I am fairly new to the Mac and I'm struggling to understand the benefit of Expose. I believe it was on and it was causing some things to move around when I had multiple windows open. I found it kind of annoying, but maybe it's because I don't understand the concept.
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Expose...?
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dukebound85
macrumors Core
mkrishnan
Moderator emeritus
It's just an alternative way of application switching. On Macs you have several ways of switching between windows. Most of the ways exist with variation on other systems also.
1) Clicking a window to bring it in focus and to the front (like on Windows and also like some Unix/Linux variants)
2) Clicking on an application's dock icon brings its window(s) to the front and also focuses them (analogous to clicking on a taskbar entry in Windows and again in some Linux variants)
3) You can use Apple-Tab to cycle through open applications and Apple-` to cycle through open windows of the current application (analogous to alt-tab and ctrl-tab, etc)
4) You can do it visually using Expose (loosely analogous to the visual system in Vista and also to the one that I think is part of compiz in some linux distros). So for this last one, the idea is that you manipulate the screen so that you can see all the windows that are open at once, and pick the one you want.
If you're fairly comfortable with the mouse, like a lot of us are, many of us like to set it up so that the mouse switches to Expose views by going to the corner of the screen (you can do this from System Preferences). Otherwise, it gets activated with function keys (which one is which is also listed in system preferences. It sounds like you're accidentally hitting the function keys.
To be honest, I avoided it for the first few months on my Mac and ultimately started using it predominantly, although I use all four methods interchangeably. After a while, it became very intuitive to me, although occasionally I do it inadvertently.
1) Clicking a window to bring it in focus and to the front (like on Windows and also like some Unix/Linux variants)
2) Clicking on an application's dock icon brings its window(s) to the front and also focuses them (analogous to clicking on a taskbar entry in Windows and again in some Linux variants)
3) You can use Apple-Tab to cycle through open applications and Apple-` to cycle through open windows of the current application (analogous to alt-tab and ctrl-tab, etc)
4) You can do it visually using Expose (loosely analogous to the visual system in Vista and also to the one that I think is part of compiz in some linux distros). So for this last one, the idea is that you manipulate the screen so that you can see all the windows that are open at once, and pick the one you want.
If you're fairly comfortable with the mouse, like a lot of us are, many of us like to set it up so that the mouse switches to Expose views by going to the corner of the screen (you can do this from System Preferences). Otherwise, it gets activated with function keys (which one is which is also listed in system preferences. It sounds like you're accidentally hitting the function keys.
To be honest, I avoided it for the first few months on my Mac and ultimately started using it predominantly, although I use all four methods interchangeably. After a while, it became very intuitive to me, although occasionally I do it inadvertently.
Much Ado
macrumors 68000
Honestly, i cannot live without Expose now.
I was on a PC earlier and i started squeezing the mouse like mad to let me switch windows 😉
Seriously, give it a go. You will be swapping between all your windows so quickly and easily after a while. My favorite OS X feature, by a mile.
I was on a PC earlier and i started squeezing the mouse like mad to let me switch windows 😉
Seriously, give it a go. You will be swapping between all your windows so quickly and easily after a while. My favorite OS X feature, by a mile.