Over the past couple of days there have been news stories about a vulnerability in Java which is apparently being exploited in an effort to steal identities. The situation isn’t entirely clear to me and details change rapidly, but currently the Department of Homeland Security recommends that people disable the Java web browser plug-in, for each of their web browsers.

According to this article from ZDNet, Apple has already sent out an automatic update which effectively disables the Java web browser plug-in for Macs running OS X Lion (10.7) and OS X Mountain Lion (10.8). That said, it can’t hurt to follow the instructions below to double-check your Mac’s configuration.

Important Note – Please don’t confuse Java and Javascript. These are two entirely different technologies despite the very similar names. This current security vulnerability only affects Java, not Javascript. More specifically, this vulnerability targets Java web browser plug-ins. In other words, you don’t need to fully remove or disable Java or Java-based applications, like OpenOffice or CrashPlan. Reportedly, Java applications have a very low chance be being exploited by this bug.

This OS X Daily article from August 2012 provides instructions on how to disable the Java plug-in in Safari, Chrome and Firefox. Please follow these instructions to ensure that Java is disabled in your web browser.

Safari version 5 introduced a new feature named Top Sites which automatically displays your most frequently visited web sites. Top Sites displays thumbnail depictions of each web site in a grid of several rows and columns. This tech tip tells you how you can customize Top Sites.

You can permanently add a web site to Top Sites by going to the Bookmarks menu and selecting Add Bookmark. Then select Top Sites from the pop-up menu near the top of the small window that appears. Click the Add button, as depicted below.

By default, Safari 5 displays Top Sites when you open a new window. You can manually display Top Sites by clicking the grid icon located near the upper left-corner of the Safari window. This grid icon is highlighted by the red circle in the picture below.

When the Top Sites grid is being displayed, you can click the Edit button in the lower left corner. Then, in the lower right corner you’ll see that you can switch between Small, Medium and Large. These choices will cause Top Sites to display 24, 12 or 6 thumbnails respectively.

You can also drag the thumbnails around in the grid so they appear in the order that you prefer. Additionally, you can click the Push Pin icon or the X icon located in the upper left corner of a thumbnail to permanently add or remove a web site from your top sites. When the Push Pin icon turns blue, you’ve permanently added the web site.

When viewing Top Sites, look for a star icon to appear in the upper right corner of a thumbnail. The star indicates that the web site has added content since you last visited the site.

Firefox and Safari for Mac are the two most popular web browsers for Mac users. At times, both of them can act up and not perform properly. When this happens, here are a couple of basic troubleshooting steps you can take.

In Safari, go to the menu named Safari and select “Empty Cache”. This will remove the local (cached) copy of recently visited web sites. This might be all you need to do to fix your problem. If not, you can continue by going to the Safari menu and selecting ”Reset Safari.” This is a very handy feature that lets you easily remove some of the saved information which can get damaged and cause Safari to misbehave. By default, all of the options are checked in the Reset Safari window. Typically, I recommend that you only select and reset the following since they seem to cause the most problems:

• Remove all webpage preview images
• Remove all website icons

If your Safari problem is not resolved, you can go ahead and select other items to reset. Be aware that removing saved names, passwords and AutoFill data can mean that you’ll be prompted to re-enter this information down the road. Consequently, I try to reset these items last.

Firefox doesn’t have a handy reset feature the same way as Safari. However, you can empty its cache by doing the following. Open Firefox and go to the Firefox menu. Select Preferences, click on Advanced, then click on Network. Click the “Clear Now” button in the Offline Storage section. To do more advanced troubleshooting in Firefox, I recommend checking out this helpful troubleshooting article written by the makers of Firefox.

Do you ever want to do any of the following tasks?

• View two Word documents side-by-side so you can compare them or more content between them.
• View two Finder windows side-by-side so you can move files from one folder to another
• Make a window fill your entire screen

If so, Cinch ($7) is an easy to use application that lets you accomplish these tasks. I regularly need to file documents that have accumulated either in my Downloads folder or on my Desktop into a folder elsewhere on my Mac. In order to do this easily, I’ll open two Finder windows, then move them to one of the edges of my screen which triggers Cinch to automatically resizes them to fill half of my screen. With the two windows sitting side-by-side, I can easily file my documents. If my description isn’t sufficient, please check out the brief but excellent video demonstration.

You can download Cinch from the Irradiated Software web site and try it for free. Irradiated Software also makes a slightly fancier window management utility named SizeUp ($13) that lets you accomplish the same tasks using keyboard shortcuts, along with additional features.

Do you use multiple web browsers on your Mac? Do you use only one browser but multiple Macs? Do you want all of your browsers to have the same set of bookmarks? If so, you should checkout Xmarks, a free bookmark syncing tool that works with the most common web browsers on both Macs and PCs.

Setting up Xmarks is fairly straight-forward. Specific setup is beyond the scope of this article, as there are many combinations to consider since Xmarks works on both Macs and PCs and supports Safari, Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer. In general, the setup process includes creating a free Xmarks account and then installing the Xmarks plug-in for each web browser you use on each computer you use. When you next open your web browser, you’ll typically be greeted by the Xmarks setup assistant which will give you guidance in configuring and using this tool.

Before you start the install process, it’s always prudent to have a backup copy of the bookmarks from each of your web browsers since it’s possible to over-write your bookmarks if you click the wrong button. If you use Time Machine to backup your Mac then the Time Machine backup will contain backup copies of all of your web browser bookmarks, but they aren’t readily accessible since they are tucked in the ~/Library folder.

Once Xmarks is installed, it can be setup to automatically sync your bookmarks. You can view your bookmarks via the Xmarks web site. There you have access to tools that will help you find and delete duplicate bookmarks as well as empty bookmark folders. By default, Xmarks only encrypts the login process, so your bookmark data is being sent in an unencrypted manner to and from Xmarks’ servers. Thus, in theory, somebody could capture and view your bookmark data. This likely isn’t a big security threat, but it’s something to be aware of. You can change Xmarks’ configuration to have it encrypt the transmission of your bookmark data. The basic version of Xmarks is free, but the developers offer paid versions that offer more features.

I looked at other bookmark sync tools including BookIt, URL ManagerPro and BookMacSter, but found that I liked Xmarks the best. URLManagerPro and BookIt have not been updated to work with current web browsers. BookMacSter is current, but I found the interface un-intuitive and jargon laden. It’s definitely powerful, but I don’t need all of it’s features and I don’t want to learn a lot just to use the basic features. I also didn’t want to use a separate application to manage my bookmark syncing. I just want the syncing to happen automatically in the background. Thus, Xmarks was the best choice for my needs.

Here are some simple instructions on how to enlarge the size of text on a web page when you’re using Safari, Firefox or Chrome on a Macintosh computer. I use this feature on a daily basis since web sites use a variety of font sizes. This is especially handy in low-light settings or if one typically needs glasses but they aren’t handy.

All three of these web browsers support the same keyboard shortcut. While viewing a web page, press Command + (plus sign) to enlarge the text size and Command – (minus sign) to reduce the text size. If you prefer to use menu commands then go to the View menu and select Zoom In to make the text size larger or Zoom Out to reduce the text size.

Would you like to change Safari’s Home Page? Apple typically sets Safari to open to this page on their own web site.

You can easily configure Safari to show you any web page you’d like. Here’s how:

• Open Safari
• Go to the Safari menu and select Preferences
• Click on the “General” button
• In the box next to “Home page” type in the address of the page that you’d like. See examples at the bottom of this tip.
• Click the red dot to close that window.
• Go to the Safari menu and select Quit.
• Go to your Dock and re-open Safari. You should now see the start page you just set.

Web pages you might like:

In the past people often set Safari to open to Google, but this is no longer necessary since there is now a Google search field in the upper right corner of Safari’s window. Instead, you might like to configure Safari to take you to a news web site like the New York Times or Google News. Their addresses are http://www.nytimes.com and http://news.google.com, respectively.

Here are step-by-step instructions for deleting bookmarks from Safari and Firefox. The instructions might vary slightly if you’re using a different version of Safari or Firefox.

If you use Safari 4 or newer

A. Open Safari
B. Go to the Bookmarks menu and select Show All Bookmarks
C. Your current window will change to show your bookmarks. On the left-hand list click on the “Collection” that you want to change. For example, you might click on Bookmark Menu since this is where most people keep bookmarks. Then, on the right-hand side, click on the bookmark that you want to delete.
D. Press the Delete key on your keyboard.

If you use Firefox 

A. Open Firefox
B. Go to the Bookmarks menu and select Organize Bookmarks. (In newer versions of Firefox select Show All Bookmarks.)
C. A new window will open. On the left-hand list click on Bookmark Menu. Then, on the right-hand side, click on the bookmark that you want to delete.
D. Press the Delete key on your keyboard.