I was talking to a friend last night who has had a mac for over a year and knew absolutely nothing about expose. Man is she missing out! It’s the type of feature that is often overlooked in the beginning, but once you start using it life becomes a lot easier for you. It’s pretty simple to use and works no matter what application you are in. Essentially you have three options: Push F9, F10, or F11. They all work a bit differently and are all equally useful. Pushing F9 will zoom out all the application that are currently open, including the numerous windows, so you can see everything you are working on at once. It’s handy if you are work on a lot of files at once. While this environment is open you can use the tab key to move through all the applications one by one. Once you find the program you want to use click on it with the cursor or just bring it to the front using the tab button. Push tab to exit this environment. By pushing F10 you essentially do the same thing as F9 but it will be for one specific application. For say you have 6 Firefox windows open at once. Push F10 and they all zoom out and you can select the window you want. Once again pushing tab allows you to cycle through all the other applications that are open. Finally, is the F11 feature. Essentially F11 takes every single window and application that is open and shoves them off the screen so you can see your desktop. I probably use this one the most. To get you applications back again push F11. Now it’s your turn to fool around with it. Trust me, you will love it. Oh… and if your too scared to try it, or don’t own a mac you can check out a video of it here
PS. This was in OS X well before it was in Vista or Ubuntu… I guess imitation is the greatest form of flattery.
Joshua Schnell
