Monday, April 21, 2003
Ten simple tips for enjoying Jaguar
In the spirit of keeping things simple this Monday morning, here are ten tips to make your Jaguar experience easier and to allow you to begin to customize your interface to your heart’s content. Most of you are probably already familiar with some of these, but hopefully everyone can get something out of these ten tips of varying degrees of simplicity. Sometimes there's nothing more useful to an advanced user than uncovering that one basic concept or trick that you'd somehow been missing all this time:
1. Make the Dock automatically hide and reveal itself: Click on the Apple Menu (upper left-hand corner), go to “Dock” and on the submenu, choose “Turn Hiding On”. Your Dock will disappear off the bottom of the screen, and will only reappear when your cursor touches the bottom edge of the screen. This gives you more screen space to work with. It can be quite useful when working on a laptop.
2. Move the Dock to the left or right side of the screen: Click on the Apple Menu (upper left-hand corner), go to “Dock” and on the submenu, choose “Position on Left” or “Position on Right”. It brings a whole new meaning to the concept of "left-brained" and "right-brained".
3. Adjust the Dock’s size: On the right end of the Dock, just to the left of the trash can, there is a black dividing line. Click-and-hold on the black line, and drag it up or down to adjust the size of the Dock.
4. Change the order of your Dock icons: To change the order of your existing Dock icons, just drag them around until they’re in the order you want them to be in. The one and only rule is that applications go on the left side of the black dividing bar, and everything else goes on the right. If this seems simple, it is. The ordering of the Dock is not restrained by alphabetical order, application type, or anything else. Other than the fact that the Finder stays on the far left and the trash stays on the far right, you're the boss.
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5. Know what application you’re in at all times: In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, next to the blue apple, you will always find the name of the application you’re using in bold letters. Although you can have as many applications running or active at one time as you want, you are only “using” the one in the foreground -- you are considered to be “in” this application. The menus across the top of the screen change based on what application you’re in, so it’s good to be aware of which app you’re in at any given time. The bold name of the app is also a menu that allows you to access the preferences and settings for that application, as well as to quit it.
6. Know what the “Finder” is: The Finder basically the name of your desktop. Anytime you are looking through the hard drive, locating a file, or moving items around the desktop, you are using the Finder. The Macintosh has had the Finder since the very beginning, but few users have been consciously aware of its existence. The Finder is always running and is represented by the blue happy-face at the bottom left of the screen. When you are in the Finder, the word “Finder” will appear in bold in the upper left-hand corner of the screen (since this is the application you are using at that time). If someone tells you to “go to the Finder” and you don’t know what this means, just check the upper left-hand corner of the screen. If it doesn’t say “Finder”, just click on the blue happy face in the Dock and it will take you there..
7. Make your hard drive icon invisible: Because there is already a happy-face icon in the Dock that gives you access to the hard drive, the hard drive icon on the desktop is unnecessary unless you prefer using it. To make it disappear, go to the Finder (see #5 above), click on the Finder menu, choose Preferences, and a window will open. Uncheck the box next to “Hard Disks” if you want the hard drive icon to disappear from the desktop.
8. Know what applications are running: In MacOS X, you can have as many applications running at one time as you wish. Supposed you are typing a document (AppleWorks) while surfing the web (Safari), listening to music (iTunes), sorting your digital pictures (iPhoto), looking up a movie time (Sherlock), and sending instant messages (iChat). You can easily switch among these applications without having to quit any of them or close any windows. The biggest difficulty most users have when working with multiple applications is that they think they have to close one window in order to open another. This is not the case. Looking at your Dock, every active application has a black triangle underneath it. To switch to another active app, just single-click on its Dock icon. For example, if you are using Safari and someone sends you an instant message and you want iChat to come to the front of the screen, just single-click on the iChat Dock icon. When you want to go back to Safari, just single-click on its Dock icon. There is no need to close any windows in the process.
9. Shrink your menu bar clock: In the menu bar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen you will find the clock, and icons for volume, displays, battery life (if on a laptop), internet connection (if configured for dial-up internet), and AirPort (if wireless). Especially on a laptop screen, there is barely enough room for everything! To make more space, you can turn your clock into a small analog clockface by clicking on the time and choosing “View as Icon” from the menu.
10. Move your menu icons around: Hold down the Apple key while you drag the clock, volume, etc. around in the upper right-hand corner, and they will change places. You can put your most valuable icons on the right side, to ensure that they are always visible.
I know these are fairly basic, but sometimes it's a good idea to make sure all your bases are covered. If you already knew all of these, send in a more challenging one!
In the spirit of keeping things simple this Monday morning, here are ten tips to make your Jaguar experience easier and to allow you to begin to customize your interface to your heart’s content. Most of you are probably already familiar with some of these, but hopefully everyone can get something out of these ten tips of varying degrees of simplicity. Sometimes there's nothing more useful to an advanced user than uncovering that one basic concept or trick that you'd somehow been missing all this time:
1. Make the Dock automatically hide and reveal itself: Click on the Apple Menu (upper left-hand corner), go to “Dock” and on the submenu, choose “Turn Hiding On”. Your Dock will disappear off the bottom of the screen, and will only reappear when your cursor touches the bottom edge of the screen. This gives you more screen space to work with. It can be quite useful when working on a laptop.
2. Move the Dock to the left or right side of the screen: Click on the Apple Menu (upper left-hand corner), go to “Dock” and on the submenu, choose “Position on Left” or “Position on Right”. It brings a whole new meaning to the concept of "left-brained" and "right-brained".
3. Adjust the Dock’s size: On the right end of the Dock, just to the left of the trash can, there is a black dividing line. Click-and-hold on the black line, and drag it up or down to adjust the size of the Dock.
4. Change the order of your Dock icons: To change the order of your existing Dock icons, just drag them around until they’re in the order you want them to be in. The one and only rule is that applications go on the left side of the black dividing bar, and everything else goes on the right. If this seems simple, it is. The ordering of the Dock is not restrained by alphabetical order, application type, or anything else. Other than the fact that the Finder stays on the far left and the trash stays on the far right, you're the boss.
.
5. Know what application you’re in at all times: In the upper left-hand corner of the screen, next to the blue apple, you will always find the name of the application you’re using in bold letters. Although you can have as many applications running or active at one time as you want, you are only “using” the one in the foreground -- you are considered to be “in” this application. The menus across the top of the screen change based on what application you’re in, so it’s good to be aware of which app you’re in at any given time. The bold name of the app is also a menu that allows you to access the preferences and settings for that application, as well as to quit it.
6. Know what the “Finder” is: The Finder basically the name of your desktop. Anytime you are looking through the hard drive, locating a file, or moving items around the desktop, you are using the Finder. The Macintosh has had the Finder since the very beginning, but few users have been consciously aware of its existence. The Finder is always running and is represented by the blue happy-face at the bottom left of the screen. When you are in the Finder, the word “Finder” will appear in bold in the upper left-hand corner of the screen (since this is the application you are using at that time). If someone tells you to “go to the Finder” and you don’t know what this means, just check the upper left-hand corner of the screen. If it doesn’t say “Finder”, just click on the blue happy face in the Dock and it will take you there..
7. Make your hard drive icon invisible: Because there is already a happy-face icon in the Dock that gives you access to the hard drive, the hard drive icon on the desktop is unnecessary unless you prefer using it. To make it disappear, go to the Finder (see #5 above), click on the Finder menu, choose Preferences, and a window will open. Uncheck the box next to “Hard Disks” if you want the hard drive icon to disappear from the desktop.
8. Know what applications are running: In MacOS X, you can have as many applications running at one time as you wish. Supposed you are typing a document (AppleWorks) while surfing the web (Safari), listening to music (iTunes), sorting your digital pictures (iPhoto), looking up a movie time (Sherlock), and sending instant messages (iChat). You can easily switch among these applications without having to quit any of them or close any windows. The biggest difficulty most users have when working with multiple applications is that they think they have to close one window in order to open another. This is not the case. Looking at your Dock, every active application has a black triangle underneath it. To switch to another active app, just single-click on its Dock icon. For example, if you are using Safari and someone sends you an instant message and you want iChat to come to the front of the screen, just single-click on the iChat Dock icon. When you want to go back to Safari, just single-click on its Dock icon. There is no need to close any windows in the process.
9. Shrink your menu bar clock: In the menu bar in the upper right-hand corner of the screen you will find the clock, and icons for volume, displays, battery life (if on a laptop), internet connection (if configured for dial-up internet), and AirPort (if wireless). Especially on a laptop screen, there is barely enough room for everything! To make more space, you can turn your clock into a small analog clockface by clicking on the time and choosing “View as Icon” from the menu.
10. Move your menu icons around: Hold down the Apple key while you drag the clock, volume, etc. around in the upper right-hand corner, and they will change places. You can put your most valuable icons on the right side, to ensure that they are always visible.
I know these are fairly basic, but sometimes it's a good idea to make sure all your bases are covered. If you already knew all of these, send in a more challenging one!
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