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.