Inside:Â Bookmarks, Safari Reading List, Links, Web Archives, tooltips
There’s not enough room in this newsletter for me to adequately apologize for going silent for so long. In January I had a good excuse as I spent most of the month with a sore throat that made my voice very unworthy of recording new videos. But February just got away from me with other work and was over before I knew it. The important thing is I’m back in the groove and have FOUR new articles and videos to announce.
I did have a brief scare when the hard drive in my MacBook Pro got corrupted recently. Fortunately I can’t use that as an excuse because I was able to swap in a bigger drive and then restore everything from backup. Time Machine worked just how it’s supposed to and I was back running in a few hours, with nothing missing. If you still aren’t backing up your Mac, please use me as a cautionary tale. Drives can fail at any time. Mine gave me no warning. They ALL ultimately fail. My October article on setting up Time Machine inspired a few readers to finally start backing up their Macs, so if you still aren’t backing up, hopefully you’ll be inspired by my quick recovery from what could have easily been a tragedy.
Okay, enough catching up, on to this issue’s articles and videos. Note that all these videos show me using Safari, but most of the features I show apply to other browsers like Firefox and Google Chrome as well.
Saving Web Pages – Four Different Ways
Maybe it’s the engineer in me, but I’m always looking for better ways to do things. Even something as simple as saving a web page so I can come back to it later. Often the “best” way depends on the situation. In this article and video I survey four ways to save a web page and discuss what each is good for.
How to Save Web Pages – Four Different Ways
The most popular method is with browser bookmarks but, without a little discipline, your list of bookmarks can quickly get out of control. (I speak from experience!) So please join me on this little Safari tour of the various ways to add and organize your bookmarks.
Even if you were already a bookmark master, I suspect you may have still learned at least one thing new in that video. Heck, I know I learned a cool trick while making it. Speaking of tricks, here are a couple more, including another that I just learned.
Safari bookmark tips – “Open in Tabs” & Auto-Click
Bookmarks are great for storing links to pages you’ll need over and over, but for pages you’ll read once and then be done with, Safari’s Reading List feature is really handy. Once you know it’s there, it’s pretty easy to use, but be sure to check out this article and video to learn how to get the best use out of it.
How to use the Safari Reading List
And now, great news for Quicken users who weren’t able to upgrade to Lion…
Quicken 2007 will now work on Lion (for $14.99)
As promised in December, Intuit re-engineered Quicken for Mac 2007 so it will work on Lion. Although it still retains the “2007” in its name, this is really a full application, not just an update, so the $14.99 price tag seems reasonable. So, if Quicken’s inability to run on Lion was the only thing keeping you on Snow Leopard, you no longer have that excuse.
You can read more about this news in Quicken 2007 and Lion will play nice for $15. Here’s a link to buy it directly from Intuit.
Word of the Week
The word is “tooltip”.
If you’ve spent any time hovering your cursor over almost any button or tab or other control on your Mac, or over most links or images on web pages, you’ve seen a tooltip. On a Mac, they’re those little yellow rectangles that pop up temporarily to tell you a little bit about the item you are hovering your mouse over. I just hovered my cursor over Google’s special logo today and learned why their logo looks like origami.
To prevent tooltips from popping up all over your screen as you move your cursor around, they don’t pop up until your cursor has been hovering over an object (image, button, etc.) for a couple seconds. Then, when you move your cursor away from that object the tooltip will disappear a second later.
Tooltips are GREAT ways to learn new things about your Mac. Please hover your cursor over the previous sentence to see how serious I am about that. 🙂
I never would have learned the handy tip I mentioned in the “Safari Tour of Bookmarks” article mentioned above if I hadn’t hovered my cursor over the little plus sign button in Safari’s Bookmark List.
Option-click? I never would have thought of that. But now that I know, I’ll be using it all the time.
This story has three morals:
- If you’re ever not sure what something does, hover your cursor over it to find out.
- If you think you know what something does, hover over it anyway, you might be surprised what else you can do with it.
- If you know WHAT you want to do but don’t know HOW to do it, take your cursor on a stroll around your screen and read tooltips until you find the button that does what you want.
Please take yourself on a tooltip tour and share your discoveries by adding a comment to thecopy of this newsletter on the website. (Did you hover your cursor over the link in that previous sentence? You never know where secret messages might be hidden! 🙂
Mac Help For Mom on Facebook
Do you use Facebook? It’s another way to learn about new Mac Help For Mom videos and interact with other people who like Mac Help For Mom. If you click the “Like” button on the Mac Help For Mom Facebook page then you’ll see the Mac Help For Mom Facebook posts in your Facebook News Feed, be able to comment on them, and join in the discussions.