Sunday, October 18, 2015

Apple OS X El Capitan - Well Pleased with the Upgrade

The upgrade to OS El Capitan went much more smoothly than the previous upgrade to OS X Yosemite and that alone is most pleasing.

Note: The fault for the previous upgrade was an incredibly unlucky coincidence in which the iMac's power supply went wonky at the same time as the upgrade.

Two big draws for me in the new release are in Safari and in Notes.

Safari

Safari can now 'pin' a tab to the left side of the tab bar and shrink it to the size of the Web site's icon.  This makes things much smoother for me because there are seven tabs for what I consider my required kit for browsing.  Prior to the El Capitan upgrade, those seven tabs and at least half a dozen others could be open across the tab bar and they may move depending on what you opened last.


Example shows the Safari tabs bar with the pinned tabs reduced to the size of the icon for the Web site and a second normal tab beside them.

The change to add pinned tabs made an immediate and effective improvement to the way I can use the Safari browser and that one is excellent.


Safari has another change to add a mute button to the Web address line.  The button is clever and will only appear when there is active audio playing on one of the tabs.  When the mute button is present, click it when that tab is active to mute that tab or click the icon from any other page to mute all other tabs.  It's a simple change but it's a handy thing to have and reduces hassle.


Notes

The program remains simple to use but has gained some sophisticated new features.  These are not whizbang changes but rather improvements in the way to do things.

With the share icon from Safari or other application, Notes can be selected as the target.  In this way, you can add links to Web pages, photos, videos, etc, etc.

Making a note, for example, of some things I'm learning about Twitter security would use maybe half a dozen links, possibly a screen shot or two, that would show progress with it.

The share icon in Notes, the current note can be sent wherever you like and perhaps you would like to email it.  The note with all associated pictures, videos, and links will then go out in an email.

As with Safari, the use of it is smooth and easy which makes more things happen with less button pushing to do it.


There are more changes within El Capitan but these are the ones of primary interest here in the Rockhouse.  We're well pleased with both of them.

Time Machine was turned off prior to the upgrade in case of the need for a disaster recovery but that's over and we will keep El Capitan.

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