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A finder window is a handy friend, and the Finder is indeed a window (or multiple windows) in OS X Tiger. Use the Finder to navigate through files, folders, and applications on your hard drive — or to connect to other Macs and Internet servers — right from your Desktop.
Finding the Finder
If you don't see a finder window on the Desktop when your Mac finishes the start-up process, you probably closed it the last time that the Mac was on. So how do you find the Finder window again?
- Click the Finder icon in the Dock. (It's the one with a blue smiley Mac face on it.)
- Choose File --> New Finder window (or use the keyboard shortcut Command+N), and a Finder window appears. New Finder windows always open up showing your Home directory. In other words, they open up labeled YourShortName, the same as if you chose Go --> Home or clicked the Home Button in the Sidebar.
In Finder Preferences, you can change what is displayed when a New Finder window opens — to your Home, Computer, Documents folder, or any other folder you choose.
An old pal with new tricks
 | If you're an experienced Mac user, you know the Finder well. Every version of Mac OS before Max OS X has included a Finder, and its appearance has been pretty much the same since 1984. What's new in the Mac OS X Finder is that you can use a single window instead of multiple windows if you like. Imagine using a single window to display just about everything stored on all your hard drives and removable disks. Instead of opening a new window for each folder or disk, the Mac OS X Finder can display everything in the same window, shifting your view of items as you click or select them with buttons in the window. |
If you liked it the old way and prefer multiple Finder windows onscreen, you can tell your Mac to give you what you want temporarily or permanently. To open a folder or disk in a new window just this once, merely hold down the Command key when you double-click the folder or disk and it will open in a new window. To make that the default behavior for your Finder, set your Finder Preferences (in the Finder menu) to open a new window when you double-click a folder.
 | If you've hidden the toolbar by clicking a Finder window's Hide/Show Toolbar button, new windows open automatically when you open a folder — you don't have to hold down the Command key at all. This can be quite disconcerting. All of a sudden, Finder windows behave differently as a result of your doing something totally unrelated — hiding the Toolbar. |
One last thing: If you want to use the new one-window approach on a window with its toolbar hidden — or if you've set your Finder Preferences to open folders in a new window — just hold down the Option key when you double-click a folder or disk. It closes the current window and opens the new window as if you had never hidden the toolbar or changed the Finder preference setting.
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