Get a Handle on Finder Windows


As I pointed out in Chapter 4, the Finder is the part of Mac OS X that controls and manages windows, and that displays your files and folders. The Finder is your control center for working with your data.

Figure 6-1 shows a Finder window open in my home folder. Each of the elements indicated in the figure has special functions and uses. We’ll look at all of these and more in the coming sections.

click to expand
Figure 6-1: A Finder window showing the contents of a user’s home folder

If you don’t have a Finder window open on your Mac, press z-N, or select File | New Finder Window to display one.

Tip

The preceding commands, used to open a new window, work in many applications. In programs such as word processors, spreadsheets or graphics programs, these commands generally open a new file in a window. In other programs, they generally either open a new file or create something new (such as a new playlist in iTunes, a new event in iCal, or a new e-mail message in Mail or other e-mail programs.)

Finder windows are different than most other windows you’ll see in Mac OS X. Not only do they contain files and folders—some application windows may also display these items—but Finder windows have a sidebar at the left. This special part of the window, which is a new feature in Mac OS X 10.3, lets you group your most commonly used places and folders so you can access them easily.

Navigate Folders in the Finder

The Finder is designed to provide a visual display of your files, folders, and applications. Each window displays the contents of a folder, which may contain files, applications, and other folders. To open a folder from a Finder window and see its contents, just double-click it. You can keep double-clicking folders to see the contents of other subfolders. If you want to view the contents of a folder that’s in the sidebar, just click it once to display it.

You can click the Back and Forward buttons in the Finder toolbar to go back to the previous folder, or to go ahead to a folder you have already viewed (if you have clicked the Back button while viewing another folder).

Shortcut

If you want to go to the parent folder of the currently displayed folder (the folder that contains the current folder), you can use a quick keyboard shortcut: z-UP ARROW takes you up through your folder hierarchy, one level each time you press it. You can go back down the hierarchy by pressing z-DOWN ARROW if a folder is selected.

The Sidebar

The sidebar contains two sections separated by a horizontal divider (see Figure 6-1). At the top, you’ll find your Computer (with the name of your computer, which you can set in the Sharing preference pane; see Chapter 12); then you’ll see an icon for your iDisk (if you have a .Mac account; see Chapter 11); next comes the Network icon, which gives you quick access to other computers on your network (see Chapter 12); and, finally, your hard disk. If you have any removable media mounted on your Mac, or any additional hard disks or partitions, you’ll see them below your hard disk. To their right are arrow icons that you can click to eject these items.

You can add files or folders to the sidebar by dragging them from any window. Just move an item over the sidebar, until you see a line between two other items, and release it. The sidebar will add this item—this is actually an alias of the item; the original remains where it was—and resize the contents of the sidebar to fit the space available. If you have a lot of items in the sidebar, you’ll see a scroll bar, but the sidebar resizes its contents dynamically so you can fit many items in it.

Caution

Be careful when you drag items into the sidebar. If you don’t see a line between two existing items, and one of the sidebar’s folders is highlighted, you may end up dropping the item you’re dragging into a folder, moving or copying it to that folder instead of placing it in the sidebar.

You can remove items from the sidebar by simply dragging them out of any Finder window. As you do, you’ll see them disappear with a puff of smoke. This won’t delete the original, only the alias in the sidebar.

What to Put in the Sidebar

While you can put files, folders, or applications in the sidebar, it’s designed for folders. This lets you navigate to a commonly used folder by clicking its icon in the sidebar; when you do, the Finder window changes to show the contents of that folder, using the view you have set for that folder (I’ll tell you about Finder window views in the “Customize View Options” section later in this chapter).

If you put files or applications in the sidebar, you can open them with a single click (not a double-click as you do in Finder windows). But this means you may accidentally click one of these items and open it when you didn’t mean to. If you want to have shortcuts to files or applications, use the Finder toolbar (see the “The Finder Toolbar” section later in this chapter), or create a folder for such favorites and place it in the sidebar.

Note

Remember, whatever you put in the sidebar displays in every Finder window, so add items that you really need to access often. As you’ll see in Chapter 13, these items in the sidebar also display in Open and Save dialogs, so you can access them from these dialogs as well.

If you put items in the sidebar whose names are too long, they’ll get cut off, and the ends of the names will be replaced with ellipses (...). If you have a lot of items like this, you may want to change the width of the sidebar. Just move your cursor over the metal bar that separates the sidebar from the main window contents and drag in either direction. You can enlarge the column to accommodate long names, or you can shrink it to take up less space. If you’d prefer to only see icons, you can shrink the column so only icons display. And, if you don’t like the sidebar, drag the separator all the way to the left, or double-click it, to remove it entirely. (You can move it back to the right by clicking and dragging the left border of the window to the right.)

Tip

if you move the sidebar separator to show only icons, the Finder displays a tooltip when you move your cursor over any of the sidebar icons, telling you its name.




How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
How to Do Everything with Mac OS X Panther
ISBN: 007225355X
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 171

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