Leopard "Preview" Gallery - Part I (Finder, Dock, System Preferences)
UPDATE (8/16/2006): There is now an additional screenshot of the Show View Options palette while viewing a window in List view.As promised, and without further ado:
Here we have the customary screenshot of the "About this Mac" window. You will already notice Leopard-only features. In this screenshot, you can see that when I pressed Command-Option-4-then-Space to take this screenshot, only and exactly the window appeared in the screenshot and not any bits of surrounding windows or wallpaper. I have been waiting for this forever and you will notice this in subsequent screenshots as well.
The Finder
Arguably the most important part of the User Interface. Has received no major changes yet, is still Carbon, but has got lots of minor tweaks.
This is how the standard desktop looks. No different from Tiger.
Finally, the contextual menu can Arrange by nearly any criterion you like. There is also a "Create disc image from <folder>" option that should be useful for some people.
When you rename an item in the Finder by hitting Return while a file or folder is selected, the text selection is placed only around the "name" part of the file name and not the extension. This is so handy that I'm already in love with it.
The new Trash window sports a Spotlight-look and has a convenient Empty button.
There is a net total of one new preference in the Finder Preferences and it is the last one in the list shown above.
The Battery Menu Bar icon has got some unnecessary new options. Incidentally, clicking More Info will take you into Apple System Profiler's Battery section, while clicking "Purchase spare battery" takes you to the Apple Store.
In the sixth major release of Mac OS X, you will finally be able to change the Grid Spacing for Finder windows. This feature is currently not implemented as well as it could be and the file icons look ugly when the Grid Spacing is reduced.
Another screenshot of the Show View Options palette with the "Arrange by" menu open.
Someone in the comments wanted to know what this palette now looked like and here it is.
The Dock
Again, at first, there are next to no visible changes, but after a bit of digging, I found a few welcome changes in the Dock.
The Dock gets Spring-Loaded Folders! I can already hear some of you saying "Finally!"
he Finder Dock menu got a few new options,
System Preferences
System Preferences is a lot more boring than the others (this screenshot obviously contains some third-party Preference Panes that I have installed). Hardly any changes. I'm just going to put up the screenshots of new or "apparently changed" Preference Panes.
Possibly the only noteworthy feature is in the Screen Savers PrefPane which now lets you overlay a digital clock over your screen saver. Yay! Also, Leopard fixes a Tiger anomaly wherein you couldn't set an iPhoto Album to the "Change picture every x minutes/hours/days" setting while you could set a folder or a pre-loaded Apple album. Weird, but now fixed.
But anyway. there's still a lot more to cover. I shall keep snapping screenshots of Leopard, so stay tuned.
I didnt exactly understand what Core Animation is. Please could you describe it a little.
whoops! me kinda missed seeing the core duo part :)
"Possibly the only noteworthy feature is in the Screen Savers PrefPane which now lets you overlay a digital clock over your screen saver. Yay! Also, Leopard fixes a Tiger anomaly wherein you couldn't set an iPhoto Album to the "Change picture every x minutes/hours/days" setting while you could set a folder or a pre-loaded Apple album. Weird, but now fixed."
http://www.macworld.com/2006/06/secrets/julymac911/index.php
Second tip from the top might help.
Similarly, you can already right-click on a minimized Finder window and choose Open (again, Tiger 10.4.7)
As for the Dock menu, I guess Leopard introduces more of a "technical" change rather than a real one. It lists the name of the window, which Tiger doesn't.
Refer to this entry for more.