread RSS feeds
There are a few ways to manage RSS feeds in Safari; I am going to show you the way I feel is most accessible to new users.

Step one is to create a new folder on your bookmarks bar. The easiest way to do this is to control-click on the bookmarks bar and select the “New Folder” option. You will be asked to give it a name, I chose RSS. It will be placed at the beginning of your bookmarks bar. I moved mine to the end, but feel free to put yours wherever you want.

Now that you have an empty bookmarks bar folder called RSS, we need to put some items in it. I suggest you follow along with my examples. At the end, you can delete any sites from your RSS feed folder if you no longer are interested in them.

A good place to start is with this site. Click on the blue RSS icon in the URL bar, and you will see the slimmed down RSS version of our site. You should also see the URL change to “feed://osxhelp.com/feed/”. To the left of the URL, right to the left of the “f” in “feed” is an icon. Not all icons on every site will be the same. Drag that icon into the RSS bookmark bar folder. You will be asked to give it a name; in this case, keeping the default of OS X Help should be fine.

Follow through to the below sites, click on the RSS icon, and drag the feed icon into the RSS bookmarks bar folder.

• Google News
• CNN
• Apple

You should now have a total of four items in your RSS bookmarks bar menu.

Safari’s RSS notification system
It is a bit of a stretch to call the way in which Safari tells you new content is available to your RSS subscriptions a notification; nonetheless, Safari does notify you in several ways.

First, right next to your RSS bookmarks bar item, a number will show. (See above image) You may not see it just yet, but as new content makes it’s way to your RSS subscriptions, your RSS bookmarks bar icon will change from RSS to RSS (23) where 23 can be any number that reflects how many unread articles there are for you. This is a cumulative summary of all the articles for all your subscribed sites.

If you click once on the RSS bookmarks bar item, each site listing will get a number next to it. This represents the total number of articles on each specific site that has not yet been viewed by you. Sites with no new content will have no number listed.

I suspect by now, you are starting to see how great this is. No more stepping through your bookmarks to check on all your daily sites. A quick glance at your RSS button and you know which ones deserve your time.

Almost done… Don’t give up yet… A few more tips and tricks.

You can pick one RSS item at a time, and read the articles that you have not read in the past. Once you click on one, it will be removed from the running count in your RSS bookmarks bar item. The article listing will still remain, and expire from your view over time. This expiration time can be changed in your RSS preferences.

In the RSS bookmarks bar item you created, you will see one item labeled “View all RSS Articles”. Selecting this will show you on one page, every single site you are subscribed to.

I know, a bit daunting isn’t it?

As daunting as it appears, this is the item I select most often. The reason I use this most is it gives me full access to Safari’s RSS reader’s tools.

On the right of Safari when in RSS reader mode, are links and a search box. The search box allows you to filter out the listing and distill it down to just what you are interested in.

There are also options to change your sorting order, and even toggle between specific RSS feeds. You can even force a refresh so that if there are any new RSS articles to download, they will come in immediately. By default, RSS feeds are only checked every 30 minutes; this is something you can change in your RSS preferences.

I have not covered all the features in Safari’s RSS reader view, none are harmful, so click around and experiment.

Safari RSS preferences
If you navigate your mouse to the Safari menu, and down to Preferences, then click on the RSS tab, you can change a few options about how your RSS feeds are presented.

The Default RSS Reader should be set to Safari, only change this if you know why you need to change this setting.

The next two options define where Safari looks to automatically update your articles. I suggest checking both the bookmarks bar and the bookmarks menu. Even though in my sample case here, we only use the bookmarks bar, at a later time, you may want to put RSS items into a special bookmarks folder.

I am greedy, and tell Safari to check for new article updates every 30 minutes. You can change this to a less frequent interval if you are easily distracted. For me, being on top of what new news is out there is important. To be honest, 30 minutes is not soon enough.

The second to last option defines how articles are marked as read. When you have not read an article, it will have a small blue dot, as well as a blue outline around it. In one case just clicking on the article summary will mark it as read. In the other case, simply viewing the RSS page will mark all those articles as read. For clarity, I would suggest you leave this set to “After clicking on them”.

The last setting in the preferences allows you to define how long an item will show up in your RSS feed. I set mine to one week. If you use your computer less frequently, you may want to up the time. If you are pretty quick to read your RSS articles, set it to a lesser time frame.

Third party RSS readers
I suspect part of the confusion surrounding RSS readers is there are so many out there. Many of you wrote in asking how to get Google reader to work. Others mentioned I might want to cover NetNewsWire.

The point you need to understand is that Safari is not the only way to read RSS feeds. There are dedicated desktop applications like NetNewsWire, there are web-based tools like Google Reader, and there is even a way to use Apple’s mail.app email application to read RSS articles. Firefox also has strong tools for RSS reading as well.

In a future post, at the very least, we will talk about NetNewsWire and mail.app as a different way to read RSS articles. At this point, I think Safari is a great RSS reader for the beginner. Safari offers a no frills, yet simple way to get the job done. Gone are the days of remembering to go back and read part two of an article you were really interested in. Now, Safari will remind you in a gentle unobtrusive way.

To me, the greatest thing about RSS is that it allows my web reading to be done on my own terms. At a glance, I know what sites have new articles, and I can deal with it when I have free time. I do not need to worry about a sites article getting buried under other newer articles, as the RSS system keeps track of what I have and have not read.

If this is a bit much to digest all at once, please post a question in the comments. I strongly urge all of you to post your questions, or suggestions in the comments so everyone can learn as much as possible about how to benefit from RSS.

OS X has a built in system for pulling words out of its dictionary, and showing you a list of those words. While not something I use all the time, it can be handy once you learn how to access it.

The best way to learn this tip is by trying it out. Since you are reading this in Safari, put your cursor in the Google search box in the upper right of Safari.

Type the beginning of a word, such as ‘auto’. Now press option-escape at the same time. You should see a list that looks similar to the image below.

How much utility this feature has is going to depend a lot on the type of things you personally use your computer for. I use it rarely; though on the occasion I do use it, I feel as if I have saved some time.

Do keep in mind; this feature does not work in all Applications. Most all-native OS X applications should be able to use auto completions. Certain third party applications may simply ignore the feature.

Quick Look saves time. For every file on your computer, if you want to view the contents of the file, you have to open the file. You then have to wait for it’s parent application to launch, and finally, you get to see what is in the file.

There is a much faster, and easier way.

While this only applies to OS X 10.5 Leopard, that should not be an issue, since you have all upgraded to Leopard by now. Find a file, select it, and press the space bar.

You should see a floating window pop up, allowing you to view the files contents. It can be a Word file, an image, a text file, almost anything.

Even nicer, you can select groups of files; for example, a large chunk of images someone just sent you. It is then simple to move through each image with the small arrows in the Quick Look window.

Quick Look offers other features, such as a thumbnail view, auto-import to iTunes, and much more. For now, enjoy knowing that just pressing the space bar will invoke Quick Look.

Stay tuned for an in-depth tutorial featuring all the aspects of Quick Look. In the mean time, please feel free to discuss Quick Look in the comments.

To this day, I love the Little Smokies; a favorite treat for me every time I have them. They are tiny, quick, simple, and quite awesome.

In that spirit, we are adding a new category to OS X Help; Little Smokies.

The goal here is tiny, quick, simple, awesome tips. These will be far from the usual epic length tutorials we normally put out. Of course, we will still will be putting out the full tutorials on the same regular schedule we do now. The only real difference is we will also have many more Little Smokies for you.

We hope you enjoy this new category. Some tutorials are just too small to merit an entire post. Some of you are too busy to keep up with a full tutorial every day of the week. Hopefully, this will help balance out the site in a way that is better for all our users.

If you are a new Macintosh user, and you only read one post on OS X Help, please, read this post. Downloading files is something almost all of you will do on a daily basis. From applications to photos, there is no shortage of file downloads to contend with.

Where downloads end up
In all cases, the default settings on Macintosh OS X 10.5 Leopard is to put any file you download into your downloads folder. This of course is located in your home folder. Any file you download, at least through an automated means, will end up in this location.

The many types of files
Some files downloaded are what they seem; they end in .jpg, and are in fact an image. You can open them, and you will see an image. Other times you end up with a file called a Disc Image, or .dmg file. Other times you may end up with a .zip file, others a .sit file. Worse case, you end up with a file that is a combination of all of the above mentioned file types.

The simple .dmg file type
.dmg files are a file format called a Disc Image. It is very much like a real hard drive. The only difference is that it is a small portable file that can be downloaded, or exchanged. For all other intents and purposes, it is a portable hard drive. .dmg files are pretty simple to deal with, once you understand how they work.

Downloading a .dmg
The next time you download a file, and it happens to be a .dmg, OS X should jump into automated mode. The .dmg file will reside in your downloads folder; but, it will also be mounted on your desktop. In nearly all cases, the .dmg will automatically open and a white drive icon will show up on your desktop.

What is inside the white drive icon is what you are after. Those are the files you want to keep.

Dealing with the contents of a .dmg
What is inside the .dmg is where things can become a little fragmented. Most of the time, you have a single file, usually the application. Just drag it out of the white drive icon, and put it into your Applications folder. The application is now installed. Uninstalling is as simple as reversing the process, and moving the file from the applications folder to your trash.

In other cases, the contents of the .dmg will be a full-blown installer. In this case, you launch the installer, and let it do its thing. This usually amounts to a simple double click, which will give you some options as to how to install the file or application.

Some developers who make these .dmg files take an extra step, and automaticity copy the file to your applications folder. They even clean up afterward and delete all the files the .dmg has left laying around.

What to do with the .dmg when you’re done?
Once you have installed your application or file, you are still left with a white drive icon on your desktop, and the original file you downloaded, which should still be in your downloads folder. This is where many new users get confused.

Since you have installed the application, you are free to delete everything else it left behind. First, take the white drive icon, move it to the trash. This will unmount the .dmg. Next, take the .dmg file in your downloads folder, and move it to the trash as well. You can now safely empty your trash if you so desire.

Never be afraid to clean up these files once you have installed the main application. Since you downloaded them from the internet, you can always download them again. In most cases, not cleaning up the files will leave you with duplicates, which can be troublesome when it comes time to perform an update.

I consider my downloads folder a temporary location. At any time, I feel very safe in deleting everything in it, as I know I have already installed, moved, or copied what I needed. I also know, more than likely, I can always just download again.

It is my hope that you only ever run into .dmg files. While I am hopeful, some developers and distributors of software are yet to get a clue. In these cases, you can run into any number of very confusing cases, let’s go through each one.

The Stuffit Archive
Back in the OS 9 days, and the early days of OS X, there was a compressed file format called a Stuffit Archive. You will run into them from time to time. You can tell them apart by the ending part of the file name, called the file extension. It will be either .sit or .sitx. In this case, you need another program just to open the file. Many people end up downloading a program called Stuffit, which will in fact do a very nice job of uncompressing the files.

I am very much against Stuffit, as it tends to install a lot of files deep into your computer. The company also tries hard to push you to buy the “Pro” version of their software, when all you need is the free version. I have found for the rare cases I run into a stuffit file, a simple application called Unarchiver does a wonderful job. It downloads as a single file, a plain, clean application. All you have to do to install it is move it to your applications folder.

The next time you run into a .sit or .sitx file, just open it, and it will be uncompressed. You can then throw away the original .sit or .sitx file, and are left with the file you just uncompressed.

The almost ubiquitous .zip file
If you have come from Windows, you are more than likely familiar with a .zip file. .zip files are more or less the same on a Macintosh, as they are on Windows. Just like a Stuffit file, a .zip file is nothing more than a container file, which holds one or more files inside it. Your goal is to simply get at the files inside that .zip container.

Leopard, and even a few earlier versions of OS X, have the ability to decompress, or unzip these files, built right in. You do not need any additional software to deal with a .zip file. Just open the .zip file, and OS X will unzip the file, leaving you with the contents ready for you to manipulate any way you desire. Again, once you have unzipped the file, feel free to throw away the original .zip file, and just keep the files you most recently unzipped.

If it can be difficult, it will
Once in a blue moon, you will download a file that has been zipped, compressed, and otherwise packed up multiple times. For example, you may download a file called example.dmg.zip. The people who make these files are the worst offenders at confusing a new computer user. Given the above example, you will end up with the following:

example.dmg.zip – original file
example.dmg – disc image once unzipped
example – the file or folder you really wanted

If you run into this case, while it can be confusing, just step through it. Get the main file(s) you want, and delete all the rest. In the above example, you can throw away example.dmg.zip and example.dmg, and simply copy or install the data that is inside the white disc image.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness at times, try your best to keep your downloads folder nice and clean. Over time, you will start to understand the many processes in which files can be distributed.

In talking this over with a friend, he suggested the “cube” idea that we are now using. Currently, we have most of the icons we need for future tutorials. We lack a few for broad topics like “hardware” and are in brainstorming mode to figure out how to fill those holes.

If you are interested in icons, or have a need to hire out an excellent icon designer, look no further than md3d.com. Mark Dhand has been at this for a long time, and really came through for us.

One of the more interesting parts of the procedure is how much iteration we had to go through to get where we are now. If you would like to check out the process, head over to Mark’s development area, and take a look at where we started, and where we ended up.

Again, a huge thanks to Mark for helping the site out with these icons. I think they look great.

They have all bought a used Macintosh. Whether it was from eBay, a friend, or a donation, one way or another, they have a less than brand new machine.

Nothing wrong with this at all, everyone needs to eventually get a Mac. I would like to take this time to explain what you need to do to your newly acquired computer, to make sure it is trouble free.

Check specifications
Figure out what machine you actually have. Sure, you know it is an iMac, but there are many. Depending on what version it is, depends on how forward you can take the operating system, and how much memory you can put in it.

You can look up your computer in the Apple Spec Database.

Get current
According to Apple, in order to run OS X 10.5 Leopard, you need at least:

• Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or PowerPC G4 (867MHz or faster) processor
• 512MB of memory
• DVD drive for installation
• 9GB of available disk space

As long as you meet those requirements, you are good to go and should buy a copy of OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Your computer very well may have came with a copy already; just look at the DVD it came with, if it says 10.5 or Leopard on it, you are fine, and need not buy anything.

Make sure you have enough memory
While Apple likes to tell you that 512MB of memory is enough, I would say, bare minimum is 1GB. You can certainly buy the RAM and try to install it yourself, however, since this site is targeted to beginners, I would suggest taking it to a local Mac shop. I would strongly suggest not using the Apple Store, as their RAM prices are generally double or more going rate.

Wipe it clean
This is the most important part, and it has nothing to do with Windex or 409. Even if the previous owner claims that they did a new fresh install of the operating system, I would still be inclined to do it again yourself.

Not only will you learn how to install the operating system if you ever need to, you will now know for 100% sure that there is nothing malicious on the computer.

The process is simple, put the installer DVD in, and follow the on screen instructions to perform a full clean installation.

Make absolute certain that any data you personally have put on your computer is backed up in some way. You can use a DVD, a USB thumb drive, or any other portable media.

Once the new installation is done, just copy your personal data back; you now have a truly new computer, at least as far as the software is concerned.

Be good
Sometimes, you will find that the person you bought your computer from left all their data on it. I have found banking information, pictures, and other sensitive data.

Give the seller a call; ask them if they are aware of the mistake, and if they have a backup. If they have a backup, just ignore their data; it will be wiped clean when you do a new operating system install.

The programmers at Apple are not perfect; from time to time, bugs will be found, and fixed. Apple’s software update tool is how those bugs are repaired. Oftentimes not only are bugs repaired, but new features are implemented as well.

Today we will cover the Apple Software Update tool. From how it works, when you should run it, to ignoring it and updating manually. If you continue reading, you should be able to keep your Macintosh up to date and in relatively smooth working order.

The easy way
If you have not adjusted any settings, and you are connected to the internet, once a week, your computer will connect to The Mothership. Your computer can then determine if any updates are needed. If updates are needed, you will be prompted with a list of what to install.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, this is fine, and you can safely update everything. I recommend this setting to nearly everyone, and follow this recommendation myself.

The semi-manual way
If you are so inclined, you can force your computer to check if there are available updates. Just head over to the Apple menu in the upper left corner of the menu bar and select “Software Update…”

A progress window will show up as the Software Update program scans your computer’s software against Apples list of up to date software. If any software is found that is out of date on your computer, you will be presented with the option of updating at that time.

It is important to note, just running software update is harmless. You must tell it to actually perform the installation. You can further pick and chose which software you want to update. Worth noting, Software Update only updates Apple software. Third party software is not the responsibility of Apple.

Knowing what to update
Once your computer knows what needs to be updated, you will be presented with a list of software that can be updated.

In the example above, you can see a several updates. A security update, and an update for Airport/Time Machine, among a few others I have not installed at this time.

If you click on each item, you can read some of the details about the update. Some items will list links to more detail if applicable.

In general, I just install all updates. For example, iTunes, I feel pretty safe; I know if it blows up I am only missing out on my music. I still can get real work done, even though perhaps, iTunes may be having issues.

The security update and the Time Machine/Airport update worry me, though only marginally. Since I do not rely on wireless, in my case, I could safely assume if it did break something, it would not affect me. The security update, on the other hand, probably updates many small things and could cause me issues.

In the case of the security update, I may be inclined to read the description, and follow any links to a release date, and maybe even hold off on updating for a few days.

If something goes horribly wrong with Apple released software, news spreads fast. You can use this to your advantage and hold off on certain updates that are not critical.

If everything is working fine on my computer, waiting to update until the more brave have tested things out is not a bad idea.

Call me crazy, I just update everything. I have means to back out of an update if I need to, which we will cover in our section on backups.

Ignoring updates
At times, you may see items show up in your Software Update queue that are not related to anything you ever plan on owning or using. iPod software updates are well known for this. Perhaps you know for sure, you will never own an iPod. In that case, you can select “Ignore Update” from the “Update” menu, and it will disappear from the list.

At any time, you can also select “Reset Ignored Updates” if you want or need any of your ignored updates to come back again.

Take note of the restart option
At the bottom of the Software Update window, can be a small arrow that says, “Restart will be required”. If you see this, it is a good idea, in my opinion, to save all open application data. You never know what could happen. At the very least, be aware, you will be nagged to restart and it will interrupt what you are doing.

Laptop users beware
If you are on a laptop, please, do yourself a favor, and plug it in. Nothing could be worse than having a battery die or fail on you in the middle of a software update. This can be very nasty to recover from. If you cannot get power, hold off on the update until you can in fact plug in.

Software update log and installed updates
I do not want to dig too deep into this, as it is part of our series on System Preferences which has not begun. However, there is a log of software updates. You can find it in your System Preferences under Software Update. You can also change the schedule from once a week to daily, monthly, or even never.

General practice
I suggest, in most cases, just let the tool do as it was intended, and update everything. Even the stuff you think you will never need. I know, you think you will never need an iPod, and never own one. One day, you will, and you will be glad you can just plug it in and it works.

Now go have fun, there is a new version of Safari out, and it is a good deal speedier than the last.

The good news is, you are free to change the sidebar to your liking. You can even close off the sidebar and make it disappear if you are so inclined.

The default sidebar
As seen blow, the default sidebar has three sections. Devices, Places, and Search For. Devices are items such as drives, UEB thumb drives, disc images, or otherwise, any form of “removable media”.

Under devices, is places, which are quick links to places on your computer. Clicking on any of them will bring the window to that location in an instant.

The “Search For” section is a little more complex. For the time being, use what Apple has supplied. It can find all files from today, or yesterday, or even the entire past week. You can further locate all images, documents, or even movies.

The search section uses what are called smart folders. Smart folders are not really folders, but a way to quickly generate a dynamic folder based on search criteria. Smart folders are powerful; we will cover them in detail shortly.

Customizing the sidebar
You have two ways to customize the sidebar. Three, if you include hiding it altogether. If you look at your Finder Preferences, which was covered in OS X Finder tutorial and customizations (Part 2), you can toggle certain items on and off.

Take some time to disable the ones you know you will never use. The less items in your sidebar by default; the more space you will have to add personalized items of your own liking.

Close off or resize the sidebar
The thin vertical line that separates the sidebar from your files is adjustable. You can move your mouse to it, and the cursor will change to a set of cross arrows. Click, hold, and drag, and not only can you resize the width; but you can also shrink it to the far left. This will completely remove the sidebar from that particular window.

Personalize your sidebar
I have found very few people take the time to personalize their sidebar. Perhaps it is just that people are not aware you can make changes to its behavior.

If there are items in the sidebar you do not want, just drag them out. In the usual animated poof, they will disappear. This is a non-destructive action, meaning that no items are deleted. Only the link or shortcut is deleted, your files and folders are safe.

If you want to add a particular file or folder to the sidebar, just drag it in place. While I cannot personally think of any compelling reason to add a single file to the sidebar, many of you may have great reason to. So by all means, do what is best for you.

Finally, you can rearrange items as well. A click, hold and drag with your mouse, and you can put sidebar items alphabetically, or in any order you see fit.

Since the sidebar is customized so little in my experience, along with the methods in which you customize the sidebar being hard to explain in words…

Video example of sidebar customization

If all goes as planned, you can look forward to what I consider one of the most important lessons the site has had to date. Check back tomorrow to demystify file downloading. If you have any questions, as usual, use the contact links to drop us an email.

You can download just the interview portion, or you can listen to the entire InsideMac Radio podcast. The OS X Help interview is short; if you have a spare 10 minutes, give it a listen.

This is my first ever experience talking to a few hundred thousand people, and it probably shows. We did not have a ton of time to cover everything, but I do feel the major points where covered.

One thing I do like about the interview, is I managed to get the main focus of the site out. I wanted to get the point across that both Caroline and I are just average every day people. We try hard to make a site that is helpful. We try even harder to respect all of our readers by communicating with them.

Our goal is to build a strong community that new Macintosh users are not afraid to jump right into. The interview seemed to get that point across rather well in my opinion.

Give it a listen, feedback is appreciated.

If your email address also ends in aol.com, more than likely, you are being taken advantage of. Paying for something that is otherwise free is never a good feeling. Spare five minutes of your day; when done, at the very least, I think we can save you $120.00 a year.

Background on internet service providers
Your computer can get a connection to the internet one of several ways. Most of us use a cable modem, or a DSL modem, and in some rare cases, dial-up or satellite. This is a 100% normal way to get internet access. You will be able to browse websites, check email; everything even the most advanced internet users do, you too will have that capacity.

Many years back, when the internet was relatively new, dial-up modems were the standard method of getting online. AOL came onto the scene and offered a system that you could dial into. They gave you an email address, chat features, and an application you would install on your computer.

This application allowed you AOL specific entry points to the internet. You could find chat rooms, support for software, software updates, and many other useful tools. AOL also has their own web browser that was used to get to websites outside of the AOL system.

With the explosion of the web, and the internet in general, AOL’s custom services have all been replaced. You no longer need AOL for email, since there are free providers like Gmail. You no longer need AOL for software support and updates, as you can just visit the software companies website directly. In most cases, you no longer need AOL for anything at all.

Is it safe for you to cancel AOL?
AOL has been around a long time, and some of you do in fact need to continue using their service. Most of you probably do not.

If you receive two bills per month, one from AOL, and one from your internet service provider, you are in the camp that can cancel your service with AOL.

You need a service to connect to the internet. If you are connecting to the internet through an ISP such as Comcast, or your local telephone company, also using AOL is pointless. You can safely cancel, as long as you understand the repercussions.

Some of you cannot cancel just yet
There will be a small handful of people who get only one bill. This means they use AOL not only for their “services” but also for their connectivity.

AOL is now a reseller of connectivity. They will happily broker the deal, and get you connected to the internet. You are charged for internet connectivity, as well as the use of their services. They put it all on one bill, making it seem like they are providing all services.

This is one case where you can simply skip the middleman. Go direct to your telephone company, or your cable provider and sign up for internet access with them.

What to do before you cancel
Before you cancel, make 100% certain you are not going to disrupt your service. If you are a dial-up user, AOL may not be a bad choice. They have a large amount of local dial-up numbers to call into. While there are much cheaper dial-up internet service providers, they may not have a local number to dial into.

Well before you cancel, you will need to get a new email address. This advice applies to not only AOL users, but cable and DSL users as well. Even you .Mac users may want to pay attention to this.

So many of the people I communicate with have email addresses that end in mac.com, comcast.com, cox.com, sbc.com, etc. I also see a good deal of email addresses that are obviously connected to their place of employment.

I have had the same email address going on sixteen years now. Everyone needs to have a free email address that will never change. It is time to put an end to accidentally emailing friends at their old work email address.

As soon as you are done reading this, go out and get a free Gmail email address. If you have a preference for another free provider, by all means use that one. It is my recommendation to avoid hotmail.com or yahoo.com for technical reasons.

Once you have this set up, start the painful process of telling all your contacts your email address has changed. I know this is a rough procedure to go through, but it will be the last time.

Those of you holding onto your old email addresses will one day move. With that move you will get a new internet service provider. And yes, they will give you another new and free email address. By making this change now, you at least do it on your own terms and can take your time.

Keep the AOL account open for as long as you think is needed for everyone to get your new email address and update their address books. Once you feel the word is sufficiently out, call AOL and tell them to shut down the account.

I hate to see anyone taken advantage of. Even if only $10.00 a month, that is still $120.00 a year. If you are willing to throw money away, please, cancel AOL and throw it into our donations box.

From time to time, I plan on posting articles such as this. Just the other day I heard a friend had bought a very expensive piece of software. For his needs, there was an equally good competing software, which is offering it for free. There are a many great applications out there that are free, and just as good as the pricey competition. Over time, I would like to share these with all of you.

The items you have as a default will largely depend on your computer. Laptop users will almost all have an Airport icon, and sometimes a Bluetooth icon.

What many people have not learned is that those menulets can be repositioned, deleted, and customized.

Moving a menulet
To move a menulet, just press and hold the command key and drag the menulet from left to right. The other menulets will scurry out of the way. Once you have it where you want, release the mouse and the command key.

I find myself frequently adjusting the volume, so I move the volume control off to the right. With it at the right, I find it easier to target quickly.

Removing menulets
Of course, what good would moving a menulet around be if you couldn’t also completely banish it from your menu bar. Removing is the same process as moving, with the exception of you drag downward and release the mouse. On release, a poof of smoke animation will appear, to let you know you have removed the item.

Adding menulets back
Now that you know how to arrange and remove icons from your menu bar, it is time to add a few back. Most, such as Airport and Bluetooth are controlled in your System Preferences. If for example, you removed the Bluetooth menulet, and you want it back, a quick trip to your Bluetooth preferences will bring it back.

Each menulet is different, but you should find an option that states “Show (item) in menu bar”, where “item” is the name of the item you are trying to bring back.

Menulet customization in action

Hidden menulets
Some menulets seem to evade all attempts at bringing them back. For example, the “Eject Disc” item has no known preference for adding it back in.

If you navigate to your main hard drive, and open the following folders:
System -> Library -> CoreServices -> Menu Extras
Double clicking on any of them will add that item back to your menu bar. Many will be non applicable to your system, but they are all there for your future needs.

I would guess the reason many people have issues with how to change a file or folder name is that there is no menu item or command in OS X to start the process. I have a feeling many people stumble on the methods by accident; it certainly is not immediately clear.

There are two ways to rename a file or folder in OS X. Each of these two methods apply equally well to files, or folders.

Rename with the return key
The method most people seem to have the least trouble with is using the return key. Click on a file or folder once, this will select the item. Press your Return key and the file name or folder name will be highlighted. You can now start typing as usual, when done, press the return key once more, and the changes are locked in.

Rename with a delayed click
The second method is with the mouse exclusively. Click on a file or folder once. Wait a second, and click on the file or folder once more. If you time this just right, the file or folder will become selected, and you can type your new name.

Be careful not to click too fast, or this will actually open the file in its default application. You will not harm anything by doing so, but it can be frustrating. Once you get the timing down, it will become second nature.

A small word of caution
In closing, a word of caution. If for example, you are writing a letter in Word, and have the file saved as ‘my letter.doc’. You should not rename the file while you are working on the file. The problem with this is the next time you save the file, it may or may not save to the new name you have given the file.

In a perfect world, this would not matter, as applications would follow the file even after you have renamed it. Not all applications follow these rules. I have never seen this cause data loss, but it will cause you to have a duplicate file. While a duplicate file is not a huge deal, it can be a source of confusion to some.

If you find yourself frequently pressing the back button in Safari, the SnapBack tool may save you a bit of time. Users that frequent large sites, such as Amazon.com, or Apple.com, or perhaps Ebay.com will find snapback to be valuable.

What does SnapBack look like?
Snapback presents itself to you as a small orange icon, with an arrow on it. You can see it in two places, either the far right of the URL bar, or the far right of the search box.

The snapback icon does not show up at all times, instead only under certain conditions. If you visit a site, perhaps our very own OS X Help, and then click on any link within the site, the orange icon will appear.

Clicking on the snapback icon in the URL bar will take you back to the first page you visited on the site.

SnapBack in use
Imagine you learn of OS X Help, and start reading it. You have clicked a few links, and are now several pages deep in the site. In order to get back to the first page you visited, most would click the back button a few times. While the back button does indeed work, it is slow.

Clicking the SnapBack button once, will take you back to your first visited page in an instant.

SnapBack for search results
Safari also will show the snapback icon at the far right of your browser, in the Google search box. It works the exact same way, with the exception that it applies to searching only.

For example, if you were to search for “OS X Help” in the search box, Google will show you a page of many results. Clicking on any of them will take you to that website. If at any time you want to get back to the main listing of search results, just click the orange snapback icon.

Force marking a page for SnapBack
It is also possible to force a page to be marked as your snapback page. Simply go to your History menu, and select “Mark Page for SnapBack”. While I rarely use this method, it may be useful to some of you.

Snapback is a small feature, and one that may go undetected to the casual user. In the beginning, I rarely used it. While I do not use it all the time, there are times I find it speeds up my web browsing a great deal.

Next time you notice the small orange icon, give it a click, it is one of the simpler Safari features to learn.

Today’s web browsing experience is as much driven by beauty and design as it is by putting out information. People have been pushing the limits of design in a web browser since the old days of modem connections and slow internet speeds.

While a browser is rather flexible in what can be displayed; all browsers do have various nuances in how they display a site. A well designed website should look near identical in every browser you view it in, whether it be Safari, FireFox, or Internet Explorer. The great news is Safari and FireFox both do a great job at trying to follow standards and give you a high quality viewing experience.

Today’s tutorial will cover one of Safari’s preferences that gives you a small amount of control to over-ride how a site is displayed. In general, these Appearance preferences should be reserved for those with eyesight disabilities. However, many people will at times find a site has type that is too small to read; Safari has you covered, and provides simple tools to make your reading a little more pleasurable.

Enlarging and shrinking fonts
While in Safari, navigate to the view menu, you will see three items, “Make Text Bigger”, “Make Text Normal Size”, and “Make Text Smaller”.

Selecting the larger or smaller option will do as you would suspect. If a website is difficult for you to read, select the “Make Text Larger” option, and it will bump up the font size. If the type is too large, and you would like to be able to read more of a site in one glance, you of course can make the type smaller. Finally, the “Make Text Normal Size” will bring everything back to how the website designer intended you to view the site.

While these options can make a site easier for you to read, it is important to know the layout, or the design of the site may suffer. Not all sites can gracefully shift their layout to accommodate the extra, or lack of space that a font size change may cause. As long as you are aware that you inspired the change, and an ill placed image is the cause of your font size adjustments, you should be fine. Also remember, it is very simple to change the site back to its original format by selecting “Make Text Normal Size”.

Changing fonts with the keyboard for efficiency
Many people will use these settings often, making them a perfect case for keyboard shortcuts. To make text larger, just press the command-plus keyboard combination, smaller is command-minus, and to bring it all back to normal, command-zero.

The Appearance preferences
Selecting the Safari menu, and down to Preferences, will bring up a palette that has numerous options. Over time we will cover them all, for now, I would like to concentrate on the Appearance portion.

Safari’s standard font
The first option of the Appearance preferences is setting of the “Standard Font”. By default, it is set to Times 16. You are free to change this to anything you like. In most cases, you will be best serves to leave this setting as it is.

“Times” refers to the name of the font, and “16″ refers to the size. This should not be confused with the font being 16 times larger.

When a developer makes a website, it is designed around a browsers default settings. Safari’s default of Times 16 is taken into consideration when the developer is building the site.

If you make this larger or small, all websites will be shown either larger or smaller in regards to the fonts. This can wreak havoc on sites that have strict design structures. At times, it can even make a site more difficult to navigate, as the larger fonts can push graphics elements off the page.

If you are burdened with a vision impairment of some form, I would go against my recommendation of leaving the setting as is. People with vision disabilities should do whatever it takes to make their internet experiences as comfortable as possible.

Safari’s fixed width font
In the same area is a setting to control Safari’s fixed width font settings. This has the same effect on fonts as the standard font setting with one exception. It only affects a certain type of font. A fixed width font is one in which the width of every character is identical to that of another character. For example, a skinny letter “i” will take up the same width as a fat letter “m”. I am again recommending this setting be left alone, unless you have a specific need to change it.

Display images when page opens
In the past, people have written in and asked how they can speed up their browser when they are on a slow internet connection. This setting is one such way. Un-checking the “Display images when page opens” will disable all images from loading.

In general, a page will load much faster with this setting off. If a site only has superfluous images, and they are of no use to understanding the content, you can turn this setting off.

The trouble with this setting is it is indeed valuable, but the difficulty in accessing it makes it near worthless to use. There are many sites I would not mind reading without images. The downside is it takes longer to visit the setting and locate it in the preferences than it does for me to sit patiently and wait for the website to load. Worse, when I want to turn it back on again, I have to repeat the same steps. Time wasted if you ask me.

Safari character encoding
The last preference in regards to Safari’s appearance has to do with character encoding. If you read English text, this should be left alone, and set to “Western (ISO Latin 1)”. If you read in a foreign language, set the character encoding to what is most logical.

Keep in mind; this is a default character encoding. Websites can and do over-ride this setting and force the encoding they feel is most appropriate for the language the site is written in.

The Safari Appearance preferences are pretty mundane and simple. In most cases you should leave them as they are. I wanted to point them out as there are people with disabilities, and it is important they are not treated like second-class citizens. Everyone gets old, everyone’s eyes wear out to some degree, and the Appearance settings may help you tolerate this inevitable problem.

The problem as I see it, with bookmarks, is you end up with an unmanageable list of links to sites. Over time, this list will grow to the point that it becomes easier to simply search Google for the site. If your bookmarks menu has gotten somewhat out of control; this tutorial will teach you basic organizational tactics allowing you to tame your bookmarks.

The bookmarks menu
The bookmarks menu, as shown below, has all the basic features you can access in regards to bookmarking. You have quick access to your bookmarks bar, the ability to add new bookmarks, see all your bookmarks, or even add a folder to help organize your bookmarks.

The bookmarks manager
If you select “Show All Bookmarks” from the “Bookmarks” menu, Safari will drop you into the bookmark editing area. It is here you have full control over all your bookmarks, as well as the bookmarks bar.

You can also access the bookmark manager by clicking on the small book icon on the left of your bookmarks bar. Of course, you need your bookmark bar set to visible, which was covered in Mastering Safari’s bookmarks bar.

Making a bookmark
Making a bookmark is simple, simply select “Add Bookmark” from the Bookmarks menu, or press command-D on your keyboard. A small sheet will pop down asking you what to name the bookmark, as well as where in your bookmark structure you want it saved. The name should default to the title of the site you are bookmarking.

One nice feature of adding a bookmark is that it will be saved to the same location as the last bookmark that was saved. I plan on exploiting this feature to a degree.

Exploring the Bookmark Manager
The bookmark manager has two sections, Collections and Bookmarks. You may not see a section called “Bookmarks” at first. If you have never dragged a bookmark to the side of the bookmark manager, this feature will not be visible.

Starting with the Bookmarks section, you can drag a URL out of the URL bar in Safari, and store them here. To me, this seems counterintuitive, as this section is not accessible from any other area than the bookmark editor. As far as I know, you cannot get to these bookmarks from any menu in Safari.

If you want to store items in the Bookmarks area of the bookmark manger, by all means do so. I find it takes too long to jump from Safari’s browser view, into the bookmark manager, locate which bookmark I want to use, and then double click it.

Collections
Collections are where I spend most of my time in Safari when managing my bookmarks. We already covered the Bookmarks Bar section of collections. Today, let’s focus on the Bookmarks Menu.

Designing a workflow
The following are all suggestions. This is how I work in Safari, and how I manage bookmarks. This may or may not suit your workflow. My hope is that you can take these general ideas, and adapt them to your personal needs.

As you can see, I set up my bookmark manager with a few simple folders, and one subfolder. When I am making a bookmark to a site, I want to do so quickly, and get on with what I’m doing. In order to accomplish this, I have built a structure of folders to store bookmarks in. While it takes a second to pick where to store a bookmark, in the long run, I feel like I am saving time.

At the very least, I end up with a collection of bookmarks that are simple to manage. This method will allow you to easily know which bookmarks are safe to delete, and which you may want to keep around for a while longer.

Starting with the Temporary folder. This is where I will put a bookmark to a site I know I will only visit once. I may be surfing around, and decide I need to come back to something, but it is not highly important that I do return. Temporary acts as a trash can for various site URL’s that are interesting, but ok if I forget about. Once a week, I delete everything in this folder.

Check Later, as you can see, has a sub folder in it called Done. The Check Later folder is perhaps the most valuable to my workflow.

In the example image above, I have three items in the Check Later folder. One is a forum post where I asked someone a question. The second is a link to a post here at OS X Help, as I wanted to follow the comments. And the third is a link to a bug report I filed with another software developer.

Every few days I will check in on each of these, and see if there has been any progress or updates to the bookmark. If there has, and this issue is resolved, I simply move the bookmark to the Done folder. In general, I leave the Done folder as is and allow it to fill up. Maybe once a year I might be inclined to clean it up. I certainly do not manage it daily, as that would waste too much of my time.

Check Later can hold anything from eBay auctions you want to keep an eye on, to forum posts you are following. Any website that has something I will be interested in for a short period of time, ends up in the Check Later area.

The Daily folder is pretty self-explanatory. Sites that I visit once a day, end up here. Before the more advanced users cry foul, this would indeed better be served by using RSS. We have not covered RSS yet; I feel this is an acceptable method in the meantime.

Below that you can see I have folders for Work, Shopping, Banking, and Research. These are what suit my needs. You will of course want to create folders that work for you.

Perhaps you spend a lot of time on a photography website, you may want to make a folder for all the sites you visit in that category.

Setting up your bookmark structure
If you want to create a similar folder structure, it is relatively simple. Select the “Bookmarks Menu” item on the left, go to the Bookmark menu, and select “Add Bookmark Folder”. At that point, you can move them around, move one into another, delete mistakes, or change the name. The entire area is built on dragging and dropping items around; organize them as you see fit.

Putting it to use
Now that you have this structure all set up, it is time to make a bookmark. If you are like me, the Temp bookmark folder is where most of your bookmarks are going to go. Next time you decide to bookmark a site, select that folder from the pop down sheet. All future bookmarks will have your last used bookmark folder as the default selection.

Eventually, you can quickly press command-D and then return. In one quick motion, you have now added a bookmark and can get back to whatever you were doing. Next time you have a spare moment of free time, you can peruse your Temp bookmark folder, and see what you wanted to follow up on. Some you may want to keep, in that case, move them to the appropriate folder in Safari’s bookmark manager.

Alphabetize your bookmarks
In a past post, a reader asked how to alphabetize your bookmarks. Bookmarks are interesting in that they are entered in the order you make them, so your oldest bookmarks will be near the top, and your newest near the bottom. The name of the bookmark has no relevance on how it is sorted.

The only way I have found to accomplish this is to take the folder of bookmarks you want to put into alphabetical order, and drag it to your Desktop. This will make a copy of that folder. Now drag the folder back into Safari’s bookmark manager.

At this point, you will have a duplicate folder in Safari. Delete the folder that is not alphabetized; leave the one you just dragged in as it is. Finally, you can also delete the folder of bookmarks you put on your desktop.

Share your ideas
This is by no means a definitive set of rules to managing your bookmarks. Merely a suggestion to get you started. Please share your own organizational tips in the comments below.

First is whether the site you are connecting to is trustworthy. This can often be difficult to determine. Second is the data your browser collects as you browse the web. Safari has built in tools to help you keep your experience as safe as possible. With a little foresight and education, you can protect yourself from being taken advantage of.

Secure websites, SSL certificates, and the little lock
If you are performing any transaction online, where the data you are sending in is important to you, the website should be secure. I draw the line at bank data, credit card data, and social security numbers. If I am being asked that data, I insist the site is secure.

The simplest way to tell if a website is secured, is to look in the upper right corner of the browser, if you see a padlock, it is secure.

You can also look at the URL and see if it starts with “https“. Either of these identifiers, in most cases, will let you know the site is secure.

What does secure mean?
If you see the padlock icon, or the URL starts with “https”, the data you are transmitting can be considered encrypted. You can click on the padlock, and a sheet will pop down, showing you even more detailed data about the security of the site.

In all of my purchases on the web, I am yet to find a site claiming to be secure that is not. Spoofing, or tricking Safari into showing the padlock on a non-secure site is also a non-trivial task. Not to say there cannot be problems with the security, but you should be rather safe in knowing your data is being transmitted from your browser, to the remote website in a secure and encrypted method.

Security alerts
From time to time, you will visit a site that pops up a security alert in Safari. As you can see in the image below, this very alert pops up with an Amazon site.

What is important to know immediately, this does not mean the site I am about to visit lacks security. I will still be transmitting encrypted data. It simply means there is a problem in some way with the certificate that generates the encryption.

Two things can and will go wrong here.

In order to have a secure site, the website owner must purchase an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate. Many companies sell these, but not all are known by Safari. These certificates come from what is called a CA, or Certificate Authority. In the case of the above example, if you click on “Show Certificate”, you can verify this.

As you can see, Safari tells me in red “The certificate was signed by an unknown authority”. In this case, I know to trust this site, so I can click continue. If I plan on coming back often, I can click off the checkbox to “Always trust” this site.

At other times, you will run into the same error, but Safari will tell you the certificate has expired. SSL certificates are valid for one year and onward. Sometimes they expire and the site webmaster has not had time to renew.

In either case, it is important to know, the data will be secure and encrypted, it is up to you to judge whether or not the site really is who they say they are.

Not all cases are safe
Seeing a padlock only means data is sent securely, it does not guarantee the site is who it says it is. In the image examples above, if the web address in the URL bar of Safari does not match that on the certificate, you know something is fishy.

A scammer will go to great lengths to make a website look like the real site you last remembered. They will even use URL’s such as e-b-a-y.com to try and confuse you. If you have any suspicions, ask someone before you proceed.

Personal security
Your computing environment will dictate how rigorous you need be with securing Safari.

Every page you visit in Safari is remembered for some period of time. You know this as your history. Small bits of data are stored in what are called cookies. Your entire past web browsing habits are being recorded by your browser, be it Safari, FireFox, or Internet Explorer.

Maybe you have a secret crush on Bill Gates. You of course want to keep this a secret. However, anyone who shares your computer with you could simply look in your history and trace the sites you visited. Possibly worse, you may have left yourself logged into your bank. This leaves you vulnerable to someone making changes to your bank account.

Safari has a very handy feature called “Private Browsing”. Everything from history, cookies, auto-fill entries, downloaded items, and even searches, are cleared from Safari as soon as you close the window, or quit Safari.

You enable this feature in the Safari menu, by selecting “Private Browsing”.

A window will pop up that explains in detail, just what this feature is doing.

This does not mean you should enable this feature all the time. I personally use it when I am at a friend’s house, borrowing their computer. Or perhaps on a laptop when in travels. I generally trust the people I live with, and feel it is not needed at all times.

Private browsing is a feature of tradeoffs. Turning it on will certainly slow down Safari by a small degree. I only notice this slowdown on older computers. It definitely will inconvenience you, as Safari will have a very short-term memory about what you have been doing.

Consider Private Browsing a feature to use in cases where you personally feel it is warranted. I would not consider turning it on at all times unless you have a very specific reason to.

The web has all sorts of nasty back alleys. About the best advice I can give, is if you are at all suspicious, stop what you are doing, and ask around. You can come back here, ask in the comments, ask a more experienced friend, or do some online research. I assure you, nothing you are trying to do online, or purchase online, is worth the trouble of fixing a stolen identity.

I find the Application Switcher to be a pretty handy tool of OS X, which I use now without even thinking about it. It’s not a complex application, but it can make navigating your computer a breeze.

The Application Switcher allows you to easily toggle through all programs you have open, hidden or not, in a clear and rapid manner. For instance, you are copying and pasting from your email program into Word. Instead of using your mouse to move between the two, which can take time, especially on a laptop, a simple keyboard command will bring the other program up in a flash.

By pressing Command + tab, a translucent window appears in the middle of your screen displaying the icons of the applications that are currently running. You will notice the icon of the last application you used will be highlighted and have a white box around it.

The icon of the application you are currently using will appear first, the next icon will be of the application used just before that, and so on. So as you use different applications, the order will then be rearranged.

There are several ways to move through the applications. The one I use, and in my opinion, the easiest, is to continue pressing the tab key while holding down the Command key. You will see it move to the right and then wrap around back to the beginning.

Simply letting go of the tab key while the desired application is highlighted will bring that application to the front.

If you are only toggling between two applications, which is where I find the Application Switcher most helpful, simply pressing Command + tab once, will bring the other application to the front.

There are a couple other ways to move between the applications. I don’t find myself using them, but I will mention them because you may find one you like better depending on your computer setup.

To move through the applications in the reverse order, is to hold down Command + shift and press the tab key. Or by pressing Command + back tick (button above the tab key) will do the same thing.

Another way to toggle through applications is by using the scroll wheel or trackball on your mouse, or the track pad on your laptop. You can also simply use your mouse to click on the desired application. You may even use the left and right arrows on your keyboard. Give each method of toggling a try and stick with whatever feels most comfortable to you.

If you are in the Application Switcher and want to escape without choosing an application, you simply press the Esc key, or the period key, while holding down Command, and the Application Switcher will disappear.

A couple extra features to the Application Switcher are that you can quit and hide programs. To quit a program you simply toggle to the desired application and press “Q”. If you’d like to hide an application, press “H”.

One last feature I would like to point out is the drag and drop feature. You can drag an item from your desktop, say a text document, and while dragging with your mouse, open the Application Switcher and drop the document onto a program like TextEdit or Word. Simply release the mouse while the desired application is highlighted and your document will open in that program.

I tend to use the dock for something like this, since the program I need may not be open, but the Application Switcher is capable of doing this as well, just as long as the program is open.

Play around with the different ways of toggling through programs and see what feels most comfortable to you. I think you’ll find that once you get used to it, it’s quite a quick and convenient way to move around.

Today, we will explore a subset of Safari’s bookmarking feature, the Bookmarks Bar. The bookmarks bar has so much utility to it; I do not know how I managed to get around without it.

Think of the bookmarks bar as an always-visible short list of your most visited places. Rather than digging through a large and unwieldy list of bookmarks, the bookmarks bar affords you quick access to your most frequently visited sites.

Enabling the bookmarks bar
Turning on the bookmarks bar in Safari is relatively simple. Just go to the “View” menu and select “Show Bookmarks Bar”.

Once you have enabled the bookmarks bar, just below the URL bar in Safari, you should see a row of words. Apple has been kind enough to get you started and include bookmarks to some more popular sites. Simply clicking on one of the words will bring you to that website.

I personally do not have much interest in any of the bookmarks that Apple supplies. I suspect you as well will have different sites you visit on a daily basis. The good news is, customizing the bookmarks bar is dead simple.

Customizing the bookmarks bar
Take any of the links in the bookmarks bar that you do not want, click and hold, then drag them off the bar. As you do this, you will see the other bookmarks slide to the left to accommodate the space. Simply release your mouse somewhere away from the bookmarks bar, and in a poof, they will disappear.

Safari will not warn you that this removal is about to happen, so make sure you are removing the bookmark you want to remove. If you accidentally remove one, do not fret, adding it back in is quite simple.

Adding links to your bookmarks bar
There are three ways to add a link to your bookmarks bar. Probably the simplest, is to simply drag any URL out of the URL bar, down to the bookmarks bar, and release the mouse button. As you do this, you will see a small green plus icon to let you know you are adding to the bookmarks bar.

You can add it anywhere you like; Safari will gracefully slide your other bookmarks around to accommodate the new position. As soon as you drop it in place, you are given an opportunity to name it. By default, it will inherit the title of the page. I tend to find this to be a bit long, and make the names of items in my bookmarks bar as short as possible.

The second method for adding an item to your bookmarks bar is via the “Bookmarks” menu. Select “Add Bookmark” or press command-D on your keyboard. Upon making this selection, a window will pop up, give the bookmark a name, and select “Bookmarks Bar” as it’s location.

I find using this method a little less convenient, as I do not have an immediate way to put the bookmark in exactly the location I want. To change the location, you need to go to your bookmark editing area in Safari, which is the third and way to add an item to your bookmarks bar.

Customizing within the bookmark editor
Either select “Show All Bookmarks” from the Bookmarks menu, or click the small icon that looks like an open book. This icon is located to the very left of your bookmarks bar. You will be put into your bookmarks editor, where you can further customize your settings.

Once in the bookmarks editor, you will see a listing of “collections” to the left. For this tutorial, we will only focus on the area labeled “Bookmarks Bar”. By selecting that collection, you should be presented with a list of all items in your bookmarks bar.

It is here that you can click and drag them to a new order, change their title, and also adjust the URL if need be.

Adding a bookmark folder
From within the bookmark editor, you can also enable a nice organizational feature. As you can see in the image above, there are two folders, “News” and “Popular”. Folders can contain more than one URL, which is very nice, as you will quickly run out of room on the main bookmarks toolbar.

To make a new folder, select “Add Bookmark Folder” from the Bookmarks menu. Give the folder a name. Now you can start to group your URL’s into logical categories. Maybe you spend a lot of time in Google groups, Google maps, and Google docs. Creating a folder called “Google” and then adding links into that folder would be one method of organizing these URL’s.

You may have noticed a small checkbox that is labeled “Auto-Click”. This only applies to folders; when selected, you will disable the drop down list of items in your bookmarks bar. Instead, it will be one item, that when clicked on, will open all items in new tabs. I chose to not select this, as you can still manually select “Open in Tabs” from the sub menu of the bookmark bar.

Quick keyboard access to bookmark bar items
Every item in your bookmarks bar is automatically assigned a keyboard shortcut. From left to right, starting at the number one, sequentially up to the total number of items in your list. Bookmark bar folders are ignored.

In the image of the bookmark bar above, pressing command-1 would take you to the Apple bookmark. Command-2 goes to yahoo, command-3 to Google Maps, and so on. If you use Gmail for your email, setting up gmail.com as your first item in the bookmarks menu provides you quick access to Gmail at any time by pressing command-1.

There is a good deal more to cover in regards to bookmarks. I felt this was a good place to start as it has a lot of day to day utility. I find in watching other users that they are quick to add a bookmark, but those bookmarks rarely get used.

Bookmarks tend to become disorganized. Over time, they lose any value as locating a bookmark takes more time than simply searching Google for the site based on what you remember about it.

If you continue to follow along tomorrow, you should be on track for creating bookmarks that are clean, organized, and hold their usefulness over time. Safari has one of my favorite bookmark managers of all browsers, with a little help, navigating and organizing your bookmarks will become second nature.

Now that you have learned this, click, hold, and drag this link: OS X Help, into your bookmarks bar.