Expose your Desktop

Expose your Desktop
Mac Tip #127/12-Nov-2003

Apple’s 10.3 Operating System, named Panther, has brought a huge number of small and large improvements. I’ve been running it for two weeks now and I’m thrilled.

One entirely new feature is called Exposé (pronounced: exposay). Let’s say you have a whole lot of documents and windows open (this is how I work all the time). You want to find one of the windows which is behind a whole lot of others.

Exposé reduces all your open visible windows to thumbnails.

In the old days you’d rummage around, switching to another application and then clicking menu items to get to the window. Now you just press F9 and then click on the correct document.

When you press F9 all the windows visible on your screen are shrunk down to be very tiny and they are arranged over the screen so you can see all of them. When you hover your mouse over one a label appears telling you which window it is. Click on one window and all the windows return to full size with the one you clicked on at the front.

Not only useful, but very cool!