Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Color Labels

Mac OS X 10.3 introduces—or, rather, reintroduces—a welcome blast from the Macintosh past: icon labels. This feature lets you tag selected icons with one of seven different labels, each of which has both a text label and a color associated with it.

NOSTALGIA CORNER Favorites Reborn

Hey! Where the heck are my Favorites?

In previous versions of Mac OS X, the File→Add to Favorites command placed the names of icons you’ve highlighted into a submenu of the Go→Favorites command. The Favorites scheme, in other words, was yet another mechanism of listing your favorite files, folders, programs, disks, and even network-accessible folders for quick access.

Trouble was, Mac OS X already had a number of different methods for stashing favorite icons for convenient access, like the Dock, the Finder toolbar, and the Sidebar. So Apple decided that enough was enough. There’s no more Add to Favorites command, and there’s no more Go→Favorites command.

There is, however, still a Favorites folder. It’s sitting right there in your Home→Library folder.

If you miss this feature—maybe you upgraded from Mac OS X 10.2 and you’ve got a bunch of stuff already listed in your Favorites—you’ll find the new 10.3 scheme to be much simpler.

First drag the Favorites folder into your Sidebar (Section 1.2.1).

From now on, whenever you want to designate an icon as a Favorite, drag it onto the Favorites folder icon in your Sidebar. (Or Option- drag it to create an alias.)

Thereafter, to view your collection of faves, ...