Chapter 4

The Internet and Your Mac

One of the reasons for the resurgence of the Mac OS X platform is the Internet. As we do more of our computing through Web browsers and Internet portals, our operating system becomes less important. When you read the New York Times on the Internet, it doesn’t care whether you are using Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X to do so. This gives Mac workers the freedom to use Mac OS X. This chapter explains the best ways to access the Internet from your Mac.

The Web Browser Options

Although Internet Explorer rules Windows, there are several browsing applications on the Mac OS X. Three of the most popular Mac browsers are Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, and Google Chrome.

Apple Safari

 Safari (free; www.apple.com/safari), shown in Figure 4-1, ships on every new Mac. Safari, designed by Apple, includes the best Mac OS X Internet browser integration. For example, Safari works out of the box with the built-in Mac OS X downloads stack. It also works natively with Apple’s Mail application, allowing you to e-mail a link or contents of a page. You can even save photos from Safari directly to iPhoto. Safari is also very automation-friendly and accepts instructions from Automator and AppleScript, both of which are explained in Chapter 24. Safari also integrates the Mac OS X Dashboard with the Web clippings feature that turns a Web page into a Mac OS X Dashboard widget accessible for quick reference. If you use Safari and also use a Windows PC, there is a Windows version that follows most of the same interface guidelines as Safari on the Mac.

Figure 4-1

The Safari main window

 

Font rendering runs deep in the Mac OS X DNA. This is apparent in Safari, which renders fonts beautifully with its own anti-aliasing. Safari is also intelligent about the way it prints Web sites, auto-shrinking when appropriate.

Safari is based on WebKit, an open source Internet rendering engine. WebKit is the foundation of Safari on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It is also the engine used for Google’s Chrome, covered later. With WebKit, Apple, which was legendary for its proprietary systems when the Mac was first released, now finds itself at the leading edge of open Internet standards. Safari supports numerous experimental properties such as text and object effects that enhance the browsing experience. Unfortunately, not all Web sites are compliant with these emerging properties. Some sites, particularly high-security and financial sites, may not render in a WebKit-based browser. Mozilla’s Firefox, explained later, does normally render these sites.

Safari supports extensions (also called plug-ins and add-ins). Apple has a Web site with a collection of some of the most popular Safari extensions (choose Safari ➧ Safari Extensions Gallery or visit http://extensions.apple.com). Using extensions, you can add features to the browser.

Extensions are a new addition to Safari 5, so developers are just starting to sink their teeth into the capability. Still, extensions already exist that add security, bookmarking, productivity, shopping, and translation tools. My favorites include the following::

• AutoPagerize. Some Web sites use a practice of paginating their articles, requiring you to click through multiple pages (and multiple ads) to complete the article. AutoPagerize automatically assembles multipage articles into one page.
• A Cleaner YouTube. Have you noticed how messy YouTube is? When you go to watch a video, you are bombarded with additional information. A Cleaner YouTube removes the junk and lets you watch just the video.
• Google Reader Styles. This extension cleans up the otherwise uninspiring Google Reader (covered later in this chapter) Web view.
• InstaPaperBeyond. This extension adds keyboard shortcuts to the Instapaper service (covered later in this chapter), making navigation much easier.

Other popular Safari extensions include 1Password (covered in Chapter 23)and ClickToFlash (covered later in this chapter).

In Safari, you can start browsing where you left off by choosing to reopen all the windows from your last session in the History menu. Another useful feature in Safari for Mac workers is the built-in PDF-rendering engine. This allows you to view PDF documents in Safari without going to an outside application or add-in. You can open the PDF in Preview, covered in Chapter 12, or save it to your Mac for later use.

Safari’s Top Sites feature, shown in Figure 4-2, allows users to get an attractive page with small images of their favorite Web sites. Top Sites can be configured to your favorite sites and is easily navigable with one click. The Cover Flow view, shown in Figure 4-3, allows you to flip through sites in your browsing history. Because Safari keeps an index of all the content in the page history, you can even search for individual words contained on the pages.

Figure 4-2

Safari’s Top Sites view

 

Figure 4-3

The History Cover Flow view in Safari

 

Mozilla Firefox

 Mozilla’s Firefox (free; www.mozilla.org), shown in Figure 4-4, is an open source browser and was the first real alternative to Internet Explorer on Windows since the original browser, Netscape Navigator. Because it has such penetration on the Windows platform, Firefox works with just about every Web site. If you come across a site that doesn’t load in Safari or Chrome, try it in Firefox.

Figure 4-4

The Firefox main window

 

Firefox is also the most extensible browser available for Mac OS X. If you like to customize your browser, Firefox is for you. There are multiple add-ins for every conceivable use. At the time of this writing, there were more than 6,000 add-ins available for Firefox. Additionally, there are thousands of themes to change the look of the application. If you want your browser to feature unicorns and cupcakes, you can do it with Firefox.

The following add-ins are particularly helpful for Mac workers (you can find most Firefox add-ins at http://addons.mozilla.org):

• Merriam-Webster (www.merriam-webster.com) puts a dictionary in your browser.
• DeeperWeb allows you to navigate through Google search results using tag clouds.
• FastestFox speeds up Firefox with several tweaks and improvements.
• Wired-Marker installs a highlighter in your browser. You can mark up a page in different colors and the page is automatically saved in a scrapbook, as shown in Figure 4-5.
• Converter lets you convert units, time zones, and currency on any Web site.
• Adblock Plus stops a lot of advertising before it gets to your browser.
• Greasemonkey allows you to drastically change the functionality with downloaded JavaScript programs.

Because Firefox add-ins work on all platforms, it is a popular browser for people who use both Windows and Mac OS X; they can have the same browser experience on both machines.

Figure 4-5

The Wired-Marker Firefox plug-in

 

Google Chrome

 Google recently launched its own browser, Chrome, shown in Figure 4-6. Chrome for the Mac (free; www.google.com/chrome) simplifies the traditional browser interface. The search bar and address bar are combined into one box, called the Omnibox. You can type a Web address or a search query in the same place, and Chrome is smart enough to do the right thing. The Chrome address bar also displays the security level of the current site and allows you to bookmark pages.

Figure 4-6

The Chrome main window

 

The Chrome browser’s New Tab button works much like Top Sites in Apple’s Safari, opening a preview page of several sites available to you, as shown in Figure 4-7. Also like Safari, Chrome uses WebKit as its rendering engine.

Figure 4-7

Chrome’s New Tab window

 

Google Chrome runs each browser tab in its own block of memory. This technique, called sandboxing, makes for a stable browsing environment. If you have seven tabbed pages open and one page crashes, Chrome flushes the memory for that single tab and keeps the remaining six tabs open. This sandboxing also makes your browser more secure: If a hacker gets into your sandboxed Web page, he usually can’t get any further than the tab assigned to that particular page. This partitioning of the browser is a significant advance in browser technology. Indeed the WebKit team has announced that it will adopt this feature, so it will also be in Safari, and Firefox is sure to follow suit.

Although Chrome doesn’t offer the slick user experience you get with Safari’s Cover Flow view, Chrome does a good job indexing and searching visited sites. You shouldn’t be surprised; Google is the undisputed king of search.

Where Safari offers the best integration with Mac OS X, Chrome has the best integration with the cloud-based Google applications such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Reader, and the ever-expanding Google cloud-based software library. If you rely on the Google applications, Chrome is probably the right browser for you.

Chrome is also extensible. Although it does not have the exhaustive add-in library available to Firefox, there is an active community of Chrome developers. There are add-ins for Twitter and many Web social networking services, as well as feature improvements, ad blockers, and enhancements. One of the best is SearchPreview, which allows you to see thumbnail images of the Web sites generated in response to your Google search.

Despite its newness, Chrome is making an impression with innovative security and stability features, making it a favorite for many Mac workers.

Choosing a browser

I have not said which browser is fastest because there is no clear winner. There is a constant arms race among the various browsers over which is the fastest. Every time a new version of any particular browser comes out, it is claimed to be the fastest, until the next browser’s update shows up. All three Mac browsers are fast. More important, with modern computer processors, there isn’t much of a difference between the slowest and fastest browser.

The real choice is about features and stability. Firefox is the most extensible and most likely to open any Web page you throw at it. Safari masters the Mac OS X experience and integrates throughout the operating system. Chrome features some great new technologies and the Google Web experience. They are all free, and the best way to choose is to try them out and see what works best for you. There is no wrong decision. And you can use more than one if you like.

Bookmark Syncing

Because there are several attractive browser options on the Mac, you may find yourself using multiple browsers and if you do, you will want to share your bookmarks among them.

When syncing bookmarks between multiple browsers, one popular tool is Xmarks (free; www.xmarks.com). This Internet-based service installs on your computer and keeps your bookmarks in sync. It is multiplatform, so if you use a Windows PC at your desk and the Mac on the road, you will have no trouble sharing your bookmarks.

If you’re not comfortable synchronizing your bookmarks through the Web, a local tool is Agile Web Solutions’ All Bookmarks (free; www.agilewebsolutions.com/allbookmarks). This application puts all your bookmarks in your menu bar for use in any Web browser installed on your Mac.

If you just use Safari but have multiple Macs, an iPad, or an iPhone, you can sync your bookmarks with Apple’s MobileMe service ($100 per year; www.apple.com/mobileme). MobileMe is a subscription service that has several additional benefits as referenced throughout this book.

Taming Flash

 Adobe Flash is a programming environment that allows Web developers to make animated graphics for the Internet, as well as other interactive items. When you log onto a Web site and there are popping lights, jumping boxes, and moles to whack, most likely there is a Flash animation involved. Flash is the programming environment of choice for many advertisements and complex animated Web pages.

Unfortunately, Flash doesn’t always run efficiently on the Mac. Moreover, not all Flash programmers are created equal. Once you start opening multiple tabs and have several Flash instances running on your Mac at the same time, your browser — and your Mac in general — may slow to a crawl. Because Flash animations are processor-intensive, running them for extended periods makes your Mac run hotter, requires the fans to run more often, and reduces the available battery life on your MacBook. Flash also can present a security risk as some hackers exploit Flash as a point of entry into your computer.

One of the best methods to ensure efficient browser performance is to stop Flash in its tracks. For Apple Safari, use the shareware add-in, ClickToFlash (www.clicktoflash.com). Once installed, ClickToFlash blocks all incoming Flash animations. When your page loads, you just see an empty box with the word “Flash” written in the middle, as shown in Figure 4-8. If ClickToFlash blocks a Flash animation that you do want to see, just click the blank space and the animation loads. If you Control+click or right-click on a blocked Flash animation, you can instruct ClickToFlash to always allow (or to always ban) Flash animations on certain Web sites, as shown in Figure 4-8. An additional benefit is that ClickToFlash also strips the Flash out of YouTube, allowing you to watch dogs surf without overloading your Mac.

Figure 4-8

Setting rules in ClickToFlash

 

Because ClickToFlash stops Flash animations until you specifically authorize viewing them, your browser is much less likely to get bogged down. Stopping Flash results in a more stable and secure browsing environment for you and much less work for your Mac, which will run cooler and longer. If you are using Firefox or Chrome, use the Flashblock extension for the same purpose. It is not as feature-rich as ClickToFlash but it does block Flash.

Once you install a Flash blocker, you will be amazed at how much more stable your Web browsing is and surprised by how infrequently you need to click the box and let Flash loose on your Mac.

If you really want to declare war on Flash, you can also install BashFlash (www.bashflash.com). This shareware application installs to your menu bar and gives you feedback as to how much work Flash is giving your Mac. It works with both Chrome and Safari. If the menu bar icon turns red, Flash is using a lot of system resources. With two clicks on the menu bar icon, you can kill all active Flash animations.

By using a Flash blocker with BashFlash, you can limit your exposure to Flash animations in your browser and make sure the Flash code you do let through to your Mac doesn’t get in your way.

RSS

 Do you have a lot of bookmarks and find it tedious clicking them to see what is new? You are not alone. If you had even 15 Web sites that were relevant to your industry and worth checking on a daily basis, you could spend hours just clicking to see what is new. Fortunately, there is a solution for this called RSS, which stands for Really Simple Syndication.

An RSS document, usually called a feed, is a bit of Web code that includes a list of articles and their text from a blog or Web site (sometimes summarized) along with the author and publisher data, as shown in Figure 4-9.

Figure 4-9

A sample RSS feed

 

You give an RSS reader a list of your favorite Web sites and it pulls the feeds from those sites, giving you a list of new articles from all your favorite Web sites in one location. This allows you to keep up with all your important Web sites with just a glance, and it saves you the trouble of the bookmark tango.

On the Mac, there are several RSS readers. My favorite is Google Reader (free; www.google.com/reader), shown in Figure 4-10. You can set up Google Reader as part of your free Google account and check your feeds from any Web browser. Google Reader also has several social networking features, allowing you to share and mark feeds for other people.

Figure 4-10

Google Reader

 

One of the primary advantages of using the Google Reader service is the ability to synchronize with multiple devices. There are Google Reader clients for the iPhone, iPad, and Windows, so you can stay current with your feeds from any device.

Some users prefer a dedicated Mac OS X application to read their newsfeeds. There are several native Mac OS X applications that synchronize with Google Reader. My favorite is NetNewsWire (free; www.newsgator.com/individuals/netnewswire), shown in Figure 4-11.

Figure 4-11

NetNewsWire’s main window

 

Another option is Fever ($30; www.feedafever.com). Fever is set up on a Web server. You tell Fever which feeds are the most important and it automatically filters the news for you. Fever uses an interesting temperature metaphor to bring what it believes are the most important news items to your attention: Articles of interest may be set at 101 degrees, whereas something that Fever thinks you must read immediately might be set at 106 degrees.

Once you discover the magic of RSS, you will begin to notice the RSS logo at all your favorite Web sites. It is so easy to click that RSS button and add the feed that before long you will find yourself with 200 RSS subscriptions, and when you open RSS feed reader over your morning tea you will discover there are 1,732 unread articles from the last eight hours. It is really easy to go overboard with RSS feeds. When you have too many feeds, you either spend your whole day catching up (and get nothing else done) or you don’t bother reading any of them and lose the benefit of RSS. So put yourself on a data diet: Pick the feeds that are particularly relevant to your industry and stick with those.

Instapaper

Once you become Internet-savvy with your customized browser and efficient RSS workflow, you will discover there are a lot of interesting articles you want to read. The trouble is finding a time and a place to read those articles. Instapaper (free; www.instapaper.com) is a great tool.

As part of the Instapaper account setup, you copy a special bookmark named Read Later to your browser’s bookmarks bar. This special bookmark, called a bookmarklet, has a bit of JavaScript code in it. After you copy the bookmarklet into your bookmarks, anytime you find an interesting Web article that you don’t have time for, you just click the Read Later button to have that JavaScript push a copy into your Instapaper account. Instapaper then does its best to remove the Internet noise and show you just the article text and any inline pictures. You can later log in to your Instapaper account and read the articles at your leisure. If you own an iPhone or iPad, there is also an Instapaper application that allows you to synchronize your Instapaper articles to those mobile devices.

Instapaper is very useful to Mac workers: No matter what your profession, using the Web to intelligently find, filter, and absorb information is within your grasp on the Mac.

Web 2.0 and the Future

Although the Internet started life as a pipe of information, it has become so much more. There is an emerging group of Internet-based software applications that work out of your browser and are licensed with a monthly fee. This software-as-a-service, or SaaS, model seeks to replace the traditional approach of buying software licenses for your office computers and servers. Instead, companies and users subscribe to software from an online vendor. This book addresses several of the popular Internet-based (or cloud) applications in their appropriate chapters, such as Google Docs in Chapter 11.

There are certain benefits to software as a service. It is, by its very nature, multiplatform. These applications run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and mobile operating systems — as long as they follow accepted Web standards, of course. These services also are low-maintenance. The software is upgraded and maintained by the software vendor on its servers. No longer do you have to bring in IT staff in the middle of the night because your key application decided to stop behaving. Also, if your staff is mobile, it gives them easy access wherever they are, as cloud-based data is accessible from anywhere there’s an Internet connection. In some cases, it can replace costly data servers in your office.

Despite these benefits, software as a service is not a solution for every company. Data security may require that you keep everything on your local servers. Also, this is an emerging field, and often the cloud-based software lack features found in traditional local applications. Regardless, as browsers become more powerful, the move toward cloud-based software is going to accelerate.

The Internet is a blessing and a curse for Mac workers. It offers a wide variety of tools and services to allow us to get work done more easily, but it also constantly threatens to drown us in information. Using the tools from this chapter, you should be able to tame the Internet on your Mac.