Exposé (Mac OS X)
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 Screenshot of the Exposé feature in Mac OS X 10.5 illustrating the "all windows" function. |
Exposé is a feature of the Mac OS X operating system. First previewed on 23 June 2003 at the Worldwide Developers Conference as a feature of the then forthcoming Mac OS X v10.3,[1] Exposé allows a user to quickly locate an open window, or to hide all windows and show the desktop without the need to click through many windows to find a specific target.
Exposé makes extensive use of undocumented features of the Core Graphics framework.
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Exposé includes three separate features for organizing windows:
- The "All windows" feature shows all open and unhidden windows, shrinking their appearance so they all fit on a single screen. By default, this can be activated using the F9 key.
- The "Application windows" feature shows all open and unhidden windows for the currently active application. Again, the windows shrink to appear on the screen together, but generally they shrink less because there are fewer windows in a single application compared to the system as a whole. During this mode, the user can conveniently cycle through windows of different applications by pressing the tab key. In the default preferences, this can be activated using the F10 key.
- The "Desktop" feature moves all windows off the screen, with just the edges of the windows visible at the side of the screen, giving the user clear access to the Desktop. In the default preferences, this can be activated using the F11 key.
In the first two cases, after Exposé is activated, the user can select any window by clicking on it or selecting it with arrow keys and pressing Enter. Exposé then deactivates, leaving the selected window in the foreground.
The key used for activating Exposé can be customized to be any of the function keys, the shift, control, option or command key, the fn key on Mac laptops, or even a mouse button on multiple-button mice (such as Apple's Mighty Mouse).
Exposé can also be activated by moving the mouse to a corner of the desktop using a feature called Active Screen Corners (which is off by default).
Exposé also works with Spaces (software), another Mac OS X feature, so that a user can see the windows in each desktop scaled down while looking at a scaled down version of each space.
Windows Vista provides a feature called Windows Flip 3D, which has a vaguely similar purpose. Flip 3D allows a user to flip through all open windows in a manner similar to how the application switcher works (alt+tab), where the frontmost window covers a significant portion of the other windows. Exposé allows a user to view scaled down versions of all open windows and select the one they want brought to the forefront regardless of the order in which they would appear in the application switcher.
A number of Exposé clones exist as separate applications for other operating systems.
The Scale plugin for Compiz and Beryl, compositing window managers for 3D accelerated X servers, mimics Exposé.
The "blob" is a hidden and undocumented interface to Exposé that was discovered by a member of the MacNN forums.[2] When clicked, it enables the "Application Windows" mode. When Option+clicked, it enables the "All Windows" mode.
Another undocumented feature of Exposé is for the show desktop function. It places all the open windows in a small box on the screen that can be moved to anywhere on the screen. Unfortunately this function has some bugs, after exiting the show desktop mode, the foremost window will not have a shadow and the user will not be able to move the window. However, this easily fixed by using the show all function (which is set to default F9).
Using the Shift key, Exposé can be activated in slow motion, just as Front Row, Dashboard and the minimise effect can. This is the same effect that was demonstrated by Steve Jobs during the unveiling of Exposé during the 2003 Worldwide Developers Conference.[3]
- ^ Apple Previews Mac OS X “Panther”. Apple Press Release Library (June 23, 2003). Retrieved on 2006-08-19.
- ^ Luke Sands (October 9 2003). wvous: 'Hidden' Dock Feature. MacNN forums. Retrieved on 2006-08-20.
- ^ Mac OS X Panther - Expose. YouTube (September 7, 2007).