Figure 3-1.Spotlight’s search field
possible matches for your search (Figure 3-2). As you refine your search, the matches will dynami- cally change to the most appropriate choices.
Once you have finished typing your search phrase, the top results matched will be revealed for you, organized by type. Depending on how specific your search is, there could be only a few possible matches; however, often there are more matches than fit in the simple drop-down menu.
Selecting the Show All item will open a special Finder search window containing all the results from your search (Figure 3-3). This window will also allow you to further refine your search.
TIP There are a number of keyboard shortcuts to help you move around the list of search results without having to reach for your mouse or trackpad. The up and down arrow keys will (as you may assume) move up and down one item at a time. Using the Cmd key with the up and down arrows will move up and down through the file types. Pressing Cmd+left arrow will insert a cursor at the beginning of your search term, and pressing Cmd+right arrow will insert the cursor at the end of your search term to edit or revise it. Finally, if Spaces is not active, press- ing Ctrl+up arrow will move to the top of the list highlighting Show All, and pressing Ctrl+down arrow will move to the bottom of the list high- lighting Spotlight Preferences. (If Spaces is active, it will by default use these shortcuts to switch spaces, and this function will override Spotlight.
You may be able to duplicate this effect, though, with Fn+arrow keys.)
Refining and Saving Your Searches
Whether you start with a simple Spotlight search and, as discussed earlier, choose the Show All option or you start a search directly in the Finder’s search field, you will be presented with a spe- cial Finder search window (shown in Figure 3-3) that will allow you to refine and save your searches. The Finder’s search window and regular Finder window are different in two ways.
First, since you are dealing with search results, the items shown are not necessarily located in a single folder but rather can be collected from all over your hard drive and attached file systems.
Second, there is a search bar and perhaps some refinement bars present at the top of the Finder view area that allow you to refine your searches.
There is always one primary search bar at the very top that will allow you to set the scope of your search; this can be your entire computer, a specific folder, or a shared resource. The spe- cific options depend on a few criteria; for example, This Mac is always an option, which will cause the search to include your entire computer. The following option is a folder: if you are per- forming your search via the Spotlight icon, this folder will be your home directory; if you are performing the search from the Finder, then this folder is the folder from which you are per- forming the search. Other search options may include specific shared or network resources on which you have permission to perform searches.
Figure 3-2.Spotlight reveals top matches for your search as you type.
Figure 3-3.Show All will open a special Finder window revealing every item that matches your search.
To the far right of the topmost search bar is a Save button that will allow you to save your search for future use, and then there is a + or - button that will allow you to add or remove addi- tional search criteria. Each time you add criteria, a new bar will appear that will allow you to refine your search from a series of drop-down lists (Figure 3-4).
Figure 3-4.Refining a search using search criteria
CHAPTER 3USING SPOTLIGHT, EXPOSÉ, SPACES, AND DASHBOARD 39
Table 3-1 describes the general search criteria.
Table 3-1.Search Criteria to Refine Searches Criteria Description
What Provides check boxes to determine whether the search should be limited to file names only and to system files. By default, the search will exclude system files;
however, with all other files it will attempt to find the search string in any meta- data, text within the item, and Finder comments as well as the actual file name.
Kind This can help narrow down your search to a specific kind of file and includes the following options: Applications, Documents, Folders, Images, Movies, Music, PDF, Presentations, Text, and Other. Certain options will allow you to further refine the kind; for example, Images will allow you to narrow search results to specific image formats.
Last opened date This will allow you to narrow search results to a date, or range of dates, when the item was last opened.
Last modified date This will allow you to narrow search results to a date, or range of dates, when the item was last modified.
Created date This will allow you to narrow search results to a date, or range of dates, when the item was created.
Name This will allow you to match additional search strings against the name of the file.
Contents This will allow you to match additional search strings against the contents of the file.
Other This option will open a window with a number of additional search criteria that can be added to your search (Figure 3-5); many of these items are common metadata items or other common possible search criteria. Your actual list may change because of third-party applications that add their own data here.
Figure 3-5.The Other search option opens a window that contains a large list of other common metadata and search criteria.
Once you have you search criteria set, you can select the specific item you are looking for in the Finder’s Search view.
If you want to save your search, click the Save button in the top-left side of the view area.
This will open a Save dialog box (Figure 3-6) that will let you save your search and if desired add it to your Finder sidebar.
Figure 3-6.Saving a search for future access
Setting Up Smart Folders
The default locations for saving a search is in your ~/Library/Saved Searchesfolder. If you look there, you will see that saved searches are nothing more than smart folders. In fact, the process of setting up a smart folder is the same as refining and saving a search.
Using Spotlight Technology in Other Applications
Spotlight is a key technology in OS X, and developers are able to include its features into their own applications as they see fit. For example, digital asset management (DAM) applications can use it to help organize and find specific digital media files in a large collection. The Mail app includes Spotlight technology to help locate mail messages, notes, and to-do items stored in Mail. Spotlight is even cleverly included in the default help system and can be used to find and highlight application commands in the application menus (Figure 3-7).
CHAPTER 3USING SPOTLIGHT, EXPOSÉ, SPACES, AND DASHBOARD 41
Figure 3-7.Spotlight technology in the Help menu can help you find application menu items.
Using Exposé and Spaces
Besides Spotlight, some other nice features are built in to Leopard that can be summoned as nec- essary. The first two we’ll talk about are Exposé and Spaces.
Exposé and Spaces help you find and manage open applications and application windows.
Both Exposé and Spaces do this by manipulating your work area, but each of them does this in different ways.
Exposé
Exposé works within your current work area or desktop by moving, shrinking, and highlighting your current windows in ways that are incredibly useful, especially if you are working with many open windows at once.
Exposé provides three distinct views: “All windows” view, “Application windows” view, and Desktop view. Each view provides certain benefits.
You can trigger the “All windows” view (Figure 3-8) by default by hitting the F9 key. This view will shrink and arrange all the windows open on your current desktop so that they are all visible; from this view you can mouse over and select the particular window you’d like to bring to the foreground.
NOTE On Apple computers, the F-keys (aka function keys) are often used for controlling things such as the brightness of the screen, the volume, and other features. This is especially true with MacBooks and MacBook Pros that by default have the F-keys set to control these features. In such a case you must use Fn+[F-key] to activate the desired F-key. If you would rather have the F-keys work as the F-keys by default, you can set this behavior in the Keyboard
& Mouse preference pane.
Figure 3-8.Exposé’s All windows View
The “Application windows” view (Figure 3-9) is similar to the “All windows” view, but it affects only the open windows of the foreground application. Triggered by the F10 key by default, it causes the windows of all background applications to be faded into the background while arranging and highlighting the windows of the current application. This is effective if you are working with many documents in a single application or if you have multiple Finder win- dows open.
Figure 3-9.Exposé’s “Application windows” view highlighting only the open Finder windows
CHAPTER 3USING SPOTLIGHT, EXPOSÉ, SPACES, AND DASHBOARD 43
The final Exposé view, triggered by the F11 key by default, is Desktop view (Figure 3-10).
This “slides” all the currently open windows off the screen, making the entire desktop visible so you can access any Finder items located on it that may be blocked by the current windows. This is especially nice for people who tend to collect a large number of items on their desktops.
Figure 3-10.Exposé’s Desktop view moves all the open windows to the side to reveal the entire desktop. The edges of the open windows remain slightly in view along the darkened edge.
NOTE The F-key defaults to control Exposé, Spaces, and Dashboard can all be changed in the Exposé & Spaces preference pane. Additionally, if you have a mouse with many buttons, you can easily map these features to mouse buttons.
Spaces
Spaces is a new feature in Leopard (though there have been third-party applications available for a while that provide a similar experience) that allows you to set up multiple working environ- ments, or desktops, and switch between
them. This is commonly referred to as creating and managing virtual desktops.
By default, Spaces isn’t enabled, but its icon is on the Dock. Clicking the icon on the Dock the first time will prompt you to set up Spaces in the Exposé & Spaces preference pane (Figure 3-11). Clicking Set Up Spaces will open System Prefer-
ences to configure Spaces (Figure 3-12). Figure 3-11.If you attempt to use Spaces before it’s set up, you will be presented with a dialog box asking you to do so.
Figure 3-12.Spaces is set up in the Exposé & Spaces pane of System Preferences.
By default Spaces is set up with a row of two spaces. To add a row or column, click the appropriate + in the preference pane. The preference pane will show you a small illustration of your current layout with a label on each space to designate its appropriate number. If you select the “Show spaces in menu bar” option, it will use the designated number to display the active space and allow you to switch to other spaces via a drop-down menu.
Below the area displaying your spaces layout, you can set up applications so that they always open in a designated space. For example, you could have all your Internet applications open in one space and all of your office apps open in another. Switching to an application in the Dock, or opening an application, will automatically take you to the appropriate space.
To move from one space to another, you can “activate” Spaces either using the F8 key (by default) or clicking the icon in the Dock. This will present a view of all your spaces shrunk down to fit on your screen, very much like the “All windows” view in Exposé (Figure 3-13).
While Spaces is activated, you can select any window in the view and move it from one space to another, or you can select any space to make that space active on your primary screen.
You can also move windows from one space to another by selecting a window and dragging it to an edge of your screen where another space may be.
To quickly move from one space to another, you can use a series of other keyboard short- cuts. By default, pressing Ctrl and an arrow key at the same time will move you to the space in that direction. Specifically, pressing Ctrl with the right or left arrows will cycle through the spaces numerically, and pressing Ctrl with the up and down arrows will move up or down only if there is a valid space above or below to move into. If you know the space’s number, you can move directly to that space pressing Ctrl and the spaces number (for example, pressing Ctrl+4 will move to space 4). When you use these keyboard shortcuts, a small overlay graphic will appear on the screen to illustrate where you are in the Spaces layout (Figure 3-14).
CHAPTER 3USING SPOTLIGHT, EXPOSÉ, SPACES, AND DASHBOARD 45
Figure 3-13.Activating Spaces will present you with a live view of all your active spaces.
Figure 3-14.A small overlay graphic will appear when you switch to a new space using the keyboard shortcuts; it highlights the space you have just entered.
NOTE The maximum number of spaces is 16, a 4✕4 grid. This should most likely be more than enough spaces since in general it’s probably best to utilize the fewest number of spaces nec- essary. Additionally, the keyboard shortcut won’t work with spaces 10–16.
Dashboard
The final nifty Leopard feature we’ll talk about in this chapter is Dashboard. Dashboard is an interface feature that, when activated, will bring forward a number of user-selectable widgets. A widget is a small, simple application that can do various things. Leopard ships with a number of widgets that can display the current time, give you the latest movie schedule for you area, control iTunes, and do much more.
By default, you activate Dashboard with the F12 key. When you do this, the active widgets will slide into view over your current desktop view (Figure 3-15).
Figure 3-15.Dashboard active with default widgets
To add a widget to your Dashboard, you can click the + sign in the lower-left corner of the screen when the Dashboard is active. That will open the widget bar across the bottom of the screen that contains all the Dashboard widgets currently installed (Figure 3-16). To add any of the installed widgets, select them and drag them off the bar onto the desktop. To remove a widget, click the X on the top-left of any widget when the widget bar is open. To move a widget, just click it and move it around to wherever you want, and it will reappear in your selected loca- tion each time you activate Dashboard.
NOTE Holding the Opt key while mousing over a widget will also reveal its Close (X) button.
In addition to the widgets included with Leopard, many, many other widgets are available to download and install. A good place to look is www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/. If you download a widget in Safari, it will usually recognize the file as a widget and ask you whether you’d like to install it. To manually install a widget, just stick it in your ~/Library/Widgetsfolder (you may need to create this folder if it doesn’t exist). Once it’s installed, it will be available from the widget bar. You can uninstall widgets by moving them out of the Widget folder. You can also deactivate widgets using the Manage Widgets widget that presents a list of all the installed widg- ets with check boxes that can be unchecked to deactivate any widgets.
CHAPTER 3USING SPOTLIGHT, EXPOSÉ, SPACES, AND DASHBOARD 47
Figure 3-16.Dashboard with the widget bar open at the bottom and the Manage Widgets widget open in the middle of the screen
NOTE Double-clicking a Dashboard widget in the Finder will also install the widget. If you are an administrator, it will prompt you whether you’d like it installed for yourself or for everyone.
If you are a regular user, it will install it in your Library/Widgetsfolder.
Using the individual widgets varies from widget to widget; however, many widgets have set- tings hidden in them. To check a widget’s settings, mouse over the widget to see whether a small i appears (usually in one of the corners). Clicking this i will cause the widget to flip over, reveal- ing the widget information and settings.
In Leopard you can also add web clippings to your Dashboard from Safari. We’ll talk about web clippings more when we cover Safari in Chapter 10, but as far as Dashboard is concerned, they generally behave like any other widget.
NOTE One new, behind-the-scenes feature of Dashboard in Leopard is that all widgets are run in the same process. Previously, every time you started a widget it would run in its own process, so if you ran a large number of widgets, you would notice a slowdown on your computer.
Summary
This chapter wrapped up our quick introduction to the basics of Leopard. The next part jumps into the basic administration of Leopard as well as how to customize Leopard to suit your needs.
We’ll begin by going through System Preferences in the next chapter.
2
PART
Customizing and
Administering Leopard
Many of the configuration and administration options for Leopard are located in Sys- tem Preferences (Figure 4-1). In Leopard, System Preferences is an application that presents a collection of individual items called preference panes. Each preference pane presents configurable options for one specific facet of the OS.
Figure 4-1.System Preferences
This chapter will give an overview of each of these preferences and explain what they all do.
We will discuss them according to how they are categorized in System Preferences:
51
System Preferences
4
CHAPTER
• Personal preferences
• Hardware preferences
• Internet & Network preferences
• System preferences
Some preferences will only be touched upon lightly, as they will be covered in depth later in this book.
NOTE There is also an Other category of preferences, which is where third-party system pref- erences are shown.
Personal Preferences
The first row of preferences in System Preferences contains the Personal preferences (Figure 4-2).
These preferences together largely affect your personal environment and can be set differently for each user on your system.
Figure 4-2.The Personal preferences in System Preferences
Appearance
The Appearance preference pane (Figure 4-3) contains a number of options that control how cer- tain aspects of your environment will not only look, but also behave.
Table 4-1 lists each of the appearance options and describes them.
Table 4-1.Appearance Options
Option Description
Appearance This option allows you to change certain visual elements from blue to graphite. In Leopard, many of the elements that had been affected by this preference have been replaced with a common black/gray appearance; however there are still many things that will be affected by this. The remaining elements that are affected by this are the window widgets in the top left of the title bars (switching from blue to graphite will cause the red, yellow, and green buttons to each change to become the same graphite color) and some other UI elements (e.g., the edges of drop-down option menus) will change from blue to graphite.
Highlight Color This option allows you to change the highlight color of selected text in most applications.
Place scroll arrows This option selects whether the scroll arrow in window scroll bars will be together (in the lower right of each scrollable window), or whether the arrows will appear at each end of the scroll bar.