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.