Mac OS® X Leopard™ All‐in‐One Desk Reference For Dummies®

Chapter 2. Navigating and Running Programs

In This Chapter

• Restarting, sleeping, and shutting down Mac OS X

• Using windows

• Using menus

• Recognizing and selecting icons

• Using the keyboard

• Running applications

• Switching between programs

• Opening, saving, and quitting within an application

As the folks in Cupertino will tell you, “It's all about the graphics.” They're right, of course — Mac OS X is a highly visual operating system, and using it without a mouse is like building Hoover Dam with a pocketknife. (And not a particularly sharp pocketknife, either.) Therefore, most of this chapter will require you to firmly grasp the little rodent — I introduce you to little graphical bits like icons and menus, and you discover how to open windows that can display anything from the contents of a document to the contents of your hard drive.

On the other hand, any true Macintosh power user will tell you that the keyboard is still a useful piece of hardware. Because I want you to be a bona fide, well‐rounded Mac OS X power user, I also demonstrate those key combinations that can save you time, effort, and possible tennis elbow from all that mouse‐wrangling.

Finally, I lead you through the basic training that you'll need to run your programs: how to start them, how to open and save documents, and how to quit an application as gracefully as Fred Astaire on his best day.

Restarting, Sleeping, and Shutting Down

First things first. As the guy on the rocket sled probably yelled, “This is neat, but how do you stop ...