Keyboard & Mouse | Menus | Finding, Opening, Arranging Files | Views | Ejecting & Shutting Down | Outside Resources

Menus:
In Mac OSes before OS 9, to keep a menu active you had to click and hold down the mouse button while scrolling through the menu's selections. In Mac OS 9 and newer, you may click once to activate a menu, and then let go.

Windows allows you to do either! You can click and hold or click once and let go to activate the menu, and then click once on your selection to activate it.

Apple Menu & Dock vs Windows Start Button:
Macs have an Apple Menu in the absolute upper left of the screen, next to which you will find the menus for individual programs as you use them. In OSes 9 and previous, the Apple menu contains programs and files to open, folders to organize them, etc. However, the Macs currently using the latest version of OS X have a “Dock,” generally located at the bottom center of the screen. This Dock serves as a general “launching pad” for various applications. You will be able to launch programs such as Microsoft Word, Safari, etc. from this Dock. From the Apple menu, you can set the location and alignment of the Dock (such as bottom-centered, as it defaults to).

Windows has a "Start" button (usually in the bottom left corner), which contains a folder for individual applications, a folder for recently opened documents, and a folder for the control panel. Above all of these, the user can set specific links to programs for easy access.

The Application Menu (the next selection to the right from the “Apple” menu in the upper-left) in the Mac OS contains a command called "Hide." By selecting "Hide" while in any given application, that program will essentially "hide" itself on the desktop. It will remain open and in use, but will not physically be seen. To bring it back up, simply select its name from the Application Menu. This in conjunction with "Hide Others" (which will hide ALL but the current application) can keep a neat working space..

Application Menu vs Task Bar:
As you're using multiple programs, you may want an easy way to switch back and forth between them. You can also cycle through open applications by pressing Apple + Tab on the Mac. Windows has a similar feature, accomplished with Alt + Tab. On both Mac and Windows computers, pressing this combination will switch back and forth between currently open programs.

By continuing to hold either the “Apple” or “Ctrl” button during this combination, a new temporary window will appear on the screen, visually showing which applications are currently in use. You can hold the “Apple” or “Ctrl” button and press “Tab” to cycle through these applications in this window.

Both Windows and MacOS provide a much more visible display of what programs are in use, and keeps this display neat on the screen. In the MacOS, the Dock will place a little, upwards-pointing arrow at each currently-open-application icon. In Windows, the area directly to the right of the “Start” menu will show a list of currently-open-applications in a series of named rectangles.

In Windows, the taskbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen where the "Start" button is located) contains quick-launch buttons directly to the right of the Start button. These can be added and deleted by the user by simply dragging icons of programs to it (or right clicking and selecting "Delete" to delete them). The middle part of the task bar contains rectangular buttons with both the icon and name of the program / document in a row. These are listed in order, from left to right, in the order they were opened (this order cannot be changed). The final part of the task bar is the "Tray," in which icons of programs that are running or can be run appear. By clicking them (and/or right-clicking them), specific options can be set in these programs.

In Windows, you can minimize open documents or programs by clicking the "Minimize" button in the upper-right corner of that document's or program's window (the third button from the right; it looks like a thick horizontal line at the bottom of the box). This will essentially hide the program from view down to the task bar. By clicking that program's / document's box in the task bar, it will be brought back up into view. To minimize all programs at once (and bring the view back to the desktop), there is a button immediately to the right of the Start button (which looks like a pencil on a square) that you can click. Again, to bring any program back into view, simply click its corresponding box in the task bar.

In the MacOS, you can minimize open documents by clicking the orange button in the upper-left of the document (located between the red “X” and the green “+”). The document will “shrink” down to a new area in the Dock, located at the right next to the Trash Can. To maximize the document again, simply click the new icon that appeared in the Dock.

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