A Beginner’s Guide to Mac: Using Expose to Save Time Switching Between Files and Applications

Welcome lower back to the collection. In article one, we found out how to use Finder and the Dock to navigate your laptop, open applications, and locate documents. In this newsletter, we’re going to take this a step similarly by getting to know a few hints and hints that might be built into the Snow Leopard running machine to make you faster. In Windows surroundings, you will be aware of keyboard shortcuts that enable you to replicate, paste, choose, keep and print while not having to open a record menu or use your mouse to click an icon. In the Mac surroundings, those shortcuts are also possible. Still, there is any other characteristic referred to as Exposé that enables you to take shortcuts as you work between the various programs and folders you may have open at any individual time.

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Firstly permit’s recognize how the computer shows statistics on display and what you are asking it to do while getting into a command along with your keyboard or mouse. Every instance of a selected application, inclusive of a Firefox net browser, is displayed as a window. You could have multiple Firefox home windows open straight away, or you can simplest have one Firefox window open. However, you also have other open windows of other programs, together with Mail and Finder. The laptop stacks these home windows, and the only you’re running on is always displayed at the top of the stack.

When you want to move to a window decrease in the stack, you have some options. Your first alternative is to paintings inside the software you are currently using. If you open the Window menu on the top navigation bar, you’ll see a listing of the windows which might be currently open within that utility, inclusive of another phrase processing record in OpenOffice or another surfing window in Firefox. You, in reality, click on the call of the window you want to navigate to, and it’s far displayed at the display screen on the top of the stack. If you need to switch from writing a report to viewing a web page, you definitely want to exchange applications. To interchange packages, you may either click on the icon of the software you want to apply within the dock or use the keyboard shortcut we mentioned within the first article, hold down Command, and press Tab to scroll through the open numerous applications.

But the trouble with both of these strategies is that you frequently do not consider the call of the document you have been operating on and want to get returned to. Exposé gives you 3 ways of viewing all the windows you have open on the pc, after which you honestly click to select the only you need. The first choice, known as All Windows, is to view all of the windows as tiles on your display screen. If you had a word processing record open, a Firefox internet browsing window, and iTunes open, you could see each of those as a tile at the screen. If you had more than one window in any of those programs, such as two phrase processing files, these could be displayed as separate tiles.

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The 2nd alternative, known as Application Windows, exposes handiest the windows that relate to the application you’re currently running on. If you had four phrase processing documents, one phrase processing file, and one spreadsheet open in the software OpenOffice, each of those windows would be displayed as a clickable tile on display. All other home windows, consisting of a web browser, could be excluded from this display as they’re now not OpenOffice windows. The third Exposé choice is called Show Desktop. As its call implies, this option certainly indicates your Desktop, wherein you may click files or folders to open them, drag and drop files, or open a brand new utility.

To use Exposé, we need to turn it on. Go to System Preferences, which you could find with the aid of clicking the Apple icon inside the pinnacle left-hand aspect of the screen and deciding on it, fourth down on the listing. In System Preferences, select Exposé and Spaces, fourth from the left in the top row. We will cover spaces in a later article, however, for now, click on the Exposé tab and you may see 3 separate rows of options. The top row, titled Active Screen Corners, lets you decide actions to get right on entry utilizing moving your cursor to each of the four corners of your display. The second row is the Exposé settings which enable you to create keyboard shortcuts for the 3 Exposé commands, and the bottom row pertains to the Dashboard, which we will cover in a later article.

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Setting your Active Screen Corners is a compelling way to use Exposé. Determine which screen corner you wish to trigger the All Windows, Application Windows or Desktop command, Quit System Preferences, and you’re exact to go. If you circulate your cursor to the pinnacle left hand corner of your display screen you invoke the corresponding action, consisting of All Windows. You also can specify keyboard shortcuts to perform this motion. In the second one row pick the important thing, along with F9, and the motion All Windows. Now, whilst you press F9 on your keyboard, the All Windows command is achieved, and all of your home windows are displayed on display. To pass to some other window, you sincerely pick it out along with your cursor. Experiment with Active Screen Corners to discover the combination of commands and corners which you locate best.

You may have been aware of 3 other instructions that you may assign as one of your Active Screen Corners: Dashboard, Start Screen Saver, Disable Screen Saver and Put Display to Sleep. You can also experiment with these commands in exactly an equal manner.

John R. Wright
Social media ninja. Freelance web trailblazer. Extreme problem solver. Music fanatic. Spent several months marketing pubic lice in the financial sector. Spent 2002-2008 supervising the production of ice cream in Africa. Had some great experience developing robotic shrimp in the aftermarket. Spent several years getting my feet wet with puppets in Miami, FL. Was quite successful at supervising the production of corncob pipes worldwide. What gets me going now is working with electric trains in Mexico.