Panther by the Numbers Page 2 of 2

40 Mac OS X 10.3 Features, Tips, and Tricks

Finder Fixes

8. Introducing the Sidebar New to Finder windows is the sidebar, a pane on the left side that shows mounted disks, file servers, and favorite folders. The sidebar is aimed at making it easier to find what you're looking for on your Mac. To quickly add favorite items to the sidebar, just select them in the Finder and press CMD-T.

9. Open and Save, Redeemed When Apple first showed us OS X, the Finder offered only one way to display files: column view. By the time the operating system arrived, other traditional ways of viewing files--as icons or as a list--had returned to the Finder. But they were still missing from Open and Save dialog boxes, which kept column view as the only option. But with Panther, the process of navigating to the right folder in which to open or save a file has gotten much easier. The new Open and Save dialog boxes include a Finder-inspired sidebar containing your favorite locations for quick access. You can also opt for an OS 9style List view.

10. Instant File Compression Panther's Finder lets you compress files and folders without any add-on applications using the Zip file compression standard common on Windows. To compress items in the Finder, select them and then choose Create Archive Of File name or Create Archive Of Number Files from the Action menu, found in either the contextual menu you get by control-clicking on your selection or the Finder's File menu. To uncompress a Zip file, just double-click on it in the Finder.

11. At Long Last, Labels Panther may just restore the goodwill of grumpy OS 9 users who never quite forgave Apple for getting rid of Finder labels. Now you can label items in the Finder by control-clicking on them and selecting a color label, by using the toolbar's Action menu, or by choosing a color at the bottom of the File menu. To edit label names (by default, they're just the names of the label colors themselves), choose Finder: Preferences and click on Labels. Panther's labels don't look like OS 9's labels: the background behind the item's name is tinted, rather than the item's icon. (In list view, the entire row devoted to a labeled item is colored.)

12. Network in the Finder In OS 9, you browsed your network for a file server via the Chooser. In OS X, you did it via the Finder's Connect To Server command. In Panther, local servers simply show up in the Finder--just choose Network from the Go menu to see a list of servers in the familiar Finder interface. If the server you're connecting to isn't local, you can enter remote server addresses by choosing Connect To Server.

13. Control the Finder OS X is based on Unix, an operating system with a complex series of file permissions that prevent users from deleting or moving files that don't belong to them. The problem is, Mac users are used to moving files anywhere they please--and they aren't happy when OS X tells them what they can't do. Fortunately, Panther's Finder isn't quite as obstinate when it comes to moving files into protected areas, giving a certain amount of control back to users. If you try to move something into a protected location and you have administrative privileges, you can enter your password and force the action to happen, permissions be damned.

Other Interface Tweaks

14. Subtler Interface Elements You'll see a lot less of OS X's trademark striping in Panther. The texture behind the menu bar is much subtler, and active window title bars now have a slight gradient. Inactive windows are no longer translucent; instead they have no color or gradient.

15. Good-bye Tabs, Hello Chiclets The original OS X interface featured lots of tabbed items. Apple has eighty-sixed tabs from Panther. Instead of blue tabs at the top of windows, the interface now features blue buttons on the perimeter of a shaded box that contains the window's content. The areas under tabs used to appear as square windows with slight drop shadows; now they're rounded areas that appear to be etched into the surface of the parent window. It's a subdued but attractive effect.

16. Highlighted Toolbar Items In Panther, applications that let you toggle between windows now highlight the currently selected toolbar item. For instance, if you click on the Displays icon in the System Preferences toolbar, its background will become shaded to show that it's selected.

Productivity Boosts

17. Smooth Scrolling In the new Appearance preference pane--the pane formerly known as General--there's a Use Smooth Scrolling option. When this option is selected, applications that support smooth scrolling will--as the option's name suggests--scroll more smoothly. For example, if you hit the Page Down key while you're in Safari, the browser will scroll line by line down to the next page. This feature's appeal is matter of taste, but it's growing on us.

18. Integrated iPhoto With Panther, Apple has integrated iPhoto even more deeply into OS X. Before, if you wanted to select specific iPhoto albums or your entire iPhoto library for screen-saver images or desktop pictures, you had to do so from within the application. Panther lets you do so from the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane.

19. Network at a Glance The Network preference pane now has a friendly face--the Network Status view. It shows you at a glance what's going on with your various connections. For example, it can tell you that you're currently using Ethernet, but that you're also connected to an AirPort Network or that your modem configuration hasn't been set up yet.

20. By All Accounts Rather than dividing user information among Jaguar's Users, Accounts, and Login Items preference panes, Panther puts it all in the Accounts preference pane. From Accounts, you can set your startup items and user picture, as well as edit other accounts on your system (as long as you have administration privileges).

21. Help for the Help Viewer Ever accidentally pressed the help key and then groaned as Apple's slothful Help Viewer application took an eternity to launch and display help pages? Well, those days are over. Panther offers a new Help Viewer that uses the same HTML-display technology in Safari. The result is a fast, good-looking help system--and one that won't make you cry when you inadvertently ask for help.

22. Internet Connect's Virtual Features OS X's Internet Connect utility lets you connect to the Internet by dialing a modem or logging on to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) securely over a network. Panther improves greatly on Internet Connect's VPN technology, adding support for IPsec VPN servers and adding a VPN menu bar item so users of corporate networks can get online and offline without having to open up Internet Connect each time.

Editor in Chief JASON SNELL has followed the changes to Mac OS X since before it had a roman numeral.