Tài liệu The Save and Open Dialog Boxes pdf

The Save and Open Dialog Boxes When you choose File Save, you're asked where you want the new document stored on your hard drive.. Right inset: If you open the Where pop-up menu, you'll

5.8 The Save and Open Dialog Boxes

When you choose File Save, you're asked where you want the new document stored

on your hard drive The resulting dialog box is crystal-clear—more than ever, it's a

miniature Finder All of the skills you've picked up working at the desktop come into play here

To give it a try, launch any Mac OS X program that has a Save or Export command— TextEdit, for example Type a couple of words, and then choose File Save The Save sheet appears (Figure 5-15)

Tip: In Mac OS X, a quick glance at the Close button in the upper-left corner of a

document window tells you whether it's been saved When a small dot appears in the red button, it means you've made changes to the document that you haven't saved yet (Time

to press -S!) The dot disappears as soon as you save your work

5.8.1 Sheets

In the days of operating systems gone by, the Save dialog box appeared dead center on the screen, where it commandeered your entire operation Moreover, because it seemed stuck to your screen rather than to a particular document, you couldn't actually tell which document you were saving—a real problem when you quit out of a program that had three unsaved documents open

Figure 5-15 Top: The Save dialog box, or sheet, often appears in its compact form Right (inset): If you open the Where pop-up menu, you'll find that Mac OS X lists all the places it thinks you might want to save your new document: on the hard drive or iDisk, in a folder that you've put into your Sidebar (Section 1.2), or into a

folder you've recently opened

Bottom: If you want to choose a different folder or create a new folder, click the button shown above to expand the dialog box Here, you see the equivalent of the Finder—with a choice of icon, list, or column view Even the Sidebar is here,

complete with access to other disks on the network

In most Mac OS X programs, there's no mystery regarding which document you're

saving, because a little Save dialog box called a sheet slides directly out of the

document's title bar Now there's no mistaking which document you're saving

Better still, this little Save box is a sticky note attached to the document It stays there, neatly attached and waiting, even if you switch to another program, another document, the desktop, or wherever When you finally return to the document, the Save sheet is still there, waiting for you to type a file name and save the document

5.8.2 The Mini Finder

Of course, you, O savvy reader, have probably never saved a document into some deeply nested folder by accident, never to see it again But millions of novices (and even a few experts) have fallen into this trap

When the Save sheet appears, however, a pop-up menu shows you precisely where Mac

OS X proposes putting your newly created document: usually in the Documents folder of your own Home folder For many people, this is an excellent suggestion If you keep everything in your Documents folder, it will be extremely easy to find, and you'll be able

to back up your work just by dragging that single folder to a backup disk

As shown at top in Figure 5-15, the Where pop-up menu gives you direct access to some other places you might want to save a newly created file (The keystrokes for the most important folders work here, too—Shift- -H for your Home folder, for example.)

In any case, when you save a file, the options in the Where pop-up menu have you

covered 90 percent of the time Most people work with a limited set of folders for active documents

But when you want to save a new document into a new folder, or when you want to navigate to a folder that isn't listed in the Where pop-up menu, all is not lost Click the button identified in Figure 5-15 The Save sheet expands miraculously into a very familiar sight: a miniature version of the Finder

There's your Sidebar, complete with access to the other computers on your network There's the Back button There's your toggle switch between views; in Leopard, you can even switch to icon view here, in addition to the traditional list and column views

Tip: In column view, your first instinct should be to widen this window, making more

columns available Do so by carefully dragging the lower-right corner of the dialog box Mac OS X remembers the size you like for this Save sheet independently in each

program

Most of the familiar Finder-navigation shortcuts work here, too For example, press the right and left arrow keys to navigate the columns, or the up and down arrow keys to highlight the disk and folder names within a column Once you've highlighted a column, you can also type to select the first letters of disk or folder names

Highlight the name of the folder in which you want to save your newly created document Alternatively, you can click the New Folder button to create a new folder inside whatever folder is highlighted in the column view (The usual New Folder keystroke works here, too: Shift- -N.) You'll be asked to type the new name for the folder After you've done so, click Create (or press Enter) The new folder appears in the rightmost pane of the column view You can now proceed with saving your new document into it, if you like

The next time you save a new document, the Save sheet reappears in whatever condition you left it That is, if you used column view the last time, it's still in column view

At any time, you can collapse it into simplified view, shown at top in Figure 5-15, by clicking the button to the right of the Where pop-up menu

Tip: The Save box always displays whatever places you've put in your Sidebar (In

compact view, the Where pop-up menu lists them; in expanded view, you see the Sidebar itself.)The bottom line: If, on some project, you find yourself wanting to save new

documents into the same deeply buried folder all the time, press F11 to duck back to the Finder, and add it to your Sidebar From now on, you'll have quick access to it from the Save dialog box

5.8.3 Spotlight

The Search bar at the top of the Open and Save dialog box is a clone of the Finder's

Search bar (Chapter 3) Press -F to make your insertion point jump there Type a few letters of the name of the file or folder you're looking for, and up it pops, regardless of its actual hard-disk location

Your savings: five minutes of burrowing through folders to find it, and several pages of reading about how to navigate the Save and Open boxes

5.8.4 Insta-Jumping to a Folder Location

Whether you're using the mini-sheet or the expanded view, you can save yourself some folder-burrowing time by following the tip shown in Figure 5-16 This feature is totally undocumented—but well worth learning

Figure 5-16 The quickest way to specify a folder location is to drag the icon of any folder or disk from your desktop directly into the Save or Open sheet Mac OS X instantly displays the contents of that folder or disk You'll see by the Where pop-up

menu that Mac OS X has indeed understood your intention

Tip: If, when the Save box is in its expanded condition, you click the name of an existing

file, Mac OS X thoughtfully copies the name of the clicked file into the Save As: text box (which otherwise said "Untitled" or was blank).This trick can save you time when you're saving a second document with a slightly modified name (Oprah and Me: The Inside Story, Chapter 1 and then Oprah and Me: The Inside Story, Chapter 2) It's also useful if you want to replace the original file with the new one you're saving Instead of having to type out the entire name of the file, you can just click it

5.8.5 The File Format Pop-up Menu

The Save dialog box in many programs offers a pop-up menu of file formats below the Save As box Use this menu when preparing a document for use by somebody else— somebody whose computer doesn't have the same software For example, if you've used a graphics program to prepare a photograph for use on the Web, this menu is where you specify JPEG format (the standard Web format for photos)

5.8.6 The Open File Dialog Box

The dialog box that appears when you choose File Open is almost identical to the expanded Save File sheet Because you encounter it only when you're opening an existing file, this dialog box lacks the Save button, file name field, and so on

Figure 5-17 The new Media Browser is built right into the Open dialog box That is, you get miniature listings of your iTunes, iPhoto, and movie files right in the Sidebar, for convenience in importing them into (for example) Keynote,

PowerPoint, or a Web design program

Note: Furthermore, the Open dialog box shows you only icons for disks, folders, and

documents that you can actually open at this moment For example, when you're using GarageBand, picture files show up dimmed

But it does have a new Sidebar category called Media (see Figure 5-17), which gives you direct access to all your photos, music, and movies The premise is that Apple figures you might want to import these items into a document you're working on

Most of the other Save File dialog box controls, however, are equally useful here That handy Spotlight search bar is still there, only a -F away Once again, you can begin your navigation by seeing what's on the desktop (press -D) or in your Home folder (press Shift- -H) Once again, you can find a folder or disk by beginning your quest with the Sidebar, and then navigate using either list or column view And once again, you can drag a folder, disk, or file icon off your desktop directly into the dialog box to specify where you want to look (If you drag a file icon, you're shown the folder that contains it.) When you've finally located the file you want to open, do so by double-clicking it or highlighting it (which you can do from the keyboard), and then pressing Return, Enter, or -O

In general, most people don't encounter the Open File dialog box nearly as often as the Save File dialog box That's because the Mac offers many more convenient ways to open

a file—double-clicking its icon in the Finder, choosing its name from the Recent Items command, and so on—but only a single way to save a new file