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Leopard Tips and Hints
- Thread starter arn
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Or "desktop" (swipe four fingers up if you have a new Macbook, or just set it as an hotcorner). But if you want to "clean" your desktop, use +alt+H, that will hide all windows except the one you're at.
Speaking of that, why doesn't Mac OS X give us Hide All? They apparently excluded it on purpose, since they give us Hide (appname) for the current application and Hide Others for everything else, but once you use Hide Others you can't hide the current application. Why not?
Hide All would put you on the desktop until you clicked a particular application in the Dock or chose Show All. I've never understood why we don't have it.
Hide All would put you on the desktop until you clicked a particular application in the Dock or chose Show All. I've never understood why we don't have it.
i guess Exposé is the Hide All Q. although took a while to be implemented from the beginnings of OS X.
if you dont have any Finder windows open you can command-option click the desktop to hide everything. just the same as invoking Finder and then doing Hide All.
if you dont have any Finder windows open you can command-option click the desktop to hide everything. just the same as invoking Finder and then doing Hide All.
Almost. Command-option-click on the desktop hides other apps but leaves open all of your previously open Finder windows. So it's equivalent to clicking the Finder icon and selecting Hide Others, but doesn't get you to an empty desktop.
Since there's no Hide All or equivalent, I use Exposé for quick access to the desktop. But I use another trick too. I define more Spaces than I would otherwise need and keep at least one always empty of windows. That way I can switch to it, open a file, copy something out of it, and close it again, without seeing any other windows. (In contrast, Exposé exits and brings all of the windows back if you launch an application.)
Expose' shows Desktop or All Windows...
I use Expose' for this.
Go to system preferences.
Set one corner of your display to "Desktop"
Now, when you move your mouse into this corner, all windows on your screen will slide off the screen and reveal the desktop.
I use the left bottom corner for Desktop and the left upper corner for "All windows"
I never use "Command+tab".
This working style increased my speed enormous and shows how crippled Windows is, when working on a PC without this great feature.
I use Expose' for this.
Go to system preferences.
Set one corner of your display to "Desktop"
Now, when you move your mouse into this corner, all windows on your screen will slide off the screen and reveal the desktop.
I use the left bottom corner for Desktop and the left upper corner for "All windows"
I never use "Command+tab".
This working style increased my speed enormous and shows how crippled Windows is, when working on a PC without this great feature.
good trick :thumbsup:
im trying to work out how to use Spaces and that is definitely an idea to use. this would be a good time to ask a question on something im not quite clear on with Spaces. what does "When switching to an application, switch to …" in Spaces preferences do? the only difference i can see when it is checked is you have to click an application dock icon twice before it switches to it?
Let me answer that with an example. Suppose you have a Safari window open in Space 1 but not in Space 2 and you are in Space 2. If you decide to use Safari, by clicking the Safari icon in the dock or using Alt-Tab, do you want to change back to Space 1 or do you simply want Safari to become the active application in Space 2 (so you can do File->New Window, for example)? Spaces gives you the choice with that checkbox.
As an extra convenience, if you click an application's icon in the dock when you are already in that application, but there's a window for that application open in another Space, it switches Spaces for you. That's true whether or not you select that checkbox.
As an extra convenience, if you click an application's icon in the dock when you are already in that application, but there's a window for that application open in another Space, it switches Spaces for you. That's true whether or not you select that checkbox.
ah yep good example! its a bit of a toughie but i get it now
. thanks.i like that with Spaces too. probably standard in workspace managers.
In the Spaces preferences pane, you can assign certain applications to certain spaces. The application will automatically launch in that space upon opening. This way you don't have to set it up the way you want every time you turn on your Mac.
This works in quite a lot places, for example from a Spotlight search you can press command while selecting the file/folder you want and it will show you where it is located rather than opening it.
Its an awesome feature and its incorporated around Mac OS X. For example CMD+Click in safari opens a new tab and many other ways.
Its annoying however with stacks, CMD+Clicking a folder will select the folder in its outer folder, I'd rather it open the folder.
is there any way, I could remove scroll bar from Safari (or even Finder, but Safari is more critical, as my scrolling is done with trackpad and some extra space is always welcome)?
Snow Leopard now has its own Hints and Tips thread.
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This thread will be closed for about a week or so but if you would like to post please report this post and ask for it to be reopened.
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