Windows and How to Work Them phần 1

1.2. Windows and How to Work Them In designing Mac OS X, one of Apples key goals was to address the windowproliferation problem. As you create more files, stash them in more folders,
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Windows and How to Work Them phần 11.2. Windows and How to Work ThemIn designing Mac OS X, one of Apples key goals was to address the window-proliferation problem. As you create more files, stash them in more folders, and launchmore programs, its easy to wind up paralyzed before a screen awash with cluttered,overlapping rectangles.Thats the problem addressed by Exposé, a useful feature thats probably worth at least$34 of Mac OS Xs $130 price, and Spaces, which is easily worth another $17.35. Theyredescribed in detail on pages Section 5.3 and Section 5.3.2.3.There are some handy clutter and navigation controls on the windows themselves, too.For example:1.2.1. The SidebarThe Sidebar is the pane at the left side of every Finder window, unless youve hidden it(and, by the way, also at the left side of every Open dialog box and full-sized Save dialogbox).The Sidebar has been overhauled in Leopard. Now this list has as many as four differentsections, each preceded by a collapsible heading: • Devices. This section lists every storage device connected to, or installed inside, your Mac: hard drives, CDs, DVDs, iPods, memory cards, USB flash drives, and so on. The removable ones (CDs, DVDs, iPods, and so on) bear a little gray logo, which you can click to eject that disk. • Shared. It took 20 years for an operating system to list all the other computers on the home or small-office network, right there in every window, without any digging, connecting, button-clicking, or window-opening. But here it is: a complete list of the other computers on your network whose owners have turned on File Sharing, ready for access. See Chapter 13 for complete details. • Places. This primary section of the sidebar lists places (in this case, folders) where you might look for files and folders. Into this list, you can stick the icons of anything at all—files, programs, folders, disks, or whatever—for easy access. Each icon is a shortcut. For example, click the Applications icon to view the contents of your Applications folder in the main part of the window (Figure 1-3). And if you click the icon of a file or program, it opens. • Searches. The folders in this new Sidebar section are actually canned searches that execute instantly when you click one. If you click Today, for example, the main window fills with all files and folders on your computer that youve changed today. Yesterday and Past Week work the same way. Figure 1-3. The Sidebar makes navigation very quick, because you can jump back and forth between distant corners of your Mac with a single click. In column view, the Sidebar is especially handy because it eliminates all of the columns to the left of the one you want, all the way back to your hard-drive level. Youve just folded up your desktop!Good things to put here: favorite programs; disks on the network to which you often connect; a document youre working on every day; and so on. Folder and disk icons here work just like normal ones. You can drag a document onto a folder icon to file it there, drag a downloaded .sit file onto the StuffIt Expander icon there, and so on. In fact, the disks and folders here are even spring- loaded (Section 2.4.4).The All Images, All Movies, and All Documents searches round up everything in thosefile-type categories, no matter what folders theyre actually sitting in.These insta-searches are very useful all by themselves, but whats even better is how easyit is to make your own search folders to put here. Section 3.4 has the details.1.2.2. Fine-tuning the SidebarThe beauty of this parking lot for containers is that its so easy to set up with your favoriteplaces. For example: • Remove an icon by dragging it out of the Sidebar entirely. It vanishes with a puff of smoke (and even a little whoof sound effect). You havent actually removed anything from your Mac; youve just unhitched its alias from the Sidebar. Tip: You cant drag Shared items out of the list. Also, if you drag a Devices item out of the list, youll have to choose Finder Preferences to put it back in; see the box on Section 1.2.3.• Rearrange the icons by dragging them up or down in the list. (Youre not allowed to rearrange the computers listed in the Shared section, though.)• Install a new iconby dragging it off your desktop (or out of a window) into any spot in the Places list of the Sidebar. Unlike previous versions of Mac OS X, you cant drag icons into any old section of the sidebar—just the Places place. Tip: You can also highlight an icon wherever it happens to be and then choose File Add to Sidebar, or just press -T.• Adjust the width of the Sidebar by dragging its right edge—either the skinny divider line or the extreme right edge of the vertical scroll bar, if there is one. You feel a snap at the point when the line covers up about half of each icons name. Any covered-up names sprout ellipses (…) to let you know (as in Secret Salaries Spreadsh…). Note: The Leopard Sidebar is a lot less flexible than the old one. For example, you can no longer drag the divider bar so far to the left that it hides the icons names. It stops just to the left of the end of the longest name.Nor can you hide the Sidebar completely by double-clicking the dividing line, by pressing Control-Option- - T, or by dragging the line all the way to the left. None of those methods work anymore; the only way to hide the Sidebar is to use the Old Finder Mode button.• Hide the Sidebar by clicking the Old Finder Mode button, a white, capsule-like button in the upper-right corner of th ...