As a previous Linux user I naturally have a long and happy relationship with Firefox. But after switching to my MacBook Pro I made the decision to give Safari (the OSX “native” browser) a fair appraisal before carrying over my preference for Firefox.
So far the experience has been great, Safari has a beautiful rendering engine, most of the features of Firefox and an excellent Bookmarks Manager. So, for the time being, Safari remains as my browser of choice on my Mac.
However, there has been one missing feature which has been bugging me up until a few minutes ago. This was the fact that links on web pages which were set to open a new window did just that… opened the link in a new window! The result, after even a relatively short research session, was a proliferation of Safari windows.
Help is at hand! There is a way to change this behaviour so that Safari opens a new tab, rather than a new window. The way to change the default behaviour is so obscure, yet so easy, that I just had to share it with you.
Open a terminal session (using Finder you’ll find terminal under Utilities) and on the command line type…
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool TRUE
and press Enter.
It’s that simple!
February 1st, 2009 at 01:03
I commend you on trying to go with Safari I tried to do the same but in the end I could not do with some of my Firefox plugins. I was dissapointed because Firefox on my Mac Pro seemed dog slow, until… I found the Mac optimized compiles on Firefox @ http://www.beatnikpad.com/archives/2008/12/17/firefox . Firefox is now faster than Safari on my Mac, even for the Apple home page. Go figure.. all the speed plus my plugins, I was finally feeling good about my web browser again.
December 6th, 2009 at 13:58
[...] to make this decision … I’ve already posted the primary tricks to force Safari to open new pages in tabs, and to always show the tab [...]