Opening and Closing

Hello,

I was playing around with an iMac G5. I opened a few programs and closed them by clicking the red button. Then they dissapeared at the dock where it shows the open prgrams near the trash. But the actual path to the program in the dock had a little triangle under it. Then i tried to launch the program from the dock with the black triangle but nothing happend. I tried opeing it from the finder and nothing happend. I have to right click or left click and CTRL, and then click Exit on teh dock icon. Then reopen it to get the program open. Why when i close it with the red button i can't open it again unless closing from the dock?

Thanks.

Unlike Windows, the "close window" button (the red one) only closes the application window, not the application itself. The triangle below the dock icon shows that the program is still open, and when you click on the icon, you switch to that program again. You can see that in the menubar, as all menus change.
That's one second gig difference to Windows. In Windows, everything relating to the program, including it's menus, are in a window, thus closing that window closes the program.
In Mac OS (every version, including X) there's only one menubar at the top of the screen, that shows the menus of the program you'r actually using.

Let's take iTunes, for example:
You open iTunes, it opens the iTunes window, and the menubar changes. The name of the program that's now active is right next to the Apple menu.
Click on the "Window"-menu, and you'll see a list of available windows, between "minimize"/"zoom" and "bring all to front.
As you can see, the iTunes window has a checkmark.
Now close the iTunes window with the red button. The triangle below the dock icon is still there, as well as the iTunes menubar (as long as you're not clicking anywhere on the desktop, because that will bring you to the Finder menu). Now in the iTunes menubar, click on "Window" again, and you see the checkmark disappeared. Clicking on iTunes will reopen the window.

Now that's the normal behaviour of Apple programs, and most other Mac software. But some developpers think they have to write software a little more Windows-like, and therefore use the red button also to close the program. In some programs, you can set that behaviour in the preferences, if you want the red button just to close the window or also to quit the program.

OK. That makes sense now. Can you just go into system preferences and change it so that jsut closes it for good? I wouldnt have a clue. (no mac yet, getting a iMac ina few days tho). Thanks for the reply. Anything else on how you can change this? Maybe with 3rd party software? It's not a big deal, I just want to give it a shot.

Thanks,.

nope, but command+q will quit an app. and some apps will close by closing the window.

Ok, so Command+Q is like ALT+F4... Right on

Thanks guys.

shaun89 said:

Ok, so Command+Q is like ALT+F4... Right on

Thanks guys.

Click to expand...

Exactly ;-)

Oh yeah, and after you click the red button or the X, i think you should be able to click the icon again to open the program window back up instead of through the menu bar.

Well, on most programs, it does just that. But not all...

Which programs did you try? iTunes (as I had that example before) open the iTunes window again when you click on it's icon...and so does Mail, Safari, etc
But I know that some don't, just can't remember any specific app