Since my last post grumbling about Twine, i’ve been trying out some other social bookmarking/social interests tools. More on that later, but it got me to thinking about opening a few different tabs when Safari starts up.
At the moment my homepage is faithful old Google, and I have a suite of regular links in the Bookmarks Bar above. Still, I thought it might be nice if I had other tabs open with some of the sites I want to quickly glance at. Strangely, I discovered Safari (3.2) doesn’t do this out of the box (other browsers let you just type more web addresses separated by semi-colons), so I started reading around for some fix.
Macosxhints has a post on using Applescript to open multiple pages as the homepage but I didn’t really want to go down that route (and in any case, i’m not sure where you put the Applescript?).
The first thing that came to my mind was using Automator. For those not in the know, Automator is an app preinstalled with Mac OS X that let’s you script little actions in a really nice drag and drop way. Basically scripting for the masses=) I currently have a couple of workflows to back up my local emails and run an iTunes alarm clock.
Well the existing Safari action Display Webpages only opens webpages in seperate browser windows, so that was less than ideal. However, by installing the Display Webpages as Tabs action for Automator by Eric Blair, and using it in place of Display Webpages, you can create a workflow that opens multiple pages in tabs. For it to work, you have to enable Tabbed browsing in Safari, and set links from applications to “open in a new tab in the current window.”
All well and good, and to be honest that might be a workable solution for you if you drag the app into your Finder startup items so that it runs when you turn on your Mac, or if you manually start the app yourself. However, I went a little further.
Since I saved the Automator action as an app, I simply dragged it to my Applications folder (You don’t have to, but it makes sense) and using the simple method of changing icons in Mac OS X, I copied the Safari one and pasted it over my new app (which I called “safariload” to remind me). I then dragged the app to the Dock to create a shortcut to it, and removed the original Safari link from the Dock (It’s still in your Applications folder, don’t worry!).
Simply clicking on the new app icon in the Dock – which looks just like the old Safari icon – causes the Automator functions to be executed, opening a safari window with multiple tabs. It works but with two minor issues: The the new Safari window isn’t in focus when it loads and, since the app launches Safari and you have a shortcut pinned to your Dock, you have two Safari icons while Safari is open.
Still, it’s another method I thought i’d throw out there. Don’t know if it’s original.
March 20th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Ah you’ve had no comments for ages so I figure you deserve at least one.
Sounds like an interesting fix although it seems kinda annoying with those two problems you mentioned. But anyway is it really worth it? I mean I just middle mouse all the quick links in my firefox at the top and surf through each one. You must have a lot of sites that you visit each day to havea valid reason to open multiple pages at once.
Still we all have our habits.
March 21st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
True, you can do the same in Safari, although I can’t remember the shortcut. Not that many tbh, but it would save me a mouseclick or two;-)
Since posting this, the whole thing seems moot since Safari 4 has a Top Sites feature: it displays all your favourite sites on one page.
Still, this kept me occupied of an evening..