MacMost: Safari

With Yosemite and iOS 8 you can once again use RSS feeds. The left sidebar allows you to add the feed for a web site you are viewing. You can add many feeds and see an aggregated list of items from those feeds, as well as from social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. This works both in Yosemite on the Mac and iOS 8 on the iPad.

Using the developer tools built into Safari, you can see how long it take to load a web page, and which elements of the page may be holding things up. Developers can use this tool to optimize their web sites.

There are a variety of buttons and keyboard shortcuts that you can use to quickly create, close and navigate between tabs. How some of these work depends on your Safari preference settings. If you use tabs and multiple windows, these tips should help you optimize your web viewing.

When sharing links with friends, long URLs can cause issues as they take up a lot of space in tweets and text messages, and can wrap across multiple lines in emails. You can use one of the many free URL shortening services to turn any URL into a very short one. These will redirect to the original page. The danger in using URL shorteners is that you can't be certain where a link leads. But browser extensions and the URL shortening services can help with that.

Safari 6 has some great tools for developers, including the Safari Snippet Editor. This tool allows you to write HTML code and see the results instantly. You can include tags as well as styles and scripts. It could be useful for those learning HTML or JavaScript, and for those starting a new HTML project.

You can store bookmarks in Safari in four places: the bookmarks bar, the bookmarks menu, custom bookmarks folders and Top Sites. See how to create custom folders and how to choose where to store bookmarks and how to move and re-arrange them.

Mountain Lion offers four different ways to send web pages from Safari through Mail. You can send a plain link, as before, or send the page as HTML, a PDF or Reader content only. The trick is knowing where to select which of the four options you want.

Here are three key techniques that everyone who surfs the web on their Mac should know. But using tabs, browsing history and page search you can move around quickly and find what you want.

You can grab a small portion of a web page and use that to create a Dashboard widget. This gives you easy access to information from often-updated web sites. You can view the widget on your Dashboard screen or mixed in with your desktop.

With Safari 6 and Mountain Lion, users can get system notifications from web pages. Some simple JavaScript can be used for web developers to enable and use these notifications. You must first ask for permission to send notifications to the user, and then can trigger notifications. You can react to the user clicking on them as well. However, they only work while the web page is present.

Safari 6 has arrived for Lion and Mountain Lion. Look at changes to Safari including a smart search field, offline reading list and faster JavaScript. But the ability to look at RSS feeds is gone.

There are several ways to export bookmarks in Safari. You can use these techniques to archive old bookmarks and clean up your list in Safari. You can also create handy lists of links that can be stored elsewhere or uploaded to a web site.

In OS X you have various ways of setting default applications for files and other actions. You can set your default email and web browser applications with settings in Mail and Safari. You can set what happens when you connect a camera or SD card, or insert an optical disc. You can also set which application will be used to open specific file types.

Learn about all of the different Safari browser preferences that affect security. You can find them in more places than just the Security tab. Learn what each one does to protect you while you surf online and decide what the best settings are for you.

Learn how to take multiple RSS feeds and view them all on one page in Safari. You can create your own custom page of news from sources you like to read. You can also search this page to find articles to read.

The new Safari Reading List feature allows you to quickly and easily save web pages for future viewing. You can add pages to your Reading List in various ways, and they will be marked as read when you get back to them. They will also sync with iOS 5 devices. They are similar to bookmarks, but could be used in some interesting ways.

Take a look at four extensions that you might find useful. You can discover web page-specific keyboard shortcuts. You can select and jump to links using only your keyboard. You can lock tabs. You can make it easier to generate shortened URLS.

Take a look at four free Safari extensions that you may find useful. You can add a customizable toolbar, view multiple pages in one long page instead, print specific areas of a page and see your incoming Gmail at the top of the Safari window.

You can change how pages are loaded in Safari, and alter them after they load with Safari extensions. You can prevent images and Flash content from loading when you are on a slow connection, but click to view that content on demand. You can also mark up a web page and send it via email.

Learn how Safari extensions can make it easier to shop online. You can get free extensions that will show you prices at different sites, allow you to navigate product information and even add to your Amazon wish list from other sites.