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22 Sep 2003
Before I start this mini-rant (rantette?), I should say that I love Apple’s Safari; it’s a quick, elegant and–most importantly–standards-compliant browser, and since they introduced tabbed browsing I have used it as my default browser for all but the most non-IE-phobic of sites. However, there are two (related) flies in the ointment. First, I hate the fact that there’s no easy way of saving all of the tabs in an open window manually (or even better, automatically). Second, I wish Safari would warn me when I’m about to close a tab-laden window or quit. Even though I generally sneer at dialogues that ask me if I’m sure I want to do X, in this case it would be invaluable. When I’ve been a complete muppet and hit quit, I would really love it if some kindly dialogue box came up and said:
Hi there! You seem to have quite a lot of tabs open, but you’re asking me to quit. Now, I’m sure that you know what you’re doing, but I thought I’d just ask you if you really want to lose all those links you’ve been patiently accumulating over the past few hours. We can just forget all about the whole “Quit†thing, or I could save those tabs for you and go for it. Anyway, it’s up to you. Sorry to have bugged you, dude.
For some reason, I always imagine my Mac to have a friendly–but ultimately very laid back–attitude, possibly as a result of illegal substances; a bit like Dylan the rabbit in The Magic Roundabout.
You might wonder how I can hit quit accidentally. Well, it is possible to absent-mindedly hit Cmd-Q when you meant Cmd-W (close a tab), particularly as they are so close together on the keyboard. But I now have another way to mess up; there are some very neat gestures for closing a window (or tab) and for quitting an application on the MacNTouch, but they are reasonably similar to each other. Both use the right hand twisting to the right, but ‘close’ uses the thumb and first three fingers, and ‘quit’ uses the thumb and last three fingers. Usually it doesn’t matter too much, as you’ll get a warning if you try to quit an application with unsaved changes.
I know that technically you’re not working with documents as such in a browser, but if you’re anything like me, you can spend ages carefully accumulating a load of pages to read later–something that Safari makes laughably easy and convenient. If you’re reading a page in a tab, you can command-click a link in an article to open it behind the tabbed page you’re reading. It doesn’t come to the front, so you can just go on like that, building up a little stock-pile of pages to go back to later, but that you don’t want to actually bookmark. This makes it all the more crazy that there isn’t a way to save your current set of tabs.
I’ve come across a number of work-arounds for this problem. Inspired by a script that John Gruber wrote to save the current set of windows, mazatty wrote one to save the current set of tabs (it needs GUI scripting installed to work). These work nicely, but they are no use at all when you quit accidentally, or Safari crashes on you. Pith does something similar automatically, but it doesn’t work with tabs. I suppose it might be time to send some feedback to Apple, and carry on hoping.
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I feel your pain. I've been using mazatty's save/restore tabs scripts with moderate satisfaction, but not 5 minutes before reading your post just got burned again when Safari froze up and I had to force quit and lose my tabs.
Another improvement I'd like to see is the ability to open links from other applications (like mail and newsreaders,) in new tabs of the current window, by default. I like to browse through my news and open up in the background all of the links I want to dig deeper on later , but it's annoying to end up with 10 or 15 separate windows when I finish with NetNewsWire and switch to Safari.----- Jeff, that works right now. In Safari's preferences under "General" select "Open links from applications in the current window". This together with tabbed browsing enabled will open links from Mail or NetNewsWire in a new tab in the front window rather than in a new window.
by Kai von Fintel @ 22/09/2003 7:09 pm • Permalink •
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Gah! Kai beat me to it. For a moment, I was that kid with her hand up as high as she can put it, going "Miss, miss! I know!"
One application which I still can't get to work like this is URL Manager Pro. I'm sure that in one of the preferences, I managed to get it to show the same behaviour (open link in a new tab in the front window), but I downloaded the latest version (3.1b1), and I can't get it to work. If I check "open in a new window" under the URL tab, it does just that, but if I uncheck it, it opens in the front tab, over-writing whatever I had there. Anyone know how to get around this?
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Have you filed a feature request?
Apple doesn’t monitor web logs, mailing lists, or newsgroups for bug reports or feature requests. The only way to get it on the radar is to file the bug report. If you don’t do so, there’s no point in lamenting.
by J. Random Hacker @ 22/09/2003 9:09 pm • Permalink •
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What may be a more elegant solution (at least in my mind), is if you could configure Safari to startup with the last page (or pages) that you were looking at. That way, you can avoid the 'Are you sure you want to quit, dude?' dialog.
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I feel your pain.
I use Safari constantly to browse the web for both personal- and work-related stuff. Whenever I'm reading through a page and find an interesting link, I automatically Cmd-Click to pull up the link in a new tab.
I accumulate tabs this way, and read them as I have time. I usually have a dozen or two open at once, but sometimes will have as many as one hundred -- only because I haven't had a chance to go through them all. In these cases, I'd love to be able to save them to a bookmark all at once so I can go back through them. And I, too, have also inadvertantly hit Cmd-Q and lost what was really several hours of "work".
Finally, for some reason, the idea of someone being a "complete muppet" just strikes me as absolutely adorable! I've never heard that before!
by Nathan Ladd @ 22/09/2003 10:09 pm • Permalink •
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You know that Mozilla already has the "Bookmark This Group of Tabs" feature. Just open up a bunch of websites in tabs, then go to the Bookmark menu and you can bookmark all the sites in the window.
by Trimm @ 23/09/2003 1:09 am • Permalink •
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I highly recommend Mozilla's Firebird for their very configurable tab features. It does exactly what you ae wishing for, and that is exactly why I switched to it. In the preferences, under extensions, click- get new extensions and download �tabbrowser extensions�. Even if you still use Safari for certain things, as I do, for heavy duty comparison type tasks, it can't be beat! Have Fun! PS- the only draw back is no autofill-yet! [A beloved feature on mine in Safari], but, it does remember all your passwords and usernames, and other info as it learns.
by Katherine @ 23/09/2003 6:09 am • Permalink •
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Hi there! It's quite easy to change the key combinations. If you find that Cmd-Q is just too easy to hit by mistake, open up the Safari package, find MainMenu.nib and use Interface Builder (on the Development tools CD) to change the key combination - to option+cmd+Q, perhaps. It's so easy, I can do it!
Not sure how this squares up with your super duper keyboard, though - does that do keyboard shortcuts or menu names?
Cheers
Pete
by pete @ 23/09/2003 7:09 am • Permalink •
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Yeah, Firebird will do all of that. Also, Opera does the same - including the "open all tabs from when Opera crashed" option suggested in one of the other comments.
I've never used Safari, so can't comment on it, but Firebird and Opera sound similar in style, if not appearance. Hope you find a fix. 
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following on from lyle, the latest build of opera [7.20 on the pc, but it looks like the mac version has the same features] not only has the 'continue from last time' option, but also has a brilliant 'list of tabs you've closed', so if you accidentally close the wrong tab you can get it back immediately.
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J. Random Hacker: Yes, I've sent feedback. Actually, I'm hopeful that they might fix it in the future. Perhaps thanks to Dave Hyatt's influence, they have been listening to feedback for Safari: I suspect that that was why we ended up with tabs.
To everyone who suggested Firebird/Opera: I have tried Firebird, and think that the implementation of Tabs is really superb (so many preference settings!) -- basically, it's what Safari should be doing. But (and this is a big but), I find them both slower than Safari in loading pages, and quite a bit uglier. Once you've got used to the stripped-down elegance of Safari, it's hard to go back. So I think I'll probably use the Applescripts as a temporary measure, and also try pete's great tip of changing the keyboard shortcut for quit (which will work with my keyboard - the gestures generate keystrokes).
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I nearly forgot...
Nathan: Unfortunately, I didn't make up the phrase "complete muppet": it's recent British slang. See http://www.concordmonitor.com/stories/news/recent2003/082103dictionary_2003.shtml
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To open a new tab in the current window from URL Manager, you need to use the command (Apple)-modifier key while selecting the bookmark. Alco Bloom, the author of URL Manager, did this to mimic Safari's own behavior: if you select a bookmark from Safari's bookmark menu it opens in the current tab unless you use the command key as a modifier (similarly of course when you just click a link on a page you're reading).
There's a complete list of keyboard shortcuts for URL Manager at http://www.url-manager.com/shortcuts.html
by Kai von Fintel @ 23/09/2003 7:09 pm • Permalink •
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Safari certainly sounds like an interesting piece of kit. I keep thinking I should get myself into Macs a bit more, but never quite get round to it. Besides, it'd mean giving up my beloved Libretto ( http://www.dynamism.com/libretto/index.shtml ) which is quite a major minus point, I'm afraid.
Hmmm, maybe I need to find a friend who uses Macs...
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Kai: Thanks! That does indeed work. Unfortunately, I normally use the handy global (menu bar) bookmarks menu, and the command key trick doesn't seem to work there.
Lyle: Everyone needs a friend who uses Macs 
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Mac folks may be interested in Voodoo Pad, kind of a personal wiki for your desktop:
by JF @ 25/09/2003 11:09 pm • Permalink •
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What i want (beside all good points you’ve made) is to be able to open a link in a new tab without having to press options/apple-key. Its would be great when you’re surfing in bed with the laptop
by IcE @ 21/01/2004 6:01 pm • Permalink •
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I’ve re-mapped the “Quit Safari†short cut from CMD + Q to CMD + CTRL + Q problem solved – I used to do exactly the same thing.
Apple really needs to get there act together on the old ’saving state while crashing’, it’s only requested feature.
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yeah, RTFM, jeff... Thank you!
by jeff @ 22/09/2003 7:09 pm • Permalink •