Tips for the Mac OS X Leopard

• The Leopard operating system for the Mac comes packaged with many features that help you speed up your tasks and work flow. Tips for the OSX can demonstrate how to take advantage of this system's features.

Expose

• Expose is a tool that will show you all the windows you are using at the same time, so you can select the one you want to move to. This is very useful if you have a lot of programs open at the same time. Click the "Expose" key (it looks like a few blocks within a rectangle) or press the "fn" key and "F9" at the same time. All the programs currently operating will show in the form of a mini-window, and you can click on the one you want to work on.

Spaces

• Spaces allows you to set up four or more virtual desktops. This is helpful if you are working on two or more tasks, and want to keep them separate but be able to navigate quickly between them. To set up Spaces, click "System Preferences," then select "Expose and Spaces." Click on the Spaces tab and use the "Application Assignment" window to put a program in one of the four spaces. Navigate between the spaces by holding down the "Command" key and pressing on the arrow keys to move from space to space.

Spotlight

• Spotlight is extremely efficient if you need to find something on your Mac quickly. It indexes everything on your computer in real time, which speeds up searches enormously. You can look for keywords, folders and pictures. Click on the Spotlight icon in the top menu (the magnifying glass on the right), and enter your keyword or search term. Click "Show All" to see all the results, and order them by file type, size or other feature. Clicking on the file will open it.

Smart Folders

• Smart Folders use Spotlight to find and collect files by specific criteria. For example, you can gather all files that have a particular keyword or topic. Click "Command," "Option" and "N" at the same time, then type your keyword in the provided space. Click the "Add" button to add a criterion (such as type of file), then click "Save" to give the smart folder a name and save it.