9.11. Displays

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9.10. Desktop & Screen Saver

This panel offers two ways to show off Mac OS X's glamorous graphics features: desktop pictures and screen savers .

9.10.1. Desktop

Mac OS X comes with several ready-to-use collections of desktop pictures, ranging from National Geographic “style nature photos to plain solid colors. To install a new background picture, first choose one of the image categories in the list at the left side of the window, as shown in Figure 9-7.

Your choices, greatly expanded in Tiger, include Apple Images (muted, soft-focus swishes and swirls), Nature ( bugs , water, Tiger fur), Plants (flowers, soft-focus leaves ), Black & White (breathtaking monochrome shots), Abstract (swishes and swirls with wild colors), or Solid Colors (boring grays, blues, and greens).


Note: Several of Apple's ready-to-use desktop pictures come in two sizes. The elongated versions (with the flatter, squashed-down thumbnails) are designed to perfectly fill the extra-wide screens on 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks, Apple Cinema Displays, and other unusually wide screens.
9.10.1.1. Using your own pictures

Of course, you may feel that decorating your Mac desktop is much more fun if you use one of your own pictures. You can use any digital photo, scanned image, or graphic you want in almost any graphics format (JPEG, PICT, GIF, TIFF, Photoshop, and ”just in case you hope to master your digital camera by dangling its electronic instruction manual in front of you each morning ”even PDF).

Figure 9-7. Using the list of picture sources at left, you can preview an entire folder of your own images before installing one specific image as your new desktop picture. Use the Choose Folder option to select a folder of assorted graphics ”or, if you're an iPhoto veteran, click an iPhoto album name , as shown here. Clicking one of the thumbnails installs the corresponding picture on the desktop.


That's why your own Pictures folder is also listed here. If you use iPhoto to manage your digital camera shots, you'll welcome the appearance of the Library, Last Import, and iPhoto album icons here, too.

In any case, when you click one of these icons, you see thumbnail versions of its contents in the main screen to its right. Just click the thumbnail of any picture to apply it immediately to the desktop. (There's no need to remove the previously installed picture first.)


Tip: If there's one certain picture you like, but it's not in any of the listed sources, you can drag its image file onto the well (the mini desktop displayed in the Desktop panel). A thumbnail of your picture instantly appears in the well and, a moment later, the picture is plastered across your monitor.
9.10.1.2. Making the picture fit

No matter which source you use to choose a photo of your own, you have one more issue to deal with. Unless you've gone to the trouble of editing your chosen photo so that it matches the precise dimensions of your screen (1280 x 854 pixels, for example), it probably isn't exactly the same size as your screen.


Tip: The top 23 pixels of your graphic are hidden by the menu bar ”something to remember when you prepare the graphic.

Fortunately, Mac OS X offers a number of solutions to this problem. Using the pop-up menu just to the right of the desktop preview well, you can choose any of these options:

  • Fill screen . This option enlarges or reduces the image so that it fills every inch of the desktop. If the image is small, the low-resolution stretching can look awful . Conversely, if the image is large and its dimensions don't precisely match your screen's, parts get chopped off. At least this option never distorts the picture, as the "Stretch" option does (below).

  • Stretch to fill screen . Use this option at your peril, since it makes your picture fit the screen exactly, come hell or high water. Unfortunately, larger pictures may be squished vertically or horizontally as necessary, and small pictures are drastically blown up and squished, usually with grisly-looking results.

  • Center . This command centers the photo neatly on the screen. If the picture is larger than the screen, you see only the middle; the edges of the picture are chopped off as they extend beyond your screen.

    But if the picture is smaller than the screen, it doesn't fill the entire background; instead it just sits right smack in the center of the monitor at actual size. Of course, this leaves a swath of empty border all the way around your screen. As a remedy, Apple provides a color -swatch button next to the pop-up menu (also shown in Figure 9-7). When you click it, the Color Picker appears (Section 5.11), so that you can specify the color in which to frame your little picture.

  • Tile . This option makes your picture repeat over and over until the multiple images fill the entire monitor. (If your picture is larger than the screen, no such tiling takes place. You see only the top center chunk of the image.)

9.10.1.3. Auto-picture changing

The novelty of any desktop picture, no matter how interesting, is likely to fade after several months of all-day viewing. That's why the randomizing function is so delightful.

Turn on "Change picture" at the bottom of the dialog box. From the pop-up menu, specify when you want your background picture to change: "every day," "every 15 minutes," or, if you're really having trouble staying awake at your Mac, "every 5 seconds." (The option called "when waking from sleep" refers to the Mac waking from sleep, not its owner.)

Finally, turn on "Random order," if you like. If you leave it off, your desktop pictures will change in alphabetical order by file name.

That's all there is to it. Now, at the intervals you specified, your desktop picture changes automatically, smoothly cross-fading between the pictures in your chosen source folder like a slideshow. You may never want to open another window, because you'll hate to block your view of the show.

9.10.2. Screen Saver

On the Screen Saver panel, you can create your own screen-saver slideshows ”an absolute must if you have an Apple Cinema Display and a cool Manhattan loft apartment.


Tip: Of course, a screen saver doesn't really save your screen. LCD flat-panel screens, practically the only kind Apple sells, are incapable of "burning in" a stationary image of the sort that originally inspired the creation of screen savers years ago. (And even on the CRT screen of the eMac, you'd have to leave the same picture up for two solid years before the image might begin to burn in.)No, these screen savers offer two unrelated functions. First, they mask what's on your screen from passersby whenever you leave your desk. Second, they're a blast.

Apple provides a few displays to get you started:

  • Computer Name . This display shows nothing more than the Apple logo and the computer's name, faintly displayed on the monitor. (These elements shift position every few minutes ”it just isn't very fast.) Apple probably imagined that this feature would let corporate supervisors glance over at the screens of unattended Macs to find out who was not at their desks.

  • Flurry . You get flaming , colorful , undulating arms of fire, which resemble a cross between an octopus and somebody arc welding in the dark. If you click the Options button, you can control how many streams of fire appear at once, the thickness of the arms, the speed of movement, and the colors.

  • Abstract, Beach, Cosmos, Forest, Nature Patterns, Paper Shadow . These are photographic screen savers, featuring gorgeous pictures that slowly zoom and softly cross-fade into each other. Abstract features psychedelic swirls of modern art. In the Beach, Cosmos, Forest, and Nature screen savers, you see a series of tropical ocean scenes, deep space objects, lush rain forests, and leaf/flower shots. Paper Shadow, new in Tiger, is a slide show of undulating, curling, black-and-white shadowy abstract forms.

    Each creates an amazingly dramatic, almost cinematic experience, worthy of setting up to "play" during dinner parties like the lava lamps of the Seventies.


    Tip: If you select one of these photographic modules (or one that incorporates your own photos), the Options button brings up a useful dialog box. The choices include "Cross-fade between slides" (instead of just cutting abruptly), "Zoom back and forth" (that is, slowly enlarge or shrink each photo to keep it interesting), "Crop slides to fit on screen" (instead of exposing letterbox bars of empty desktop if the photo's shape doesn't match the screen's), "Keep slides centered" (instead of panning gracefully across), and "Present slides in random order" (instead of the order they appear in Apple's photo folder, or yours).
  • iTunes Artwork . New in Tiger: Now you can fill your screen with a grid of CD album covers culled from your iTunes music collection, if you have one. They periodically flip around, just to keep the image changing. (The Options button lets you specify how many rows of album-art squares appear, and how often the tiles flip.)

  • RSS Visualizer . Here, buried 43 layers deep in the operating system, is one of Tiger's most spectacular and useful new features: the RSS Visualizer. When this screen saver kicks in, it displays a jaw-dropping, 3-D display of headlines (news and other items) slurped in from the Safari Web browser's RSS reader . (RSS items, short for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary, are like a cross between email messages and Web pages ”they're Web items that get sent directly to you. Details in Chapter 21.)

    After the introductory swinging -around-an-invisible-3-D-pole-against-a-swirling-blue-sky-background sequence, the screen saver displays one news blurb at a time. Each remains on the screen just long enough for you to get the point of the headline. Beneath, in small type, is the tantalizing instruction, "Press the '3' key to continue" (it's a different number key for each headline). If you do, indeed, tap the designated key, you leave the screen saver, fire up Safari, and wind up on a Web page that contains the complete article you requested .

    The whole thing is gorgeous, informative, and deeply hypnotic. Do not use while operating heavy equipment.


    Tip: Click Options to specify which Web site's RSS feed you want displayed.
  • Spectrum . Here's another new Tiger module. It's for people who prefer not to have anything specific on their screens, like photos or text; instead, it's just a gradually shifting parade of glowing rainbow hues.

  • .Mac . One of the perks for paying $100 per year for a .Mac membership is the ability to create slideshows online, which can play back either on your own Mac or (if you opted to make it public) on anybody else's.

    Yes, that's right: You can now enjoy a screen saver composed of photos taken by somebody else on the Internet . ("Oh, look, honey, here's some shots of Uncle Jed's crops this summer!")

    Click the Options button to specify which member's slideshow collection you want to view and how you want it to appear. (For example, you can turn off the crossfade between slides, crop the slides so that they fit on the screen, opt to present the slides in random order, and so on.)

  • Pictures Folder, Choose Folder . This is one of the coolest modules. It lets you transform your own collection of pictures ”whatever you've got in your Home Pictures folder ”into a self-playing slideshow, complete with spectacular zooming and dissolving effects. (If you keep your photos elsewhere, click Choose Folder instead.)

  • Library, Last Roll, Last 12 Months, album list . If you're using iPhoto to organize your digital photos, you'll see its familiar album list here, making it a snap to choose any of your own photo collections for use as a screen saver.

  • Use random screen saver . If you can't decide which one of the modules to use, turn on this checkbox. The Mac will choose a different module each time your screen saver kicks in.

When you click a module's name in the Screen Savers list, you see a mini version of it playing back in the Preview screen. Click Test to give the module a dry run on your full monitor screen.

When you've had enough of the preview, just move the mouse or press any key. You return to the Screen Saver panel.

9.10.2.1. Activating the screen saver

You can control when your screen saver takes over your monitor in a couple of ways:

GEM IN THE ROUGH
Secrets of the Screen Saver Modules

The canned screen saver modules are stored in your System Library Screen Savers folder. If you Control-click one of the icons inside and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu, youll find a Contents Resources folder that contains the individual JPEG files for each module (the outer space photos for the Cosmos screen saver, for example).

Why bother? Because some of these spectacular photos make really good desktop pictures. You're free to copy them out of the Resources folder for that purpose.


  • After a period of inactivity . Using the "Start screen saver" slider, you can set the amount of time that has to pass without keyboard or mouse activity before the screen saver starts. The duration can be as short as three minutes or as long as two hours, or you can drag the slider to Never to prevent the screen saver from ever turning on by itself.

  • When you park your cursor in the corner of the screen . If you click the Hot Corners button, you'll see that you can turn each corner of your monitor into a hot corner (see Figure 9-8).

Figure 9-8. Click the Hot Corners button to open this "sheet," which lets you designate certain corners of your screen as instant-activation spots, or never-come-on spots. Sliding the mouse to the Start Screen Saver corner, for example turns on your screen saver right away. (You can use the remaining corners to control Expos , as described on Section 5.3.2.)


FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
The Password-Protected Screen Saver

I like the fact that when I wander away from my desk, the screen saver protects whatever I was doing from prying eyes. But whoever walks by can just press a key to exit the screen saver, so big deal! I looked all over, and couldn't find any way to make the Mac require a password before exiting the screen saver .

You had the right idea ”you were just looking in the wrong place.

In System Preferences, click Security. There's the checkbox you're looking for: "Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver."

You're welcome.



Tip: You can find dozens more screen saver modules from Apple at (www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/icons_screensavers, and from other people at (www.epicware.com/macosxsavers.html.
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Mac OS X. The Missing Manual
Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual (Missing Manuals)
ISBN: 0596153287
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 506
Authors: David Pogue

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