Transcript CS 2508 - UCC CS

Introduction to the Mac user-interface
• The Mac user interface is subtly different
from the Microsoft Windows interface
• So we will spend a few minutes pointing
out some of the differences
The Mac desktop
The Menu-bar and the Dock
A key difference: menu-bars
• MS Windows and the Mac OS treat menubars differently
– In MS Windows, each open program window
has its own menu-bar
– In Mac OS, no program window has its own
menu-bar
MS Windows
• Each window below has its own menu-bar
Mac OS
• No program below has its own menu-bar
The Desktop menu-bar in Mac OS
• In Mac OS, there is just one menu-bar
• This menu-bar belongs to the desktop
• When a program window is active, it takes
over the desk-top menu-bar
• This means that the options in the desktop
menu-bar change when a different
program window becomes active
Mac OS -- situation 1
• Below, the active window belongs to VLC Media player
• And VLC Media Player "owns" the desktop menu-bar
Mac OS - situation 2
• Below, the active window belongs to iTunes
• And iTunes "owns" the desktop menu-bar
Mac OS - situation 3
• No program window below is active
• The desktop menu-bar is controlled by a "default"
program called Finder
Mac OS - situation 4
• In fact, when no program window is open, Finder
controls the desktop menu-bar
Mac OS Finder is a bit like MS Windows Explorer
• Consider the situation below
• Suppose we click on the icon indicated by the arrow
Finder versus Windows Explorer continued
• When we click on the icon, we get a Finder window, as shown
below
• We can use this window to navigate through the folders on the
Mac hard drive
The title-bar in a Mac OS program window
• Although no Mac OS program window has a menu-bar, each
program window does have a title-bar
• The title-bar contains some buttons as well as the program title
• These button allow us to maximize, minimize or close the window
The dock on the Mac OS desktop
• The dock contains several items, including
– icons for launching important programs
– an icon for the trash-can
• Below, arrows point to dock icons for iTunes, PhotoShop, FinalCut,
AfterEffects, Quicktime and the trash-can
The dock on the Mac OS desktop (continued)
• The dock also contains icons
for minimized program
windows
• Compare the docks on the two
screen-shorts shown here
– in the top screen-shot, an
iTunes window is open
– in the bottom screen-shot, the
iTunes window has been
minimized
• the icon for the minimized
window can be seen in the
dock, just to the left of the
trash-can icon
Programs which open multiple panels
• Many programs open several several dis-connected window panels
• This is fine, if you run only one program at a time and have a plain
desktop which is empty, except for the dock
• Below, PhotoShop has three panels open
• Note that the blue area is NOT part of any PhotoShop window panel
Programs which open multiple panes (contd.)
• Multi-pane programs can be confusing if you run several programs
at the same time
• Below, PhotoShop has three window panels (see the blue arrows)
• And iTunes has one window panel (see the red arrow)
• It is easy to be confused into thinking that the blue area and the
iTunes window are panels in the PhotoShop window
Programs which open multiple panels (contd.)
• Multi-panel programs can be very confusing if you have a picture
desktop and have several multi-panel programs running at the same
time
• Can you tell what is happening below?
The Mac keyboard
• There are several different Mac OS keyboards, just as there are
several MS Windows keyboards
• A few of the keys on Mac OS keyboards are worthy of attention
The command key
• This key is often used in combination with other keys to make
keyboard shortcuts for executing commands
The option key
• This key is also often used in combination with other keys to make
keyboard shortcuts for executing commands
A brief note on screen capture in Mac OS
• All MS Windows keyboards have a button labelled "print
screen" which can be used to capture the current
contents of the screen
• Mac OS keyboards do not have such a key
• Instead, we can use a program called Grab
• Or, we can use one of the following keyboard shortcuts
cmd+shift+3
saves an image of the entire screen to a file on disk
cmd+shift+4
displays a cross-hair cursor which can be dragged over a
smaller area if the screen required area (while the cross-hair is
showing, a press of the space-bar brings up the further option to
select a specific window for the image)