Accelerate File Access With Panther s New Places Sidebar

Accelerate File Access With Panther’s New Places Sidebar

Task #12

Difficulty Level 2

The first thing that you will notice about Panther is that Apple has made some significant changes to the Finder. Chief among these changes are improvements to Finder windows. Each Finder window now has a Places sidebar that displays drives, including hard drives, removable drives (such as CD and DVD), network drives, and even your iDisk. You can view the contents of any drive by clicking its icon in the Places sidebar. Its contents appear in the Content view. As you navigate through the folders on a drive, the Places sidebar remains constant. When you change between Icon, List, and Column views, the Places sidebar does not change.

You can customize the area below the drives in the Places sidebar with your own files and folders. As you add an item to the Places sidebar, the icons in the sidebar resize to accommodate the new addition until you reach the icons’ minimum size.

Removing items from the Places sidebar is a simple drag-and-drop operation. When you drag items away from the Places sidebar, they disappear completely. If you have ever removed items from the dock, you will be at home with this operation.

Caution

When you remove an item from the Places sidebar, it has no effect on the item that it represents. For example, removing a document from the Places sidebar does not delete the actual file or move it to the Trash. It simply removes the item from the Places sidebar. If you are familiar with older versions of the Mac OS, items in the Places sidebar work somewhat like aliases or items in the toolbar. If you remove one, you can always re-create it later.

Did You Know?

The Places sidebar is an optional aspect of the Panther Finder. If you prefer the Finder style of older Mac operating systems, simply drag the vertical handle beside the Places sidebar to the left. When the handle meets the left edge of the window, the Places sidebar disappears.