Status with Safari

Mac Tip #135/04-Feb-2004
Status with Safari

When I create a web page I have to include all kinds of special coding in amongst the text, like this: <h1>Here’s a heading</h1>.

When you want to look at my web page you need to use a piece of software which will understand the coding and display the headings as headings, lists as lists and so on. That piece of software is a web browser.

Safari is a fine example of a web browser, but when you first open it up it has some important options switched off. The first thing you should do with Safari is to go to the View menu and ensure Status Bar is checked.

The Status Bar is a grey stripe at the bottom of Safari’s window which provides important and useful messages about what you’re doing.

If you hover your mouse over a link, for example, it will show you the address the link will take you to. But it might also show you more, such as “Open [link] in a new window”. That means that if you click on the link then a whole new browser window will open up.

You can try that one out at the KnowIT site by hovering over the links in the main body of the page. The Status Bar will report for most of them that the link will open in a new window.

On some sites you’ll find that some links offer extra information in the Status Bar and by a Tooltip which appears if you leave your mouse stationery over a link. Note that this might not work unless you’re running the latest version of Safari which is available with Panther.