Navigating Mac OS X

Particularly if you're already familiar with another operating system ( Windows or Mac OS 9), navigating through the structure of a Mac OS X system can be a challenging and unusual task. Mac OS X isn't any more complex than these other operating systems, but it's different enough from them that if you don't know what to look for, you could find yourself at a loss for what to do next .

Following this chapter, this book is filled with step-by-step demonstrations of useful tasks you can accomplish with Mac OS X. However, before we can proceed to those tasks , it is necessary to provide some detailed background on the Finder the application that allows you to move through the system and find the resources you're looking for.

Structure of a Disk

Without disks, Mac OS X is nothing. The system must boot from a "startup disk," which is a disk with a full installation of Mac OS X on it. A startup disk (or startup volume ) can be a hard disk, a CD-ROM or DVD, an external drive connected with FireWire or USB cables, or even a remote disk accessible over the networkanything with a readable filesystem . The entire operating system (which consumes about three gigabytes of disk space) must be available on a mounted disk for the Mac to function.

KEY TERMS

Volume Any disk (or portion of a disk that has been partitioned) is a volume, a discrete storage resource that can appear on the Desktop or in the Finder.

Filesystem A term that refers to the software architecture that allows the operating system to read from and write to a volume. It also can mean simply a volume; for instance, your startup disk is both a volume and a filesystem.

NOTE

Every item in the system can be located by describing its path (the names of the folders you have to open to get to that item). You will seldom see a path written out in text, but if you do, it is described as a series of folder names separated by slashes or colons. For instance, the Home folder for a user called johndoe is inside the Users folder of the startup disk; its full path is /Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/johndoe , though it may be shown only as /Users/johndoe , depending on the context. Some applications might show the path as Macintosh HD:Users:johndoe .

Beyond just the operating system, however, is the part of the disk that you will be using. As you saw earlier in this chapter, your Home folder also resides on the startup disk of the operating system, in the Users folder. As you use the system, the applications you run will create files, all of which will be stored within the Home folder; this goes for documents you create, files you download from the Internet, and preference files and other supporting data for your applications.To use all these files, you must be able to find them; that's where the Finder comes in.

Know the Finder

Click the Finder icon at the left end of the Dock. A window opens up that should look like the one shown here.

NOTE

To hide or show the labels on the Finder's toolbar buttons or customize which control buttons are available, choose View, Customize Toolbar while a Finder window is open.

A Finder window.

NOTE

Removable diskssuch as CDs, DVDs, card readers, network servers, external floppy or optical drives , and iPodshave an Eject button next to them in the Sidebar. Clicking this button ejects the disk in the case of truly removable media such as CDs or floppies, or unmounts it in the case of fixed USB, FireWire, or network devices.

1.	Window Control Buttons Use these buttons to close, minimize, or zoom the window.
2.	Sidebar The entire Dock-like section on the left side of the Finder window is the Sidebar. It provides starting points for you to use in navigating the disk.
3.	Toolbar The buttons across the top of the window are all part of the toolbar, which provides controls that apply to all Finder windows. You can customize which buttons appear in the toolbar, using the Customize Toolbar command in the View menu.
4.	Disks This area shows all the disks and other data sources available in your system. Click on any disk to show its contents.
5.	Location Shortcuts Each item here is a link to a folder in the system; clicking an icon takes you to that folder's contents. You can add folders to this pane by dragging them into position, much as you can with the Dock.
6.	Items in Current Folder Depending on the view you have selected (using the View selection buttons), icons representing the contents of the current folder are displayed arbitrarily or in organized listings. Double-click any folder to open it in the same Finder window; double-click any document to open it in its default opener application.
7.	Selected Item Single-clicking any item selects that item; a selected item is shown with a darkened box around it and its label highlighted in a colored oval. You can select multiple items by clicking and dragging a box around them.
8.	Navigation Buttons As you move through the system of folders, you can move back and forth through your navigation history using these buttons.
9.	View Selection Buttons Choose Icon view, List view, or Column view. Each view has its own advantages and specialized options. You will see each of these views in detail later in this chapter.
10.	Action Button Use this button to perform specific actions on any documents or folders you have selected. Available actions include opening documents or folders, setting color labels, getting detailed file info , or moving items to the Trash.
11.	Search Bar Type in this field to perform an instant search on whatever text you type. See 12 Find an Item for more on searching with Spotlight.
12.	Hide/Show Toolbar Button This button allows you to hide or show the toolbar (the row of control buttons) and the Sidebar.

The Finder is a flexible piece of software that can be tailored to however you are most comfortable using it. Let's take a look at what some of its controls do. First we have the three different view modes, which you can switch between at any time. Each view mode has a particular strengthspeed of navigation, amount of information, configurability of presentationand is weak in others. You will find that different view modes are appropriate for different areas of the system.

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You can assign a different view mode to every folder in the system. One folder can be in Icon view (with large icons), another might be in List view (with small icons), and a third can be in Column view. Each folder stores the view settings that were in effect when you closed the window in which you were viewing that folder; if you then open that folder directly, it opens with the same view settings it had when you last closed it.

Icon View

The first view option is Icon view. Each document and folder in the window appears as a pictograph or icon, with a label underneath it or to the right. Depending on your settings for the folder, the icons can be arranged in a strict grid pattern or scattered arbitrarily around the window. You can click and drag icons from one part of the window to another; some application developers create artistic presentation folders this way, as you will see in 1 Install an Application from Disc or Download .

A Finder window in Icon view, and its View Options panel.

Icon view is the most configurable of the views. To configure the view, choose Edit, View Options ; a panel opens in which you can select your viewing preferences, such as the background color or picture, or the icon arrangement.

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Hold down the Command and Option keys, then click and drag to pan around a window in Icon view.

To open a folder shown in Icon view, double-click it; the new folder opens in the same Finder window, its contents replacing those of the folder you were in previously. Alternatively, you can have the new folder open in a new Finder window, by holding down the Command key while you double-click. If you hold down the Option key while double-clicking a folder icon, the new folder will open in a new window and the old window will close.

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Hold down the Command key and click the title of the Finder window to see a pop-up menu showing all the folders in the path to your current location. This action lets you easily jump to any point along the folder path.

Icon view is aesthetically pleasing and very useful for displaying folders with a few special items in it, but for easier sorting or quicker navigation, the other two views are often preferable.

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If you've got an Icon view window that has icons scattered haphazardly all over the place, select View, Clean Up . The icons all snap to an organized grid layout.

List View

A Finder window in List view, and its View Options panel.

List view provides the most information about the items in a folder. Documents and folders are listed alphabetically (if you're accustomed to Windows, you might be surprised at first to see that folders are alphabetized right along with documents, instead of being shown first in the listing as in Windows). However, several additional columns show extra information about each item. You can click the column headings to sort the items based on whichever column you choose. These columns include the time of last modification or access, size , kind, version, and label color; in the View Options panel, you can enable or disable these columns according to your taste.

Navigating in List view is more flexible than in Icon view. To the left of each folder is a small triangular arrow pointing right; if you click the arrow, it turns downward, and the folder's contents are displayed, indented under the folder. This arrangement allows you to open branches of the hierarchy of folders underneath the current folder. However, to see folders higher up in the hierarchy, you must use another method to move back along the path, such as clicking the Back button at the top of the window or holding down Command while clicking the window title.

List view is tailored for showing the maximum amount of item information possible, at the expense of the prettiness of Icon view. However, it's still not the easiest mode for fast navigation; for that, you need Column view.

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You can select a set of items in the same spatial area by clicking and dragging to create a selection box around the items.

You can click to select one item, scroll to another item further down the list, and press Shift while clicking to select the entire intervening range of items.

Hold down Command while clicking individual items in succession; each additional item you click is added to the selection. Command +click individual selected items to deselect them while leaving the rest selected.

is nearly always a key combination for Select All Items .

Column View

Although Icon view and List view have been in the Mac OS for many years , Column view is a new addition to Mac OS Xbut not a new idea. It first appeared in the NeXT operating system, which also pioneered features such as the Dock, which eventually made their wayin heavily altered forminto Mac OS X.

A Finder window in Column view, and its View Options panel.

The idea of Column view is pretty simple: your window contains a series of columns, each of which represents a folder. The columns can be scrolled left and right, and picking a folder from any column causes that folder's contents to be shown in a new column to the right. This way, the entire path through a folder hierarchy can be represented in a single left-to-right view, and you can scroll horizontally to any point along the path.

If you select a file in a folder, the column to the right displays that file's preview and vital information, along with a More Info button that opens the item's familiar info panel. However, you don't get to see much else in the way of item information in Column view. All that's visible in a folder list are the icons and item names, which are always sorted alphabetically. Column view is designed with easy navigation as its primary goal, and the tradeoff in this case is information visibility. If you need to move quickly up and down through the folders on a disk, but you don't especially need to see the detailed information on all the items along the way, Column view is the most efficient way to do it.

The Action Button

In a Finder window, there are several things you can do to a document or folder directly without need for any extra applications; these include labeling items, creating new folders, getting detailed information on items, duplicating items, and moving items to the Trash. These operations are all grouped into the Action button.

The Action button and its contextual menu.

If you click the Action button without having selected any items, you will see only two options listed in its context menu: New Folder and Get Info . However, if you select one or more items first, the menu is filled with options.

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Most of the actions that can be launched from the Action button are described in 12 Find an Item , 13 Create a New Folder , and 18 Set a Color Label .

Use the Second Mouse Button

Contrary to popular belief, the Mac does not limit you to a single-button mouse, even if that's all Apple sells; you are perfectly free to plug in a two-button or three-button mouse, or one with a scroll wheel, and Mac OS X will support the extra features without any need for extra drivers. The operating system is designed to require no more than a single mouse button, but if you have more mouse buttons, they can provide you with shortcuts to commonly used functions.

The contextual menu resulting from right-clicking an item.

For instance, in the Finder, right-clicking a document or folder opens a contextual menu that matches the one you get from selecting the item and then clicking the Action button. (You can also get the same menu by holding down Control while clicking on the item.) The right-click context menu lets you perform an action on the item with two clicks in the same general vicinity, rather than three or four clicks and drags that require you to move the mouse all around the window. The Action button provides all the functionality available in the system, so a single-button mouse can accomplish everything the system offers, but a multi-button mouse saves you time and effort.

Hide the Toolbar and Sidebar

The elongated white button in the upper-right corner of the Finder window is an interface element that appears in the Finder and a handful of other applications; its purpose is to let you shrink the window to its bare minimum components , hiding the toolbar and Sidebar from view so that all you see is the window and its contents.

A Finder window with the toolbar (at the top of the window) and the Sidebar hidden.

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Double-click the vertical divider between the Sidebar (on the left) and the document pane (on the right) to hide the Sidebar. You can also drag the divider back and forth to adjust the size of the panes.

If you hide the toolbar, be aware that you won't be able to change view modes or navigate back and forth using the mouse; you can use keyboard shortcuts for navigating ( and ), and you can change the view mode using the View menu. But actions from the Action button's context menu must be selected from the File menu or by right-clicking the item you want to work with. A window with the toolbar hidden can be more streamlined and take up less space, but it's missing many amenities you might decide are too useful not to have available.

NOTE

In Icon view with the toolbar hidden, if you double-click a folder, the new folder opens by default in a new window; if the toolbar is shown, double-clicking a folder opens the new folder in the same window. It's assumed that if you have the toolbar hidden, you expect to have your navigation path available in the form of the windows you have opened to get to your current position.

The Get Info Panel

Each document or folder has a wealth of information associated with it. On the Mac, documents can have custom icons, version numbers , opener applications, access permissions, comments, and other bits and pieces of data that are normally useful only to applications. The Get Info panel lets you examine that information for each item in the system.

The Get Info panel for a document.

The Get Info panel consists of several subpanels, each of which can be expanded or collapsed by clicking the triangle arrow in the left corner of each one. You can use the Get Info panel to change many of a file's attributes: You can show or hide the filename extension (or remove it entirely), you can change the opener application, you can set a comment, and you can modify the access permissions. Some of these processes are covered in 7 Assign an Opener Application to a File , 17 Change an Icon , and 18 Set a Color Label . For now, remember that the Get Info panel can always be accessed for any item by selecting Get Info from the Action button menu or by pressing .