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General Interface

The General Interface of Mac OS 8.5 is, to put it simply, much nicer than anything in the past. 16-bit icons adorn the Finder and impressive Appearance controls have been added to the Appearance control panel. For example, windows can now use Smart Scrolling, which places the two arrows at one end one on top of each other and makes the scroll bar proportional the window and its current size. As you've probably already noticed, text can also be selected to become anti-aliased on screen (creating a smoother look). While this certain makes the Finder a lot nicer to navigate, some users may find it annoying in other applications. The link below shows how a web page looks with smoothed text.

Internet Explorer 4.0 under Mac OS 8.5 Smooth Text

Aliases now contain a small arrow so you can easily point them out (although their titles still remain in italics). Popup menus remain much the same, except that when you click on them they slide smoothly up to their full size instead of simply "popping" up. All of these touches make using the Mac OS a more enjoyable experience. But perhaps the best thing about all these graphical options is that you will suffer no loss in performance.



Clippings have also undergone some changes. The title of a text clipping now uses the first few words of it, and a text clipping that only contains an email address is turned into an email clipping which can then be double clicked to load up your Email program and create an email with the address already filled in.

Updated 9/7/98

As shown in the screen shot below, the individual columns of a list view can be resized under Mac OS 8.5.



Mac OS 8.5 also adds a new method of scrolling through windows. Holding down the command key turns the cursor into a hand, which can the be used to "push" the window's contents up or down.




Appearance