Easy Mac OS X Lion - Kate Binder [5]
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Getting Help
Macs are very easy to use—that’s probably one of the reasons you own one in the first place—and, of course, you’ve got this book to help you out when you do get stuck. But we don’t have room here to cover everything you might need to know about how your Mac works, so it’s a good thing that Apple has included its Help Center right in OS X Lion. A quick trip to the Help menu, maybe a search for a few relevant words, and you’ve got step-by-step instructions for any task that’s puzzling you.
In the Finder, click the Help menu.
Enter the words you want to search for in the Search field.
Choose a topic from the resulting list.
In the Help Center window, click Show to reveal details about the topics covered.
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Tip: At a Loss for Words
If you’re not sure how to word the topic for which you want to search, click Help Center in the Help menu to open the Help Center’s main screen. Then you can click through a table of contents to see what help is available.
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Tip: You Have Options
Click the gear menu at the top of the Help Center window to see options such as printing and changing the text size.
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Moving and Resizing Windows
Mac OS X is full of windows: document windows, folder windows, more windows than you can count. The Finder shows you the contents of each folder or disk in a window. Each of your open documents—a picture, a text file, a web page, and so on—appears in a window, too. All these windows, whether they belong to the Finder or to the program in which you’re viewing or editing a document, have certain features in common. Knowing how to get windows to go where you want them is an important skill you’ll use every hour of your Mac’s life.
To move a window so you can see what’s underneath it, click its title bar and drag the window to a new position.
Click and drag either side, the bottom, or a corner of a window to change the window’s size.
View the remaining contents of a window by clicking and dragging the scrollbars.
To close a window, click the red button at the left end of the window’s title bar.
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Note: More to Windows Than Meets the Eye
Keep reading for more about wrangling windows. The next task shows how to minimize and maximize your windows, and the results might not be quite what you’re expecting.
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Minimizing and Maximizing Windows
Although windows are a great way to look inside folders, they never seem to open at just the right size for what you’re trying to see. Getting the most from your windows requires learning to maximize their size when you need them and minimize them out of sight when you don’t.
Click the + button at the left end of a window’s title bar to size the window so that it shows its entire contents—or as much as will fit on the screen.
Click the + button again to return the window to its previous size.
Click the – button at the left end of a window’s title bar to shrink the window downward into the right side of the Dock.
Click the window’s thumbnail image in the Dock to put it back onto the desktop.
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Note: Window Identification
Each minimized window in the right side of the Dock has a small icon attached to its lower-right corner that identifies the program to which the window belongs. Folder and disk windows belong to the Finder, so they have a Finder logo.
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Note: The Wonders of Windows
The Dock continuously updates the appearance of minimized document windows. For example, if you minimize a movie window while the movie’s playing, you can monitor the movie’s progress while its window is in the Dock.
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Managing Multiple Windows
By combining the features of Spaces (see the next task) and Exposé, and then adding a few tricks, Lion’s new Mission Control gives you a handy way to cut through window clutter instantly, no matter what program you’re using. And if you tend to use a lot of programs at the same time, you’ll definitely find these little magic tricks very useful. To