OS X: The Best Way to Share a Page (via Email) in Safari

In Safari, if you select File > Share > Email This Page, an image of the page you are viewing will be dropped into a mailer. All you have to do is fill in the recipient.

Image #1 Holt: Default Share.

For a quick recap, see “Safari: Mailing Page Links (the Easy Way) by our Melissa Holt. (Note that Ms. Holt shows how to hold down the Shift key to change the operation to emailing just the link — which is actually the best option.)

Recently, I discovered to my dismay that there is an interesting problem with sharing just a web page via email. The link itself, while buried deep in the message text, is not surfaced in the visible body of the email and obvious to the recipient. So if the email recipient is curious about that page and wants to know more, it's rather difficult to click anywhere in order to go to the original web page.

The Solution

Whether you access this share function from the Safari File menu or the Share button in the Safari tool bar, you're going to end up in a mailer.

In the mailer. under the Signature popup is a set of options called “Send Web Content As:” Again, Ms. Holt has explain this in: “Safari 6: New Ways to Share & Email Links.”

Image #2

As I mentioned above, the “Web Page:” option sends a formatted web page, and without an obviously clickable URL. Plus, the recipient may not even be set up to view that kind of email.

Best: Select the “Link Only:” option. Anyone can read that, and go to the link with the browser of their choice.

Good: Select the “PDF:” option. That sends a PDF of the page accompanied by a visible, clickable link.

It seems the omission of the URL in the “Web Page:” option is a simple oversight in OS X Mavericks. It's fixed in OS X Yosemite.

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