Stacks were a great idea that just didn't get implemented very well. At least not until recently when they were made better. But that will wait until Part 2.
In this Part 1, I will introduce you to Stacks and show you how they work in their most simple form. In Part 2, I will show you how to make Stacks really work for you.
Stacks are a way to quickly access your files from your Downloads folder and your Documents folder. They live in the Dock between the divider bar (which now looks like an airport runway) and the Trash.
Stack as a fan Click to see a larger image
When you got your new Mac with Leopard on it or updated to Leopard, your Stacks were represented by nice, blue folder icons The first problem with Stacks is that once you put items into your Downloads or Documents folders (located in your home folder) the Stack on the Dock shows the icon of the most recent item you added. Nice idea, but suddenly you can't tell which Stack is which by looking. And it looks kind of messy because you can see the icons of the other files you added "stacked" up behind.
When you click on a Stack in the Dock, one of two things happens, Either the last ten items pop up as a "fan' shape (see image) or the Stack opens as a
bezel
showing more than 10 files. From either the fan or the bezel you can click a file or folder and it will open up.
Stacks work fine if you only have a few files in your Downloads or Documents folders. But, since these are among the most used folders in your home folder, they probably have lots of files in them. (My Downloads folder has 73 items in it.)
Wait, you might be saying. In Tiger and earlier, couldn't you just drag any folder to the Dock and get the same functionality? Yes, indeed. But actually the old way was better because you didn't have "fans" or "bezels"; you just had a nice pop up list of your files.
So what happened with Stacks? Again, a nice idea that didn't get implemented very well. People griped. A lot. And Apple listened. In OS X 10.5.2, they added alot of new features to Stacks. They best feature, however, was the ability to go back to the Tiger way of doing things. That is what Part 2 will be about.
I love the iTunes Store. For the most part, it is very easy to find what I am looking for. I find the search tool to be quite effective. Sometimes, however, you just want to do a quick browse through the store. That can be kind of hard to do the way the store is set up.
The iTunes Store has an alternate interface that doesn't have all of the graphics that can make the store feel cluttered. Look for the "eye" icon on the bottom right of the iTunes window. Clicking on that icon replaces the graphic interface with a very simple, straightforward browser. Click it again to return to the regular iTunes Store.
Before Leopard 10.5.2, you pretty much needed to go two places to work with Time Machine. You had the Dock icon where you entered Time Machine, and the Time Machine Preferences pane where you monitored how your backups were progressing.
Now in 10.5.2, Time Machine has added a Menu Bar icon that looks like the Time Machine icon on the Dock except that it is all black. Clicking on the icon tells you the time of your last backup and also lets you start a backup right away. You can also enter Time Machine from this icon.
The Menu Bar icon does all that the Dock icon does and more, so if you want, you can now drag the Time Machine icon off of your Dock to save space.
The Menu Bar icon has one more trick: it animates when Time Machine is making a backup. The arrow spins and the clock hands move backwards. Clicking the icon when a backup is being made shows you the progress of the backup. This saves you having to run to the Preference pane every time you want to check the status.
One more thing I have learned about Time Machine. This isn't new to 10.5.2 but worth sharing nevertheless. Every other backup software I have ever used would end the backup rather ungracefully if you were to sleep, shut down or restart your Mac. Time Machine, however, doesn't seem to mind at all. It just picks up where it left off when it can. Pretty smart.
This is a very simple tip. Many web sites put up pop up ads or "pop under" ads when you visit their site. To keep this from happening, so go to the Safari menu and choose Block Pop-Up Windows. No more pop ups.
If you have a .Mac email address (one that ends in @mac.com), you can access your email from any computer connected to the web.
Just go to www.mac.com and log in using your .Mac user name and password.
The .Mac webmail interface is very similar to Mail, so you shouldn't have any problems at with using it. My only complaint about it is that it is very slow.
Shopping online? You can help support Basics4Mac by making your Amazon purchases through this website. Simply click the link below and you will be sent to Amazon.com. Any purchases you make at Amazon by going through this site will give me a small commission. It does not affect the price of the items you buy.
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