Interface Issues

Mac OS X at first presents a very simple screen, as Figure E-1 shows. At upper-right are any disk drives and network connections, while at bottom is the Dock, which contains a selection of programs (any that are running have a triangle beneath them). At top is the menu for the currently active application (the Finder is considered an application).

Figure E-1: The initial Mac OS X interface.

Dock

The Dock combines the Mac OS 9 Application menu and the Mac OS 9 Apple () menu's Favorites folder. You can drag application icons or files onto the Dock so they're accessible at any time ‚ similar to the Favorites folder. And any applications that are running ‚ whether or not you launched them from the Dock ‚ will display as well. So will minimized windows . The Dock is preloaded with a variety of Apple applications, as well as Microsoft Internet Explorer, the Systems Preferences control panel (which replaces the Mac OS 9 Apple menu's Control Panels folder), and the trash can.

Tip ‚  

As in Mac OS 9, you can drag icons into the trash can to delete them, but Mac OS X uses contextual menus more widely than Mac OS 9 did, and you'll find it easier in many cases to simply right-click (if you have a two-button mouse) or Control+click (if you don't) icons that you want to delete and select the Move to Trash option in the menu that pops up.

When you launch an application, you'll see its icon on the Dock bounce. After it has launched, a triangle appears below it so you know it is active.

Finally, if you click and hold the mouse down over a Dock's icon, you'll get a pop-up menu that lets you quit the program, force-quit it if it is frozen, keep it in the dock from now on, and show the actual application's folder location.

Common menus

There are three other key interface issues you'll need to know to start using Mac OS X. Apple has redefined the Apple menu's purpose and added two new standard menus, the application menu and the Go menu.

• The Apple menu (shown in Figure E-2) contains basic system functionality: System Preferences, Force Quit, Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, and Log Out ‚ as well as Dock settings, a list of recent items, a link to Apple's OS X software Web page, and Location settings (for those who travel and have different network settings for work, home, remote office, and so on).

  
  Figure E-2: The Apple menu.

• The new application menu (shown in Figure E-3) ‚ which is always the name of the current application, such as Finder or InDesign ‚ is where application preferences are accessed, as well as where you quit the application, hide it or other applications, and access basic Mac OS X system services such as mail, speech, the basic TextEdit text editor, and so on.

  
  Figure E-3: The application menu for the Finder; all applications have a similar menu in which preference-oriented settings may be added in addition to the options shown here.

• The new Go menu (shown in Figure E-4) provides shortcuts to standard locations on your Mac ‚ Computer, which shows the drives and network connections; Home, which is the home folder for the currently logged-on user (you can have multiple user accounts, and each has its own folder for files and settings); iDisk, which is an Internet-based storage site for subscribers to Apple's .Mac Internet and e-mail service; Applications, which is the default folder for installed applications; Favorites, which contains aliases placed by the user for quick access; and Recent Folders. This is also where the Mac OS 9 Chooser functionality has been placed: You use the Connect to Server menu item to connect to Apple or Windows servers.

  
  Figure E-4: The Go menu.

Folder views and navigation

Mac OS X provides three ways to look at folder contents: the Icon view, the List view, and the new Column view. Figure E-5 shows all three. The Column view is similar to the List view in that it can display subfolders. The difference is that subfolders are always opened for the currently selected folder or drive, and you can scroll the folder hierarchy using the scroll bar at the bottom.

Figure E-5: The three folder views (from top to bottom): Icon, List, and Column.

Note that Open dialog boxes in programs use the new Column view. That can be a problem ‚ if your filenames tend to be long (more than 20 characters ), the view skips over the middle part of the filename and displays an ellipsis (...) instead. That can make it hard to know which file is which, especially if you keep copies of file revisions. Unfortunately, there's no way to know what the file actually is until you open it.

Windows have several options as well:

• There are three icons at the upper-left : Close, Minimize, and Restore. These work like the Mac OS 9 equivalents, except for the Minimize icon, which places a thumbnail of the window in the Dock. As in Mac OS 9, you can also double-click the title bar to minimize the window.

• Windows have a toolbar that contains a series of icons at top, such as Back and Forward to navigate, View to choose the view type, shortcuts for standard Mac OS X locations such as Home, and Search. You can hide the toolbar by clicking the oblong icon at the window's upper-right.

• In addition to using the Back and Forward navigation buttons , you can navigate via a folder hierarchy. Just z +click the folder name to get a list of folders containing the current one, as Figure E-6 shows.

  
  Figure E-6: Mac OS X displays this folder hierarchy when you z +click the folder name.

• You can resize windows by dragging the resize corner at the bottom-right.

  Tip ‚  

  You can customize the toolbar's contents by Control+clicking it. (Multibutton mice should let you right-click instead of Control+click.) You can also choose View ‚ Customize Toolbar from the Finder.