In list view, the Finder window displays folder or volume contents as a list, which can be sorted by name, date, kind, or other criteria.

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1 Using the Finder When you first start up your Mac, you're greeted by the Finder, which allows you to visually access practically everything on your Mac, including applications, hard disks, files, folders, and CDs. You can use the Finder to organize all your files and folders as neatly or as messy as you want, search for stuff anywhere on your Mac, delete things you don't want, and more. Finder Windows To see all the goodies on your Mac, double-click the hard disk icon. This opens a Finder window, which allows you to visually see the hierarchy of your computer's contents. Finder windows generally include a sidebar on the left side. Items are grouped into categories: places, devices, shared computers, and searches. Whatever mounted and accessible volumes you have, such as a hard disk, idisk, network, CD, DVD, or ipod, in the top portion. The bottom portion contains your user account folder, aka Home folder the folder named after your user account name, some of the folders found in your Home folder include (Desktop, Documents, Movies, Music, and Pictures), and the Applications folder. This is what it looks like: The contents of the selected folder or volume appear in the right pane. Depending on what view your Finder window is set to, this pane may look a little different from ours,

2 our window above is shown in icons view. In icons view, you can navigate through your hard disk contents by double-clicking the folders to view the contents inside. To go back one folder, click the Back button in the toolbar. To close the window, click the round, red button in the upper-left corner. If you don't want to close the window but want it out of your way, click the round, yellow button to minimize the window to the Dock. If a window is chock full of stuff, you can resize it by dragging the lower-right corner to make it bigger, or click the round, green button to maximize the window's size. If you'd like to change how folder and volume contents appear in the right pane, click one of the view buttons in the toolbar. For example, when we click the list view button, our Finder window magically transforms itself into this: In list view, the Finder window displays folder or volume contents as a list, which can be sorted by name, date, kind, or other criteria. If you'd rather see your stuff displayed in a more hierarchical fashion, click the columns view button. In columns view, the right pane splits into multiple columns to display your computer's file and folder organization. Instead of double-clicking folders to see what's inside, select a folder in any column, click on it once, and its contents will appear in another column to its right. If you really start digging down deep into your folder, you can drag the bottom-right corner of the Finder window to expand it and see how many layers you've traveled. In column view, you get a better view of your hard disk's folder hierarchy as you look for stuff.

3 Getting Around The Applications folder contains all the applications installed on your Mac. The Users folder houses all the content for each user on your Mac; each user gets a separate Home folder that's named after his or her user account name. Whatever you do, do not rename your Home folder; doing so can make it impossible for your Mac to access pertinent resources. The active account's Home folder, the user who's currently logged in to the computer, displays a little house as its icon instead of a folder. Each Home folder contains a series of subfolders Desktop, Documents, Library, Movies, Music, Pictures, Public, and Sites. When you put stuff on your desktop, technically it's being stored in your user account's Desktop folder, even though to you it appears on your desktop. When you bring music into itunes, your music files get stored in the itunes folder in your user's Music folder. Likewise, iphoto stores pictures in the Pictures folder and imovie stores movies in the Movies folder. You can get quick access to your user account folders from any Finder window sidebar. Find Stuff Fast Sometimes it can take a little effort to navigate through a lot of folders to find what you want, but you can find stuff quickly using the search field in the Finder window. Just start typing in the search field, and Spotlight dynamically displays results in the Finder window that match your criteria as you type. You can choose where you want Spotlight to look by clicking on an item in the header, such as Servers, Computer, Home, and more, that appears just below the search field in the Finder window. Spotlight will scour the location you select and organize its search results by kind.

4 While you'll generally find files and folders in any given Finder window, the window also features an Action menu, which lets you easily perform commands on a selected file or folder, such as make a duplicate, move it to the Trash, or create an archive for sending. To access the Action menu, click its gear button at the top of the window; the button turns blue to indicate that it's active, and a pop-up menu full of commands opens. To put it in use, select a file or folder and then click the Action menu. Choose any action from the menu by clicking it. If you don't want to choose an Action item, click anywhere outside of the menu to close it. Using the Menu Bar See that semi-transparent bar that spans across the entire width of your desktop? That's the menu bar when you need to accomplish a task, you can access just about any application's functions, commands, and more from the menu bar. The menu bar contains some words that represent the menus for the active application. The menu bar also contains a few icons on its right side that represent menus for other features on your Mac, such as Spotlight (the magnifying glass icon) and sound volume (the speaker icon). When you click a menu, it displays a sheet (the actual menu) full of menu items. To perform a task or command that's listed in a menu, just select the item and your Mac will perform the action. What's On the Menu? The menu bar menus will change as you switch applications. For example, when the Finder is active, you'll see the following menus across the menu bar: the Apple logo, Finder, File, Edit, View, Go, Window, and Help. When you click the Window menu, its menu displays the following menu items: Minimize, Zoom, Cycle Through Windows, and Bring All to Front. (Depending on whether or not you have any Finder windows open, your Window menu may contain a few more items.) Tip: If you're unsure of which application (including the Finder) is active, look at the word to the right of the Apple logo in the menu bar. If a menu item is dimmed (the text isn't black), then that particular item isn't applicable at that moment. For example, if you currently don't have any Finder windows open and you make the Finder active, all of the items in the Window menu will be dimmed because you need to have a Finder window open in order to perform any of the Window menu

5 commands. If you have a window open, some or all items in the Window menu will be available, depending on whether a window is currently selected. Because we didn't have anything in our Trash, the Empty Trash commands are dimmed in the Finder menu. Every application you use will have a set of menus with menu items some more than others. You'll notice that many applications share the same common commands, such as Save, Select All, Copy, Paste, and Undo. Most applications also use their own set of specialized commands. For example, itunes (the music-playing application included with Leopard) features Controls, Visualizer, and Advanced menus that contain many functions and commands for controlling itunes play. Using the Dock The Dock is the bar of icons that sits at the bottom or side of your screen. It provides easy access to some of the applications on your Mac, displays which applications are currently running, and holds windows in their minimized state. It's also the place to find the Trash. For your convenience, you can add your own applications, files, and folders to the Dock too. The Dock gives you quick access to commonly used applications and more; note the blue light beneath the running applications (Finder and Safari). To select an item in the Dock, just click its icon. When an application is running, the Dock displays a blue light beneath or beside the application's icon. To make any currently

6 running application the active one, click its icon in the Dock to switch to it (the active application's name appears in the menu bar to the right of the Apple logo). As you open applications (or open files to launch applications), their respective icons appear in the Dock, even if they weren't there originally. That means if you've got a lot of applications open, your Dock will grow substantially. If you minimize a Finder or application window (click the round, yellow button in the upper-left corner of any window), the window gets sucked down into the Dock and waits in its small iconic state until you click this icon to bring up the window again. The Dock keeps applications on its left side, while folders and windows are housed on its right. If you look closely, you'll see a vertical "crosswalk" that separates them. If you want to rearrange where the icons appear within their line limits, just drag a docked icon to another location on the Dock and drop it. This line in the Dock separates the application icons from the file, folder, and minimized window. When you quit an application whose icon resides in the Dock (such as Safari or Mail), the blue light disappears, but the icon remains. When you quit an application whose icon doesn't reside in the Dock (for example, you just finished playing Chess), its icon disappears from the Dock. If you want to add an application, file, or folder to the Dock, just drag its icon from any Finder window (or the desktop) and drop it on the Dock; the icons in the Dock will move aside to make room for their new neighbor. The resulting icon that appears in the Dock is actually an alias of the original item (it's kind of a bridge to your original item). If you drag an application or file onto the Dock, you'll be able to open it anytime by simply clicking its docked icon. If you drag a folder onto the Dock, a Finder window of the folder's contents will display when you click the folder icon in the Dock.

7 To get rid of any unwanted item, just drag its icon off the Dock. Handy Keyboard Shortcuts (note: = option = shift ) -tab cycle forward through applications -tab cycle back through applications - -esc Force Quit dialog -click Dock icon or window switch to new program, hide previous one F9 Exposé: show all windows F10 Exposé: show all windows for active app F11 Exposé: hide all windows. Stop (example: cancel a print job) A Select All C Copy F Find N New (Window) O Open P Print Q Quit Application S Save S Save As T New Tab V Paste W Close Window X Cut Z Undo Z Redo