Mac Kindergarten

If one screen is not enough for you, then just go out and buy another monitor! What!?

Don’t worry, just kidding…

With Mac OS X Leopard, Apple introduces a feature called “Spaces”. The idea is to give you multiple, (virtual) desktops on only one screen (cool, saves you money).

Setup

To access Spaces, just click on its icon in the Dock.

Mac OS X asks you if you want to set up Spaces. Oh yeah, definitely! So, you’re taken to the Spaces Preferences.

First of all, enable Spaces.

You see, there is a number of things, you can set up. From an icon in the menu bar (to indicate the space you are currently in) to keyboard shortcuts to change the current space (yeah, keyboard shortcuts!)

You can assign certain applications to certain spaces. This is handy, if you, for example, want to make a space for all your internet applications such as Safari (browser), Mail and Adium (Instant Messaging). So no matter which space you currently are in, the application always starts in the space you assign it to.

By setting it to “Every Space” the application is present in every space.

Keyboard shortcuts

You can get an overview of all Spaces by hitting the F8-key, showing you a birds-eye view of all your spaces.

Finally, you can set keyboard shortcuts, to directly switch or access a certain space. The “^” symbol is the symbol used for the “ctrl” key on your Mac keyboard. In the default setup, hold down the “ctrl” key while you press one of the numbers from 1-4 to access a space directly.
By holding down “ctrl” and pressing the arrow keys you can switch around the spaces as well.

One more thing …

When you are in birds-eye view (i.e. you pressed F8) you can re-arrange your windows, by dragging them around with the mouse.

Hitting the C-key collects all visible windows (not those you have hidden, as shown yesterday) in Space 1, so you can sort them out, easily.

As with everything else: Just go along, try it out and leave a comment on how you like it.

In the default configuration, the Dock at the bottom of the screen is quite big. This is good, if you have a hard time seeing and don’t want to reach for those glasses all the time.

However, it also takes up some screen space. So we will make it a bit smaller and we will show you, that there is still an option for all those out there, who would really need glasses (but what’s a “would really need” worth, eh?)

First, access the System Preferences through the Apple menu.

In System Preferences, select Dock to get the options for customizing your Dock.

You see, you can adjust the size or the position of your Dock (note, that the 3D effect goes away, if you have your Dock on the sides).

Magnification is interesting, you can have a small Dock, but as soon as you move your mouse over an icon, it gets magnified, so you can see all those beautiful icons in their full glory.

You can also completely hide the Dock, so it only shows up, when you move your mouse to the Dock area, so you have all the screen space you can get for the open windows (and have the Dock ready when you need it).

The best thing is, to just play around with the settings and find a setup that fits your needs. With or without glasses.

As you start to get more comfortable using your Mac, keyboard shortcuts provide a great way to do things quickly.

Mac OS X has great support for keyboard shortcuts. For now, we will only look at the most basic ones.

Application Switcher

Press and hold Command (next to the space bar) and press the Tab-key (upper left corner)

You get a window with all active applications, looking kind of like this:

Important is: Hold down the command key all the time and press the tab key to move to the next application. When you release both keys, this application will become active.

Hiding Applications

The feature to hide an application in Mac OS X is great to get an application out of sight, but still leave it running, keeping all your files open and all the input data. The application is just put in the background, nothing really happens (except the application is hidden), so don’t worry.
To hide an application simply press and hold command and press H.

You see in the Dock, that the application is still active (the little blue spot underneath the icon)

To make the application appear again, just click on its icon.

Apple has released an update to its current operating system. It’s recommended for every user. You can get Updates for your Apple operating system as well as all Apple programs, installed on your computer via the Software Update, found in the Apple menu.Watch out! Some updates can be quite heavy in file size (as this one, having more than 300MB). So make sure you don’t exceed your internet usage limits (if you have any, like some folks in Brisbane, Australia).

Install the Updates and restart. Done.

First improvement through the update

As some users (like me) found the transparent menu bar annoying, Apple decided (because of me….yeah, sure!) to provide an option to turn it off. To do so, just go to the System Preferences - Desktop & Screen Saver.

In the Tab “Desktop” you find the option to turn transparency of the menu bar on or off.