Mac OS X Power Hound, Second Edition

Navigating the Finder

The Finder offers a variety of ways to navigate the various windows and menus on your screen. Some, like clicking, are obvious. Others, such as the hints in this section, are less so.

Keyboard Shortcuts

When you’re typing up a storm, the six inches from your keyboard to your mouse can feel like six miles. To help keep your hands in one place, Apple provides some keyboard shortcuts for the Finder:

• In the Finder,

  

  -1, -2, and -3 switch the window to icon view, list view, and column view, respectively.

• If you press

  

  -` (next to 1 on the keyboard), the Finder cycles among its open windows. The Finder treats the desktop itself as a window, so if you’ve got three open windows, you must repeat the keystroke four times to return to the first one.

Tip

This window-rotating ploy works in any program, not just the Finder.

• In list view, if you press the right arrow key, the Finder expands a selected folder’s flippy triangle, revealing the files and folders inside it. If you press the left arrow key, the Finder collapses it again (Figure 2-5).

• If you press

  

  -delete, the Finder throws your selected item(s) in the Trash.

• If you press Shift-

  -delete, the Finder empties the Trash. (To bypass ...