Safari is the default web browser on OS X, and the one I use the most. Although it is arguably the fastest popular browser, and it generally works very well, there are some ways to make it better.

Put RSS feeds in your Bookmarks Bar

Many websites and blogs have RSS feeds, which are usually all the news or posts from the site condensed into an easy-to-read format. If you are on a site with RSS (like this one), you will usually see this icon after the websites’s address in the address field:

Clicking that icon will take you to the RSS feed. Sometimes there is more than one RSS feed, so you may get a pop-up window asking which feed you want. Some websites will not show the RSS icon in the address field; but you may see an RSS or XML icon or link on the page.

RSS is great for both news sites and blogs. With Facebook, you can get a single RSS feed that contains updates from all your friends. What’s more, Safari has great support for RSS.

If you put RSS feeds in your Bookmarks Bar, Safari will show numbers showing how many new updates or posts are available. This saves you from needlessly visiting sites just to see if there is anything new. For example, I created three collections of RSS feeds in Safari, representing family and friends, news and society and culture, and work-related feeds. They show up like this in the Bookmarks Bar:

This quickly tells me that there are 2 updates from my friends’ pages, 334 updates about news/society/culture, and 271 updates related to my work. Clicking any of these will give me all the updates, newest at the top, with new ones highlighted in color. Each contains a link to the originating website, making it easy to respond or comment.

To create these collections, you would simply add folders to your Bookmarks Bar (see steps in Organize Your Safari Bookmarks) for each category you want. While you are creating the folders, tick the checkbox for “Auto-Click” if you want all the updates to load when you click the collection name. That is what I have done.

Launch multiple websites at once

Ticking the Auto-Click checkbox will make all the links in a folder open at once (each in a separate tab if they are regular web links; or in a single combined listing if they are RSS feeds). See picture above. This is handy if you have a number of websites that you like to check routinely. This only works from the Bookmarks Bar collection. See Organize Your Safari Bookmarks for instructions on how to edit.

Customize the toolbar

From Safari’s menu, choose View > Customize Toolbar…. Simply drag items on and off the toolbar to customize to your heart’s content. Here are some of the options:

• Home: go to your home page (as defined in Safari’s Preferences; you can make it whatever you want)
• Bookmarks Bar: turns the Bookmarks Bar on and off
• AutoFill: fill forms automatically, saving you tedious typing (see Safari’s Preferences, AutoFill tab, for settings)
• Open in Dashboard: make your own custom Dashboard widgets, by selecting portions of web pages
• Mail: send a link to the current page to someone by email
• Downloads: go to the downloads folder

Turn off “Open ‘safe’ files after downloading”

In Safari’s Preferences, General tab, there is an option to Open “safe” files after downloading. If you really want to be “safe” you should un-tick this. Although there are not many Mac nasties in circulation, it is still true that files that automatically open after downloading are a security risk.

Change your download location

Personally I find the Downloads folder pointless. It can quickly fill up with clutter. Unless you have a very slow connection and really hate to re-download files, there is little reason to keep old downloads. Besides that, the Downloads folder is a bit of nuisance to open each time you download something.

Personally I find downloading to the desktop much better. After I install or use a download, I usually trash it immediately or else file it somewhere. This keeps the desktop clean and keeps the clutter away.

To change your download location, go to Safari’s Preferences, General tab, and pick another folder (such as your desktop) for the Save downloaded files to setting.

Install ClickToFlash

If you have a slow connection, or simply hate seeing Flash ads or waiting for them to load on the sites you visit, try installing ClickToFlash (freeware). It has a great interface, and does its job beautifully. Erstwhile annoying Flash graphics will then appear like this:

If you want to see the Flash graphic, just click once on it. If you want to allow all the Flash on a particular site, you can right-click on the placeholder, or click the little gear icon in the upper-left corner, and set your preference.

Please note that Flash is just one type of animated/interactive graphic. Other ad images, Java, JavaScript, and other technologies are not blocked.

If you want more ad-killing kick, you can try SafariBlock (freeware). It does for Safari what Adblock Plus does for Firefox. In fact, it shares ad-blocking technology with Adblock. It will block all types of ads. However, it simply replaces those ads with white space. I did not consider it a very elegant solution. I would not advise installing both ClickToFlash and SafariBlock; because their functions overlap, doing so could have unpredictable bad consequences.

Install SafariStand

SafariStand (freeware) adds all kinds of cool and useful features to Safari.

My favorite feature is automatic restoration of closed windows. Say you have a crash or power failure, or simply need to restart after a system update, and so you lose the Safari windows you had open. With SafariStand installed, when you restart Safari you’ll be asked if you want to restore those windows. This feature alone has helped me time and again.

Other features include: some extra buttons you can add to your toolbar (see “Customize the toolbar,” above), an optional sidebar that gives you a thumbnail view of each open window; shelves (collections of websites and windows that can be restored); ability to delete website icons (favicons); setting to open all links in new tab; alternate web searches; colorized HTML source; setting to disable certain JavaScript functions (window resizing, etc.); and much, much more.

Add some useful bookmarklets

I’ve added a folder to my Bookmarks Bar called “Bookmarklets.” A bookmarklet is a small JavaScript program that can be saved anywhere regular bookmarks can be saved. Below are some that I’ve found useful; to use, just drag the links to your Bookmarks Bar (or to a folder you’ve previously created in your Bookmarks Bar):

• Post to del.icio.us: posts the current page to your del.icio.us account
• Restore context menu: enables the context menu on websites that have disabled it
• Safari Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts: list of all available shortcuts (not really a bookmarklet, but I save it in the same place)
• Search on Wikipedia: searches for a selected word on Wikipedia
• Share on Facebook: shares current page on Facebook
• Sort table: rearranges a selected table in alphabetical order, and adds links to change the sort order to ascending or descending, or sort by any column (this is so cool!)
• YouTube FLV DL or YouTube MP4 DL: two options for downloading high-quality videos from YouTube (may not work on all videos)
• Zap colors: removes all color elements from a page (other than pictures and artwork)

Some other places to find more are the websites Bookmarklets and Pimp My Safari.

Install Bookdog

Bookdog ($19.95) is an application I’ve been using forever. It can automatically alphabetize bookmarks, as well as sync bookmarks between browsers (one way or both ways). It works very well, and has been very actively developed. It supports many browsers, not just Safari and Firefox.