How to tell how many windows are open, and what they are

Hi.

If you press F11, Exposé will display all the open windows on your screen.
Also, you can use the Switcher: press Command-Tab and it will display all the icons for the open apps, and every tap on the Tab key will make you jump to that program window.

MacMini G4 1.25GHz 1GB Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Expose is what you want: it displays all open windows, all open windows in the frontmost application, or the Desktop only (moving all windows out of the way), depending which of the three keys you press. Furthermore, when displaying the windows you can move between them with the arrow keys, and it shows the name of the selected one, if you hit return the selected one pops to the front.

Also, if you right click or control click on the running application icon in the dock you'll see a list of all the windows open in that application, and selecting one brings it to the front.

There may be some third party utility that does what it seems you want, namely show all windows all the time, but that would take up valuable screen real estate. I usually have all my windows hidden that I'm not actively using anyway and mouse to the Dock when I want to bring something back.
Francine


Francine
Schwieder

Remember that on the Mac you almost always have the menu bar at the top of the screen. In that menu should be a "Window" menu, which lets you see a list of all open windows and provides feedback on their status (a • next to the window signifies unsaved changes, a check signifies that it's the current window, a diamond signifies that the window is currently minimized to the Dock, etc.). You can use that menu to help deal with the windows associated with that application.

In the Windows user interface paradigm, the basic building block is a window. The task bar at the bottom of the screen helps you deal with those windows. Each of those windows is self-sufficient, in a sense, since each one contains the menus to work with the objects in the window. The windows are thought of as independent entities.

In the Mac's user interface paradigm, the basic building block is, first and foremost, the application and then the window. Applications can have any number of windows which are owned by the application and cannot exist independently like they can in Windows. The Dock on your screen serves a couple of purposes. First and foremost, it helps deal with the Mac's basic building block, the application. Clicking on an application icon in the Dock (if it's already running) changes the menu at the top of your screen to that of the application and brings all the windows of that application forward.
A secondary function of the Dock is to help deal with the windows of those applications. It does this in two ways: First, you can Control-click (or Right-click) on the icon of an application to see a list of the windows associated with the application, similar to the Window menu I mentioned above. Second, and this is the part that's somewhat similar to the "taskbar" idea in Windows, you can temporarily minimize a window of an application to the right side of the Dock.

The Mac behaves differently from Windows because of the difference in the underlying beliefs about human interface design principles. You've been used to working a certain way, and the Mac is ask you to work in a different way, which may take some time to get used to.

While the following article is intended for software developers, it may be helpful in understanding some of the underlying ideas on the Mac and why things are the way they are: Human Interface Design Principles.

Hope this helps...

Dual 2.7GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 2.5 GB RAM; 17" MacBook Pro w/ 2 GB RAM - Mac OS X (10.4.9)