How to get Safari to keep my tabs when I click red

[btownguy]

What are my options for keeping a program open (with data), but not open on the screen? Ideally, I would like to click the red circle and have the program (with data) hidden. This seems to be the behavior of Mail.app. But when I do, it closes Safari out (although the program is still running, right?)? It's kind of confusing. I'd like Safari to remain running (with all of my open tabs) when I click the red circle. I don't think this is possible. Is my only option to keep Safari running (with tabs open) is to click the yellow circle and minimize it over to the right side of the dock?

 

[devburke]

This isn’t exactly what Mail does when you click the red dot, but luckily for you, OS X does exactly what you’re looking for. If you right-click on the dock icon (or click “Safari” or whatever app’s name in the menu bar) there will be an option to “Hide” or “Hide Safari” (you can also do this by pressing cmd-h). What this does is keeps all of the windows open, but makes them invisible until you activate that app again, when they’re all appear just how you left them.

 

[btownguy]

That's what I was looking for! Can you tell I just switched a few months ago? I've been minimizing programs filling up my dock rather than hiding windows. I thought the red circle did that. I need to think of the red circle in terms of "close document" but keep the program running.

 

[devburke]

Haha yeah I researched OS X a ton before I switched a few years ago, but it still took me a long time to find all the little niceties of it. Hope you’re enjoying it!

It was a long time before I found “hide”, but now I constantly use it. I never minimize anything (with Hide and Exposé, I don’t see the point). I always have Mail and NetNewsWire hidden in the background. The reason I prefer it to just closing the window in an app like Mail is that if I cmd-tab back to it, the window will reappear, unlike closing the window, where the app will activate, but there will still be no open windows.

 

[btownguy]

Yep, I'm really enjoying it. I bought a 15" MacBook Pro and then a few weeks later bought a 24" Apple Cinema Display. Then I bought a Mac wired keyboard and a wireless Mighty Mouse. Oh, and a 1TB WD MyBook for Time Machine. Love the new setup. Still learning all the shortcuts, but it's great. As much time as I spend in front of the computer, it was time for something new.

 

[P Mentior]

Snow Leopard has a feature to minimise windows into their dock icon. I use it for Firefox to keep my dock from getting cluttered. If you have 10.6 the option is under Settings-->Dock.

 

[devburke]

Well hanging around the forums is a great way to pick up little things here and there!