Visual QuickStart Guide [Electronic resources] : Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger

Maria Langer

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Multitasking & the Dock

Mac OS uses a form of

multitasking, which makes it possible for more than one application to be open at the same time. Only one application, however, can be

active . You must make an application active to work with it. Other open applications continue running in the background.

Mac OS X uses

preemptive multitasking , a type of multitasking in which the operating system can interrupt a currently running task to run another task, as needed.

Chapters 2 through

6 .

The active application is the one whose name appears at the top of the application menuthe menu to the right of the Apple menuon the menu bar (Figure 3 ). The application menu is covered a little later in this chapter.

Figure 3. The name of the active application appears at the top of the application menu.

To learn what applications are running

Look at the Dock. A tiny triangle appears beneath each application that is running (Figure 1 ).

Figure 1. A tiny triangle appears beneath each open application. Click an icon to make its application active.

To switch from one open application to another

In the Dock (Figure 1 ), click the icon for the application you want to activate.

Hold down and press . A large icon for each open application appears onscreen (Figure 2 ).

Figure 2. When you hold down and press , icons for each open application appear onscreen.

[View full size image]

While holding down , press repeatedly to cycle though the icons until the one you want to activate is selected. Release the keys.

Click the icon for the application you want to activate.

The windows for the application you selected come to the front and the application name appears on the Application menu (Chapter 4 .