Macbook pro - shortcuts

By default, Safari comes up showing a page of icons of your Favorites. You can add to this by going to the site you are interested in and make it a favorite. Use control-D and save a bookmark into the folder "Favorites" using the listbox at the top of the dialog box that appeared.

If you have set a different default site for Safari, you can click on the "Show Top Sites" icon in the Safari Toolbar (by default near the top left). You will see either "Favorites" or "Top Sites" at the top of the page but under the Toolbar. If you don't see "Favorites", look at the top right of this page and click on the box containing an asterisk '*' on one side and an array of 12 dots on the other. Click on the asterisk to show the favorites. The "dots" side will display the "Top Sites" or your most used sites.

You can arrange these icons as you want by dragging them into place. They can be edited by right-clicking on them or using control-click if right-clickiing is not enabled in your Settings Mouse configuration. A small drop-down list will offer options for editing.

Another option is to left-click on the URL and drag it to the desktop, but a lot of files on the desktop both clutter it and can actually cause OS X to lag - slow down. Many Windows users, as you said use a technique similar to this, but I don't recommend it on the Mac.

I hope that this is helpful.

Trauts

In Windows I have dozens of shortcuts to my most used applications some on the taskbar (

The equivalent is the Dock. Just drag the application onto it or, if the app is running, right-click on the icon in the Dock and choose Keep in Dock.

The he equivalent to a Windows Shortcut is an Alias. You can make an alias from the File menu in Finder, or cmd-opt+drag the original to the place you want the Alias. When you drag an icon and hold down both command and option keys, the icon badge will show a curved arrow indicating it will create an Alias when you drop.

For or a shortcut to a website, drag the favicon from the address bar into the desired location in the Finder

You may benefit from reading a book written by David Pogue. He has been writing the "Missing Manual" for OSX versions since at least 10.2. As the name implies, it is supposedly "the manual that Apple should have written but did not" and many people read it especially if new to Apple. Here is a link to get it through iTunes, but paper copies can be had through Amazon or brick-and-mortar stores https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/os-x-capitan-missing-manual/id1060816710?mt=11

violet96 wrote:

For example my mail is Yahoo mail, so I need a shortcut that will open Safari straight into the Yahoo mail page.

For this specific item, use a BOOKMARK.

Ciao.