macOS New app Release – SessionRestore

Product Announcements – SweetP Productions, Inc. of Wilmington, Delaware has updated their Safari advanced tab management extension to support the new macOS 10.14.4 Safari App Extension framework. Now built using Swift as a native app, SessionRestore is even more powerful and useful than its javascript based predecessor.

Are you the kind of person who keeps numerous Safari tabs open, with the intent of reading them later? SessionRestore is here to help. Save your browsing session, close all windows then start with a fresh session. It’s super easy to restore a session whenever you need it.

Easily store any number of sessions with a quick button press. You can name sessions, and provide custom notes – so you don’t forget why you saved it in the first place! It’s possible to remove unneeded tabs or windows from saved sessions. You may also want to combine sessions. This is easy in SessionRestore’s powerful dedicated session editor.

You back up your computer often, (well.. you should be) and now you can easily do the same with your browser tabs using SessionRestore. Who needs clumsy bookmarks – Go one step further, and save groups of tabs for instant retrieval anytime.

Features:
* Safari browsing session save and restore
* Full session editing
* Session metadata search (name/urls/notes)
* Session screenshots for easy identification
* Lightweight and Quick native Safari App Extension
* Minimal Intuitive UI

Built with the latest technologies, and integrated right in to Safari as an Extension, SessionRestore can help streamline how you manage and recall important websites.

System Requirements:
* Compatible with macOS 10.14.4 and Safari 12.1.

Pricing and Availability:
SessionRestore 1.0 is $9.99 USD (or equivalent amount in other currencies) and available worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Productivity category.

Add Favicons to Your macOS Safari Tabs

Tech Tips – Have you noticed that your Safari tabs do not show the favicons for the sites you visit? You can fix that very easily.

If you are asking what a favicon is this is how Wikipedia defines them:

A favicon /ˈfæv.ɪˌkɒn/ (short for favorite icon), also known as a shortcut icon, website icon, tab icon, URL icon, or bookmark icon, is a file containing one or more small icons, associated with a particular website or web page.

Safari recently began (I am using Safari 12.0.3 running on macOS 10.13.6) to natively support favicons. Favicon display must be enabled before you will see them in your browser tabs. To enable them on your Mac do:

1. Open the Safari App
2. 
   Click on Safari in the top left corner, then select Preferences from the drop-down menu
3. Select ‘Tabs’
4. 
   Click on the Check Box next to “Show website icons in tabs”
5. Close the Preference window

You are all set now. Favicons will show up in the browser tab for each site you visit that has favicons implemented.

So now when I open tabs in Safari with pages from the Wikipedia, Apple, and Stuff You Missed in History Class sites respectively, you see the little icons in the tabs. Having favicons enabled isn’t a big deal, but it does let you identify at a glance the source of each tab.

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Mac Keyboard Shortcuts – Scrolling down with the Spacebar

Tech Tip – I was unaware that this shortcut existed until I read “There’s a keyboard shortcut that will transform how you browse the web hiding in plain sight” today. Needless to say, this is a Keyboard Shortcut I will use dozens of time each day from now on!

I just tested this on my Mac with both Safari and Google Chrome. It works as advertised on both, scrolling down the viewed page one screen at a time each time the spacebar is pressed.

This doesn’t sound like much, but if you are reading through multiple web pages each day using this keyboard shortcut can save you time. As I have said before, each time you shave seconds from your daily work process, you make yourself that much more productive.

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Product Review – Grammarly Extension for Safari

Product Review – I read about Grammarly in a recent “Working Smarter for Mac Users” newsletter. This is written and distributed by Bob “Dr Mac” Levitus from The Mac Observer. As you might expect from the product name, Grammarly is an extension for Safari on your Mac. As described on the extension website:

Grammarly – Will help you communicate more effectively. As you type, Grammarly flags mistakes and helps you make sure your messages, documents, and social media posts are clear, mistake-free, and impactful.

The free version does a nice job. Below are three examples of what it will catch. Text that it has a recommendation for is underlined in red. Move your cursor over the underlined word or phrase and the pop-up will appear. You can then click on the ‘green’ recommendation (if you agree with it) in the pop-up box and it will be implemented in the text you are writing:

• misspelling
  
• unnecessary comma
  
• wrong word
  

 

While I have not tried the Premium paid version, the level of writing I do just doesn’t, in my mind, justify the cost of the paid service. I will continue to use the Safari extension as I do like how it reports recommended changes.

 

My recommendation: Install the free version and pass on the paid Premium version

 

Pros

• Easy to use
• Easy to install
• Base service is free
• Works with any writing you do within a Safari window

 

Cons

• You do have to create an account
• You must be connected to the internet for Grammarly to work
• Paid (Premium) version is expensive ($29.95/month, $59.95 for 3 months, or $139.95 for a year)

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Keyboard Shortcuts – Bookmark Current Page

One of the keyboard shortcuts that I use multiple times each day is to bookmark the currently viewed page while in Safari:
CMD + d.

As I read the various articles in my RSS Client, Vienna, I often want to add a bookmark of the page for later reference. Using the keyboard sequence of CMD + d is faster than clicking through the menu bar.

This isn’t a huge time savings, but again it is one of those quick keyboard sequences that will save you a few seconds each time you use it. Every little bit helps when you are trying to make your day more productive.

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macOS Safari Tip – Disable Video Auto-Play

Tech Tip – Opening a web site in Safari and then having a video on the page begin to play is annoying! Of course I can mute it by clicking the speaker symbol in the tab, but the video is still playing – consuming bandwidth and processor cycles, not to mention being a distraction.

I came across a means of disabling video auto-play a week or so ago and tried it. It works perfectly! It does involved you dropping into the Terminal interface but the steps are not difficult. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Quit Safari if it is running
2. Open Finder >> G0 >> Utilities >> Terminal
3. paste/type this command into your Terminal window

   defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

4. Hit return and wait several seconds. You will see the command prompt when it has completed
5. Quit the Terminal
6. Launch Safari
7. There will be a new menu item “Debug”
8. Choose Debug >> Media Flags >> Disallow Inline Video

Now any video embedded in a web page will no longer automatically play once the page is loaded. They can be manually played if desired.

To make the “Debug” column disappear, repeat steps 1-5 above, but enter into your Terminal window:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 0

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Security Patches for Safari

Apple released a security update to Safari on March 17 which applied to versions of Safari running not only on Yosemite, but Mavericks and Mountain Lion as well. Apple did not release any details on the vulnerabilities being patched, other than to say that:

• Multiple memory corruption issues existed in WebKit. These issues were addressed through improved memory handling.
• A user interface inconsistency existed in Safari that allowed an attacker to misrepresent the URL. This issue was addressed through improved user interface consistency checks.

The memory corruption issues allowed a malicious web site to cause an unexpected application termination or the execution of malicious code, while the user interface inconsistencies opened a door to possible phishing attacks.

As always, the best practice is to keep up-to-date with security related patches.

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Security – FREAK

FREAK is a newly discovered security flaw affecting both the iOS and OS X versions of Safari, as well as other web browsers. This vulnerability enables an attacker to force the browser to use a weakened, 512-bit form of encryption. FREAK is an acronym standing for ‘Factoring RSA-EXPORT
Keys’. This flaw has been around for years and was just exposed by security researchers March 2, 2015. Specifically this vulnerability is with TLS/SSL (i.e. HTTPS) servers and clients.

This flaw left iOS and other devices vulnerable to attack when visiting what were thought to be secure web sites. The flaw actually was caused by a cold war US government policy that forbade export of strong encryption. The export restriction was lifted in the late 1990s, but the browser code was never updated.

Once an attacker breaches the browser, they can then steal passwords and other personal information. Using this man-in-the-middle mode of attack, they can also attack the site being visited by taking over elements on the site’s pages. The researchers estimate that more than 35% of HTTPS sites world wide are vulnerable.

Apple has indicated that a fix for Safari will be available in the next week or so.

UPDATED 4/22/15 – See Security Now episode #498 for a more detailed description of FREAK.

UPDATED 3/10/15 – Apple Security Update 2015-002 1.0 applied patches that close this vulnerability. The vulnerability was resolved by removing support for ephemeral RSA keys.

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The Evernote App

Updated 3/7/16

I have been an avid user of Evernote now for several years. What is Evernote?

Evernote is a way to collect and organize notes, ideas, web articles, handwritten notes, photos, and much more. Best of all it is cross platform – Mac OS X, iOS, Windows and Android. Evernote has a Free, as well as a Premium ($5/month) and Business ($10/month) plan. I have been using the Free plan thus far and I have been very satisfied with it.

Evernote allows you to set up Notebooks, then add notes to those notebooks. The Notes can be Notes created within Evernote, photos or clippings from web pages. I have the Evernote Web Clipper installed in Safari (it is also available for Firefox and Chrome). That gives me a button added to the Safari header which allows me to clip (anything from just the URL to the entire Web page) from web pages that I visit. This is a great way to collect information for later use. I save recipes, technical articles, and just sites that I am interested in.

I have a separate Notebook for each of the topic areas that I am writing about so that articles I find can be saved for later use. The great thing is that everything I save while I am on my Mac Mini is also available on my iPad and iPhone.

One of my Notebooks is just for Books and Reading. I have a Note there that lists all of the books that I own and that I have read. That makes it easier on the rare occasion that I go into a used book store. I can easily look up what I have and have not read by an author. I have also seen books at the brick and mortar stores that I am interested in, but want the eBook. So I just use the camera within the iOS Evernote App to take a picture of the book cover with my iPhone and save it to my Book Notebook. That way I have all the information I need for later to try and find the eBook.

All in all I find this to be one of the most essential apps whether for OS X or iOS.

I came across this article on how to use templates to make Evernote even more productive. If you use Evernote, these are good ideas.

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Mac OS X – Safari Sharing Options and Markup Missing

I, like many others, recently upgraded my Mac to OS X Yosemite. The upgrade seemed to have gone smoothly, until a few days ago when I tried to save a Web page to my “Reading List” in Safari. When I clicked on the Sharing icon, all I got was “No Services”.

I did a little research and found that this is a known problem with Yosemite. Fortunately, Apple already has a fix documented (see http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT6545). I opened a Terminal (Finder >> Go >> Utilities >> Terminal) and ran the command described in the fix. A minute or so later I had my Sharing option list back. The command to run is:

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