Chapter 2
In This Chapter
Restarting, sleeping, and shutting down OS X
Using windows
Using menus
Recognizing and selecting icons
Using the keyboard
Running applications
Switching between programs
Opening, saving, and quitting an application
As the folks in Cupertino will tell you, “It’s all about the graphics.” And they’re right, of course. OS X is a highly visual operating system, and using it without a mouse, trackball, or trackpad is like building Hoover Dam with a pocketknife. (And not a particularly sharp pocketknife, either.) Therefore, most of this chapter requires you to firmly grasp the little rodent, roll the ball, or finesse a trackpad. I introduce you to little graphical bits such as icons and menus, and you discover how to open windows that can display anything from the contents of a document to the contents of your hard drive.
On the other hand, any true Macintosh power user will tell you that the keyboard is still a useful piece of hardware. Because I want you to be a bona fide, well-rounded OS X power user, I also demonstrate the key combinations that can save you time, effort, and possible tennis elbow from all that mouse-wrangling.
Finally, I lead you through the basic training that you need to run your programs: how to start them, how to open and save documents, and how to quit an application as gracefully as Fred Astaire on his best day.
First things first. As the guy on the rocket sled probably yelled, “This is neat, but how do you stop it?” Call ’em The Big Four — Sleep, Restart, Shut Down, and Log Out are the OS X commands that you use when you need to take care of business away from your computer. All four appear on the friendly Apple menu () at the top-left corner of your Desktop (as shown in friendly Figure 2-1).
Each option produces a different reaction from your Mac:
To awaken your slumbering supercomputer, just click the mouse or press any key on the keyboard. MacBook owners can put their laptops to sleep by simply closing the computer; they can wake the beast by opening it back up again.
The Power Nap feature in Yosemite allows your recent-model Mac to take care of business, even while it’s in Sleep mode, because system updates are downloaded, iCloud Drive data and documents are synchronized, and Time Machine continues to back up your hard drive.
“And in the beginning, there was the window.” Like with older Mac OSes, most of what you’ll do in OS X occurs within these fancy frames. And, as you might imagine, a number of controls are at your disposal, which you can use to control the size, shape, and appearance of these potent portals. In this section, I — well, to be blunt, I do windows. (No squeegee jokes, if you please.)
Windows are generally opened automatically by an application when you first run it, or it needs to display a document, or by OS X itself, such as when Finder opens a window to display the contents of your hard drive. Finder, by the way, is the “foundation” application that OS X Yosemite runs to display the OS X menus and windows.
Some programs even let you open new windows on the fly; for example, Figure 2-3 shows a window in its purest form: a new Finder window. To display this window on your own Mac, choose File⇒New Finder Window, click the Finder icon in the Dock, or press +N. From here, you can reach your files on your Mac or even venture to the Internet.
When you’re finished with a document or you no longer need a window open, close it to free that space on your Desktop. To close a window in OS X, move your pointer over the Close button; it’s the first of the three circular buttons at the top-left corner of the window (refer to Figure 2-3). An X appears on the button when you’re in the zone. When the X appears, just click.
Most Mac applications don’t want you closing a window willy-nilly if you’ve changed the contents without saving them. For example, try to close a document window in Word without saving the file first. The program asks you for confirmation before it closes the window containing your Great American Novel. Most programs also have a Close command on their File menu. (Here’s another indicator: Most programs display a black dot in the center of the program’s Close button to indicate that there are unsaved changes.)
Often, more stuff is in a document or more files are on your hard drive than you can see in the space available for a window. Guess that means it’s time to delete stuff. No, no, just joking! You don’t have to take such drastic measures to see more in a window.
Just use the scroll bars that you see in Figure 2-4 to move through the contents of the window. By default, scroll bars don’t appear until you move your pointer close to them. You click the scroll box and drag it. For the uninitiated, that means clicking the darker portion of the bar and holding down the mouse button while you move the mouse in the desired direction. (Or, with a trackpad, drag two fingers in the desired direction.) Alternatively, you can click in the empty area above or below the scroll box to scroll pages one at a time.
Depending on the type of application that you’re using, you might be able to scroll a window with your arrow keys as well — or perhaps use the Page Up and Page Down keys to move through a window.
The multitalented Figure 2-4 also displays another control that you can use with a window: the Minimize button. When you minimize a window, you eliminate it from your Desktop and store it safely on the Dock — that strip of icons that appears along the bottom (or the side) of your OS X Desktop. A minimized window appears as a miniature icon on the Dock by default, so you can keep an eye on it (so to speak). Figure 2-5 illustrates a minimized window from Safari, which is displaying my website at www.mlcbooks.com. To minimize a window, move your mouse pointer over the second of the three buttons at the top-left corner of the window — a minus sign appears on the Minimize button — and click.
When you’re ready to display the window again on your Desktop — restoring the window — simply click the thumbnail icon representing the window on the Dock, and OS X automagically returns it to its former size and location.
By the way, some — note that I said some — applications continue to run when minimized, whereas others simply stop or pause until you return them to the Desktop. Such is the crazy world we live in.
Zooming windows has a kind of Flash Gordon sound to it, don’t you think? It’s nothing quite that exciting — no red tights or laser guns — still, when you’re trying to view a larger portion of a document, zooming is a good thing because it does one of these things:
The Zoom/Full-Screen button can even be disabled by an application that doesn’t want you to muck about with the window; for example, I own some games that don’t allow zooming, and the System Preferences window has a disabled Zoom/Full-Screen button.
To zoom a window, move your pointer over the third button at the top-left corner of the window. Again, refer to Figure 2-4 (in the preceding section), which struts its stuff and illustrates the position. (Man, that is one versatile figure.) A double-arrow icon appears on the Zoom/Full-Screen button. Click to expand your horizons to full-screen, or hold down the Option key while clicking to zoom the window to maximum size.
If you’re wondering what those tiny icons are at the top of many OS X application windows, I won’t leave you in suspense: They’re called toolbar buttons. A toolbar is a strip of icons in a window (usually across the top) that you click to perform common commands, such as changing the display format or printing the current document. (The Finder window toolbar in Figure 2-4, for example, features icons to move Back and Forward, among others.) You encounter more toolbar technology throughout the book.
In contrast to the rather permanent windows in your home, you can cart a window to another portion of the Desktop. Typically, you do this when you’re using more than one application and you need to see the contents of multiple windows. To grab a window and make off with it, click the window’s title bar — the strip at the top of the window that usually bears a document or application name — and drag the window to the new location. Then release the mouse button to plant the window firmly in the new location.
I talk about Mission Control and Spaces later, in the section “Switching ’Twixt Programs with Aplomb.” Mission Control helps you organize a large number of open windows on your Desktop. You can use it to display all open application windows so you can pick the one you want or display all the windows opened by a specific application. Another Mission Control feature — Spaces — allows you to create custom virtual desktops. (Truly cool.) Each of your Spaces desktops can contain a different set of application windows that you use for different tasks!
Next, consider how to change the width or height of your window. To change the dimensions of a window to your exact specifications, move your pointer over any edge of the window and then click and hold down the button to drag until the window is the size that you prefer.
Before I move on to other graphical wonders of OS X, it’s important that you master how to switch between windows on your Desktop. First, remember this old Norwegian saying (or is it one of Mark’s Maxims?):
Only one can be active at one time.
What our Oslo friends are communicating is that only one window can be active at any time. The active window appears on top of other windows, and it’s the one that you can edit by typing or by moving your mouse. (It also sports colored/darkened Close, Minimize, and Zoom/Full-Screen buttons, or it fills the entire screen if you’re working in full-screen mode.) Other windows you have opened might be minimized, as I describe earlier in the section, “Minimizing and restoring windows,” or they can be inactive (mere ghosts of themselves) and remain on your Desktop. OS X dims the controls for inactive windows so you can tell they’re hanging around but can’t be used at the moment. (Note that both active and inactive windows can contain Finder Tabs, which I discuss in the upcoming sidebar.) Figure 2-6 illustrates a number of open windows, with the iTunes window active.
I know you’re going to get tired of hearing me say this, but here I go again: Certain applications, such as iTunes and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) clients, continue to run while their windows are inactive. Some programs, however, stop or pause until you make their window active.
And how do you switch to — activate — a different window in OS X? Again, Mission Control allows you to activate another window, but if the window is currently visible, you can simply click any part of that window. I generally click the window’s title bar if it’s visible, but any part of the inactive window will do. (You can also right-click the application’s icon on the Dock and choose the desired window from the menu.) The window you click leaps like a proud stallion to the fore, and the previously active window now skulks in the background.
Next, I move on to menu control in OS X. Menus are handy drop-down controls that allow you to select commands that are grouped logically. For example, an application’s File menu usually allows you to create or open a document, save a document to disk, or print a document. To open a menu, click the desired menu group name on the bar at the top of the screen and then click the desired menu option from the extended menu.
Figure 2-7 illustrates the Safari menu. Submenus are designated by right-arrow icons. When you move your mouse pointer over a submenu command, you get another set of even more specific menu commands. In this case, the Services submenu command displays commands, such as Make New Sticky Note and Look Up in Dictionary.
OS X also provides another type of menu: contextual. A contextual (or right-click, or shortcut) menu appears when you right-click certain items, revealing commands that relate specifically to those items. (Unfortunately, the items that sport contextual menus vary from application to application, so check the program’s documentation before you spend countless hours right-clicking everything onscreen.) The same items in the right-click menu appear when you select an item and then click the Action pop-up menu, which looks like a mechanical gear. You can also hold down the Control key while clicking an item to display the contextual menu (or tap it with two fingers, if you’re using a trackpad).
Many commands in menus have keyboard shortcuts. Because I hold forth on this subject in the upcoming section, “Keyboard Shortcuts for the True Power User,” I hold off describing those shortcuts here.
Icons are more than little pictures. They’re, well, … I guess they’re little pictures. However, these graphical WUDs (that’s short for Wonderful User Devices) are really representations of the components of your OS X system, and therefore they deserve a section of their own.
OS X uses icons to represent the various hardware devices of your computer, including the following:
You get the idea. Just double-click a hardware icon to display the folders and files that it contains, as you do with your hard drive and a disc loaded in your DVD drive.
Generally, you encounter hardware icons only on your Desktop, in Finder windows, or in a device list or source list in applications such as iTunes and iPhoto. Figure 2-9 illustrates some of the hardware icons that live in my system.
Program and application icons are the fancy ones, folks. Most applications have their own custom icons, and double-clicking one typically whisks you on your way. OS X also includes a generic icon or two for applications that don’t include their own custom icon. Figure 2-10 illustrates a number of my favorite program icons from all sorts of OS X applications.
Running a program in OS X can be as simple as double-clicking the application icon — more on this later, in the section “Houston, We’re Go to Launch Programs.”
Your internal, external, and iCloud drives contain many thousands of individual files, and the Big X tries to make it as easy as possible to visually identify which application owns which file. Therefore, most applications use a special icon to indicate their data files. For example, Figure 2-11 illustrates several documents and data files created by a range of applications. Some cheeky applications even use more than one icon to differentiate among different file types, such as documents and templates in Microsoft Word.
A number of generic file icons indicate text files, including RTF (Rich Text Format) documents and PDF (Portable Document Format) documents, which use the Adobe Acrobat format.
Folders have a 3D look in OS X — some applications even customize their folder icon.
Major system folders — including Applications, Library, System, Users, Downloads, and Utilities — sport distinctive folder icons in Yosemite that help identify their contents.
To open a folder in OS X, just double-click the folder. (Alternatively, you can click it once to select it and press +O.) Discover more about how to control the look of folder icons in Book II, Chapter 1.
Essentially, an alias is a link to something else on your system. For example, an Adobe Photoshop alias can run Photoshop just as the program icon can, but the alias takes up only a scant few bytes on your hard drive. (If you’re a switcher who’s just crossed over from the Windows Wilderness, think shortcut.) The alias file yells at OS X: “Hey, the human wants you to run this or open that thing over there!”
An alias is a strange beast. Although it might look like a standard icon, upon closer examination, you’ll notice that an alias icon sports a tiny curved arrow at the base. (In addition, the word alias often appears at the end of the icon name.) Figure 2-12 has roped in a variety of aliases for your enjoyment.
Aliases come in handy for a number of reasons:
If the original file no longer exists, its alias no longer works either. However, OS X is sharp enough to automatically “fix” an alias if you rename or move the original file, pointing the alias to the new location (as long as the original file remains on the same volume). Slick!
You’ll often find yourself performing different actions on one icon — or a number of icons at one time. For example, you can copy or move files from one location on your hard drive to another or delete a group of files that you no longer need. (The idea of drag-and-drop file management using icons originated on the Mac, but I wait until Chapter 3 of this minibook to describe these operations in detail.) In this section, I focus on the basics of selecting one or more icons to specify the files and folders you want to use for whatever you’re going to do next.
First, here are the various ways that you can select a single icon for an impending action:
To select a gaggle of icons for an action, use one of these methods:
You can also select multiple adjacent icons by clicking the first item to highlight it and holding down the Shift key while clicking the last icon in the series that you want to select.
Just selecting an icon doesn’t launch or do anything. You’re just marking your territory.
Virtually all OS X applications have their own keyboard shortcuts — a ten-cent term for a key combination that performs the same operation as a menu command or a toolbar button. Although the mouse or trackpad might seem the easier path when controlling your Mac, it’s not always the fastest. Those hardy souls who venture to learn common keyboard shortcuts can zip through a spreadsheet or warp through a complex outline at speeds that no mere rodent-wrangler could ever hope to attain.
With that in mind — and with the goal of “pumping you up” into a power user — I hereby present the most common keyboard shortcuts for the Big X in Table 2-1. I’ve also sprinkled other keyboard shortcuts liberally through the book when I discuss other applications, but these combinations are the classics that appear virtually everywhere.
Table 2-1 Common OS X Keyboard Shortcuts
Combination Key |
Location |
Action |
+A |
Edit menu |
Selects all (works in Finder, too) |
+C |
Edit menu |
Copies the highlighted item to the Clipboard |
+H |
Application menu |
Hides the application |
+M |
Window menu |
Minimizes the active window to the Dock (works in Finder, too) |
+O |
File menu |
Opens an existing document, file, or folder (works in Finder, too) |
+P |
File menu |
Prints the current document |
+Q |
Application menu |
Exits the application |
+T |
File menu |
Opens a new Finder Tab with the currently selected location |
+V |
Edit menu |
Pastes the contents of the Clipboard at the current cursor position |
+X |
Edit menu |
Cuts the highlighted item to the Clipboard |
+Z |
Edit menu |
Reverses the effect of the last action you took |
+? |
Help menu |
Displays the Help system (works in Finder, too) |
+Tab |
Finder |
Switches between open applications |
+` |
Finder |
Switches between open windows in the current application |
+Option+M |
Finder |
Minimizes all Finder windows to the Dock |
+Option+W |
Finder |
Closes all Finder windows |
By the way, I should mention that many keyboard combinations use three keys instead of just two (and a few even use four). When these shortcuts appear in a menu, they look something akin to Egyptian hieroglyphics, but you need hold down only the first two keys simultaneously and press the third key. Common “strange” key symbols that you’ll see in both Finder and most applications are shown in Table 2-2.
Table 2-2 Arcane Key Symbols
Key |
Symbol |
Control |
|
Command |
|
Del |
|
Option |
|
Shift |
The next stop on your introductory tour of OS X is the starting point for your applications. Although Finder is useful, you’ll likely want to actually do something with your Mac as well.
You can launch an application from your internal or external drives by doing any of the following:
You can open documents directly from Yosemite’s new Internet-based iCloud Drive as well — naturally, you need an active Internet connection to access iCloud Drive. To display the contents of your iCloud Drive, open a Finder window and click the iCloud Drive entry in the Sidebar at the left of the window. Figure 2-15 illustrates the contents of my iCloud Drive. To open a document or an application, just double-click it as usual.
After you load a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM, you can display its contents by double-clicking the disc icon that appears on your Desktop. A Finder window opens and shows the files that reside on the disc.
After you locate the application you want to run on the disc (or the document you want to load), you can launch it by double-clicking it, or by selecting it and pressing +O.
You might think that juggling multiple applications leads to confusion, fatigue, and dry mouth, but luckily OS X includes a number of features that make it easy to jump between programs that are running on your Mac. Use any of these methods to move from open application to application:
For those power users who often work with a passel of applications, allow me to turn your attention to one of the sassiest features in Yosemite: Mission Control. Figure 2-16 shows off the Mission Control screen.
Astute observers will notice that the application menu bar also changes to match the now-active application.
Ah, but what if you want to switch to a different set of applications? For example, suppose that you’re slaving away at your pixel-pushing job — say, designing a magazine cover with Pages. Your page design desktop also includes Photoshop and Aperture, which you switch between often using one of the techniques I just described. Suddenly, however, you realize you need to schedule a meeting with others in your office, using Calendar, and you want to check your email in Apple Mail. What to do?
Well, you could certainly open Launchpad and launch those two applications on top of your graphics applications and then minimize or close them. But with Mission Control’s Spaces feature, you can press the Control+← or Control+→ sequences to switch to a different “communications” Desktop, with Calendar and Apple Mail windows already open and in your favorite positions! Figure 2-16 illustrates multiple Spaces Desktops at the top of the Mission Control screen.
When you’ve finished setting up your meeting and answering any important email, simply press Control+← or Control+→ again to switch back to your “graphics” Desktop, where all your work is exactly as you left it! (And yes, Virginia, Spaces does indeed work with full-screen applications.)
Now imagine that you’ve also created a custom “music” Desktop for GarageBand and iTunes, or perhaps you paired Photoshop Elements and iPhoto together as a “graphics” Desktop. See why everyone’s so thrilled with Yosemite? (Let’s see Windows 8 do that out of the box.)
To create a new Desktop for use in Spaces, click the Launchpad icon on the Dock and then click the Mission Control icon. Now you can set up new Spaces Desktops. Move your pointer to the top right of the Mission Control screen, and click the Add button (with the plus sign) that appears. (If you’ve relocated your Dock to the right side of the screen, the Add button shows up in the upper-left corner instead.) Spaces creates a new empty Desktop thumbnail. Switch to the new Desktop by clicking the thumbnail at the top of the Mission Control screen, and then open those applications you want to include. (Alternatively, you can drag the applications from Mission Control onto the desired Desktop thumbnail.) That’s all there is to it!
To switch an application window between Spaces Desktops, drag the window to the edge of the Desktop and hold it there. Spaces automatically moves the window to the next Desktop. (Applications can also be dragged between Desktops within the Mission Control screen.) You can also delete a Desktop from the Mission Control screen. Just hover your pointer over the offending Spaces thumbnail, and click the Delete button (with the X) that appears.
Almost all OS X applications open and save documents in the same way, whether you’re creating a presentation with Keynote or expressing your cinematic side with iMovie. Therefore, I take a moment to outline the common procedures for opening and saving documents. Believe me, you’ll perform these two rituals dozens of times a week, so no nodding off.
First, the simple way to load a document: Double-click that document in a Finder window, and … well, that’s it. (This is my preferred method because I’m an ALT — short for Admitted Lazy Techno-wizard — who would rather use complex hand movements to pour myself another Diet Coke.)
To open a document the hard way — from inside an application — here’s the plan:
Your OS X program is likely to display the attractive Open dialog that you see in Figure 2-17.
You can also open files that have been saved to your iCloud Drive directly from the Open dialog; click the iCloud Drive heading in the Sidebar at the left side of the Open dialog to display documents in your Drive that you can open in this application. (Many applications also include a named folder in your iCloud Drive, making it easier to work with files under both Yosemite and iOS 8 devices.) Figure 2-17 illustrates the iCloud Drive face of the Open dialog.
The pop-up menu allows you to jump directly to common locations — such as the Desktop, your Home folder, and your Documents folder — as well as places that you’ve recently accessed (Recent Places).
If the target folder isn’t in your pop-up menu, it’s time to use the Open dialog Sidebar, where your hard drives, DVD drives, and network locations hang out.
You can quickly locate a document by clicking in the Search box at the upper right of the Open dialog and typing a portion of the filename or a phrase contained in the document.
If you’re using Column view, you’ll note that the right column(s) changes to show you the contents of the item you just clicked. In this way, you can cruise through successive folders to find that elusive document. (This time-consuming process is derisively called “drilling,” hence, the importance of using Recent Items, or dragging files, locations, and applications into the Sidebar at the left of Finder.)
To save a document, follow these steps:
If you’ve previously saved this document, your application should immediately overwrite the existing document with the new copy, and you get to return to work … end of story. If you haven’t saved this document, the program displays a Save dialog that’s usually similar to the Open dialog; it generally has a few more options, however, so stay frosty.
Often, you can use a default name provided by the thoughtful folks who developed the software. Note that you might be given the chance to save the document in one of several formats. For example, a word-processing application might allow you to save a document in RTF, Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and even bargain-basement text format. (Typically, I don’t change the format unless I specifically need to change it.)
If I had a twisted and warped sense of humor, I’d simply tell you to quit applications by pulling your Mac’s power cord from the wall socket. (Luckily, I don’t.) For a safer and saner way to exit an application, use one of these methods:
You can also click the Close button on the application window. Note, however, that this method doesn’t always completely close down the application. For example, Safari stays running even if you close the browser window. In general, if the application works in a single window (such as System Preferences), closing the window also quits the application.