macOS Sierra For Dummies. Bob LeVitus

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СКАЧАТЬ to hold down the Control key. (You may have to enable this feature in the Mouse System Preference pane.)

      ❯❯ Drag: Dragging something usually means you have to click it first and hold down the mouse or trackpad button. Then you move the mouse on your desk or mouse pad (or your finger on the trackpad) so that the cursor and whatever you select moves across the screen. The combination of holding down the button and dragging the mouse is usually referred to as clicking and dragging.

      ❯❯

Wiggle (or jiggle): This welcome improvement, introduced in El Capitan (and terrific if I do say so myself) is awesome when you lose track of the pointer on your screen. Just wiggle your mouse back and forth (or jiggle your finger back and forth on the trackpad) for a few seconds and the pointer will magically get much bigger, making it easier to see on the screen. And, of course, when you stop wiggling or jiggling, the pointer returns to its normal size.

      ❯❯ Choosing an item from a menu: To get to macOS menu commands, you must first open a menu and then choose the option you want. Point at the name of the menu you want with your cursor, press the mouse button, and then drag downward until you select the command you want. When the command is highlighted, finish selecting by letting go of the mouse button.

      

If you’re a longtime Mac user, you probably hold down the mouse button the whole time between clicking the name of the menu and selecting the command you want. You can still do it that way, but you can also click the menu name to open it, release the mouse button, point at the item you want to select, and then click again. In other words, macOS menus stay open after you click their names, even if you’re not holding down the mouse button. After you click a menu’s name to open it, you can even type the first letter (or letters) of the item to select it and then execute that item by pressing the spacebar or the Return key. Furthermore, menus remain open until you click something else.

      Go ahead and give it a try … I’ll wait.

      

The terms given in the preceding list apply to all Mac laptop, desktop, and tower systems. If you use a MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, or Apple Magic Trackpad, however, there are a few more terms – such as tap, swipe, rotate, pinch, and spread – you’ll want to add to your lexicon. You can read all about them in full and loving detail in Chapter 4.

      Not Just a Beatles Movie: Help and the Help Menu

      One of the best features about all Macs is the excellent built-in help, and macOS Sierra doesn’t cheat you on that legacy: This system has online help in abundance. When you have a question about how to do something, the Help Center is the first place you should visit (after this book, of course).

Clicking the Help menu reveals the Search field at the top of the menu and the Mac Help and New to Mac items. Choosing Mac Help opens the Mac Help window, as shown in Figure 1-5; choosing New to Mac launches Safari and displays a tour of macOS Sierra.

       FIGURE 1-5: Mac Help is nothing if not helpful.

      Though the keyboard shortcut for Help no long appears on the Help menu, the same shortcut as always, Shift+

+?, still opens Help.

      You can browse Help by clicking a topic in the Table of Contents and then clicking a subtopic. If you don’t see the Table of Contents, click the Table of Contents button as shown in Figure 1-5.

To search Mac Help, simply type a word or phrase in either Search field – the one in the Help menu itself or the one near the top of the Help window on the right side – and then press Return. In a few seconds, your Mac provides you one or more articles to read, which (theoretically) are related to your question. Usually. If you type menus and press Return, for example, you get ten results, as shown in Figure 1-6.

       FIGURE 1-6: You have questions? Mac Help has answers.

      As long as your Mac is connected to the Internet, search results include articles from the Apple online support database.

      

Although you don’t have to be connected to the Internet to use Mac Help, you do need an Internet connection to get the most out of it. (Chapter 12 can help you set up an Internet connection, if you don’t have one.) That’s because macOS installs only certain help articles on your hard drive. If you ask a question that those articles don’t answer, Mac Help connects to the Apple website and downloads the answer (assuming that you have an active Internet connection). These answers appear when you click See All Help Results near the bottom of Figure 1-6. Click one of these entries, and Help Viewer retrieves the text over the Internet. Although this can sometimes be inconvenient, it’s also quite smart. This way, Apple can update the Help system at any time without requiring any action from you.

      Furthermore, after you ask a question and Mac Help has grabbed the answer from the Apple website, the answer remains on your hard drive forever. If you ask for it again – even at a later date – your computer won’t have to download it from the Apple website again.

      Click Search the Web (near the bottom of Figure 1-6) to launch Safari and perform a web search for the phrase you typed.

      

Here’s a cool feature I like to call automatic visual help cues. Here’s how they work:

      1. Type a word or phrase in the Help menu’s Search field.

2. Select any item that has a menu icon to its left (such as the three items with Trash in their names in Figure 1-7.

      The automatic visual cue – an arrow – appears, pointing at that command in the appropriate menu.

       FIGURE 1-7: If you choose an item with a menu icon, an arrow points to that item in context.

      Finally, don’t forget that most apps have their own Help systems, so if you want general help with your Mac, you need to first click the Finder icon in the Dock, click the Desktop, or use the app-switching shortcut

+tab to activate the Finder. Only then can you choose Mac Help from the Finder’s Help menu.

      Chapter 2

      Desktop and Windows and Menus (Oh My!)

      IN THIS CHAPTER

      Understanding the Finder

      Checking out the parts of a window

      Dealing with dealie-boppers in windows

      Resizing, СКАЧАТЬ