Macintosh Lesson #5b Switching Between Applications—Part Two

Super Switching with Exposé
In Macintosh OS X 10.3, Apple introduced Exposé. This application allows you to switch between windows of the current application or the windows of all open applications. By default these actions are set to use the Function keys. F10 will show you a smaller view of each window for the current application. This is just like the “shrunken-window” mode that you access from the dock in 10.6. F9 will show a small view of each window for all applications. Once you see these small windows, you can click on one with the mouse, or use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select a window, then press return to enter your selection. In either case, the window you select will become the frontmost window, ready for your input. In 10.6 you can sort these windows. As mentioned above, command-1, will sort alphabetically by the name of the window. If you are using F9 to view all windows, you can press command-2, the windows will then sort by application name.

        Exposé showing all applications

There is one more feature to Exposé, F11 will temporarily move all windows off the screen, allowing you to see the desktop and any files that you might want to open.Being Apple, you would expect some extra cool behavior for Exposé, and you won’t be disappointed. These F keys work in two ways. If you tap the key and release, Exposé will kick in as you expect. You can then click the window you wish to navigate to. The second way to access Exposé is to press and hold on the chosen F key. While holding the key, click with your mouse on the window you desire, then release the F key, and snap to the window you selected.
As mentioned, these keys are mapped to F9, F10, and F11 by default, but of course you can change them to any F key you wish. My preferred method is to set them to F1, F2 and F3, this way I can activate Exposé with my left hand and select the desired window with my right hand on the mouse. You can also map these commands to mouse clicks and “hot corners”. This allows you to move the mouse to a predetermined corner to have Exposé kick in. Some people use this so they can select text, start to drag it off, then slide to a corner, and finally select the proper window and drop the text in place.
There is one change since OS X 10.6. In previous versions of the OS, any window you had minimized to the dock did not show up when you entered Exposé. In Snow Leopard, the minimized windows appear smaller and in the lower section of the screen. Snow Leopard also incorporates Quick Look into Exposé. You can use the arrow keys to select a window and then press the space bar for an enlarged view. While in Quick Look you can continue to navigate with the arrow keys, and each window will enlarge as you select them.

Exposé showing minimized windows in Snow Leopard