Adding the Debug menu to Safari
Safari has a Debug menu which, when enabled, appears immediately to the right of the Help menu.
The items in the Debug are mostly of interest to developers, but also has items which could be of
interest to the casual user, such as exporting and importing bookmarks. It's real easy to add:
1. Quit Safari if it is running.
2. Open OS X's Terminal application. If you're not familiar with this, it's located in the folder /Applications/Utilities.
3. Type or paste at the prompt: defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeDebugMenu 1
4. Quit the Terminal application, launch Safari, and familiarize yourself with the Debug menu.
Creating your own keyboard shortcuts in Sarari (and most other applications)
There are basically two methods of doing this, a quick method and a slower, GUI method. I present both
because not everyone will be comfortable using the quick method.
First the quick method. Well be adding the shortcut Cmd-Opt-Z to the Zoom item of the Window menu
of the Sarari application.
1. Quit Safari if it is running.
2. Open OS X's Terminal application. If you're not familiar with this, it's located in the folder /Applications/Utilities.
3. Type or paste at the prompt: defaults write com.apple.Safari NSUserKeyEquivalents '{"Zoom"="@~z";}'
4. Quit the Terminal application and launch Safari to ensure that the keyboard shortcut works.
Note: The command in 3, above, breaks down as follows:
a. defaults write is the basic Unix command to update the file.
b. com.apple.Safari is the name of the plist file, less the extension, found in /Users/user/Preferences
c. Zoom is the name of the menu item.
d. The equal sign denotes equivalence between Zoom and...
e. @~z indicates the keyboard keys (@ denotes Command; $ denotes Shift; ~ denotes Option; ^ denotes Control).
And the more lengthy GUI method:
1. As above, we'll use Safari as an example, and add a keyboard shortcut, Cmd-Opt-Z,
to the Zoom menu title in the Window menu.
2. Quit Safari if it is running.
3. Open Menu bar>Apple Menu>System Preferences... and select Keyboard & Mouse.
4. Of the Keyboard/Mouse/Keyboard Shortcut buttons, click Keyboard Shortcut to view the Keyboard Shortcut pane.
5. Click the + button at the lower left of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane.
6. Select Safari, or other application, or All Applications. Note: If you select All Applications, and then enter
a Menu Title of Furbit, the keyboard shortcut will appear only in those applications which already have a
menu named Furbit.
7. Enter the name of the menu item as it appears when you pull down the menu.
8. Tab down to the Keyboard Shortcut and enter the shortcut, Cmd-Opt-Z.
9. Click Add, then close the Keyboard & Mouse control panel.
10. Launch Safari and ensure that the shortcut appears in the Window menu.
Note: Some menu commands are followed by three periods, or an ellipsis.
Three periods are not the same as an ellipsis. Do this: Go into TextEdit and type Opt-; (Option-Semicolon).
An ellipsis will appear. This is a single Unicode character. When creating a keyboard shortcut for such a
menu item, it is imperative to know whether the menu command uses three periods or an ellipsis.
It can be done visually; here is an example:
Launch Calculator. Examine any of the three items in the File menu, then any of the entries with an ellipsis in
the Convert menu. If necessary, pull down the menus individually, then once it is down, type Shf-Cmd-4,
use the reticule to select the pull-down menu and create a PDF on the desktop; then use the Preview application
to view the two images side-by-side. Careful scrutiny will show that the three periods used in the File menu
appear slightly heavier and kerned slightly further apart than the dots which comprise the ellipsis character.
