Switching to the Mac[c] The Missing Manual

By clicking an icon and then choosing File Get Info, you open an important window like the one shown in Figure 2-20. Its a collapsible, multi-pane palette that provides a wealth of information about a highlighted iconthe Mac version of icon properties. Click a triangle to expand a corresponding information panel. For example:

• For a disk icon, you get statistics about its capacity and how much of it is full.

• For a document icon, you see when it was created and modified, and what program it "belongs" to.

• For an alias, you learn the location of the actual icon it refers to.

• If you open the Get Info window when nothing is selected, you get information about the desktop itself (or the open window), including the amount of disk space consumed by everything sitting in or on it.

• If you highlight 11 icons or more simultaneously, the Get Info window shows you how many you highlighted, breaks it down by type ("23 documents, 3 folders," for example), and finds the sum of their file sizes. That's a great opportunity to change certain file characteristics on numerous files simultaneously , such as locking or unlocking them, hiding or showing their file name extensions (Section 4.5.2), and so on.

2.12.1. Uni-window vs. Multi-window

In earlier versions of Mac OS X, a single Info window remained on the screen all the time as you clicked one icon after another. That single window was great for reducing clutter, but it didn't let you compare the statistics for the Get Info windows of two or three icons side by side.

That's why Apple switched to the multi-window approach for Get Info: Now, a new Get Info box appears each time you get info on an icon (unless you've highlighted 11 or more icons, as described above).

Still, the uni-window approach is available for those occasions when you don't need side-by-side Get Info windowsif you know the secret. Highlight the icon and then press Option- -I (or choose File Show Inspector). The new uni-window looks slightly different (the titlebar is thinner, for example) to provide a visual cue that it will change to reflect whatever icon you now click.

2.12.2. The Get Info Panels

Apple built the Get Info window out of a series of collapsed "flippy triangles ," as shown in Figure 2-20. Click a triangle to reveal the information inside.

Depending on whether you selected a folder, file, picture, or whatever, these flippy triangled panes may include the following:

• Spotlight Comments . Here you can type in random comments for your own reference. As described on Section 2.4.5, you can then have these comments show up in list views, making it easy to pick out noteworthy files at a glance.

  Moreover, anything that you type in this field gets indexed by Spotlight, Mac OS X's super-useful searching tool. Then it's only a matter of hitting a quick keyboard shortcut to bring up a search box where you can locate files, folders, or the comments you just typed into the Spotlight Comments field.

• General . Here's where you can see the icon's size , creation date, most recent change date, locked status, and so on.

  If you click a disk, this info window shows you its capacity and how full it is. If you click the Trash, you see how much stuff is in it. If you click an alias, this panel shows you a Select New Original button and reveals where the original file is. The General pane always opens the first time you summon the Get Info window.

• More Info . Just as the name implies, here you'll find more informationmost often the dimensions and color format of a graphics file and when the icon was last opened. These morsels, like the comments you can type in the uppermost pane, are easily Spotlight-searchable.

• Name & Extension . On this pane, you can read and edit the name of the icon in question. The "Hide extension" checkbox refers to the file name extension ( .doc or .txt , for example).

  As described on Section 4.4.2, many Mac OS X documents, behind the scenes, have file name extensionsbut Mac OS X, like Windows XP, comes set to hide them. By turning off this checkbox, you can make the suffix reappear for an individual file. (You can also make file name extensions appear or disappear globally , as described on Section 4.5.2.)

• Open with . This pane is available for documents only. Use it to specify which program will open when you double-click this document or all documents of this type. (Details on Section 4.4.2.)

• Preview . On this pane, you see a large, handsome thumbnail image. In the case of spreadsheets, Microsoft Word files, HTML documents, and so on, this is nothing to write home aboutyou only see a magnified version of the generic document icon.

  But when you're examining pictures, text files, PDF files, sounds, clippings, and movies, this feature can be extremely useful. In those cases, you see a thumbnail version of what's actually in that document. A controller lets you play sounds and movies, where appropriate, for example.

• Ownership & Permissions . This is available for all kinds of icons. If other people have access to your Mac (either from across the network or when logging in in person), this panel lets you specify who is allowed to open or change this particular icon. Permissions is a hairy topic, or, if you're a system administrator, an exciting one.

Here and there, you may even see other panels in the Get Info window, especially when you get info on application icons. For example, iPhoto, iMovie, and iDVD each offer a Plugins panel that lets you manage add-on software modules.