This video shows you how to take a big high res image and get it into the right resolution for printing and right size to fit on the page.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Navigating with OS X Continued: The Right hand side of the Menubar
A couple posts ago I described the menubar at the top of the screen. I said it always began with the icon of the apple, followed by the application name and it's menu system. Further to the right on that menubar is additional information that, like the Apple Icon, is present for all applications. Today we're going to describe in detail the apple icon menu as well as the other system information on the menu bar.
Beginning at the far left of the menu bar you will see an icon of a magnifying glass. This is called "spotlight" and clicking on it (or pressing ALT SPACE) will bring up the Spotlight window. Spotlight allows you to search for any word in a file or any part of a name of a file or folder. If you begin typing Spotlight will show you the list of things that correspond to what you're typing. The first entry in the list is "show all", which brings up a window with all the search results in it. You don't need to use "show all" if you can see the file you want and scroll to it in the spotlight popup window. You should notice that spotlight attempts to categorize the types of files, so you can see what results were folders, what results were documents, what results were message, what were web pages and so forth, to help you find something. If you searched for something that comes up as the first item, just press enter to get it.
After the spotlight, you will find a "time" icon. Click it and you will see a little calendar to give you the day of the week. This clock is configurable in several ways from System Preferences, which we'll describe later.
Other icons that appear in this area (the exact order is dependent upon your particular setup) are a "sound" icon which lets you raise and lower the sound (additionally there are keys that let you do that which I'll describe later), a wireless icon if you are on a wireless network, a "spaces" icon if you've set spaces up (described later) and a host of other possible icons depending upon the programs you've installed. The possibilities are too broad to describe here so, I'll just describe the ones that I happen to have.
I'm running a special application that shows me the actual date on the menubar, so I have that showing. I have Time Machine activated (a macintosh feature that backs your computer up to an external hard drive, so I see an icon that shows me its status and lets me control it. I have a .mac account so I can see status and activity for that account. I have an icon that synchs my address book with a program called plaxo and I have a couple icons that synch the music that I play to an online system that tracks what people play. The possibilities for this space are broad and too broad to cover in depth here. Suffice it to say that software can instantiate itself here much like it can in Windows in the system tray, and I can see both status information and control some aspects of the program from these icons. If you are in doubt, click it and see what it is.
Finally, I want to cover the Apple icon menu, on the far left. So, I'll do that tomorrow!
Beginning at the far left of the menu bar you will see an icon of a magnifying glass. This is called "spotlight" and clicking on it (or pressing ALT SPACE) will bring up the Spotlight window. Spotlight allows you to search for any word in a file or any part of a name of a file or folder. If you begin typing Spotlight will show you the list of things that correspond to what you're typing. The first entry in the list is "show all", which brings up a window with all the search results in it. You don't need to use "show all" if you can see the file you want and scroll to it in the spotlight popup window. You should notice that spotlight attempts to categorize the types of files, so you can see what results were folders, what results were documents, what results were message, what were web pages and so forth, to help you find something. If you searched for something that comes up as the first item, just press enter to get it.
After the spotlight, you will find a "time" icon. Click it and you will see a little calendar to give you the day of the week. This clock is configurable in several ways from System Preferences, which we'll describe later.
Other icons that appear in this area (the exact order is dependent upon your particular setup) are a "sound" icon which lets you raise and lower the sound (additionally there are keys that let you do that which I'll describe later), a wireless icon if you are on a wireless network, a "spaces" icon if you've set spaces up (described later) and a host of other possible icons depending upon the programs you've installed. The possibilities are too broad to describe here so, I'll just describe the ones that I happen to have.
I'm running a special application that shows me the actual date on the menubar, so I have that showing. I have Time Machine activated (a macintosh feature that backs your computer up to an external hard drive, so I see an icon that shows me its status and lets me control it. I have a .mac account so I can see status and activity for that account. I have an icon that synchs my address book with a program called plaxo and I have a couple icons that synch the music that I play to an online system that tracks what people play. The possibilities for this space are broad and too broad to cover in depth here. Suffice it to say that software can instantiate itself here much like it can in Windows in the system tray, and I can see both status information and control some aspects of the program from these icons. If you are in doubt, click it and see what it is.
Finally, I want to cover the Apple icon menu, on the far left. So, I'll do that tomorrow!
Navigating with OS X Continued: The Dock
Several times now I've mentioned the all important "Dock". The Dock serves four purposes in Leopard versions of OS X. It serves as "shortcuts" to common applications, shows you which programs are "running", shows you the minimized applications, and gives you access to special "folders". Let's unpack these quickly with screen shots to help us.
But first, where is the dock? The answer is that it depends on how the machine is setup, as the location and visibility and behavior of the dock are customizable. The default setup has the dock at the bottom of the screen and visible. The default setup has icons for a web browser (Safari) and other programs that come with the Mac like iChat, iDVD, and Photobooth. Programs can be removed from the dock, added to the dock and moved along the dock. Programs can be started and stopped from the dock as well.
Starting and Stopping Programs from the Dock
To start a program from the dock, click its Icon. The icon will bounce until it displays the menubar for the program and most often opens a default window (some programs, like Adobe Photoshop don't open a window until a "file" is opened, they only change the menubar,but most programs open a default window as well and make it the active window.
Once a program is open and running a little blue light appears beneath its icon. If the program is already in the dock the light appears below it. Otherwise, the program icon is temporarily added to the dock (toward the right side) and has the blue light below it. It's possible for programs to be running without any active window opened or minimzed and the only indication of such will be the little tell-tale blue light beneath the the icon on the dock.
Clicking the icon in the dock for a running program will make it the active application. If there is a window to display that was minimized it will restore it. It will change the menubar to that program as well. You can shut applications down from the dock, but we'll address that later when we talk about accessing context sensitive menus for programs including the dock itself and the desktop.
You can remove a program from the dock by dragging it off the dock. It will disappear in a little poof of smoke. You can drag an application icon from one position on the dock to another, when you do that, the other programs will move to make room in the new spot. If you make a mistake and drag it off the dock, you'll find it's easy to drag the application on again, and I'll tell you where to find them when we discuss the Finder and the application area. You can't hurt OS X by dragging stuff off the dock or on it.
The dock has three parts to it. The left hand side of the dock is where the application shortcuts all sit that I've been discussing. As you move past the last icon you will see a series of bars (like square dots) that shows the boundary for the next part of the dock. In Leopard, the next set of icons are "special folders". By default, there are at least two of these. They are the downloads folder, the "Documents" folder. Again, like applications in the doc, they can be moved left and right (but not past the bars and not into the next section we're about to discuss. They can also be dragged off the dock (it doesn't delete the contents, just the shortcut) and can be dragged back on. Immediately after these special folder locations are icons representing minimized application windows. Clicking these will restore the window and make the menubar and application window active as discussed earlier. The last thing to the right on the dock is a trash bucket, and anything you delete goes in it. Clicking it opens it and you can restore anything from the trash. The trash has a few other things it does and we'll discuss it ... later.
I mentioned that the dock is configurable earlier and we'll talk about it when we discuss system preferences.
But first, where is the dock? The answer is that it depends on how the machine is setup, as the location and visibility and behavior of the dock are customizable. The default setup has the dock at the bottom of the screen and visible. The default setup has icons for a web browser (Safari) and other programs that come with the Mac like iChat, iDVD, and Photobooth. Programs can be removed from the dock, added to the dock and moved along the dock. Programs can be started and stopped from the dock as well.
Starting and Stopping Programs from the Dock
To start a program from the dock, click its Icon. The icon will bounce until it displays the menubar for the program and most often opens a default window (some programs, like Adobe Photoshop don't open a window until a "file" is opened, they only change the menubar,but most programs open a default window as well and make it the active window.
Once a program is open and running a little blue light appears beneath its icon. If the program is already in the dock the light appears below it. Otherwise, the program icon is temporarily added to the dock (toward the right side) and has the blue light below it. It's possible for programs to be running without any active window opened or minimzed and the only indication of such will be the little tell-tale blue light beneath the the icon on the dock.
Clicking the icon in the dock for a running program will make it the active application. If there is a window to display that was minimized it will restore it. It will change the menubar to that program as well. You can shut applications down from the dock, but we'll address that later when we talk about accessing context sensitive menus for programs including the dock itself and the desktop.
You can remove a program from the dock by dragging it off the dock. It will disappear in a little poof of smoke. You can drag an application icon from one position on the dock to another, when you do that, the other programs will move to make room in the new spot. If you make a mistake and drag it off the dock, you'll find it's easy to drag the application on again, and I'll tell you where to find them when we discuss the Finder and the application area. You can't hurt OS X by dragging stuff off the dock or on it.
The dock has three parts to it. The left hand side of the dock is where the application shortcuts all sit that I've been discussing. As you move past the last icon you will see a series of bars (like square dots) that shows the boundary for the next part of the dock. In Leopard, the next set of icons are "special folders". By default, there are at least two of these. They are the downloads folder, the "Documents" folder. Again, like applications in the doc, they can be moved left and right (but not past the bars and not into the next section we're about to discuss. They can also be dragged off the dock (it doesn't delete the contents, just the shortcut) and can be dragged back on. Immediately after these special folder locations are icons representing minimized application windows. Clicking these will restore the window and make the menubar and application window active as discussed earlier. The last thing to the right on the dock is a trash bucket, and anything you delete goes in it. Clicking it opens it and you can restore anything from the trash. The trash has a few other things it does and we'll discuss it ... later.
I mentioned that the dock is configurable earlier and we'll talk about it when we discuss system preferences.
Navigating with OS X - The Menubar and Windows
OS X (pronounced either "oh-ess-ex" or "oh-ess-ten") is the name of the Macintosh operating system. Apple names each version of the OS X operating system after a large wild cat (these last three versions have been Panther, Tiger, and is currently Leopard) and also gives them a number beginning with 10 point something. The current version I'm using is 10.5.2. This lesson will introduce you to "About your Mac" which will tell you what version your using a bit later.
As mentioned previously, OS X is a version of Unix (it's technically a variety of Unix). If you were Unix savvy, you wouldn't be reading this dumb tutorial, but if you ever learn any Unix (I doubt I will ever try to mention anything much here) you could access all of that through the use of a terminal window. I'll mention it much later in brief. It's not really important. Suffice it to say there is a way to go behind the "graphical interface" of Macintosh and do intense things with nothing but a text based command line. But you'll have to learn that elsewhere. I know "just enough to be dangerous".
The Mac Screen
The Menubar for all programs
As mentioned previously, there is a menu on the top of the Mac screen. On the extreme left edge is the icon of an apple (see the last post). Click it brings up the menu seen in the last post. I'll go through all these options in more detail in a future post.
Immediately after "Apple" icon is what is called the menubar. Here you will find the most obvious difference between using Mac and using Windows. In Windows, you have a menu bar that is a part of every window. On the Mac, every window that is "active" (which means you have selected it) uses the top menu bar for it's options. This might be somewhat baffling so let's look more closely. Let's say you have a program open (any program but let's say it's a copy of Microsoft Word). You will see to the right of that icon of the apple the name of the program (in this case, "Word") followed by options that whatever program you are running uses for it's basic operations. With Word you would see "File Edit View..." and so forth. Click any of those menubar options brings up a drop down menu that lets you choose an option in the program that is running. Now, for some weirdness for a Windows person, click on the "desktop", that is, outside of all windows. You will notice that the program menubar changes to "Finder". Two important things have happened. You have switched outside of the program you were running (Word) and activated the one program that is always running on a Mac. It's called "Finder" and it is the way you browse the computer and all it's devices (hard drives and other items the computer knows about) and it is the correlary to the Windows "Explorer" that comes up when you select "Start and My Computer".
It's imperative that you grasp this - that clicking on a window in any program changes the menubar to display it's menu and the commands will effect that program. Clicking on the desktop itself will always bring up the Finder. Clicking back on the window you were on before will bring back the original menubar. Once you're used to this it will be perfectly sensible, but for now you might want to pay attention to the menubar if something seems amiss. As soon as you click a different window or the desktop either that application or the finder will be "active".
The Finder
We'll talk about the finder in more detail later, but even the finder operates "in a window", and so it's important you understand the second major difference you will experience on the Mac -- the way you control windows so that's what we'll finish this lesson with.
Active Application Windows
Whatever window you click on (including the finder window itself) is the "active application window". On the top of the active window on the left hand side are three colored circles: Red, Yellow, and Green.
The third thing that is most different about a Mac from Microsoft Windows is the way you move programs and size them. On Microsoft Windows, you can essentially size any window using any corner of the application. On the Mac you must size using the lower right hand corner. Move windows around by dragging them with the top of the window (where the colored circles live). You can also double click that top of the window space to minimize the application to the dock. Again, I'll be discussing the dock very soon.
As mentioned previously, OS X is a version of Unix (it's technically a variety of Unix). If you were Unix savvy, you wouldn't be reading this dumb tutorial, but if you ever learn any Unix (I doubt I will ever try to mention anything much here) you could access all of that through the use of a terminal window. I'll mention it much later in brief. It's not really important. Suffice it to say there is a way to go behind the "graphical interface" of Macintosh and do intense things with nothing but a text based command line. But you'll have to learn that elsewhere. I know "just enough to be dangerous".
The Mac Screen
The Menubar for all programs
As mentioned previously, there is a menu on the top of the Mac screen. On the extreme left edge is the icon of an apple (see the last post). Click it brings up the menu seen in the last post. I'll go through all these options in more detail in a future post.
Immediately after "Apple" icon is what is called the menubar. Here you will find the most obvious difference between using Mac and using Windows. In Windows, you have a menu bar that is a part of every window. On the Mac, every window that is "active" (which means you have selected it) uses the top menu bar for it's options. This might be somewhat baffling so let's look more closely. Let's say you have a program open (any program but let's say it's a copy of Microsoft Word). You will see to the right of that icon of the apple the name of the program (in this case, "Word") followed by options that whatever program you are running uses for it's basic operations. With Word you would see "File Edit View..." and so forth. Click any of those menubar options brings up a drop down menu that lets you choose an option in the program that is running. Now, for some weirdness for a Windows person, click on the "desktop", that is, outside of all windows. You will notice that the program menubar changes to "Finder". Two important things have happened. You have switched outside of the program you were running (Word) and activated the one program that is always running on a Mac. It's called "Finder" and it is the way you browse the computer and all it's devices (hard drives and other items the computer knows about) and it is the correlary to the Windows "Explorer" that comes up when you select "Start and My Computer".
It's imperative that you grasp this - that clicking on a window in any program changes the menubar to display it's menu and the commands will effect that program. Clicking on the desktop itself will always bring up the Finder. Clicking back on the window you were on before will bring back the original menubar. Once you're used to this it will be perfectly sensible, but for now you might want to pay attention to the menubar if something seems amiss. As soon as you click a different window or the desktop either that application or the finder will be "active".
The Finder
We'll talk about the finder in more detail later, but even the finder operates "in a window", and so it's important you understand the second major difference you will experience on the Mac -- the way you control windows so that's what we'll finish this lesson with.
Active Application Windows
Whatever window you click on (including the finder window itself) is the "active application window". On the top of the active window on the left hand side are three colored circles: Red, Yellow, and Green.
- Red shuts the active window. It is not a "close the program" option (except in rare, poorly done Mac applications like Novell GroupWise), but rather a shut the window option. In this sense it is very different from the Windows "X" option that is in the right hand corner, which sometimes shuts the window and sometimes shuts down the whole program. We'll cover this more later when we talk about the various states programs can be in when we cover the question "Where is my program hiding"?
- Yellow is the minimize option, and will make your program slip down to the "dock" where you can click it's icon to maximize it again. We haven't covered the dock yet, so be patient and we'll get to it.
- Green can be seem somewhat confusing until you grasp what is going on. It basically cycles between optimum viewing state (where the program displays from the top of the screen to the bottom at a reasonable width for viewing) and a customized size where the user has dragged the window to a different size.
The third thing that is most different about a Mac from Microsoft Windows is the way you move programs and size them. On Microsoft Windows, you can essentially size any window using any corner of the application. On the Mac you must size using the lower right hand corner. Move windows around by dragging them with the top of the window (where the colored circles live). You can also double click that top of the window space to minimize the application to the dock. Again, I'll be discussing the dock very soon.
First things First - Starting up and shutting down
I'm no expert on the Mac, so listening to me isn't going to make you one. I'll probably tell you a lot of true things, but I'm sure some of what I'm going to say is a dangerous reduction of more complex things, but I don't think my dumbing down (or just plain faulty understanding) will hurt you. That said, I use Mac computers every day and my understanding makes things work great for me.
This is not going to be a fanboy series, there are things I dislike about the Mac, and the first thing is how dangerous it is to simply turn the Mac off without shutting down. Windows doesn't particularly like to be treated this way either, but the Mac, perhaps owing to its being built on top of a "real" operating system like Unix (obviously I'm talking about a modern version (as of this writing, OS X Leopard) of Mac, really doesn't like it. So don't do it unless you've followed all the advice in this post.
Mac computers turn on by pressing the on/sleep button (the only button on the mac). If the machine is off, pressing lightly on the button will turn it on. If you press the button when the machine is running it will go to sleep. Putting the machine to sleep while things are up and running generally works ok, I'll address caveats to that in another post (which I'll later link to this and title "MacBooks" since the caveats are a particular problem with laptops.
The on/sleep button is also a "force shutdown" button. If you have tried everything and you can't shut the Mac down, then (and only then) you can elect to force the Mac to shut down. You do that by holding down the button until the thing shuts down. But, don't do that, because, it is really not good for your computer. If you do it indiscriminately, you're liable to hurt your system in such a way that recovering your data will not be easy or possible.
So how do you shut down? In most cases all you need to do is to use the "shut down" menu option. In our next lesson I'll introduce you to the Mac screen and basic operations. But for now, what you need to know how to do to shut your computer down (or to "restart" it) is the following: in the top left hand edge of your screen is an image of an Apple. If you click that you will see a menu like this --
I've highlighted "restart". Selecting that with the mouse will bring up a confirmation menu and restart the computer. You can also choose, "sleep" and "shutdown". On the mac, when the shutdown is complete, the computer turns off. You won't need to touch the button again until you want to turn it on or wake it from sleeping.
A couple caveats to this nice simple solution.
But don't do that...
This is not going to be a fanboy series, there are things I dislike about the Mac, and the first thing is how dangerous it is to simply turn the Mac off without shutting down. Windows doesn't particularly like to be treated this way either, but the Mac, perhaps owing to its being built on top of a "real" operating system like Unix (obviously I'm talking about a modern version (as of this writing, OS X Leopard) of Mac, really doesn't like it. So don't do it unless you've followed all the advice in this post.
Mac computers turn on by pressing the on/sleep button (the only button on the mac). If the machine is off, pressing lightly on the button will turn it on. If you press the button when the machine is running it will go to sleep. Putting the machine to sleep while things are up and running generally works ok, I'll address caveats to that in another post (which I'll later link to this and title "MacBooks" since the caveats are a particular problem with laptops.
The on/sleep button is also a "force shutdown" button. If you have tried everything and you can't shut the Mac down, then (and only then) you can elect to force the Mac to shut down. You do that by holding down the button until the thing shuts down. But, don't do that, because, it is really not good for your computer. If you do it indiscriminately, you're liable to hurt your system in such a way that recovering your data will not be easy or possible.
So how do you shut down? In most cases all you need to do is to use the "shut down" menu option. In our next lesson I'll introduce you to the Mac screen and basic operations. But for now, what you need to know how to do to shut your computer down (or to "restart" it) is the following: in the top left hand edge of your screen is an image of an Apple. If you click that you will see a menu like this --
I've highlighted "restart". Selecting that with the mouse will bring up a confirmation menu and restart the computer. You can also choose, "sleep" and "shutdown". On the mac, when the shutdown is complete, the computer turns off. You won't need to touch the button again until you want to turn it on or wake it from sleeping.
A couple caveats to this nice simple solution.
- Some programs are stupid, like Novell GroupWise for Mac, and they don't know how to shut themselves down when you ask to restart or shutdown and they need to be closed individually. For now, I'll just say you that if you get a warning that some program prevented shutdown or restart then you can go and close those programs and try again. In most cases, merely trying to shut the system down again will do the trick.
- Programs sometimes "stop responding" and won't let you shut them down. If this happens you can use the "Force Quit" option, which will usually force a program to shut down. There are three ways to get to "Force Quit". If you can click the apple as in the picture above you can select the menu option "force quit" and then select the errant program. You can also CNTRL click the program icon and select force quit. Finally, there is a keystroke to bring up the force quit dialog. Pressing ALT Command (apple) and ESC will bring up the force quit box. Sometimes you have to ask to force quit a couple times, and sometimes you have to wait a while for it to work.
But don't do that...
Lessons on Macintosh for the Absolutly Clueless
You've got a brand new Macintosh computer. And like Donnie Hoyle says about your skills on that vastly more complex program Photoshop, "You Suck" at Mac.
I won't try to be funny and insult you, but I will assume as a starting point that you are new to the Mac, have just gotten one and have migrated from Windows. I will also assume that you know just enough to get by about Windows, and will aim my lessons in Mac toward first getting you "just good enough" on Mac.
We'll see how it goes.
I won't try to be funny and insult you, but I will assume as a starting point that you are new to the Mac, have just gotten one and have migrated from Windows. I will also assume that you know just enough to get by about Windows, and will aim my lessons in Mac toward first getting you "just good enough" on Mac.
We'll see how it goes.
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