D.88. Taskbar and Start Menu control panel

D.87. Taskbar

Mac OS X doesn't have a taskbar, but it does have something very close: the Dock (Chapter 4). Open programs are indicated by a small black triangle beneath their icons in the Dock. If you hold down your cursor on one of these icons (or Control-click it, or right-click it), you'll get a pop-up list of the open windows in that program, exactly as in Windows XP.

Control-clicking a folder or disk icon in the Dock is even more useful. It produces a pop-up menu of everything inside that disk or folder ”a terrific form of X-ray vision that has no equivalent in Windows.

On the other hand, some conventions never die. Much as in Windows, you cycle through the various open programs by holding down the c key and pressing Tab repeatedly.