This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
There are many changes within the updated applications for Lion. During the coming weeks and months I will explore all of these within the specific confines of each application.
However, some of the new features which have changed radically demand a higher level of attention.
One of these such changes is the difference in downloading web items in Safari such as PDF files or demo applications.
This change is for the better and certainly simplifies the download process whilst still making it informative and useful.
You may have already noticed the small button on the right hand side of the Google search bar in the web address area of Safari. It is highlighted in the image below:
This is now your go to location for your downloads. We not longer have to put up with a separate window to view and control downloads.
Proceed to a website of your choosing and select a document to download. You will notice that this button has a blue process line directly under the arrow when a file is downloading to represent where the download is currently up to. An example of this is presented below:
Clicking the download button whilst the download is occurring will present the following download file structure and additional information:
From here you can stop and resume a download, click the spotlight search icon to locate the file on your hard drive or double click the file to mount or launch. You can also clear all downloads in the menu by pressing the clear button.
All downloads by default still go to your downloads folder just as they did in Snow Leopard. You can also assign a different folder if you wish to handle the downloads and by default downloads will only be removed from the download list by you manually undertaking this option. You can however select to have them removed upon Safari quitting or the completion of a successful download.
Another very important warning that deserves to be included in this article but will also have a dedicated article of it’s own in the next day or so is, should you do a clean install of Lion rather than a simple upgrade then any previous security settings will not be transferred and as a result by default Apple still has the option of open ‘Safe’ files after download turned on.
A couple of months back it was figured out that this was one of the main causes of the malware infections people were getting on their Mac and whilst Apple did release additional software to combat malware attacks you can never be to careful and this option should always be switched off.
In order to switch it off you will need to proceed to the Safari preferences by pressing Command-, (Comma) on your keyboard or navigating to Safari-Preferences from the menu bar.
Then making sure you are in the ‘General’ tab proceed down to the very bottom of the window and you will see the open “safe” files after downloading option as highlighted below:
It is important to help with your security when traversing the online world that you have this option deselected so no tick is present in the box.
Please remember this is only a warning for those of you who have done a complete clean install of the Lion operating system or have purchased a new Mac with Lion preinstalled.
If you have just done a simple upgrade then your settings should remain the same. However, I would recommend double checking just to make sure.
For more helpful tips, check out our full collection of tutorials by visiting our How-To category!