With so many people excited (and enraged) about iPhone 3GS, it’s no wonder we glossed over Snow Leopard’s cool UI update, which gives you Exposé control from inside the Dock. Now’s your chance to see the video demo:
As John mentioned yesterday, it’s an update that resembles Windows 7′s amazing Taskbar, in that you can get at more windows and files from the Dock itself, currently considered more of an app launcher than an app manager. Here are the new key attributes for Exposé, and how it works within the Dock:
• Exposé itself has a new look: Windows are arranged in a grid rather than in whatever open space is available, and the title of each window appears underneath. (You can see this in the video below, if you pay attention.)
• Stacks, those folder contents that pop up from the Dock, also got tweaked. Most notably, you can scroll to see all the stuff in a stack without clicking the “More” arrow, and folders that appear in stacks can be opened and browsed, too.
• If you click and hold an app icon in the Dock, all the windows open in that app will reveal themselves in the Exposé grid, lined up neatly. Using some key command or cursor gesture (which I don’t know), you can even zoom in to one of the open windows, and check it out without leaving Exposé.
• If you grab a file, you can drag it to the dock and hold it over an app icon. This springs open App, and arranges the open windows of that app in Exposé, so you can easily drop the file where it needs to go. (I currently do this by holding the file with my mouse while doing a combo-keystroke to bring the window back into view, so I can see how this will make life easier.)
[Apple's Snow Leopard "Refinements"; Snow Leopard Full Coverage on Gizmodo]
marty
June 10, 2009 at 11:51 AM
hmm thats cool. almost looks as easy to use now as windows has been for the last decade.
dont get me wrong, i own 2 macs with leopard. os x desperately needs these new features.. bring on september!! the last feature he demonstrates – dragging the pic to the email – is a revelation for mac! of course, these kinda things have always been easy in windows. windows 7 is awesome (i have the RC on my mac mini). snow leopard is also awesome. get them both.
peace out.
Report PermalinkFox
June 10, 2009 at 1:47 PM
Hey Marty,
You may have misunderstood this demo. What’s new is not the dragging of pictures/videos into mail, which I have been doing in Mac OS X for as long as I remember. The demo is showing the new features of Expose. Are you sure you regularly use Mac OS X if you didn’t know that you could drag and drop pictures/video into windows?
Report Permalinkmarty
June 10, 2009 at 11:58 AM
p.s. window management in snow leopard and windows 7 is virtually identical now !?
win 7 – hover over icon in ‘superbar’ to see open windows. hover over one of the popup windows to see that window zoomed in and click to select.
snow leopard – hold mouse button on dock icon to see open windows. _____ (TBA) over one of the expose windows to see that window zoomed in and click to select.
Report Permalinkhugh
June 10, 2009 at 3:54 PM
why isn’t he using tabs in Safari, n00b
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