All about Menus on the Macintosh

All about Menus on the Macintosh

Contents of this page

What is a Menu?

Where do Menus live?

How do you use a Menu?

How do you get out of a menu?

What is a Menu?

A "Menu" doesn't mean your computer will bring you food! But it does mean you get to select from a menu of choices. Menus are one way you to tell the computer what you want it to do.

Where do Menus live?

On a Macintosh computer, all menus always live in one place: across the extreme top of the screen, like this:

Notes:

• The label for some menus have names and some have icons (or pictures). In the image above, the menu pulled down has a "Apple" as its label.
• In the illustration above, the Recent Applications menu item is called a "cascading menu" and has a triangle to its right. That means if you select That menu item you must select an item on the cascading menu.
• Cascading menus have been set up to keep menus shorter. (If the menu options didn't "cascade" they'd have to be That much longer to show all the options.)

(This is one of the major differences between Macintosh and Windows. Click here to see how The Other Half lives.)

How do you use a Menu?

Before we do the Activity, here's the short, narrative version:

1. You "pull down" a menu by clicking in the label. (picture of text) of the menu.
2. Once you have a menu pulled down, roll the mouse down. As the tip of the pointer (arrow shape) goes over menu items they may highlight (i.e.: turn black or invert).
3. While you have one menu item selected / highlighted / inverted, click the mouse button in order to execute That menu item.

Notes:

• In earlier versions of the system you may need to click and continue to press and hold down the mouse button in order to keep menus pulled down.
• Some menu items may be "grayed out". This means That menu command is unavailable based on what you have selected. Examples: You can't print a document (i.e.: highlight and execute the Print menu item under the File menu) if you have no document open! You can't Copy (under the Edit menu) if you have no item or text selected within the document.

Activity 1-Let's Choose from a Menu!

1. In the Finder, move the mouse so the point of the arrow is within the File menu
2. Click the mouse button. The menu will pop down.
3. Roll the mouse so the pointer rolls down the menu until it highlights the Print Desktop... menu command
4. Click the mouse button while it's over the Print Desktop... menu item
5. Click Cancel

When you click this two things will happen: 1) The pop-down menu you've been seeing will go away and 2) a dialog box will appear on screen asking you to go ahead and Print or for you to choose options affecting the print job.

We don't want you to print the desktop, just to see how menus work so please click Cancel! For more about dialog boxes, click here.

Opps! How do I get out of a menu I don't want?

Now That you've pulled down a menu, let's say you decide the command you want isn't there or you just change you mind. Here are the two ways to get out of a menu:

1. Move the mouse so the pointer is over any open part of the desktop, i.e.: not over any part of the menu. Click. This will cancel the menu pull-down.
2. Move the mouse so the pointer is back within the text or label of the menu at the top of the screen. Click. This will de-select the menu so it no longer pops-down.

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