my first gripe about OS X

I click on the HDD icon and it pulls up the HDD window. if I mistakenly pull any of the icons from the left dock out and release them, there's a 'poof' and they're gone.
'
'network' and 'photos' icons are gone, can I restore them? can I lock them down?

Not sure about locking them down but you can find them with a spotlight search.

Finder > Preferences
Click the "Sidebar" tab
Check off the items from the list that you want


For any other items (Like Pictures) just drag them into the sidebar.

to get Network back, go to Finder>Preferences and tick Show Network

to get Pictures back, go to your user's Home folder, then drag the Pictures folder into the sidebar

edit: too late..

visualpurple said:

to get Network back, go to Finder>Preferences and tick Show Network

to get Pictures back, go to your user's Home folder, then drag the Pictures folder into the sidebar

edit: too late..

Click to expand...

where is the user's home folder located? if I run a spotlight search I get the pictures folder.

Macintosh HD>Users>[your user name]

it's the one with the house icon in the sidebar

See the post by Technologist above...

FINDER>>>Preferences>>>Sidebar>>> Tick the items you want to see in the Finder window (i.e. When you double-click the HDD icon)

visualpurple said:

Macintosh HD>Users>[your user name]

it's the one with the house icon in the sidebar

Click to expand...

got it back, thanks to you and all who answered. the 'house icon' simplified it. learning OS X can be so simple and very frustrating at the same time.

The 'puff' tells you you've dragged something out of the dock. Just drag and drop icons into the dock to keep it there, or drag out onto the desktop to get rid of it.

The icons in the dock are just shortcuts - you won't delete the program by removing the icon from the dock.

Simple!

Just don't start moving your Home folder around too much..I did that. I lost all my pictures, my Keychains, my Music too. Luckily I had it all all backed up.

Digger,
I am also fairly new to OS X and sometimes find it frustrating. But, by far the best piece of advice I got from a forum was "Remember, it isn't XP!" It got me through a lot of "but in XP I would do it like this" and "What just happened" moments.
Mikeylee
(originally posted on 03-13-07 @ 0706, appears on the thread......)