Accessing Websites. Mac/PC Compatibility: QuickStart Guide for Business

Transcription

1 Accessing Websites Mac/PC Compatibility: QuickStart Guide for Business

2 2 Accessing Websites QuickStart Guide for Business The Basics People use the web for research, entertainment, and business. And it s only getting more prevalent with access to the web increasing on mobile phones and PDAs. User benefit: Productivity. Your employees can conduct crucial business quickly and easily over the Internet. For example, they can order products online, then use online tracking to find out when shipments will arrive. On-demand news sites keep managers and other employees informed about their industry. Business benefit: Competitiveness. When your employees are more informed and productive, your company stays more competitive. You also can use the web to let people know about your products or services whether those prospective customers and business partners are down the street or around the world. Standards and Buzzwords Here are some common terms associated with the World Wide Web. Web browser. Software application that is used to view web pages. Apple s web browser is called Safari, and it s available for both Mac and Windows. RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Extension to websites that lets users find out about important website updates (such as the latest news) without having to repeatedly check the website manually. Using a standalone RSS program, like Mail in Leopard, or an RSS-compatible web browser such as Safari, you can subscribe to RSS feeds. Your RSS application checks periodically for new information in any of your subscribed feeds and will alert you when new content becomes available. Cookies. Text files placed on your computer by websites to store information about your interaction with those sites. For example, cookies can keep track of which items you ve put into an online shopping basket, or which language version of the website you want to see. Cookies also can be used for tasks that benefit the website operator, such as recording which pages you ve visited or verifying that you clicked over to the website directly from an marketing message. Because cookies can raise privacy concerns, any well-designed web browser (such as Safari) will enable you to control which cookies can be placed on your computer, and to delete those you no longer wish to have. See Adjusting Your Security Settings below for details.

3 3 Pop-up windows. Small web browser windows that appear without your direct request. Pop-ups usually contain advertising, although they also can be used for surveys and other purposes. A variation, the pop-under window, comes up under the existing browser window(s), so it is not visible until the other windows are closed or moved. Web browsers such as Safari let you block the display of pop-up and pop-under windows; see the sidebar for instructions. QuickTime. Apple s standards-based, cross-platform multimedia technology for creation, delivery, and playback of media content. QuickTime is used on websites to offer audio and video that can be accessed by users of both Mac OS X and Windowsbased systems. Java. Computer programming language used to incorporate dynamic content into web pages. For example, small Java programs called applets can be used to display animations or validate content in forms. Flash. Technology used to display animated and interactive graphics on web pages. Some websites often display Flash animations before they take visitors to the home page that links to the rest of the site. PDF. Portable Document Format file that displays a document as it would appear on a printed page. Some PDFs are displayed inline within a browser window just as if it s another web page, rather than requiring the user to download the PDF file and view it in an external application such as Adobe Reader. Inline PDFs are more convenient and often a faster way to view PDFs that come from websites. Blog (short for web log ). Online journal kept current on a website by an individual, group, or organization. Blogs are typically more informal than other website content, and are thus becoming a popular means for companies to keep customers informed about day-to-day happenings. Streaming. Delivery of audio and/or video data in real time. Streaming often is used to allow website visitors to view live news events or listen to live music. The alternative to streaming is downloading the entire file to your computer before viewing it (with QuickTime Player or itunes, for example).

4 4 How the Mac Does It Mac OS X includes Safari: the fastest, easiest-to-use web browser in the world 1 and it s now available for Windows systems, too. Safari combines the latest web protocols and technologies with an easy-to-use interface to give you superb web-browsing performance. Built-in Google Search Google s popular search engine helps you find the exact information you need from the world s websites. Apple has built a Google search field right into the address bar of Safari windows, so you can perform Google searches instantly. Just type your search terms into the field, then press return to send your query to Google. If you later want to rerun any recent searches, click on the magnifying glass to bring up a list of them. Built-in RSS Reader Because Safari has RSS support built right in, it lets you view RSS news feeds as well as web pages. Many major news organizations, community websites, and blogs now offer headlines and article summaries as RSS feeds. Safari lets you take these news feeds and view them together in a simple, ad-free list, so you can quickly find all the articles that interest you from across the web. A number of RSS feeds already are included for you in the Bookmarks list of Safari. Look for the RSS icon in the address bar in Safari on websites and in bookmark lists to find available news feeds. RSS feeds may also be viewed in Mail which is useful for timely business information. Tabbed Browsing Use the Tabs window in Safari Preferences to activate tabbed browsing. This window also allows you to indicate how Safari handles new tabs and new windows. With tabbed browsing, your favorite web pages are only a click away without multiple browser windows cluttering up your Mac Desktop. Just click on a tab to switch from site to site. Also, reorder your tabs by simply dragging, or tear them off to create new browser windows. Mac and Windows Compatibility Safari supports all popular web standards HTML, CSS, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SSL, XML, RSS, QuickTime, JavaScript, Java applets, and many others so web pages written to industry standards will display quickly and correctly. Safari in Mac OS X also supports Flash. You also can add additional plug-ins that enables Safari to display other proprietary multimedia content. Do you already have bookmarks in another web browser that you can t live without? The first time you open Safari, it automatically imports your favorites from Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Netscape Navigator. In addition to Safari, excellent third-party browsers are available for the Mac, such as Firefox and Opera. If you subscribe to AOL or MSN, those companies offer versions of their client applications for the Mac. If your office has Windows as well as Mac, know that your Windows users can enjoy the blazing performance and elegant interface of Safari. Safari is available for Microsoft Windows XP and Vista.

5 5 How Do I Get Started? Safari is ready to use in the Dock at the bottom of your Mac screen. Just click it to launch the application. Alternatively, you can launch Safari from the Applications folder of your Mac. To download Safari for Windows, visit Basic Safari Settings If you choose Preferences from the Safari menu, the following window is displayed. Here you can select a web page to be your default home page (the one that Safari displays each time you launch the program or open a new window). From this window, you also can change your default web browser, select a default location on your Mac for downloaded files, and set other preferences. Of course, you can always override the defaults in specific instances, such as choosing a different destination when you actually download a file. One option turned on by default is automatic opening of certain types of files after they are downloaded. If you prefer, you can uncheck the Open safe files after downloading box. This provides even greater security against malicious files by allowing you to determine which downloaded files you open and when you open them. Need to See a Pop-up Blocker? Safari ships with pop-up blocking activated, but not all pop-up windows are unwanted. If you visit a website that uses pop-up windows you want to see, there s an easy way to turn pop-up blocking off without having to open the Safari Preferences window. You can use this method to reactivate blocking before you visit other websites. Simply go into the Safari menu, scroll down to Block Pop-Up Windows, and release the mouse button. If blocking was on, it will now be deactivated. (You will need to reload the web page for the pop-up window to display.) If blocking was turned off, it s activated. A check next to the Block Pop-Up Windows menu item indicates that it s enabled.

6 6 Viewing RSS Feeds Safari makes it easy to keep up on the latest news that interests you. A number of RSS feeds already are included in the bookmarks that come with Safari. You can access others by clicking on the RSS icon on any website that offers a news feed. If you want to change your RSS preferences, simply choose Preferences from the Safari menu, then click on the RSS tab. In this window, you can edit which RSS feeds Safari should update, how often it should look for RSS news feed updates, and other preferences. Adjusting Your Security Settings Safari gives you extensive control over the types of programs that can run within Safari, whether websites can display pop-up windows, and under what circumstances a website can place cookies on your computer. These preferences are in the Security tab of the Safari Preferences window. The Security window lets you accept all cookies, block all cookies, or accept cookies only from websites you have intentionally visited. Saving Web Pages Safari makes saving web pages very easy. Every day, you and your staff perform important online transactions that you need records of, or run across online articles that would be useful to keep for future reference. If you want to preserve the text and graphics of a web page along with its underlying HTML code (so that the links in the page still work), select Save As from the File menu, then choose the Web Archive format. If you need only an image of the page without clickable links, select Print from the File menu, then choose the Save as PDF option from the PDF pop-up menu. By clicking on the Show Cookies button, you can view the cookies stored on your Mac and delete selected cookies or all of them. If you have administrative privileges, you can even enable parental controls and define which websites each user of a specific Mac system is able to view with Safari. Users can access only those websites in the bookmarks bar. They are not able to enter web addresses in the address field, use the Google search field, or modify any of the bookmarks. Choose Safari Help from the Help menu for more information. Creating Web Clips You also can create automatically updating Dashboard Widgets based on a web page, or portion of a given web page. Just click the Web Clip button, select the portion of the page you wish to make into a Dashboard Widget, and click Add. Importing Bookmarks If you use a different web browser, Safari makes it easy to switch by letting you keep your existing bookmarks. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Mozilla on your Mac, Safari looks for bookmark files from those programs and automatically imports them into your Safari bookmarks. If you use a different program on your Mac, or if your bookmarks are on a different computer, you still can import them. Go to the File menu in Safari and choose Import Bookmarks. In the Import Bookmarks window, browse to the location of the desired bookmark file (either on your Mac or across a network to another system) and click Import. Safari creates a folder for the imported bookmarks within its bookmark file. If you wish, you can rename the folder or move the new bookmarks into other folders in your bookmark file.

7 7 Beyond the Office Planning a trip? Buying gifts for colleagues or friends? The Save PDF to Web Receipts option in the Mac OS X print dialog window lets you keep copies of your reservations and purchases in one easy-to-find place on your Mac. This option is the same as Save as PDF, except that it automatically puts saved PDFs into a Web Receipts folder inside the Documents folder of your home directory. When you need to retrieve a saved PDF receipt, you know exactly where to look. For More Information To learn more about Safari, visit To learn more about Macs in business, visit 1 Performance measured in seconds. Testing conducted by Apple in March 2008 on a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo-based imac system running Mac OS X Leopard v10.5.2, configured with 1GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 with 256MB of VRAM. HTML and JavaScript benchmarks based on VeriTest s ibench Version 5.0 using default settings. Testing conducted with a beta version of Safari; all other browsers were shipping versions. Performance will vary based on system configuration, network connection, and other factors Apple Inc. All rights reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, Leopard, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, and QuickTime are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. Adobe is a trademark or registered trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the U.S. and/or other countries. Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. Product specifications are subject to change without notice. This material is provided for information purposes only; Apple assumes no liability reliability related to its use. April 2008 L369478A-US