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Tips and tricks to help you use your Macintosh |
By Terry Lawrence, program director MacWest Computer Society, Vancouver. British Columbia What is a Control Panel? You can think of a Control Panel as being like your TV controls or Automobile instrument panel switches. They let you adjust, customize, set, fix, and tinker with the way your computer looks and works. You can use the Apple Extensions Manager to get a quick overview of what they are and what them do. Do this: Click once on the Apple Icon at the top left hand corner of the Menu Bar across the top of your display. It will open a drop down list of applications to open. Near the top of the list should be Control Panels. Hold down the mouse button and drag down to Control Panels, then over to Extension Manager. Release the mouse button, and the Extension Manager window should open on your screen It has a large window at the top which says ON/OFF, Name, Size, Version, Package, and a small window at the bottom. If you don’t see the small window, click on the grey triangle where it says “Show information item” to open the small window. By default the Extensions Manager lists all the Control Panels first, and the Extensions second. Click on any of the Control Panels in the list, and the small lower window should tell you what it is, what it does, and where it is located on your Hard Disk. The upper window tells you the Control Panel name, how much space it is taking up on your Hard Disk, what version it is, and what Application it is attached to. To the left of the small lower window the Extensions Manager tells you when the Control Panel was created, when it was last modified, how many Kilobytes of space it takes up, and where to find the original copy on your Hard Disk. The small checkboxes to the left of the Control Panel names in the upper window allow you to turn off (or “disable”) the Control Panels individually or in sets, but I’ll explain why you might want to do that that a little further along in the article. Where are the Control Panels, and how do I open them? The Control Panels reside in the Control Panels folder inside the System Folder on your Hard Disk. They can be opened from there, but the fast and convenient way to open them is to go to the Apple Menu at the top left corner of your display, hold down the mouse button, drag down to Control Panels, and then drag across to the particular Control Panel you wish to open. If you are running Mac OS 8 or later, just click once on the Apple Icon and the menu will stay open while you select Control Panels, and then the particular panel you want. Protecting your System Folder and Applications, and curing a few problems. You can use the General Controls control panel to protect your System and Application Folders, and all of their contents, from children (or anyone else who doesn’t know too much about Macs) by opening the General Controls, and clicking the checkboxes titled “Protect Systems Folder” and “Protect Applications Folder” in the Folder Protection box. This locks off the two folders and their contents until you (or one of your children / grandchildren) open the General Controls and uncheck the Folder Protection boxes. Don’t forget that you must unlock them before you can make changes, or to remove or disable anything in the System Folder. You can protect your computer from the Autostart Worm (Virus) infection by opening the Quicktime control panel, selecting Autoplay from the Settings list, and turning off the CD ROM auto-play feature (uncheck the checkbox). You don’t need this feature for anything, and without it the Autostart Worm (Virus) cannot work. It’s OK to leave the Audio CD auto-play feature turned on. Getting a flashing question mark (?) for about 10 seconds at startup? Open the Startup Disk control panel and select your Hard Disk as the startup disk by clicking on it once. By default, the Mac OS 8.6 and OS 9 operating systems select the “Network Disk” option as the startup disk, even if you are not on a network. Any time you Zap (Reset) your Parameter RAM (PRAM) you will need to reselect your startup disk, as resetting the PRAM restores the startup selection to factory default settings. Using the Appearance Control Panels to customize your Mac. In OS 8.5 and later, you can select desktop patterns and pictures, change the system fonts, turn the “Platinum” sounds on and off, select “Themes” for color schemes, and access various other options relating to the appearance of your desktop from the “Appearance” control panel. You can quickly open this control panel at any time from the Contextual Menus. Just hold down the Control key on your keyboard and click the mouse button once, or click the right button on a two or three button mouse, to open the Contextual Menus. Then select “Change Desktop Background”. Some fine tuning and tinker Control Panels. You use control panels to set the Time and Date, set the sleep and shutdown settings in Energy Saver, and adjust your Monitors & Sound, (tip - you can enlarge the iMac display a bit by choosing Monitors, selecting the “Geometry” button, and making the display wider and higher so it fills the screen). You can turn Virtual Memory on or off and set the amount of Virtual Memory, speed up your Mouse, (faster is better), change the voices in Speech, (tip - get rid of those annoying spoken dialogues by selecting “Talking Alerts” from the “options” in the Speech control panel and unchecking the check boxes). In short, the names of the control panels give you a pretty good idea of what they do, and a little experimenting will soon have your Mac looking and acting the way you want it. Control Panel and Extension conflicts and some solutions. You can use the Extensions Manager control panel to find and deal with Control Panel and Extension conflicts, one of the primary causes of freezes and crashes, especially at startup. This is a topic I’ll be going into in a bit more depth in a later article in the series, but here are a few quick tips. To determine if an extension conflict is causing your problems, try starting up with the shift key held down until a dialogue box says you are starting up with “Extensions Off.” If the computer starts up and will run OK with extensions off, there is a good chance that your problem is caused by an extension or control panel conflict. This usually involves a third party (non Apple) control panel or extension installed by a program you have loaded after buying the Computer (and probably immediately before the problem started). There are three basic thing you can do about it. You can change the startup load order of the control panels or extensions, you can disable one or more extensions, or you can make a alternate startup extension set. To change the load order, rename the problem control panel or extension so the first letter in it’s name is different, thereby changing the alphabetical load order, or place a space, asterisk (*), or tilde (~) in front of the control panel’s name. An *Asterisk or space will move the control panel or extension to the front of the load order, while a ~tilde in front of the name will cause it to load last. This will often clear up problems, especially with control panel conflicts. To disable an extension, use the Extensions Manager control panel to turn off one or more extensions or control panels by unchecking the check boxes (X) to the left of their name. If you installed a new program shortly before the problems started, try looking for extensions or control panels with the same name and disabling them first. I’ll explain in detail how to do a conflict search and track down the problem extension(s) in a later article in this series. Adding useful Control Panels. There are some nice little freeware and shareware Control Panels such as Prestissimo, Kaleidoscope, Bail, and Okey Dokey that add useful functions to your Mac. Prestissimo adds a handy application switcher palette and double scroll arrows at both ends of your scroll bars. Kaleidoscope enables you to choose between literally thousands of different desktop interface appearances for your Mac. You have to see it to believe it. Bail lets you bail out of a program launch immediately after you realize you have hit the wrong icon, but before the program actually starts to launch. Okey Dokey automatically presses the “OK” button (hence it’s name) in those dialogue boxes that often come up after you have told the computer to do something and gone off while it does it’s thing, only to return and find that it’s hung up waiting for you to press the OK button on some dialogue box that came up part way through the procedure. These and many more can be found on the MacWest BBS, on the Version Tracker website (http://www.versiontracker.com/), or at Info-Mac (http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive.html). New Control Panels in Mac OS 9. OS 9 has added a few new control panels, among them Multiple Users, Keychain Access, Software Update, and a TCP/IP File Sharing option in File Sharing Control Panel. Multiple Users enables you to set up the computer with password protected separate desktops and limited access to files and controls for various users. For example, you could set up the computer so that you have access to anything, and co-workers have access to certain files and certain programs they need, or so that your kids can access educational programs and games, but not the internet or email. You can set individual preferences for each user, including desktop appearance options, and you can use a voice passwork if you have a microphone attached or built into your Mac. All iMac’s have a built in microphone. Keychain Access allows you to store multiple passwords which are automatically unlocked by a single password. You can use a voice activated spoken password if you have a microphone on your computer. The Software Update control panel connects to the Apple website and automatically checks for and downloads the newest version of any enabled software. Third party programs will also be able to use this automatic updating feature once they enable their programs to take advantage of it. Finally, the File Sharing control panel now provides TCP/IP support, enabling you to exchange files with another computer anywhere in the world via the internet. Just select the “Enable file sharing clients to connect over TCP/IP” option in the File Sharing control panel. |