CLOSING MULTIPLE WINDOWS

CLOSING MULTIPLE WINDOWS

You can close all of your open desktop windows by either Option-clicking on any window’s Close button, or pressing Option-Command W.

CONTROLLING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DOUBLE-CLICK A TITLE BAR

If you want to minimize all of your open windows, Option-double-click on any title bar. As cool as this sounds, this “double click to minimize” feature drives some people crazy, because they’re constantly minimizing windows when they just meant to move them. If that sounds like you, go to the System Preferences, under Appearance, and turn off Minimize when Double Clicking a Window Title Bar.

WINDOW HOUSEKEEPING TIPS

If it looks as if someone tossed a grenade into your Finder window, scattering your icons everywhere with seemingly no rhyme or reason, you need an icon housekeeper. You have two different “housekeeping” choices, but once you make your choice, your windows almost straighten themselves. (1) Make sure your window is in Icon view, and then go under the View menu, choose Show View Options, and click on Snap to Grid. Now, when you move an icon around, it snaps to an invisible grid, which helps keep things organized as you work. (2) If you’ve got a “Monica Gellar” complex about keeping things in order, instead of choosing Snap to Grid, turn on the checkbox for Keep Arranged By, and select Name from the popup menu just below it. This snaps your files and folder icons to a grid alphabetically from left to right, top to bottom neatly in row. Any time you move a file, create a folder, add a new folder, it automatically “straightens itself up”.

SAVING TIME WHEN CHANGING VIEWS OF MULTIPLE WINDOWS

Back in previous versions of Mac OS, every time you wanted to adjust the View Options for a window, you had to open the View Options dialog. So, if you wanted to adjust 10 windows, you had to open and close View Options 10 times. It was mind-numbing. Now, in Mac OS X, you can leave the View Options dialog box open the whole time, and adjust as many windows as you want. You can click on the window whose settings you want to see in the View Options, make your changes, close that Finder window, then click on the next window and make changes there-all without ever closing the View Options window. The View Options window always stays in front.

THE WINDOW NAVIGATION TOOL BORROWED FROM PHOTOSHOP

If you use Photoshop, you’re probably familiar with one of it’s tools called the Hand tool that lets you move the image around by clicking-and-dragging within in the image. Well, believe it or not, Mac OS X has very similar tool. While in Icon or List view, just hold Option-Command and click within an open space in your window and you can move up/down and left/right in any window that has scroll bars.