Mac OS X Leopard: The Missing Manual

The Save and Open Dialog Boxes

When you choose File→Save, you're asked where you want the new document stored on your hard drive. The resulting dialog box is crystal-clear—more than ever, it's a miniature Finder. All of the skills you've picked up working at the desktop come into play here.

To give it a try, launch any Mac OS X program that has a Save or Export command— TextEdit, for example. Type a couple of words, and then choose File→Save. The Save sheet appears (Figure 5-15).

Tip

In Mac OS X, a quick glance at the Close button in the upper-left corner of a document window tells you whether it's been saved. When a small dot appears in the red button, it means you've made changes to the document that you haven't saved yet. (Time to press ⌘-S!). The dot disappears as soon as you save your work.

Sheets

In the days of operating systems gone by, the Save dialog box appeared dead center on the screen, where it commandeered your entire operation. Moreover, because it seemed stuck to your screen rather than to a particular document, you couldn't actually tell which document you were saving—a real problem when you quit out of a program that had three unsaved documents open.

Figure 5-15. Top: The Save dialog box, or sheet, often appears in its compact form. Right (inset): If you open the Where pop-up menu, you'll find that Mac OS X lists all the places it thinks you might want to save your new ...