Macintosh Lesson #3
The Menu Bar
The menu bar is always along the top of the screen. In OS X the menu bar has two parts. On the left side of the screen are the menus and their commands that are available for the current program.
On the right side you will see what Apple calls Menu Extras, but are also known as menulets and menu items.
Menu Commands
The first item on the left side is the Apple menu. This is shown with Apple’s logo rather that text.
Here you will find several commands that are useful no matter which application you are using. The most common ones are the four near the bottom Sleep, Restart…, Shut Down…, and Log Out (user name)…. What these commands do, is fairly obvious. They do allow me to point out a couple of intricacies about menus in OS X. The first thing you might notice about some menu commands it the strange markings to the right of the command (Log Out (user name)… ⇧⌘Q). These are command key shortcuts. I have covered them extensively in a previous article. The short explanation is that these give you a way to execute certain commands using the keyboard instead of the mouse. The second thing you might notice about these commands is that some of them have an ellipsis (the fancy word for the three dots) after the command*. The ellipsis indicates that there is more to the command, and therefore a dialog box or a sheet (a dialog box attached to a window) will appear if you select the command. Sometimes the dialog box will just ask you to confirm the action, sometimes the dialog box will present options to apply to the command. Some other menus will have sub-menus. The Dock menu is one example of this. Sub-menu have commands that apply to the main menu choice.
There are two other important commands in the Apple menu. Software Update… and Force Quit… Software Update… will check your system and Apple’s updates and tell you if there are any system updates required. It will then offer to install the required updates. Force Quit… will bring up a dialog box listing all of the currently running applications. From this dialog box, you can select any application and choose to Force Quit the application.
This is very useful if one application is not responding. For instance if Safari is stuck while trying to load a web page with bad scripting. Don’t restart the computer. First try selecting the Force Quit… Command, select Safari from the list and click on Force Quit. You will be presented with a sheet asking you to confirm that you wish to Force Quit Safari, click on Force Quit again, and Safari will quit. You can then relaunch Safari and continue browsing. There is no need to restart or even log out at this time.
While the Apple menu is always there many parts of the menu bar will change as you change programs. The contents of these menus will change between programs, but Apple (and Mac user) have done a good job of forcing software developers to be consistent between applications. This means that many common commands appear in the same place in different programs.
The menu just to the right of the Apple menu is called the Application Menu. It is bolder than the other menus and is the name of the program you are currently using. The first thing to note is that this will tell you what program you are in, even if there are no windows open. For instance you can close all of your Safari windows, but this menu will still say Safari, until you change to another program, or quit Safari. Some commands that are almost always in this menu include, About Application Name, Preferences…, Hide Application Name, and Quit Application Name. Of course in each case it will have the name of the current application in place of Application Name.
The next two menus are usually File and Edit. In these menus you will find common commands such as, New, Open…, Save, Print…, Undo, Cut Copy and Paste. After these menus are application specific menus. The final menu item is usually Help. Here you can usually find help choices for the current program.
Menu Commands
The Menu Extras are on the right side of the menu bar. There are a few common items here, but many, many extras can be added. There are some built in that can be turned on, as well as Extras that can be added by third-party software. Here is a plain menu extra section.
It shows only the Volume control, the date and Spotlight.
Here is a a much more complex menu extra section of the menu bar.
This has many Apple menulets, as well as many from third parties.
Most items you find in the menu extras section are designed to be looked at to gather information or to choose a simple command that changes system wide settings. The Sound extra allows you to change the volume, the date obviously shows you what day it is, but you can also click it to view more in depth information. The icon that always appears on the far right of the Menu bar is for accessing Spotlight. This is the Mac’s search engine. One click here and you can search for programs, files, emails, calendar appointments. even the Dictionary. The searching is dynamic, so as you type the results are constantly updating.
Here is an example that shows tome of the possibilities.
Many of the Apple provided extras are turned on in a System Preference setting. For instance the Display extra (enabled in the Displays preference pane) allows you to change the resolution of you monitor on the fly, it also allows you to switch between mirroring and extended modes when you are using a second monitor or a projector. the Airport extra (enabled in the Network preference pane) helps you connect quickly to wifi networks, The battery status (enabled in the Energy Saver system preference pain) can tell you how long you battery will last, or how long until a full charge is reached.
Apple has menu extras that; allow you to switch languages, switch users, sync with MobileMe, manage Time Machine, manage AppleScript, log on to your company’s VPN, eject CD/DVDs, manage Bluetooth and many more. There are also many third party program that either are or include menulets. Some will show you network status, how much memory your computer is using and many other useful pieces of information.
Here are some of Apple’s menu extras.
