Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, Tiger Edition

chapter 3: the dock, desktop, toolbar, and sidebar 81

chapter

3

W

hen you stop to think about it, the Mac OS X environment owes most of

its different, photo-realistic looks to four key elements: the Dock at the

bottom edge of the screen, the toolbar at the top of every Finder window,

the Sidebar on the left side of every Finder window, and the shimmering, sometimes

animated backdrop of the desktop itself. This chapter shows you how to use and

control these most dramatic elements of Mac OS X.

The Dock

As noted briefly in Chapter 1, the Dock is a launcher (like the Windows Start menu)

and a “what’s open” listing (like the Windows taskbar) rolled into one. Only a tiny

triangle beneath a program’s icon tells you that it’s open.

Apple starts the Dock off with a few icons it thinks you’ll enjoy: QuickTime Player,

iTunes, iChat, and so on. But using your Mac without putting your own favorite icons

on the Dock is like buying an expensive suit and turning down the free alteration

service. At the first opportunity, you should make the Dock your own.

The concept of the Dock is simple: Any icon you drag onto it (Figure 3-1) is installed

there as a large button. A single click, not a double-click, opens the corresponding

icon. In other words, the Dock is an ideal parking lot for the icons of disks, folders,

documents, and programs you frequently use.

Tip: You can install batches of icons onto the ...