FORCE QUITTING FROM THE DOCK

If you're running an application in Mac OS X and for some reason it locks up or crashes (hey, it happensremember, Apple didn't say applications wouldn't crash in Mac OS X; it said if they did, it wouldn't bring down your whole system), you can easily Force Quit the application by Control-clicking (or clicking-and-holding) on its icon in the Dock, and a popup menu will appear. Press the Option key, and you'll see the menu item called Quit change to Force Quit. Click that, and it will force quit the application. Also, if you're a longtime Mac user, you might be afraid to force quit an application, because back in Mac OS 9 (and prior to that), force quitting was an absolute last resort in hopes of saving an open document. If you were lucky enough to get Force Quit to work without locking up the machine (believe meit was luckforce quitting in Mac OS 9 and earlier usually brought the whole machine down), then all you could really do was restart anyway, but at least you got to save your document. Mac OS X is designed to let you use Force Quit then continue to work, so don't be hesitant to try this feature.

You probably can't put every application you'll ever use in your Dock, or you'll have one incredibly long microscopic Dock. A popular way around this is to drag your Applications folder to the right of the gray divider bar in the Dock (the left side is for apps only, not folders full of apps). Once your Applications folder is in the Dock, if you click-and-hold (or Control-click) on the folder's icon, a list of the apps inside pops upthen just press the first letter (or first few letters) of the application you want to launch, and once it's highlighted, all you have to do is press Return (or click on it).