You can access the Finder’s second area of cus-tomization by either
Choosing View➪Show View Options.
Pressing Ô-J.
The View Options settings apply to the currently active window, if one is open and active. If no win-dow is open and active, the View Options panel applies to the Desktop.
When you apply the View Options to the Desktop (see Figure 11-9), you control only how items appear on the Desktop. (View Options can affect Finder win-dows more dramatically.) Here’s the two-second guide to what the options mean:
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The first three settings — Icon Size, Text Size, and Label Position — do what you’d expect:
They control how big an item’s icon is in pixels, adjust the point size for the item’s name, and position the item’s name either underneath or to the right of the item’s icon.
• Figure 11-9: The View Options panel for the Desktop.
If your monitor is set at a high resolution (see Technique 8), you can increase the size of your icons and label text to accommodate this.
The final four check boxes in the View Options dialog affect how items are arranged on the Desktop and what information is revealed.
The most important of the four check boxes is Keep Arranged By, which allows you to maintain
order in an otherwise chaotic universe (or Desktop). Mark this check box and use the drop-down menu to arrange your Desktop by Name, Date Modified, Date Created, Size, Kind, or Label.
If you select the Show Item Info check box, image sizes are displayed along with their names, and size of hard drives and discs (including remaining space) are listed below their names. The Show Icon Preview check box turns an image’s icon into a miniature representation of the actual image (in icon view only).
Menus
The Finder, like any other application, has a series of menus across the top of the display where you can access commonly used features. The Finder’s menus are located in two areas:
In the upper-left corner are the standard menus (see Figure 11-10).
In the upper-right corner are extra and third-party menus (see Figure 11-11).
• Figure 11-10: The standard Finder menus.
• Figure 11-11: The extended Finder menus, including third-party additions.
To rearrange or remove an item from the right side of the menu bar, hold down Ôwhile clicking the icon. Then you can either drag the item off to remove it (it disappears in a cloud of smoke) or drag it side to side to move it (the other icons move out of its way).
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Window:The Window menu controls the open Finder windows (much like an application’s Window menu gives you access to the open doc-uments in that application). Although it does give you an easy way to handle the mess of mul-tiple windows, you might find Exposé to be an easier solution.
Help:Need help? Use this menu to bring up the Help Viewer application.
The right side menu area is a more flexible place;
what’s there depends on what you’ve enabled. For example:
The Fast User Switching menu appears here if Fast User Switching is enabled under Accounts.
The system clock reveals itself if you have it set to do so in the Date & Time control panel.
The display menu makes an appearance if you have it set to do so in the Displays panel.
The volume control appears here if you have it set to do so in the Sound panel.
The Keyboard Menu shows up if you’ve set it to do so under System Preferences➪International➪
Input Menu.
Laptops show their battery status here if you’ve set it to do so in the Energy Saver panel.
Furthermore, extensions and applications add menus here.
Many freeware and shareware applica-tions exist to modify or otherwise add to the menu bar. A quick sample includes the ever popular TinkerTool
(www.bresink.de/
osx/tinkertool.html, free), wClock (www.wolfware.com/wclock.html, free), FruitMenu (www.unsanity.com/haxies/
fruitmenu, $10), and Classic Menu (www.sigsoftware.com/classicmenu, $10).
The standard menus include
Apple:The Apple menu (Ú) is the catch-all for Tiger. Including system tools such as Software Update and System Preferences, it allows you to change the Dock settings and your network loca-tion, and it also lists the most recently used items. The bottom half of the Apple menu is for force-quitting applications, shutting down, restarting, putting your Mac to sleep, and logging out. (Read more on some of these in Technique 5.) Finder:The Finder menu gives you access to its
preferences panel (see earlier in this technique), controls the showing and hiding of applications, and links to Services (see Technique 29).
File:The File menu is for basic file-management stuff (such as opening and closing) and includes most of the often-used commands and keyboard shortcuts.
Edit:The Edit menu, like any application’s Edit menu, gives you access to editing shortcuts, the keyboard equivalents of which should be second nature to any power user. Two interesting fea-tures here show you the contents of the Clipboard (useful if you forget what you copied there) and bring up the Character Palette to access special characters.
View:The View menu is mostly useful with respect to windows (see Technique 12). Most of the options are grayed out (unusable) unless you’re in a Finder window. The remaining choices affect the Desktop.
The View menu lets you customize a selected Finder window or the Desktop. Conversely, the Window menu lets you control windows: You can switch among open windows, minimize a window, and bring all windows to focus.
Go:The Go menu is a nice little navigational tool, giving you links and the keyboard equivalents for quickly accessing common places. We prefer the keyboard shortcuts ourselves, but the menu option is handy to have, and you can find the keyboard shortcuts listed there as a reminder.
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