33 Things to Customize in Leopard...
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Is this book only for someone just starting with Leopard?

Nope. You could use this information at any point in your Leopard experience. (But, the sooner, the better!)

Book Intro

You start up in (or move up to) Leopard and new features are staring you in the face. There’s that shiny—and I mean glossy—new look to the Dock, tempting new Dock icons for Spaces and Time Machine, the iTunes-like sidebar and the nifty new Flow view in Finder windows… the list goes on and on.

But there are other things that have changed, too—some subtle and others not so much. Your mouse cursor is less responsive and the Desktop background is distracting; default Finder windows are poorly defined, Spaces starts out turned off, Time Machine needs to be set up… this list goes on and on, too.

This book helps you get your Leopard Mac set up to work efficiently for you in ways big and small, and in-between: major things like configuring Time Machine and Spaces; smaller things like turning on the Finder window path bar and turning off some of the built-in keyboard shortcuts; middling things like setting up RSS feeds in Mail and automatic font activation.

Not everything in this book is new with Leopard; some items were in Tiger (and earlier) but have been tweaked or expanded in Leopard, and some have been around longer with no changes—but you should be changing them from their new-system-installation defaults (or, in some cases, perhaps back to their defaults if you’ve been poking around and things aren’t so comfortable anymore).

Table of ContentsTop | 33Things Home

Mouse, Keyboard & Trackpad Settings
 1. Mighty Mouse Settings 
 2. Turn on Trackpad Gestures
2.1 Avoid Accidents
 3. Make the Function Keys Functional
3.1 Kill the Laptop Caps Lock

The Desktop
 4. Change the Desktop Background
4.1 Choose a Screen Saver
 5. Choose What Shows on the Desktop (and How)
 6. Create a New Solid-Color Background
6.1 Make Preview Open PDFs

General Window Behavior 
  7. Set General Window Options
  8. Double Double Scroll Arrows

Folder Behavior
 9. Set the Folder-Springing Speed
10. Make a New Folder NOT Mean a New Window

Finder Windows
11. Set Up the Sidebar
11.1 The Path Bar
11.2 The Status Bar
12. Colorize Sidebar Folders
13. Create a Better Search For Folder
14. Set up the Toolbar
15. Define Default Window Views
15.1 Set Views for Specific Windows
16. Design a Default New Window

The Dock
17. Configure the Dock
18. Organize and Customize Dock Contents
18.1 Set How Folders/Stacks Show Contents
18.2 Set Applications to Auto-Open

Spaces
19. Configure Spaces

Time Machine
20. Configure Time Machine

Spotlight
21. Set Search Categories and the Results Order
22. Set Privacy Options

Keyboard Shortcuts
23. Fix the Command-Space Overlap
23.1 Avoid the Command-Option-T Overlap
23.2 Swap the Dashboard and Spaces Shortcuts
23.3 Turn Off Some Default Shortcuts
24. Change the Duplicate Shortcut
24.1 Add Path Bar Shortcuts

Dashboard
25. Organize and Customize Widgets
25.1 Use the Widgets Widget

Fonts
26. Set Up Automatic Font Activation
26.1 Delete Leopard-Office Duplicates

More System Preferences
27. Turn on Keyboard Viewer and Character Palette
28. Set Up Auto-Login
28.1 Are you a dragonfly or a soccer ball?
28.2 Handling Blank CDs and DVDs in the Finder
28.3 Schedule Software Updates
28.4 Set Recent Items

Safari
29. Set a Default Page
29.1 Specify Fonts and Encodings
30. Set Up Favorite Bookmarks
for Keyboard ShortcuttingMail
31. Create a Separate Downloads Folder
31.1 Set Columns in Mail Window
31.2 Set Favorites for Stationery
32. Customize the Toolbar
33. Set up RSS feeds

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