Appearance

The Appearance preferences pane (Figure 8) enables you to set options for color, scroll bar functionality, recent items, and text smoothing.

Figure 8. The Appearance preferences pane.

To set Appearance preferences

In the Appearance preferences pane (Figure 8), set options as desired:

• Appearance sets the color for buttons, menus, and windows throughout Mac OS X and Mac OS X applications.

• Highlight Color sets the highlight color for text in documents, fields, and lists.

• Place scroll arrows determines where scroll arrows should appear in windows and scrolling lists:

  • At top and bottom places a scroll arrow at each end of the scroll bar (Figure 9).

    Figure 9 & 10. A window with scroll bars at top and bottom (top) and the same window with scroll bars together (bottom).

    

    

    
    

  • Together places both scroll arrows together at the bottom or right end of the scroll bar (Figure 10).

• Click in the scroll bar to determines what happens when you click in the scroll track of a scroll bar.

  • Jump to the next page scrolls to the next window or page of the document.

  • Scroll to here scrolls to the relative location in the document. For example, if you click in the scroll track two-thirds of the way between the top and bottom, you'll scroll two-thirds of the way through the document. This is the same as dragging the scroller to that position.

  • Use smooth scrolling scrolls the contents of a window smoothly, without jumping.

  • Minimize when double clicking a window title bar minimizes a window to the Dock when you double-click its title bar.

• Applications, Documents, and Servers enables you to choose the number of items you want Mac OS X to consider "recent" when displaying recent applications, documents, and servers. Options range from None to 50.

• Font smoothing style (Figure 11) determines how Mac OS X smooths text onscreen.

  Figure 11. The Font smoothing style pop-up menu.

  

  
  

• Turn off text smoothing for font sizes enables you to choose a minimum font size for text smoothing. Text in the font size you set and smaller will not be smoothed. Your options range from 4 to 12.

Tips

• I tell you about minimizing windows in Chapter 2.

• Recent items appear on the Recent Items submenu under the Apple menu (Figure 12).

  Figure 12. The Recent Items submenu under the Apple menu.

  

  
  

• You can clear the Recent Items submenu by choosing Apple > Recent Items > Clear Menu (Figure 12).

• Font or text smoothing uses a process called antialiasing to make text more legible onscreen. Antialiasing creates gray pixels between black ones and white ones to eliminate sharp edges. Figure 13 shows what text looks like with text smoothing turned on and off.

  Figure 13. As these example show, text smoothing can change the appearance of text on screen.