Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with osx and safari

Safari 4 and Delicious.com together?

xmutex — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 17:29:10 -0800

Do you use Safari and Delicious.com together, successfully? HOW!? I'm enjoying all aspects of Safari 4 so far, and happy to bid adieu to bloated slow crashy Firefox, but I'm really jonesing for a useful Delicious integration. Delicioussafari.com seems a little (a lot) less than I need. What I need is my bookmark list right there as in the wonderful Firefox Delicious plugin. Any tips?

Disable "Inline Search" in Safari 4 Beta for Mac

Leech — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:19:19 -0800

Is possible to disable "find in page" on Safari 4 Beta? Hi,

I hate that the "find in page" is activated by just typing anything in the page instead of Cmd+F and then search.

On some pages that requires some keystrokes to do some actions it's annoying.

Do you know if it can be disabled to use only the Cmd+F and search box instead?

(Also I'm worried if it's a plugin I've installed functionality, so please confirm me if you're experiencing the same thing or it's only me)

Safari never forgets!

TheyCallItPeace — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 05:31:44 -0800

When using Safari, since the weekend, I have noticed that whenever I do a Google search with the search field in the browser, it looks as if my girlfriend is still logged on on Google via my computer. I tried reseting the browser, restarting it, logging in to Google as myself and logging out, even clearing the cooking, cache and history manually, and still eventually it looks like she is still logged in. What gives? Has anyone seen similar behavior on Safari? This is 10.5.whatever (latest), with the latest Safari too. I don't notice any similar ptoblems with other sites.

how do I tell a browser in osx which plugin should handle a certain file type?

krautland — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 21:35:11 -0800

how do I tell a browser in osx which plugin should handle a certain file type? I installed the vlc plugin for osx to enable safari and firefox to handle vlc-streams.

vlc also tries to handle mp3 files opened in either browser.
I don't want it to do that. I prefer quicktime handling such files in-browser, which is exactly what used to happen. (the qt plugin can begin playing while still downloading, the vlc plugin says "no video" until the whole download is completed.)

how do I tell a browser in osx which plugin should handle a certain file type? is my only option to trash the vlc plugin completely?

I tried RCDefaultApp 2.0.1 but had no luck.

Safari's user agent: How can I make it stick?

senseigmg — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:18:26 -0800

How can I make safari open a certain page using a specific user agent, each time, without me having to choose the agent (on leopard)?

Why Am I getting 404 errors for legitimate web pages while casually browsing?

smersh — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 01:58:12 -0800

While casually surfing, why am I getting 404 errors for pages that definitely exist (like google and facebook)? How can I stop it? While casually surfing, I get at least five Hostgator 404 errors a day, for pages that definitely exist. Pages on google, on major websites like ign.com, facebook, etc.

I'm in India, surfing on a MacBook Pro, Safari, Leopard (though I've seen it on Firefox and on OS 10.4). I think it has to do with my ISP, but I'm not sure. It could be my wireless router (Airport Express).

My annoying remedy is to change my DNS Server information to OpenDNS when a page doesn't work (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220). But, I get the same 404 page errors at the same frequency.

The switching of DNS servers ALWAYS helps immediately, but never long term. That is, it'll allow me to see the page/site right away, but another legitimate page will give me a 404 some time later.

Please help me. I'm really hoping that my configurations are doing this somehow, but I don't know how.

thanks!

How to turn off Safari's "improved" autocomplete?

mark7570 — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 07:21:09 -0800

Is there any way to turn off Safari's "improvement" to URL autocompletion? I used to be able to type a letter in the URL field and Safari would autocomplete with my most commonly accessed URL starting with that letter.

For example, typing "t" would have Safari autocomplete the specific technorati search page for my blog.

But now, new in Safari 3.0.4, is a "feature" that screws up the autocomplete: typing "t" goes to the domain homepage - not the specific page I've gone to in the past. So "t" goes to technorati.com - and then I have to arrow-key down to the page I wanted. It's an unnecessary and irritating step.

Is there any way to turn that off? (Without reverting to an older version of Safari?)

P.S. I also don't like the new search feature that animates the find-in-page function. Any way to turn that off, and go back to what the Find function has been doing fine for, oh, 14 years now?

text entry problem with safari

6550 — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:04:54 -0800

I cannot enter text with the Safari browser, in the main window (like to login into any site or post a comment here) with the keyboard, though I can enter text in the URL and search bars. Also, I can cut and paste text within a field, just not type it in, the cursor does blink and highlighting text to cut works as normal. Strange! Searching, I found a little information regarding the Webkit browser (I think based on Safari's code or vice versa) here and here, but those aren't very recent and aren't actually Safari bugs. I've upgraded to 3.0.3 beta to see if that fixed it from 2.04 but no change. I tried deleting the files com.apple.Safari.plist as well as the contents of Library/Safari. Operating system is OS X 10.4.10 and completely up to date. I normally use Firefox so this isn't a huge issue but I occasionally need Safari and would like to be able to use it normally. Any additional ideas would be appreciated, or a way to do a fresh install of Safari.

Why is Flickr so slow/broken? OS X!

wemayfreeze — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:49:11 -0800

Why is Flickr so very very beyond slow and maybe broken, sometimes (OS X)? I'm rockin' OS X (Tiger) and all my browsers (Safari, Firefox, Camino) load Flickr slower than slow. Half the time it doesn't load fully at all: when searching, half or more of the photos won't display and the browser will sit there indefinitely, loading the page. Same thing happens on individual photo pages. It seems to happen less frequently if I'm only loading one Flickr page at a time (as opposed to lots of tabs, which is what I'm trying to do), but it still happens.

Is this just Flickr being Flickr? Is there some setting I can set or browser I can use that can fix this?

What are the best Safari plugins?

jroybal — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 13:26:21 -0800

What are the best Safari plugins? I recently bought my first Mac, a MacBook, and now I've switched to Safari. What are some Safari plugins that I should be using? Preferably free. Mac OS X Tiger, 10.4.10, Safari 3.0.2 Beta. I've seen some related threads on here, but they're kind of old, and there's no mention of Safari 3 Beta.

Two things specifically, but really anything that would be useful.
1. Something that would give me more control over tab behavior
2. An ad-blocker

Thanks very much.

Stripping some (but not all) formatting from rtf text (on a mac).

Tlogmer — Wed, 02 May 2007 01:55:16 -0800

Is it possible to programmatically strip some (but not all) of the formatting from text that's been copied from safari? So you know how when you copy and paste from Safari to Textedit (or another rtf-aware program), all the formatting comes through -- the links, the italics, images, etc?

I want to programmatically strip out all the formatting except the bolds and italics -- most importantly, to strip out the hyperlinks and images. I'm going to be copying a lot of text, so basically I just want this to be the push of a button.

Writing a script for textedit itself is out: the rtf is opaque (the only option is just to convert it to plain text, and I'll lose the italics). Nisus Writer Pro (beta) yields a similar roadblock (though if I could call up a contextual menu for each word using GUI scripting the problem's solved -- I don't think this is possible). I'd rather not use word because it's crashy under rosetta. Suggestions?

How do I get Firefox to use the OSX Keychain?

clearlynuts — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 07:35:44 -0800

How do I get Firefox to use the OSX Keychain? When I used a PC, I used Roboform. It not only remembered my password, but it was compatible with IE and Firefox, so I could switch back and forth between the browsers. Now I have a Powerbook, and I have passwords in the Keychain, for the occasions I use Safari, and passwords in Firefox. I primarily use Firefox, and I won't be switching to Safari full-time (or even a majority of the time).

I found software called 1Passwd. Does anyone have experience using that software extensively? Are there bettter alternatives? Something that works a lot like Roboform would be great. I don't mind paying for a license, so freeware isn't required.

WebKit Javascript Woes

evariste — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 13:26:46 -0800

I'm having a strange problem with WebKit's Javascript engine. Please help. Copious explanation inside. I have a live inline comment preview feature, much like MetaFilter's, on my blog. It works great in Opera and Firefox (and MSIE). However, it doesn't seem to work in Safari, OmniWeb, or even the WebKit nightly build-I downloaded it in the hope that this was a WebKit bug that's fixed upstream in the nightlies, but if it is their bug, it doesn't look like it's been fixed. I'm asking this question in the hope that it's something I can fix.

Here's how my comment preview code works:

1. There's a textarea with the id "comment-text" which you type your comment into. It has an onKeyUp event handler that calls doCommentPreview() in my javascript file. There's a preview field underneath the textarea with the id "comment-preview", which doCommentPreview() fills with the preview HTML.

2. I have a blacklist of disallowed words, as a spam prevention measure. The comment engine will refuse any comment that contains any of these words or phrases.

3. At the top of the document (not in the javascript file), I fill a javascript array called spams[] with the contents of the blacklist, using php, on the server side.

4. I have two String prototype functions: showSpams() and regExEscape(). I use showSpams() to highlight items in the blacklist that a commenter might have typed in, to alert them right in the inline previewer that their comment is likely to be rejected before they hit post. It just tests the comment against each element of the spam[]array, and if the comments contains that particular word, it turns red and is surrounded by a border.

5. I've enabled the Debug menu using

defaults write com.apple.Safari EnableDebugMenu 1

Safari's Javascript console, in the debug menu, shows the following error:

Value undefined (result of expression re.compile) is not object. bloggie_05.js

on line 16.

The line that WebKit complains about is the first line inside the for-loop in String.prototype.showSpams():

re.compile(spams[i].regExEscape(),'gim');

6. Here's all the code, in context:

6-a. At the top of the document, in the <head> section:

<script language="javascript">var spams = new Array();spams[0] = 'casino';spams[1] = 'craps';spams[2] = 'backgammon';spams[3] = 'cash advance';</script>

<script src="bloggie_05.js"  language="javascript" type="text/javascript"></script>

[I abbreviated the blacklist (the spams[] array) because this question is already way too long.]

In the textarea used for writing comments, I have this:

<textarea tabindex="1"  id="comment-text" name="comment_text_body" style='width:95%;height:300px;' onKeyUp="javascript:doCommentPreview();"></textarea>

And here's the empty div underneath it, which is filled by the doCommentPreview() function above:

<div class="ientrycomment_body" id="comment-preview" name="prevu"></div>

Finally, here's the code in the external (bloggie_05.js) javascript file:

function doCommentPreview(doc){

	doc=(typeof(doc)=="undefined"?document:doc);

	field=doc.getElementById("comment-text");

	preview_field=doc.getElementById("comment-preview");

	preview_field.innerHTML = "<p>" + field.value.split(/\n\n/).join("</p><p>").split(/\n/).join("<br />").showSpams() + "</p>";

}

String.prototype.showSpams = function(){

    despammed=this;

    re = new RegExp();

    for (var i=0; i < spams.length; i++) {

        re.compile(spams[i].regExEscape(),'gim');

        despammed=despammed.replace(re,"<span style=\"color:red;border:1px dotted;\" title=\"you can't say that here!\">" + spams[i] + "</span>");

    }

    return despammed;

}

String.prototype.regExEscape = function() {

  text=this;

  if (!arguments.callee.sRE) {

    var specials = [  '/', '.', '*', '+', '?', '|', '(', ')', '[', ']', '{', '}', '\\' ];

    arguments.callee.sRE = new RegExp(

      '(\\' + specials.join('|\\') + ')', 'g'

    );

  }

  return text.replace(arguments.callee.sRE, '\\$1');

}

The line that WebKit has a problem with is in bold, in the String.prototype.showSpams() above.

What's going on here?

Safari wierdness

spyke23 — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 08:11:33 -0800

Wierdness with Safari. Safari seems to freeze when I download (ahem) torrent files. but not when i download any other type of files. I am running Tiger, on a Mac Mini, with Saft and Concierge aside Safari.

Minor Safari inconsistency

yesno — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 09:38:27 -0800

Why this minor Safari inconsistency between machines with exact same build of Safari? I have two intel Macs, an iMac and a Macbook. They both are running Safari 2.0.3 and both are the same build--- 417.9.3. When trying to download the Universal Build of Fuzzy Clock (which isn't typed properly--- Safari sees it as a text file and adds a .txt extension on both machines), on the Macbook, I get a "Save linked file to inbox" option in the contextual menu, which does just that. The file doesn't show up in the download window. On the iMac, however, I get a "Download linked file" message, and it goes through the download window. (Also ends up in the "inbox" folder.) Why would the two machines be different? They have the same version of OS X, but different build numbers (the iMac is 8l1119 and the Macbook is 8l2025).

This is just a headscratcher for me. Maybe one of you wizards know the answer.

Safari download plugin needed.

youcancallmeal — Tue, 23 May 2006 14:19:42 -0800

I need a Safari plugin that will allow me to download all of the files/folders from a given website. Does this exist? Where?

So long Safari?

gwint — Wed, 10 May 2006 11:46:49 -0800

Has Safari become a second class browser? Does it have a future? More and more I'm encountering sites that are not compatible with Safari and ask me to switch to Firefox (or claim that Safari support is coming "soon") or that certain features in webapps only appear in Firefox (e.g. gmail). It's like that bad old days when sites were IE/PC-only except that now there is a viable choice for Mac users in form of Firefox. My question is: With so much developer momentum focused on Firefox compatibility, will Safari be put out to pasture? And if not, will it fade into obscurity?

Is there a perfect OSX web browser out there for me?

bruceyeah — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 03:26:22 -0800

I'm trying to find a (stable) OSX web browser that... A) allows you to select text and right-click to search for that text in Google, AND B) displays bookmarks in the bookmarks toolbar as favicons (not just plain text buttons). Firefox and Safari seem to do A, Camino has B, Shiira does both but it's hella unstable on my Intel Mac mini.

Or alternately... is there a way to customise Safari, Firefox or Camino so that they do both? I've searched high and low for relevant extensions with no success.

Camino is close to perfect, but not being able to right-click and Google something thing is annoying. Or am I just in need of a good bookmarklet script that does this?

Automating Safari in OSX

se7encrows — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 16:10:20 -0800

In OSX 10.4.5, is there an Automator workflow or a way in iCal to have Safari open a particular website at a particular time everyday? I basically want Safari to open to a specific URL at the same time everyday. Is this possible?

Web Developer plugin for Safari?

Manhasset — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:42:58 -0800

Something for (the latest version of) Safari that allows me to see which DIV I'm in by mousing over a section of the screen? Any suggestions besides webdevadditions (which doesn't work for me and the developer is unresponsive).

Safari RSS not updating some feeds

trey — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 15:30:05 -0800

Why doesn't Safari RSS automatically update some of my feeds? I am running OS X 10.4.2. Most of my RSS feeds (I only subscribe to 20 or so) update normally and on schedule. Several of my feeds though (specifically Arts & Letters Daily, Tom Dispatch, and the Nation) refuse to automatically update or only do so once a week or so. If I click on the feed manually and refresh, the new articles appear.

I run Safari for long periods of time, but I usually restart it once or twice a day, so it's not a matter of a slow connection. My other feeds are fine and I didn't uncheck the "automatically retrieve updates" option. The feeds, when refreshed manually, appear quickly, it doesn't seem to be a matter of server time outs or incorrect coding. Arts & Letters Daily and The Nation worked fine on my old news reader (I only recently subscribed to Tom Paine Dispatch).

Any suggestions?

Safari + Google = no tabbed browsing

rorycberger — Thu, 05 May 2005 11:33:55 -0800

I'm having a strange problem with Safari and Google: if I run a google search and command-click on a result (to open it in a new tab) about 90% of the time it will open in the main tab, thus only allowing me to click through to one result at a time. This makes me very unhappy, as I loved using tabs to quickly sort through search results. I haven't had any problems using command-click on other sites. I think this started happening about the same time I upgraded to 10.3.9, but I'm not sure. Anyone else had this problem after the upgrade? Is it fixed in Tiger? Did google change something in the way it links to search results? Is there a way around this?

Windows Media Player Problems

scazza — Wed, 16 Feb 2005 19:31:44 -0800

Windows Media Player will no longer load in Firefox or Safari. I have reinstalled twice, I remember seeing similar problems with WMP and OS X on AskMe or MeFi (I can no longer find where I saw it) without an answer, help!

Mac Defaults to QuickTime

ascullion — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 07:17:25 -0800

Potentially-really-obvious-mac-question-filter. Why does Safari want to open MP3 streams in QuickTime no matter what I do - and how can I stop it?

Camino runs much more slowly on my G4 667 TiBook than on the Lombard 333 Mhz Powerbook. I need a good browser.

weston — Sun, 22 Aug 2004 21:55:46 -0800

MacBrowserHell: I just updgraded from a Lombard 333 Mhz Powerbook to a G4 667 TiBook with 1GB RAM. Camino now seems to run dog-slow. And the others have their troubles... Firefox .9 has the same problems it had with .8 -- namely that periodically, it just decides to stop responding to typed urls and/or dialog boxes become permanent fixtures -- and also seems a little less responsive. IE is, well, IE, and Safari, while nice, still has its CSS and Javascript bugs. Also, I can't run it when I have to boot into 10.2.8 instead of Jaguar to do some compatibility checking.

I'm particularly grumpy because the waits have all the signs of being a rendering-related: the progress bar fills up, but then the page doesn't appear for another 30 seconds or so, and in the meanwhile keystrokes slow down, and occasionally the spinning beachball of death appears. Yet I can't imagine this is due to the change in hardware -- I've upgraded processor, processor speed, and memory.

So I'm wondering: does anyone else see this? Does anyone else recall Chimera and Firefox being truly zippy amazements, and now find them burdensome and clunky? Did I just forget to check some box appeasing the cocoa/quartz demidieties? In short, what is going on here?