BECOMING THE ULTIMATE MENU MASTER

BECOMING THE ULTIMATE MENU MASTER

Want to really speed things up? How about jumping right to the Apple menu without even clicking the mouse? Just press Control-F2 and the Apple menu pops down. Oh, but there’s more! Now that you’re in the Apple menu, press the Right Arrow key on your keyboard to move to the other menus (Finder, File, Edit, View ,etc. )and the left Arrow to move back, once you get to the menu you want, use the tip I mentioned earlier: Type in the first letter of the command you want and it jumps right there, then press Return to choose that command (and you did it all without ever touching the mouse).

A FASTER WAY TO GET YOUR SYSTEM INFO

If, some reason, you run into some serious problems with your Mac (hey, it could happen), you might have to tell Apple tech support, a repair tech, or a Macintosh consultant some technical information about your particular hardware and system software configurations. Luckily, all that information is found by launching Apple’s system profiler. The only bad news id it’s buried deep within your Applications folder, inside your utilities folder. Here’s the tip: there’s a quicker way to get the Apple System profiler. Just go under the Apple menu and choose about this Mac. When the dialog appears, click on the button at the bottom called more info and it launches the Apple System profiler for you.

FINDING SYSTEM PREFERENCES FAST BY SORTING ALPHABETICALLY

If you’ve been using Mac OS X for a while, you’ve no doubt noticed that the System Preferences window puts all the individual preferences in horizontals rows, sorted by four categories (Personal, Hardware, Internet & Network, and System). That’s great, if you know exactly which category to look under, but if you’re new to Mac OS X, you might prefer a feature introduced in Jaguar-sorting the preferences alphabetically it’s probably located near the end of the list. To sort your System Preferences alphabetically, first open the System Preferences Window, go under the View menu, and choose Organize back by categories in the View menu.

SHORTCUT TO HIDE YOUR APPS 

This simple keyboard shortcut is one of my favorite features When you’re in the Finder, you can hide all of your running applications from view by pressing Option-Command-H (the shortcut for hide other’s, which is found under the finder menu .)Ahhhh, to me that alone was worth the upgrade price (okay, it was almost worth the upgrade price). 

AUTOMATICALLY ADDING FILE EXTENSIONS

AUTOMATICALLY ADDING FILE EXTENSIONS

Sharing your files with someone using a PC? Make sure you name the file “Don’t you wish you had a Mac. Txt” or something like that (kidding). Actually, if you’re sharing files with a PC, you can ask Mac OS X to automatically add the three-letter file extension to your file name every time you save a file. Just go to the Finder menu, choose preference, click on the Advanced icon, and select the Show All File Extensions checkbox.

HOW TO BE SELECTIVE WITH EXTENSIONS

In Mac OS X, every file has a three-letter file extension (like PC files do), but by default, Mac OS X hides those three-letter extensions. In the previous tip, I showed you how to make those three-letter extensions visible all the time, but what if you just want to see the three-letter extensions for an individual file or two? If you want to see these extensions (perhaps if you’re designing Web graphics and want your files to have the . gif and .jpg file extensions visible), you can do that when you save each file. In the Save dialog, you’ll notice a checkbox called hide Extensions, which is on by default. Just turn that checkbox off, and the appreciate file extension is added to the file, In some applications, you may see a checkbox for append extension instead. In the case, make sure the checkbox is on to show the extension.

SPEEDING THROUGH YOUR SYSTEM PREFERENCE

When you’re in the system preference dialog. There’s a superfast way to quickly get to the individual preference pane you want. Just type the first letter of the preference, then hit the Spacebar. This not only selects the preference it opens that pane as well. This my friends, is one juicy speed trick!

SAVING TIME IN THE “GO TO THE FOLDER” DIALOG

Once you enter a path in the Go to the folder dialog of a Cocoa app, that last path stays in memory (thanks to panther’s auto-complete feature), so if you want to get back to that same folder, don’t press the “/” (slash) key when you’re in the Open dialog. Instead, press shift-command-G; that way, when the Go to the folder dialog appears, the last path you entered is already input for you, saving you the trouble.

HIDDEN COLUMN VIEW NAVIGATION TIP

HIDDEN COLUMN VIEW NAVIGATION TIP 

Here’s somewhat of a weird problem (and a simple fix): Let’s say you have your Favorites folder in your Sidebar, and you click on it to get to some of your favorite files. If you’re viewing all this in Column view, the first column winds up being the contents of your Favorites.   You can’t scroll to a column farther back (like to your Library folder, which holds your Favorites folder or to your Home folder or User folder, etc.) Well, you can’t unless you know this hidden little tip: Just hold the Command key and press Up Arrow key on your keyboard.  Each press it, it moves you back farther, so instead of hitting “the wall” when you’re in the Favorites column, now you can keep going as far as you want.

CREATING YOUR OWN KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS

Keyboard shortcuts are such huge time- savers, but sadly, not all Finder commands have them.  But they can, because in panther, you can create your own. Here’s how: go under the apple menu, to system preference, and choose keyboard & mouse. When the dialog appears, click on the Keyboard shortcuts tab, then click the + (plus) sign at the bottom left of the dialog. A dialog appears. Choose finder from the pop-up list, then type in the exact name of the menu command you want to add a shortcut for. Then, type in the shortcut you want to use, and click the add button. It’s that simple.

THE SAVE DIALOG SAVES ITSELF

The Save dialog as an excellent memory. Because not only does it remember the recent folders that you saved to, but it also remembers if you expanded it into column view or sketched out the size. The next time you open that application and go to save a file, it remembers that you like column view and how large you made the dialog. It treats it as if you’re setting “Save dialog” defaults for that application.

REARRANGING THE MENU EXTRAS

REARRANGING THE MENU EXTRAS

Want to change the order of the Menu Extras in your menu bar?  Just hold the Command key and drag the icons into the order you want to them.  It gives you a real feeling of power.  Well, a feeling of power over tiny icons anyway.

REMOVING MENU EXTRAS FROM YOUR MENU BAR

To remove a Menu Extra, just hold the Command key and click-and-drag the Menu Extra off the bar.  It doesn’t get much easier than that.

THE ACCIDENTAL-DELETE PROTECTION DEVICE  

In previous versions of the Mac OS, you could protect an important file from accidentally being deleted (trashed) by clicking on the Locked checkbox in the Info window.  The problem was you could still put the file in the Trash, and if you held the Option key while emptying the Trash, you could still delete it.  Talk about a half –assed security device.  Well, in Mac OS X, you can apply the lock the same way (click on the file, press Command- I to bring up the Info window, and click on Locked); but the improvement comes in that Mac OS X will not even let you drag that file  to the Trash on the first place.  Instead, you get a warning dialog telling you basically, “Sorry, puck.” Hey, serve you right for trying to delete a file you thought was important.  

SAVING TO THE DESKTOP IN A FLASH

When you’re in the Save As dialog and you want to save a file to the desktop, just press Command-D and the “Where” pop-up menu switches to Desktop, so all you have to do is name your file and click OK.  Another alternative to saving in the Documents folder (like the OS really wants you to), is to save the file directly to your Home folder by pressing Shift-Command- H and Home appears as your Save destination.

ERASING FILES FOR GOOD!

ERASING FILES FOR GOOD!

People are getting pretty freaky about the security of the files on their drives.  Especially since they learned that even though they “trashed” some of their most personal and sensitive files and thought they were gone forever, they’re still recoverable.  And not just recoverable by the FBI lab, but by your average junior-high student.  That’s why Apple created a secure version of the Empty Trash command called – big surprised- Security Empty Trash. Without going into too much techno-geek-speak, it deletes your file and writes over the drive space where it once lived so many times that agents from top-secret government agencies that we’re not even supposed to know exist couldn’t resurrect those files.  In short, use Secure Empty Trash when you really want your files gone for good.

LOOKING INSIDE MULTIPLE FOLDERS AUTOMATICALLY

Need to see what’s inside more than one folder while in List view? Do it the fast way – Command –click on all the folders you want to expand, then press Command Right Arrow.  All the folders expand at once.  If the file you’re looking for isn’t there, just press Command- Left Arrow (you can do that, because your folders are still highlighted) to quickly collapse them all.  

BETTER THAN THE OLD CONTROL STRIP- IT’S MENU EXTRAS

The Control Strip, thankfully, is gone and has been replaced by something infinitely better- Menu Extras.  These tiny black icons appear in the menu bar, just to the left of your menu clock; and not only do they tell what’s going on, they actually work (at least if you click on them, anyway) kind of similar to how the  Control Strip worked, but without the annoyance of the Control Strip.  (Are you getting the feeling that I didn’t like the Control Strip?) Just click on the Menu Extras to access their controls.  For example, click on the one that look like a speaker, and a volume-control slider pops down, just like a menu, where you can control your system volume.  You add Menu Extras in the System Preferences of each control you want to add.  For example, you can add the Display Menu Extra by going to the Displays preferences and choosing the Show Displays in Menu Bar checkbox.

FINDING THE HIDDEN “GO TO” FIELD

FINDING THE HIDDEN “GO TO” FIELD

In the previous versions Mac OS X, there was a “ Go to” field at the bottom of the Open dialog where you could jump directly to the folder you wanted by typing in its locations.  In Panther, that field no longer appears in the Open dialog, but luckily, it’s not gone forever- it’s just one simple keystroke away.  When you’re in the Open dialog, just press the “/” (slash) key on  your keyboard and the Go to the folder dialog pops down from the top of the Open dialog, ready for you to type in the path of your folder.  Note: this doesn’t work in all applications, so if typing the slash doesn’t bring up the Go to the Folder dialog, Just press Shift-Command-G and that’ll do the trick.

SPEED TIP: TAKE OUT THE PAPERS AND THE TRASH

Want to empty the Trash without making a trip up to the Finder menus first? Just Control –click on the Trash icon in the Dock and choose Empty Trash.  Of course, you could also press Shift-Command- Delete, but how much fun is that? Incidentally, if you want to get something in the Trash in a hurry, just click on it, press Command- Delete, and that file jumps into the Trash lickety-split!

GET INFO’S SECRWT SECOND PERSONALITY

While Command- I brings up the regular Info dialog, pressing Option-Command- I brings up a second version with a special hidden feature (you’ll know it’s the second version because it corners are squared, rather than rounded, and there’s no Minimize or Zoom Button).  This second version stays live when you click on the different files- giving you their file info as well (the regular version just deselect when you click on the different file, so you have to press Command – I all over again get info on that file .)  This is great for quickly comparing things like a file sizes or modified dates, because you can just click from file to file, and the file info is instantly displayed.  Another nice speed benefit is that when you use Option-Command-I to open Get Info, you can also use that same shortcut to close it instead of clicking on the red close button.  (The standard Command-W shortcut closes the “first personality” Command- Get Info window).

GETTING TO YOUR MOST- USED FILES AND FOLDERS FAST

GETTING TO YOUR MOST- USED FILES AND FOLDERS FAST

Do you find yourself going to the same folders over and over again? (Of course you do, we all do, we just don’t admit it at parties.) Well, if this sounds like you, you can place these most-used folders right in the Sidebar so you can access the anytime (including from the right within the Open/Save dialog).  To add a folder to the sidebar, just click on t, the press Command –T (the old Favorites shortcuts from previous versions of the Mac OS X).  Although technically there’s still a Favorites folder (I talked about it in Chapter 1), it doesn’t really much help, because (1) there is no longer a keyboard shortcut to move a file into your favorites folder, and (2) you can no longer designated a folder to be a “favorite” from within Open/Save dialog boxes, like you could in previous versions.  Basically, Apple wants you to use the Sidebar to keep your most-used files and folders- that way, you can access them from Open/Save dialogs.

STEALING A FILE’S NAME, THEN SAVING RIGHT OVER IT

If you’re saving a file, you can use the name of an existing file by just clicking on it in the Save dialog navigation window.  Even if the file is grayed out,  you can still click o n it, and when you do, its name appears as your new file name at the top of the Save  dialog.  This is a huge timesaver.  When you click OK, it asks you if you want to replace it with the file you’re saving. If you’re saving a different version of a file, and all you want to do is add a version number (like “Brochure Inside Cover 2”), all you’d have to do is click on the existing file named “ Brochure Inside Cover” in the Save dialog, and that name would then appear has your new file name, then just type in a 2.

MENU SPEED TIP

Getting the right to the menu item you want to fast can save loads of time (Since we spend so much in time digging around in menu all day).  That’s why you’ll love this tip.  The next time you’re in a pop-down menu, instead of mousing down to the item you want to select, just press the first letter of the command you want to and the command becomes selected.  For example, to select the Customize Toolbar command, click once on the View menu, press “c”, then press Return.  That’s speed menus, baby! By the way, if two commands starts with same letter, type in the first two letters.

MINIMIZING MULTIPLE WINDOWS AT ONCE

MINIMIZING MULTIPLE WINDOWS AT ONCE

If you have three or four open windows and want to minimize them all to the Dock at once, just hold the Option key and double-click on the title bar of any one of them and all open windows go to the Dock. Be careful when you do this because if you have 50 open windows, they’re all headed to the Dock in a hurry and there’s no real undo for this. Worse yet, you’ll eventually have to pull 50 very tiny icons from the Dock one by one. So make sure that’s really what you want to do before you Option-double-click.

OPENING DOCUMENTS BY DRAGGING THEM TO THE DOCK

Remember how back in Mac OS 9, if you have tore the Application menu off and had it floating around your desktop, you could drag-and-drop documents onto an application listed in the menu, and it would endeavor to open them? You can do the same thing now in Mac OS X with the Dock-just drag documents directly to an application in the Dock and if it thinks it might be able to open the document, the icon highlights, basically telling you to “let ‘er rip!”

STOPPING THE ICONS FROM MOVING

In the above tip (drag-and-drop to the Dock), showed how you can drag a document onto an application’s icon in the Dock. Sometimes, maybe trying to add the document to a folder in the Dock. When you do this, the Dock thinks you’re actually trying to add the document to the Dock itself, rather than dropping it on the folder, so it kindly slides the icons out of the way to make room for your document. If this happens to you, just hold the Command Key as you drag and the icons stay put, which enables you to drop the document into a “non-moving” object.

DRAGGING-AND-DROPPING TO THE APP OF YOUR CHOICE

You can use the Dock to open a document in the application of your choice rather than what OS X would open it in normally by default. Let’s say you make a screen capture using the standard Shift-Command-3 shortcut, and the resulting PDF file then appears on your desktop. If you double-click that file, by default, it’s going to open in Preview. As long as your Photoshop is in your Dock, you can drag the PDF screen capture from your desktop and drop it directly on the Photoshop icon in the Dock, and then Photoshop opens the document.

FORCING A DOCUMENT ON AN APP

Sometimes, docked apps don’t want to open your document, even though they may be able to, so you have to coax them to give it a try. For example, let’s say you created a document in WordPerfect for Mac a few years back. If you drag that document to Microsoft Word’s icon in the Dock, chances are it won’t highlight. If that happens, just hold Option-Command, then drag the document’s icon to the Word icon in the Dock, and you can force it to try open that document.

BRINGING HOME LOST SHEEP: FINDING DOCKED ORIGINALS

BRINGING HOME LOST SHEEP: FINDING DOCKED ORIGINALS

So you see the application’s (or document’s) icon in the Dock but you have no earthly idea where the app (or doc) really resides on your hard drive. It’s there somewhere but you really don’t know where and that scares you. To find where the docked application or the document really lives just Control-click on it in the Dock and choose Show in Finder. The window where it lives immediately appears on screen.

STOP THE BOUNCING. I BEG YOU!

When you launch an application, its icon begins to bounce incessantly in the Dock, in a distracting vertical Tigger-like motion until the app is just about open. I love this feature but then I enjoy having my cavities drilled. If you enjoy this animation as much as I do, you can turn it off by going to the Apple menu under Dock and choosing Dock Preferences. When the Dock preference pane appears, turn off the checkbox (it’s open by default) for Animate Opening Applications. Turning this off now can save you thousands in therapy down the road.

FREAKY GENIE EFFECT

There’s a little trick you can pull to make the Genie effect (the little animation that takes place when you minimize a window to the Dock) even freakier (we call it the “freaky genie”). Just hold Shift before you minimize the window and it puts the Genie Effect into a “super slo-mo” mode that looks kinda cool. I say “kinda” because this effect (like the Genie Effect itself) gets old kinda quick, but people who’ve never seen it before dig it. At least at first.

MAKING ONE ACTIVE AND HIDING THE REST

If you want to make just the application you’re working on visible and hide all the other running applications including any open Finder windows just hold Option-Command and then click on the application’s icon in the Dock. This is much faster than choosing your application, going under your application’s menu, and choosing Hide Others.

SNAPPING DOCK SIZES

In a previous tip, I showed how you can resize the Dock by clicking-and-dragging on the divider line, but if you hold the Option key first and then start dragging, the Dock “snaps” to some preset sizes. Who chose these preset sizes? Probably Apple’s software engineers but some feel the presets were secretly designated by high-ranking governments officials in yet another attempt to exert more “Big –Brotherly” control over our otherwise mundane lives. Personally, I tend to think it was Apple, but hey, that’s just me.

FORCE QUITTING FROM THE DOCK

FORCE QUITTING FROM THE DOCK

If you’re running an application in Mac OS X and for some reason, it locks up or crashes, you can easily force quit the application by Control-clicking on its icon in the Dock, and a pop-up menu appears. Press the Option key, and you see the menu item called Quit change to Force Quit. Click that and it force quits the application. Also, if you’re a longtime Mac user, you might be afraid to force quit an application because back in Mac OS 9, force quitting was an absolute last resort in hopes of saving an open document. If you were lucky enough to get force quit to work without locking up the machine (believe me it was luck force quitting in Mac OS 9 and earlier usually brought the whole machine down), all you could really do was restart anyway but at least you got to save your document. Mac OS X is designed to let you force quit then continue to work, so don’t be hesitant to use this feature.

GETTING RID OF EXTRA WINDOWS WHILE YOU WORK

If you have a few Finder windows open, they can be really distracting when you’re working in another application-you always see them floating around in the background. Well, you can hide all those messy windows without ever leaving your current application, Just Control-click on the Finder icon in the Dock and choose Hide from the pop-up menu. All those windows are instantly hidden from view. Want to hide everything but those windows? Control-Option-click on the Finder icon and choose Hide Others.

WHY SOME ICONS WON’T LEAVE THE DOCK

A couple of icons live in the Dock and Apple thinks that’s exactly where they belong, so they won’t let you pull them out of the Dock. Apple figures you’re always going to need the Finder (and the Trash) and they won’t let you remove the icon of any application that is currently running (after all, if they did let you remove the icon, how would you get back to the application? It would just run forever, kind of like a Flying Dutchman). So in short, don’t waste your time trying to drag those puppies from the Dock-they’re stuck there (for your protection).

CLOSING A FINDER WINDOW IN THE DOCK

If you’ve minimized a Finder window to the Dock, you can actually close that window without having to maximize it first (saving untold time and keystrokes). Just click-and-hold on the minimized Finder window in the Dock, and choose Close from the pop-up menu. That’s it-it’s closed, just as if you had maximized it and clicked on the red Close button.

KEEPING A RUNNING APP IN THE DOCK AFTER YOU QUIT

KEEPING A RUNNING APP IN THE DOCK AFTER YOU QUIT

If you’re running an application and you say to yourself, “You know, I use this app a lot,” you can keep its icon in the Dock so next time, it’s just one click away. Just Control-click on the app’s icon in the Dock and choose Keep In Dock. Of course, there is another way. A cooler way. An “I don’t need no stinkin’ pop-up menu” way. Just click on the running application’s icon, drag it away from the Dock, pause a second, and then drag it right back. It’s really no faster, but it makes you look less pop-up menu codependent.

UNLOADING THE DOCK

If you have a few apps running and you like to keep things uncluttered and organized by minimizing document windows on the Dock, it doesn’t take long before your Dock gets pretty crowded. If that’s the case, here’s a tip that might help you bring some welcome space and order back to your Dock: When you’re switching from one application to the next, hold the Option key before you click on the new applications’ icon in the Dock. This hides all the Dock icons for minimized windows from the application you just left, and helps unclutter the Dock. When you switch back to that application later, its minimized windows reappear in the Dock.

GETTING RIGHT TO THE FILE YOU WANT

If you’ve parked a folder full of files in the Dock, you don’t have to open the folder to get to a particular file. Instead, just click-and-hold on the folder for a moment, and a pop-up list of all the files in that folder appear (that’s not the trick). Once that menu opens, on your keyboard, just press the first letter(s) of the file you want and that file is instantly highlighted-all you have to do is press Return to open the file.

FOLDERS TO ADD TO YOUR DOCK

Adding folders to your Dock can be a real timesaver, and two of the most popular folders to add to the Dock are your Home folder and your Applications folder. Another thing you might consider, rather than putting your entire Applications folder on your Dock, is to create a new folder and put in it aliases of just the applications and system add-ons (such as the Calculator, etc.) that you really use. Then, you can access these by Control-clicking on the folder in the Dock, and a pop-up list appears that looks a lot like the Apple menu from OS 9.

FREAKY MOVIE DOCK TRICK

FREAKY MOVIE DOCK TRICK

This is one of those “show off your Mac” tricks that really amaze people but outside of that I haven’t found a real use for it. You start by opening a Quick Time movie, hitting the play button and watching it for a second or two. Then, click the yellow center button in the title bar to shrink the movie to the Dock (it appears down by the Trash). Here’s the cool thing: you’ll notice the movie continues to play even while in the Dock. You can even hear the audio! Only ants can really enjoy it at this size (in fatc ants love this effect because to them, they’re seeing your movie on the “big screen”) but the naked human eye can see the movie too.

YELLOW MINIMIZE BUTTON TOO SMALL? TRY THIS?

Sometimes, hitting that tiny middle yellow button (to minimize your current window to the Dock) is tricky, especially if you’re using a Titanium PowerBook or Cinema Display set at its native resolution, in which everything is smaller than a gnat’s nose. If you’d like something bigger to aim at than that tiny yellow button, go under the Apple menu, under System Preferences and click on the Appearance icon and then click on the checkbox for Minimize when Double Clicking a Window Title Bar. Now, you can just double-click anywhere on the window’s title bar and that window immediately minimizes to the Dock, just as if you had clicked the tiny yellow button. Of course, you could skip the clicking altogether and press Command-M but that just seems like cheating, doesn’t it?

AUTOMATICALLY HIDING THE DOCK

The smaller your screen, the more important the ability to hide the Dock from view becomes (as you might imagine, this is a very popular feature for PowerBook users). Basically, with this feature active, the Dock hides off screen and only reappears when your cursor moves over the area where the Dock used to be. It kind of “pops up” so you can work in the Dock until you move away, and then it hides again. To turn this Dock feature on, go under the Apple menu, under Dock and choose Turn Hiding On. If you think you might use this function often, you’ll probably want to memorize the Turn Hiding On/Off shortcut which is Option-Command-D.

EJECTING MEDIA FROM THE DOCK

Although Panther makes ejecting removable media (like CDs, DVDs and FireWire or USB drives) incredibly easy thanks to the little Eject button that appears  beside media icon in the Sidebar of every Finder window, many longtime Mac OS X users still prefer to use the Dock for ejecting media (it’s called “old dog/new tricks” syndrome). If you’re one of those (an old dog), you can drag the disc (or drive) icon to the Trash icon in your Dock, and as you approach the Dock, you see the Trash icon change into an Eject button. When you drop your CD/DVD/FireWire drive icon on the Eject button it erases the contents of your drive. Kidding! Just a joke. Actually, of course, it ejects your disc/CD/DVD or unmounts your FireWire /USB drive.

THE GIANT APP SWITCHER DOES MORE THAN JUST SWITCH

THE GIANT APP SWITCHER DOES MORE THAN JUST SWITCH

In a previous tip, I mentioned that holding the Command key, then pressing the Tab key, brings up a giant Dock-like window with huge icons in the center of your screen, where you can cycle through your open apps (using the tab key, the Arrow keys or clicking with your mouse). But, there’s more to it than that-you can quit any currently running app by cycling to it, then pressing the letter “q” (don’t let go of the Command key; keep holding it while you press the letter “q”). Still holding the Command key, press “h” to hide the highlighted app.

THE HIDDEN DOCK PREFERENCES SHORTCUT

A quick way to get to the Dock’s preferences is to go under the Apple menu, under Dock, and choose Dock Preferences, but I think you’re ready for the absolute fastest way there is to access the Dock prefs. This tip is so shrouded in Dock secrecy, I don’t think even Apple knows it exists (of course they do, but I doubt they’d admit it without administering some sort of “truth serum”). Just Control-click on the divider line on the right side of the Dock and a pop-up list of Dock preferences is right there, just once click away.

INSTANT DOCK RESIZE

If you want to make the Dock larger o smaller, there’s a slider in the Dock preference pane, nut you don’t have to use it. Ever. That’s because you can simply put your cursor right over the divider line on the right side of the Dock (the one that separate your apps from your folders and Trash) and your cursor changes  to a horizontal bar with two arrows: one facing up and once facing down. When it does that just click-and-drag your cursor upward to make the Dock bigger or downward to shrink it.

FOR THOSE WHO DON’T WANT TO “HIDE”

If the Dock seems to be in your way a lot but you don’t like the whole “hiding –the –Dock” thing try setting the Dock to its smallest size (so you can barely notice it’s there at all). Then, turn on Magnification and set it to a pretty large size, so when you scroll your mouse over the tiny Dock, the icons jump up in size so you can see what’s what. You can turn Magnification on by going under the Apple menu under Dock and choosing Turn Magnification On.

DRAGGING FROM THE DOCK, NOT TO IT

DRAGGING FROM THE DOCK, NOT TO IT

We’re always talking about dragging files and folders to the Dock, but in Panther, you can now drag from the Dock (out to your desktop or to an open window) by first holding the Command key, then dragging. Want to make an alias of a Dock icon? Just hold Command-Option and drag the docked file to the window you want and it creates an alias. In fact, most of the things you can do within a window (copying a file, creating an alias, etc.) can be done from the Dock , as long as you start with the Command key.

ACCESSING SYSTEM PREFERENCES DIRECTLY FROM THE DOCK

Want a quick way to access your System Preferences? The next you have the System Preferences open, don’t close or quit; instead, press Command-H to hide the preferences. Now, when you want a particular System Preferences, just click-and-hold on the System Preferences icon in the Dock for a moment and a pop-up list of your System Preferences appears. Choose the one you want from the list, and that panel then appears on screen. Very convenient.

KEEPING AN EYE ON THINGS, LIVE FROM THE DOCK

Do you like to know what’s going on “under the hood” of your Mac (stuff like your CPU usage, disk activity, memory usage-you know, total geek stuff)? If you do you can keep an eye on things right from within the Dock using Mac OS X’s Activity Monitor. It’s found in the Applications folder, under utilities. Once you find it, drag it into your Dock icon then click on it to launch it. Once it’s launched, click-and-hold for a moment on its Dock icon menu item. This is where you choose which activity you want to monitor from its live Dock icon. Choose it, and a live graph appears in the Dock that’s updated dynamically as you work.

THE ONE-CLICK TRICK TO MOVING THE DOCK

THE ONE-CLICK TRICK TO MOVING THE DOCK

So you’re working in a program like Final Cut Pro or iMovie which takes up very vertical inch of the screen and when you go to adjust something near bottom the Dock keeps popping up. You could move the Dock to where it’s anchored on the left or right side of the screen but that just feels weird. But what if you could move it temporarily to the left or right and then get it back to the bottom when you close Final Cut Pro, in just once click? Here’s how: Hold the Shift key, click directly on the Dock’s divider line (on the far right side of the Dock), and drag the Dock to the left or right side of your screen. It moves over to the side. Then, once you quit Final Cut, just Shift-click on that divider line and slam it back to the bottom (dag it back to the bottom). A draggable Dock-is that cool or what!

WHAT’S WITH THE QUESTION MARK?

What does it mean if you see a large question mark icon in the Dock? I have no idea. That’s why there’s a question mark there. No one knows, not even Apple (kidding). What it means is that you deleted the original of whatever was in the Dock. For example, if you put a Dock icon for Microsoft Word in the Dock, but then deleted Word from your hard drive, the next time you click on that icon in the Dock, you’d see a question mark. So what do you do? Just drag it right off the Dock and it’s gone forever. No questions asked.

CHANGING APPS IN A BIG WAY

In Panther, if you don’t feel like moving your cursor all the way down to the Dock to change applications, you can easily rotate an open application to the front by pressing and holding Command tab. This brings up a large transparent Dock-like window in the center of your screen, with huge icons showing just your open applications. To switch to another application, keep holding the Command key and press either the Tab key, the Arrow keys on your keyboard, or click on the icons with your mouse. Also, you can press the Home key to jump to the application on the far left, or the End key to jump to the app on the far right. Want to cruise through the applications in this window in reverse (from right to left?) Just press Shift-Command-Tab.

THE TWO-BUTTON MOUSE EXPOSÉ EXPERIENCE

THE TWO-BUTTON MOUSE EXPOSÉ EXPERIENCE

If you’re using a two-button mouse, you can access a new world of Exposé functionality that dare not speak its name. For  now my friends, you can use the second mouse button to invoke your favorite Exposé mode. Have you got more than two buttons? Four perhaps? The, go under the Apple menu, under System Preferences, and click on Exposé. If your “rich-socialite multi-button mouse” is connected, you’ll see a new Mouse section has been added to your Exposé preferences that enables you to assign various Exposé functions to your various buttons.

ACCESSING ONCE-HIDDEN WINDOW FEATURES

One of the many little tricks Mac OS X “power users” had up their sleeve was that they used contextual pop-up menus to access features and functions that many users didn’t even know existed. One reason for its obscurity was that it employed the very least-used of all Macintosh keyboard modifier keys—the Control key. To get to these contextual menus, you’d Control-click on a file, a folder, a window, etc., and up would pop this list of things you could do. (You could also right-click a two-button mouse, but of course, Apple hadn’t made a two-button mouse.) Well, Apple must have realized that only a privileged few were taking advantage of these contextual menus, so they added an Action button in the default toolbar of Finder windows. Click on a file, click on this Action button, and you get a contextual menu of “hidded” commands. Feel the power!

MOVING THAT WINDOW FROM ANY SIDE

If you’ve used a previous version of Mac OS X (a non-Panther version), you probably got used to the fact that you could only move a Finder window by clicking on the title bar—there was no place to click and move a window on the sides or bottom. In Panther, one of the advantages of the new brushed metal interface is that it has thin metal sides, so now you can grab a window by the top sides, or bottom to move it where you want it.

SWITCHING APPS WHITHIN EXPOSÉ

Once you have Exposé invoked (you pressed either F9 or F10), you can toggle through your open applications and Finder windows by pressing the Tab key. Press the Tab key once, and the next open application, and its miniaturized windows, comes to front. Press Tab again, it goes to the next open app. Want the previous app? Press Shift-Tab.

QUICKLY CYCLE AMONG WINDOW VIEWS

You can quickly cycle among the three window views (Icon, List, or Column) by pressing Command-1, Command-2, and Command-3, respectively (which means, press them with respect).

NARROWING YOUR TOOLBAR SEARCHES

If you use the Search field that appears in the top-right corner of the Finder window’s toolbar, you have a little more control over your search than you might think. For example, if you click-and-hold on the little Magnifying Glass icon that appears at the left of the field, a pop-up menu appears, enabling you to choose exactly where you want to search, potentially speeding up your search by letting you narrow (or expand) where you want the Search field to search.

ONE-CLICK LONG-FILE NAME FIX

If you’re working in a window set to Column view, you’re going to run into this all the time—files with long names have the end of their names cut off from view, because the column isn’t wide enough. That doesn’t sound like that big of a problem, until you start working with more descriptive file names. Luckily, there’s a quick fix: Just double-click on the little tab at the bottom of the vertical column divider bar, and the column expands just enough so you can see even the longest file name of any file in that column.

EXPOSÉ BUTTON TIPS

In an earlier tip, you can invoke the cool Exposé feature by pressing F9, F10, or F11. For example, if you press and release the F9 key, Exposé freezes the thumbnails in place, and continues to freeze them until you either click on a window or press F9 again. This is ideal for when you’re not sure which window you want so you need time to look around. However, if you press and hold F9, Exposé only stays active as long as you hold the button down (or until you click a window, whichever comes first), which is perfect for when you just want to look at something quickly, or you know exactly which window you want to jump to.

EXPOSÉ MOUSE TIPS

If you have a multi-button mouse, it opens a new world of Exposé functionality, and that Exposé responds to how you press the keys that invoke it. Here’s a cool Exposé tip that lets you switch from one application to another with just one click (rather than two). Click whichever mouse button you assigned to the F9 function (all windows), then keep holding down the mouse button and release it over the window of the application you want to switch to—it’s super fast, because it’s just one click.