Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Bible

Chapter 7. Working with Applications and Documents

IN THIS CHAPTER

Working with Mac OS X applications

Opening applications and documents

Managing multiple open applications

Creating and moving documents

Saving documents

Saving a stationery pad

Working with a document's content

Sharing documents with other users

Quitting applications

Now that you've set up your Mac and become familiar with the Finder, it's time to get down to the business of working with applications and the day-to-day activity of creating, saving, and working with documents.

Most of the time you spend working on your Mac is in the traditional manner: opening applications, creating documents, printing and sharing them, and saving them for future posterity. In this sense, applications are the tools; documents are the things you create and share.

Having said that, a number of rapid changes are taking place in the computing world, not least of which is the rise of so called "cloud computing." This is where documents and applications are stored on online servers, and accessed via the Internet. Google Docs (www.docs.google.com) and Apple's MobileMe Web applications (www.me.com) are typical examples of this sort of service. (More information on using MobileMe can be found in Chapter 15.)

In this chapter, we look at the different types of applications that are available in Mac OS X. We explore how to locate applications, open them, and start using them. The Mac OS includes a huge range of applications, as Chapter 8 covers, but of course, ...