Getting Started

What? Introductory material? You've got to be kidding me! Don't worry, we won't trouble you with an entire chapter of how to click your mouse, but you will need to know a handful of things to successfully use your computer:

• Apple menu The menu on the upper-left side of the menu bar contains the functions you need to log out and shut down your system. You'll also find a few shortcuts to commonly used features here.

• Application menus Each running application has a menu titled with the application name. This is called the Application menu and typically contains application preference settings.

• System preferences The System Preferences application contains all the various esoteric settings for Tiger. You can access it from the Apple menu or from the switch icon with the big gray apple on it in the Dock at the bottom of your screen.

• Action menus You'll see these scattered around the place. The action pop-up menu is denoted by a gear icon and contains additional options that can be accessed usually affecting whatever is currently selected in the window with the menu.

• Contextual menu The Mac has contextual menus that can be accessed by Control-clicking on many objects in the operating system. Tiger even recognizes most two-button and scroll mice and will automatically map the second button to a control-click and the scroll wheel to window scrollbars.

• Window controls Windows are controlled by the three buttons in the top-left corner (red, yellow/orange, and green). These buttons close, minimize, and expand windows.

See? That wasn't so bad. Let's get started with the reason why you're here: using Tiger.