Your First Software: the Finder
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Chapter 1 Your First Software: The Finder IN THIS CHAPTER: I Icons: Moving, renaming, and making them invisible I Window and list-view shortcuts, and undocumented features I The Desktop File: What it is, how to see it, and how to slim it down I The inside story on copying and deleting files I Aliases: What they are and how to use them I Details on drag-and-drop, and Macintosh Drag and Drop FINDER:THE UNKNOWN PROGRAM Do you remember the first program you ever ran on the Macintosh? We do. It was the Finder. The Finder is the program that displays your familiar startup world: the Trash can, icons, folders, and the Desktop. Most people don’t immediately think of the Finder as a program. After all, you don’t double-click an icon to launch it, as you would with, say, ClarisWorks. And there’s no Quit command in the Finder, as in other pro- grams. The Finder is just always there, waiting as your home base, whenever you exit your other programs. Nonetheless, the Finder is a program. Yes, it runs automatically when you turn on the Mac, but you can quit the Finder — and launch it again. It even 3 4 Part I: System Software Revealed TRUE FACT Figure 1-1 shows up in the Application INTERFACE? WHAT INTERFACE? The Finder on the Application menu (at the right side of the menu, along with any other menu bar). programs you’re running (see Ever wonder what the three dots (the Figure 1-1). ellipsis…) mean when you see them in a menu item? The Finder is pure utility software: You don’t actually do work there (in the sense of earning a living). Its functions all relate to managing your stuff: organizing, renaming, discarding, copying, and opening your documents, disks, and programs. Here’s what Apple’s own interface bible,Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines (Addison-Wesley,1992), has to say: A FEW WORDS ABOUT ICONS “The ellipsis character (...) after Before the Finder can perform any of its tasks, you a menu item means that the command needs more infor- must indicate which files you want to move (or mation from the user before the rename, or discard, or whatever) by selecting their operation executes.The ellipsis icons. Selecting something by highlighting its icon is character doesn’t simply mean the cornerstone of the entire Macintosh way of life. that a dialog box or window will It’s the Macintosh interface. appear.For example,in the Finder File menu,the Get Info command doesn’t have an Selecting icons ellipsis character and shouldn’t. In the days before System 7, there was only one way to When you select a Finder object and choose Get Info,a window highlight an icon: by using the mouse. Today, you appears displaying information have a wealth of efficient keyboard shortcuts for about the object.The window selecting specific items. (When we say “System 7,” by appearing simply completes the the way, we mean “7-point-anything.” And when we command.” say “System 7.5,” we mean “System 7.5-point-any- Oh,yeah? Then how come the About thing-or-7.6-point-anything.”) This Macintosh command in the Ú Here’s an example of a typical System 7.5 maneu- menu has an ellipsis? All it does is ver that demonstrates the power of ignoring your bring up an info window,too! mouse. Suppose that yesterday you were working on a Ah,well.Maybe they licensed that document called Valentine’s Party Invite,but you command from Microsoft. don’t remember which folder you put it in. You press Ô-F (the shortcut for choosing Find from the File menu). The Find dialog box appears. You type valen and press the Return key. Chapter 1: Your First Software: The Finder 5 In a moment, you’re shown a list of every file on Figure 1-2 your hard drive whose name contains those letters. The arrow keys highlight adjacent icons.The Tab key finds the next icon in alphabetical order.You can press Shift-Tab to high- By pressing the up-arrow or down-arrow keys, you light the previous icon in the alphabet.If you type a letter,you’ll highlight the precise file you were looking for. Now jump to the icon whose name begins with that letter (or the next letter alphabetically). that your file is selected, you press Ô-O to open the file for editing. During this entire process, you never once had to move your hands from the keyboard to use the mouse. Similarly, in a messy folder full of icons, you can highlight a specific file icon without even being able Shift-Tab to spot it — just type the first few letters of the file’s name. That’s especially handy when you want, for example, to change your text-highlighting color. Tab V (orZ) With the Control Panels folder open, just type CO to highlight the Color icon, and then press Ô-O to open the panel. Figure 1-2 shows some other keys you can press to select icons within a single window. To select a group of icons, press Shift and click each one in succession. To exclude a highlighted icon from a group, Shift-click it again. Of course, you can also select groups of icons by drag-enclos- Figure 1-3 In System 7,as you drag in a diagonal line,any icon even ing them (see Figure 1-3). You can even select more touched by the dotted-line selection rectangle gets selected. than one icon in a window without using the mouse (This procedure works in list views,too.) (read about Easy Access in Chapter 3). After you’ve drag-selected icons as shown in Figure 1-3, by the way, don’t forget that you can select additional groups of icons (or deselect some of the ones you already highlighted) within the same window by Shift-dragging or Shift-clicking them. And for more far-flung selections, use the Find command (see Chapter 2). After icons are selected, you can move all of them as a unit by dragging any one of them. So who cares about avoiding the mouse? Efficiency fans, primarily. Every time you have to stop your work at the keyboard while one hand reaches for the mouse, you stop your flow of thinking (and typing). As you become more familiar with your Mac, you’ll use the mouse less and get your work done more quickly. But in System 7, you can do much more with icons than just select them, as our first batch of Macintosh Secrets clearly explains. 6 Part I: System Software Revealed ICON SECRETS Make icons jump neatly into position. .or not Using the Views control panel (see Chapter 2), you can specify that you want all your Finder icons to fall into points on an invisible grid so that they’re always in a neat line (see Figure 1-4). Figure 1-4 Here’s the tip: If you press the Ô key while you drag The Finder aligns the icons in a grid. an icon, you can set the icon down anywhere, even if it’s not in a grid-defined position.(Technically,the Mac only cares whether or not the Ô key is being pressed when you release the mouse.You don’t really have to press the key all the time you’re dragging.) If the grid option isn’t turned on in the Views control panel, the Ô key has the opposite effect. It makes the one icon you dragged jump into grid position. If, like most people, you don’t have the Finder grid perma- nently turned on, keep the Ô key in mind when you want to put a couple of icons exactly side-by-side.When you set each icon down while the Ô key is pressed, they’ll jump into perfect horizontal alignment. Change windows but keep your icons highlighted e You probably think that when you select a bunch of icons, any click in another window deselects them all. Even clicking in a window’s title bar deselects all Exclusiv highlighted icons. Does that mean that you can never bring another window to the front without losing your selection? No,you can do it — if you know where to click.Click the scroll bar or the info strip (where it says Name, Size, and so on) of the other window. Your icons in the first window stay selected. Replace an icon Replacing an icon isn’t really much of a secret anymore, but it’s worth repeat- ing in case you missed it. In System 7, you can create your own icons for any file, folder, or disk.Imagine etching your initials onto a folder, reducing the size of the icons for unimportant files, and making your hard drive icon look like Neil Diamond. Here’s how to do it. First, highlight the icon you want to replace. From the File menu,choose Get Info.The Get Info box appears for the icon you selected. Click the icon in the upper-left corner (see Figure 1-5). Chapter 1: Your First Software: The Finder 7 Choose Copy from the Edit menu to copy this Figure 1-5 original icon to the Clipboard. The first steps to replacing an icon:First,select the icon (left);then choose Get Info and click the icon in the dialog box that appears; To customize the icon, launch a painting pro- then copy it.