MacMembraneThere are peels everywhere…

Every Mac is built for ease of use straight out of the box, and thus many of the power features of OS X are hidden in order to guide the new user down a straight path. But experienced users know that, just below the simplicity of the surface, there are a wealth of shortcuts that will increase productivity ten fold.

My first Macintosh Mentor – who promised me lessons if I only bought a Mac instead of the VAIO I was considering – was not a keyboard aficionado. Instead, he used Drag and Drop to accomplish almost everything on his machine, and he was fast at doing so. I’ve since become a keyboard shortcut lover, but I can’t deny the efficiency of his Drag and Drop workflow.

Here are some tips for dragging webpage and browser elements in Safari. Many of these mouse shortcuts are applicable in other applications (use your imagination), but I though I’d focus here on Safari since the range of drag and drop functionality in the browser is so vast.

If you know some other tricks that I don’t cover here, let readers know in the comments! Your experience, I’m sure, will be much appreciated.

Tabs:

Most Safari users know that you can click on a particular tab and drag it to a new position among the others, but it’s also possible to drag a tab out of the tab bar so that it opens in a new window. To do this, instead of dragging to the left or right, drag straight up or straight down. The tab will detach from the tab bar and transform into a thumbnail of the site it represents. Release the mouse and the thumbnail will expand into a full-sized window. If you have two windows open, you can drag a tab between them in the same way. It’s quite a pretty animation, moreover, and since the page and its contents are cached there is no reloading time.

Links:

Links are the fabric of the internet, and Safari offers plenty of ways to manipulate them using drag and drop. Drag any embedded link to the bookmarks bar to create a new shortcut, or drag it straight onto the desktop for a quicker option. Email any link by dragging it to Mail.app or IM it to a friend by dropping it on an iChat window. Any URL you’ve saved can be dropped on either Safari’s icon or onto a window to open it in a new tab. If the root directory of a link contains an RSS feed, dragging it onto the sidebar in Mail.app will automatically generate a new subscription. Many applications, both Apple and independent, support Drag and Drop links, so experimentation will certainly be rewarded.

Text:

The ability to drag text is one of the most underrated system features of OS X. To drag text, select it and click and hold your selection for a moment. Then start dragging. Drop any text from Safari onto the desktop to create a text snippet, or drop it onto Mail.app to open a new email with the text in the body. Drag the text onto Text Editor to edit it, or drop it on an iChat window to IM it to a buddy. You can drag text into Safari as well, for instance into comment or other online forms. Lastly, you can drag any text onto Safari’s dock icon to search Google with its contents and open the results in a new tab.

Images:

You can drag almost any image from Safari onto the desktop to save it to your hard drive, but you can also drag it onto iPhoto to import it into your library. Dropping an image onto an open Mail.app message will let you email it, or dropping it onto a Text Edit document will integrate it with your text. You can drag any image on your hard drive onto Safari to open it in a new tab and display its local path in the location bar, or drag any image out of Safari and onto its dock icon to extract its online path. You can even drop an image from Safari onto Preview to open it and do some quick editing before saving it to your hard drive.

Everything Else:

Almost everything is draggable in Safari. Resize the Google search box by dragging between it and the location bar, drag buttons off of the tool bar while holding down the command key, resize comment boxes by dragging the bottom right corner and even drop local files onto “Choose File” dialog boxes. Start experimenting and you’ll soon discover even more applications of Drag and Drop in Safari.

Safari is by far my favorite browser for the Mac. It’s fast, renders pages beautifully, and is visually integrated with all of OS X, and its powerful Drag and Drop functionality makes it even better.

If I’ve left off your favorite Drag and Drop technique, please explain it in the comment section below. What a drag!