Yes, this makes it easier to remember from previous OS, but doesn’t really give users any newer inclinations to think Apple wants change. As we’re not here to judge, this preference is one of the easiest to use. When you click on Desktop & Screensaver you can:

• (Now in Leopard) Choose to turn on/off the Translucent Menu bar,
• Add or take away folders
• Have desktop pictures appear in a random order
• Change the picture(s)—from seconds to hours
• Choose your desktop picture from any Apple file
• (Within Screensaver) Choose a screensaver
• Choose to make your screensavers appear randomly
• Turn the clock on or off
• Change the display of the screensaver: fade, turning frames (collage) or mosaic panels
• Change the time at which your screensaver begins (with the scroll button)
• Select or change the Energy Saver preference
• Select options for how to present the screensaver: random, cross-fade, zoom, crop and centered
• Access Hot Corners…to make screensaver come up at your quick command
• Test the screensaver to see if you like the setup
• Preview the screensaver on the small preview screen

Dock

With Leopard’s Dock, as we’ve spoken about in several preceding chapters, countless updates (shall we say improvements) have taken place. From the Dock’s design to layout to fashion—while holding on to tradition—have given us a design most Mac users are happy with. As to avoid critique or humdrum review of the preference itself (it’s the same too!), here is what you can do when you click on the Dock icon in System Preferences:

• Change the size of the dock (with scroll tab)
• Turn on/off magnification
• Change how small or large the magnification of the Dock’s icons become
• Change the positioning of the Dock (Yes: left, bottom, right)
• Choose which effect you’d like to minimize using: Genie and Scale Effect
• Animate the opening of Applications when you click on them (this will also show the bounce feature when an Application needs your immediate attention)
• And, choose to show or hide the Dock no matter where you position it (good for people who want their entire screen “free”; not good if you have twenty icons)

Exposé & Spaces

In the older OS X running systems, the preference icons were adjoined with Dashboard & Exposé together. Dashboard has been removed from the System Preferences icons entirely to now show Exposé & Spaces together (where you now have the Dashboard preference at the bottom of the Exposé preference window). Here’s what you can choose to do under the Exposé & Spaces preference:

• Using the screen corners, you can make each one open All Windows, Application Windows, Desktop, Dashboard, Spaces, Start and Disable, Sleep and Off
• With Exposé, you can quickly access any open and running window: assign any of the F# keys or a multitude of other keys like command, Alt and Ctrl
• Hide or show the Dashboard; Choose F# Key or others to activate Dashboard; and, choose to use (or not) the Mouse Buttons
• (Spaces) Tick to Enable (or not) the Spaces option: Lets you organize your running Applications into groups of organized windows
• Tick to show Spaces in the Menu bar
• Add or take away rows and columns
• Add an Application
• Add and choose a Space
• Apply keyboard and mouse shortcuts (default F8); choose how you navigate through the spaces (when you use the bird’s eye view)
• (Exposé) Make active screen corners for some or all four corners of your screen

Jeff Graber is CEO of the [url=http://www.macsupportstore.com]Mac Support Store[/url], a Mac consulting-support company. Since 1996, he’s led the company to consult and support over 17,000 Macintosh computers for business clients. Graber’s "Inside Wire" and "Essential Apple" columns appears whenever the spirit moves him.