Menus and Dialog Boxes

Menus and dialog boxes are the way you and your Mac talk to each other. You use menu commands (the individual items in a menu) to tell your Macintosh what you want it to do; your Mac uses dialog boxes to tell you what it's doing and ask for guidance now and then. You'll be using menus and dialog boxes for a fair bit of work on your Mac, so you need to become adept at using them. It's easy.

All About Menus

The menu bar across the top of the screen is home to all of your Mac's menus; each word in the menu bar is a menu. When you click a menu, it opens downward, revealing all of its individual menu commands or items. The Finder has its own menu bar, as does almost every program you launch. These menus contain commands appropriate for the program that's running—after all, it wouldn't make much sense to have the Finder's menus (which deal mostly with folders and files and systemwide services) when you're using a word processor to write a letter. When you switch to a different program, the menus in the menu bar change to reflect the new environment.

Menus organize menu commands into related groups, and typically a menu's title describes the relationship of the commands listed underneath it. For example, the File menu (which almost every Mac program, including the Finder, has) lists a series of commands for dealing with files—creating a new file, opening an existing file, or printing a file (Figure 1.28). In Mac OS 9 and earlier, programs also put the Quit command in the File menu, which doesn't make as much sense. In Mac OS X, the Quit command is in the Application menu. This organizational scheme also breaks down when a program uses a menu with a generic name, such as Tools, which serves as a catch-all for any menu command one might consider a tool, from spelling checks to e-mail account management. Still, Mac menus are remarkably consistent across the board, and if you're looking for a particular command, the menu's name will usually lead you to it.

In a general sense, there are two kinds of menu commands: those that require you to first select an item and those that don't care whether you have any thing selected. Menu commands that require a selection—whether it's an icon, some text, or part of an image—act on whatever you have selected (for example, the Finder's Make Alias command makes an alias of whatever icons you have selected). Menu commands that don't require a selection, known as global commands, act on the currently running program or—in the case of the Finder—on the Mac itself (for example, the Shut Down command from the Mac OS 9 Special menu, which tells your Mac to turn itself off).

When you pull down a menu (by clicking it in the menu bar), it opens to reveal all of its commands. Aside from the short command phrases, you'll often see thin gray horizontal lines between groups of commands. These dividers organize a menu's commands into even smaller logical groups. For example, the third set of commands in the Mac OS 9.2.1 Finder's File menu—Find, Search Internet, and Show Original—are all about looking for an item, whether it's a file or folder on your hard drive, a specific Web page, or the original item to which an alias points.

Some items in the menu bar aren't actually menus, such as the clock in the upper-right corner or the battery icon for PowerBook users. Although these items won't produce a list of menu commands when clicked, they might change functions. Click the clock in the Mac OS 9 menu bar, for example, and it shows the date briefly.

The Finder Menus

Over the years, Apple has added to and changed several items in the menu bar. With Mac OS 9.1, Apple settled on six menu items for the Finder: File, Edit, View, Window, Special, and Help (Figure 1.29). (The Window menu is new to Mac OS 9.1.) We'll be covering the Apple menu later, because of its unique status as a systemwide menu—it appears in all applications with menus, not just the Finder. Here's something about each of the others:

File.

The Finder's File menu is chock-full of menu commands for working with files and folders. These commands let you create new folders, open and print documents, and find files and Web pages. The File menu also includes a cluster of commands for working with specific icons (to get more information about an item, give it a label, make a copy or alias of it, and other options).

Edit.

The Edit menu is a short list of editing commands, such as cut, copy, paste, and clear. This menu is mostly for working with text and graphics in the Finder, which is limited primarily to icons and icon names. One curious thing: the Preferences command, nestled at the bottom of the menu, opens the Finder's Preferences window, in which you can change how the Finder behaves, otherwise known as editing the Finder's preferences.

View.

Remember when we talked about the various views you can use in your Finder windows? This menu lets you select a view for a given window and contains some tools for cleaning up and arranging window contents in an orderly fashion. The View Options command at the bottom of this menu opens a window in which you can tweak and twiddle the look of a particular window.

Window.

New to Mac OS 9.1, the Window menu displays a list of all open windows (including pop-up windows), putting a check next to the active window.

Special.

The Special menu is a catch-all menu for commands that don't quite fit in with any of the other menus. Besides one file-related menu item—Empty Trash—most of its commands are actually System commands, affecting your entire Macintosh, not just files and folders. The Special menu commands let you eject and erase disks, shut down or restart your Mac, or even log out of your Mac (if you have it set up to handle multiple users).

Help.

Short and sweet (at least when the Finder is the active program), the Help menu is your gateway to getting assistance with your Mac. From the Help menu, you can launch your Mac's Help Center (which contains all kinds of helpful information about the Mac OS and some of the programs installed on your Mac), plus you can zip directly to Macintosh tutorials or help files. This menu also lets you access balloon help, useful for finding out what a specific widget or menu does.

In Mac OS X, the Finder has seven menus: Finder, File, Edit, View, Go, Window, and Help (Figure 1.30). Here's an overview:

Finder.

The Finder menu is only visible when the Finder is the active program. That's because it's linked to the Application menu, a revamped menu in Mac OS X showing commands that work on the active program as a whole. The Finder menu lets you get some information about the Finder, set how the Finder behaves by changing its preferences, and hide and show the Finder (as well as other programs).

File.

The old standby from Mac OS 9 and earlier, the File menu holds commands for dealing with files and folders in Mac OS X.

Edit.

The Edit command is largely unchanged from Mac OS 9 and earlier. It holds commands (such as cut, copy, and paste) used when editing text, pictures, video, and audio. In Mac OS X, the Edit menu no longer includes the Finder's preferences as it did in Mac OS 9. It has a systemwide Undo command now too.

View.

The Mac OS X View menu lists all of the possible view modes for a given window and contains options to clean up and organize windows as well as hide or show their toolbars. The Show View Options command at the bottom of the menu opens a window where you can tweak how views look.

Go.

The Go menu connects your Mac to several locations, including the Home, Favorites, iDisk, Applications, Documents, and Users folders; plus it keeps track of any folders you've recently opened. Finally, the Go menu has a command called Connect to Server that opens a connection to a file server.

Window.

The Window menu in Mac OS X is a little more evolved than the one introduced in Mac OS 9.1—besides listing the currently open windows, it also contains a command to minimize a window and a command to bring all the Finder's windows to the front.

Help.

This menu gives you quick access to your Macintosh help.

Special Menus

As we mentioned earlier, Mac OS 9 and earlier and Mac OS X both have two menus that are worth a closer look—the Apple menu and the Application menu. These menus are present no matter what program is active. Although these menus go by the same name in both operating systems, they have different functions in each.

The Apple menu.

In Mac OS 9 and earlier, the Apple menu is home to a potpourri of items, including small utility programs (such as the Calculator, AirPort utility software, and the Chooser) and special folders (which hold control panels, favorites, or recently opened programs). Accessing any one of these programs or folders (which act like submenus) is easy—just select it from the Apple menu, always visible in the upper-left corner of the menu bar. The Apple menu in Mac OS 9 and earlier is completely customizable—you can remove items and add new ones (Chapter 3 covers the specifics).

In Mac OS X, the Apple menu is in the same place, but instead of the old six-color version popular in the 1980s and 1990s, the Mac OS X version is glossy blue. Instead of a mélange of gadgets and widgets, you'll find system wide commands under the Mac OS X version of the Apple menu—such as setting your Mac's system preferences, controlling how the Dock behaves, and shutting down your Mac. Many of the commands here are taken from the Special menu in Mac OS 9.

The Application menu.

In Mac OS 9 and earlier, the Application menu sits on the far right side of the menu bar, and its job is to list all running programs. You can switch between programs by selecting the one you want from the menu—the currently active one has a checkmark next to it. This menu also has three commands you can use to make running programs visible or to hide them, windows and all. These commands hide the currently open program, hide all other running programs, or show all hidden programs.

You can tear off the Application menu in Mac OS 9 and earlier to form a floating window (or palette) by clicking the Application menu and dragging the pointer off the bottom of it while the menu is still pulled down, tearing off the menu. This palette, which floats above all other windows, has buttons that allow you to select each of the currently running programs.

In Mac OS X, the Application menu is on the left side of the menu bar, and instead of showing a list of running programs (as it does in Mac OS 9 and earlier), it contains a list of commands that apply to the currently active program. In the Finder's case, these commands can open the Finder's preferences and hide or show the Finder and other running programs (Figure 1.31).

So how do you see which programs are currently running in Mac OS X? For that you'll have to refer to the Dock. Running programs have a small upward-pointing black triangle at the bottom of their icons in the Dock.

Selecting a Menu Item

Selecting a menu item is a simple affair. Click the menu that contains the item you want to select (such as the Edit menu), and then move the pointer over the desired menu item. Moving the pointer over items in a menu highlights them one at a time. When the menu item you want is highlighted, click the mouse button a second time to execute the menu command.

In older versions of the Mac OS (before Mac OS 8), menus weren't sticky—that is, they didn't stay down when clicked. To select a menu item, users had to click a menu and then keep holding down the mouse button while moving the pointer to the desired menu item, releasing the button only when the pointer was over the command. Otherwise, the menu would disappear.

The Common Menus In Mac OS 9 and earlier, you'll see five menus almost all the time: the Apple menu, File, Edit, Help, and the Application menu. (There are exceptions to this, mostly games, but it's true in most cases.) The system software actually provides the Apple, Help, and Application menus, so they are almost always the same no matter what program is active. The Apple menu has a list of miscellaneous gadgets and folders available no matter what program is running. Help provides quick access to whatever help you need, such as balloon help or the Mac OS Help Center. (The Help menu changes its contents somewhat to provide help options specific to the active program, but some of its commands stay the same.) Finally, the Application menu in the far-right corner of the menu bar can have one of two looks: either a small icon showing the currently active application or an expanded version (to get this, drag the vertical bar with four tiny dots in it to the left). The Application menu shows a list of currently running programs. Plus it has three commands at the top that let you hide the current program, hide all programs except the current program, or show all programs. The File and Edit menus, also present in almost every program, work a little differently. The system software doesn't supply these menus—instead, each program provides its own File and Edit menus, so although they may look the same, they're customized to meet the needs of the active program. Mac OS X has its own set of consistent menus that show up everywhere, and the list contains a few familiar entries: the Apple menu, Application, File, Edit, Window, and Help. The last four menus are similar to their counterparts in Mac OS 9.1 and 9.2.1 in that they show up in just about every program with a similar set of menu commands. However, the Apple and Application menus have changed. The Apple menu takes on the task that used to belong to the Special menu in Mac OS 9 and earlier—it handles system commands, such as starting up and shutting down your Mac. The Application menu no longer lists what applications are running. Instead, it takes on the name of the currently running program (such as the Finder) and provides commands appropriate to the pro-gram as a whole (such as changing its preferences, hiding or showing it, or quitting the program). These changes to Mac OS X's menus make the menu commands a little more logical for new users. Old Mac hands may struggle with the new arrangement a bit before it becomes second nature.

Different Kinds of Menu Items

Although every line of text in a menu is a menu item, you'll find lots of variations. These include whether a menu item is selectable (that is, executable), as well as special characters that indicate how menu items work (Figure 1.32).

Enabled.

Enabled menu items are menu commands you can execute at that moment. Sometimes you can't select a menu item because it's not appropriate for the situation—for example, a Save menu item isn't enabled unless you have a file open and therefore have something to save. Enabled menu items appear in solid black text.

Dimmed.

The flip side of the enabled menu item, a dimmed menu item (or disabled menu item) can't be selected, and thus turns gray. (That's where the term dimmed comes from.) Programs sometimes disable menu items or even whole menus when you can't use them in the situation at hand—for example, you can't use the Cut command from the Edit menu when you don't have anything selected, so Cut appears in a dimmed form.

Ellipsis.

An ellipsis (…) at the end of a menu item means selecting that particular menu item brings up a dialog box, in which you can change some settings or tweak some controls. Usually that dialog box also contains a button to cancel any changes, so in effect you get a chance to change your mind before executing the command. Menu commands without ellipses take place immediately, with no intermediate dialog box.

Checkmarks.

Some menu items are called toggle items, because selecting them toggles an option (such as guides in a page-layout program) on or off. These menu items use a checkmark to indicate whether the option is on or off. If a checkmark appears next to the item, the option it represents is turned on, and selecting the item turns the option off and makes the checkmark disappear. If there's no checkmark, selecting the menu item turns the option on and puts a checkmark next to that item.

Diamonds.

Diamonds occasionally appear next to menu items that need your attention. This happens most often in the Application menu in Mac OS 9 and earlier, when a program requests that you switch to it (perhaps a dialog box has popped up while you were working in another program.) When this happens, a diamond appears to the left of the program's name.

Submenus.

Sometimes a menu item encompasses too many options to fit neatly in a dialog box, or too few to justify a dialog box's existence. That's when you encounter a submenu. Submenus are indicated by right-facing triangles to the right of menu items; when you point to a such a menu item, another menu appears to its right. Submenus can have submenus of their own, although stacking too many menus in this fashion is considered bad form. To select an item in a submenu, click the menu that contains it, and then move the pointer over the submenu item until the second menu pops up to the right. Slide the pointer horizontally until you're in the submenu, and then move it over the desired menu item. Click the mouse button a second time over that item, and you're on your way.

If your Mac runs out of space along the right to display submenus, they'll appear on the left side of the menu, on top of whatever menu previously occupied that space.

Scrolling menus.

When there are too many items to fit in the vertical space your Mac's monitor allows (sounds crazy, but it happens, particularly with the Fonts menu), menus take on the ability to scroll so you can see all of the available selections. A scrolling menu has a black triangle at the top or bottom (or both), showing which direction has more content (Figure 1.33). Holding the pointer over a triangle makes the menu scroll in that direction—slowly, if the pointer is near the center of the menu, vertically, or quickly, if the pointer is at the menu's upper or lower edge. To select an item in a scrolling menu, click the menu, scroll through the list by holding the pointer over the appropriate triangle until you reach the desired menu item, and then click that item.

Keyboard Equivalents

You may have noticed something else in your menus that we haven't covered yet—letters and strange-looking characters to the right of some menu commands. These are called keyboard equivalents, and they let you issue menu commands directly from your keyboard. Each keyboard command has a letter preceded by one, two, or three of four basic symbols that stand for the keys you need to hold down while pressing a particular character on the keyboard. These four keys— , , , and —are known as modifier keys. The most commonly used modifier for -key equivalents is the key itself.

Most of the time, keyboard equivalents appear in menus with the symbol and then a letter, which often stands for the command given (for example, for Save). Sometimes, though, you'll see two or three of these symbols in a row before the letter. In this case, you have to press all those keys simultaneously before you press the letter key. For best results when using keyboard equivalents, first press and hold the modifier key or keys. With those keys held down, press the appropriate letter. Your Mac executes the command as if you had selected the menu item itself.

Key Command Symbols Command Control Shift Option

Common Menu Commands

Thanks to nearly two decades of attention to human interface design, the Mac has an incredibly consistent set of controls across all of its programs, and this consistency goes down to the menu command level. Almost all programs—in Mac OS 9 and earlier and Mac OS X alike—share consistent menu items and keyboard equivalents. Here are several of the most common ones:

Common Menu Commands
Command	Keyboard Equivalent	What It Does
File, New		Creates a new document. In the Finder, it creates a new folder.
File, Open		Opens a document or an item.
File, Close		Closes a document or window.
File, Save		Saves a document. (The Finder doesn't have this command.)
File, Print		Prints the active document or Finder window.
File, Quit		Quits the active program. (In the Finder, it logs out the current user.)
Edit, Undo		Undoes the last thing you did. This command is a lifesaver!
Edit, Cut		Cuts the currently selected item and puts it on the Clipboard, removing the original item.
Edit, Copy		Copies the currently selected item onto the Clipboard, leaving the original untouched.
Edit, Paste		Pastes whatever is on the Clipboard into the currently active document.
Edit, Select All		Selects everything in the currently active window.

Contextual Menus

Although we'd like to think the Macintosh side of personal computing had all of the good ideas, it's just not true. Occasionally Apple engineers borrowed a couple of user interface ideas from Windows, such as contextual menus, borrowed from the Windows right-click technique (in both Mac OS 9 and X).

A contextual menu is a menu full of options that apply to a specific item or location. These menus make selecting menu commands easier—you don't have to dig through various menus for them (Figure 1.34). To invoke a contextual menu, hold down (which adds a little rectangular object resembling a menu to the pointer's lower-right corner) and then click the object to see a list of commands you can apply to it. For example, in Mac OS 9, if you -click the Trash, a short menu of possible commands pops up right over it—commands such as Help (for help on using the Trash), Empty Trash (to erase its contents), and Add To Favorites (which puts the Trash in your Favorites submenu), among other commands. All of these commands work with the Trash, and you would have to go to three different menus to find them it weren't for contextual menus.

The Finder has built-in contextual menus, but not all Macintosh programs offer them, so you'll have to experiment by -clicking in your favorite programs. Don't worry if the pointer doesn't take on its familiar contextual-menu look when you press the key—some programs don't make this visual change even though they're capable of using contextual menus.

All About Dialog Boxes

Now that you've learned how to tell your Mac what to do with menu commands and double-clicks, it's time to learn how to listen to some feedback from your Mac. The primary way this happens is through dialog boxes, which serve a couple of purposes: to tell you about some event you may not know about (such as a program crashing in the background), and to solicit more information so your Mac can complete a task (such as printing a word-processing file).

Dialog boxes come in two major flavors: modal and nonmodal. Modal dialog boxes put your Mac in a specific mode, and they don't go away until you deal with them—by either dismissing them or providing the information they ask for. You can't get away from a modal dialog box until you fulfill its needs. A nonmodal dialog box is a friendlier dialog box (some might call it a pushover) that won't stop you from working on other things—it waits patiently in the background for you to get around to it, if you ever do. Most dialog boxes—especially in Mac OS X—are of the nonmodal variety. That's because modern operating systems strive not to come to a total halt for a single event, such as your Mac asking you how many copies of your party invitation it should print.

Outside these two groups, dialog boxes are difficult to categorize. They come in all shapes and sizes, from a screen-filling, show-stopping print dialog box, to a polite little floating window telling you your AppleTalk network has gone down, to a little speech bubble coming from Microsoft Office's animated Assistant.

Dialog Boxes Explained

Dialog boxes range from the dead simple to the hideously complicated, depending on what they're designed to do. A dialog box can contain anything from a few words of text (such as “Your AppleTalk network is now available”) to an array of controls (such as pop-up menus, text boxes, buttons, check boxes, and so on), arranged to help you finish a complicated task such as printing a document (Figure 1.35). Here's a look at some of the items you might encounter inside a dialog box:

Static text.

This is plain-vanilla text that sits inside a dialog box. It's there to pass along a message from your Macintosh to you—such as the text “Your AppleTalk network is now available.”

Text-entry box.

If your Macintosh needs some information from you (such as the name or size of a font), you'll often respond in a text-entry field, typically a rectangle in which you type the information your Mac is looking for.

List box.

A list box provides a place to show a list of items you can select, such as filenames in an Open dialog box. Typically, what you choose in a list box affects what happens when you dismiss the dialog box. List boxes resemble a Finder window in list view mode.

Buttons.

These items look and work like their real-world counterparts on machines. Press a button to make something happen. Usually labels on the button itself (say, Print or Cancel) indicate what will happen.

Radio buttons.

Radio buttons let you select a single item from a list of choices by clicking the button next to the choice you want. Clicking another button in the list deselects the first one and selects the one you click. Radio buttons take their name from the mechanical buttons on car radios. When you punched one to tune in a favorite radio station, the previously pushed button would come out because you can only tune in one radio station at a time.

Check box.

A check box lets you choose one or more items from a list of choices by clicking the check boxes next to the ones you want. When you do so, a checkmark will appear in the box. You can choose as many check boxes in a group as you like.

Pop-up menus.

Pop-up menus, like radio buttons, let you choose a single option from a list. You'll see pop-up menus instead of radio buttons in cases where the list of options is very long (more than three or four options). That's because pop-up menus take up a lot less space than a list of radio buttons—only one menu choice at a time has to be visible with a pop-up menu.

Tabs.

These hang out at the tops of some dialog boxes, providing access to more than one set of controls. They work like the physical tabs found in reference books (dictionaries, for example), which let you quickly locate a new section in the book. In a dialog box, tabs group closely related controls in the same view, and they often appear in dialog boxes where you set preferences.

Save Clarus! (KR) Longtime Mac users might notice something different in the Mac OS X page setup dialog box. The dogcow is missing. This strange-looking half-dog, half-cow icon is familiar to Macintosh users worldwide as Clarus (all cows, by nature, are female). Some say Clarus first came to life in the late 1980s as a character in Apple's Cairo font. Others insist she didn't truly emerge as a dogcow until a few years later, when she started appearing in various page setup dialog boxes. Nevertheless, for the past fifteen years the humble dogcow has inspired underground mouse pads, t-shirts, wristwatches, fan Web sites, and a few irreverent Apple developer tech notes. We hope Apple's Mac OS X team will reconsider Clarus's place in history and put her back in the Mac. Moof!

Dismissing Dialog Boxes

Dialog boxes pop up when you select a menu item with an ellipsis after it. This ellipsis indicates that the menu command will bring up a dialog box, because the menu command is too complex or has too many options for a simple menu command to suffice. Selecting such a menu item brings up a dialog box full of controls, which you tweak to customize the menu command you just issued. After you've finished fiddling with the controls in a dialog box, you have two ways to make it go away: by clicking either the OK button or the Cancel button along the bottom of the box. Clicking the OK button accepts all of the settings in the dialog box and then executes the menu command that brought it up in the first place, using your settings. Clicking the Cancel button cancels the menu command altogether—none of the settings you've changed take effect.

Dialog boxes have a default button, selected when you press on your keyboard. In Mac OS 9 and earlier, the default button is the one with the thick border around it; in Mac OS X, the default button is even harder to miss—it pulses blue (or gray, if you've changed your Mac OS X color scheme). The default button can be the OK button, Cancel button, or another button altogether, depending on what button would be picked most of the time.

Alerts

Alerts are specialized dialog boxes in which your Mac provides some vital bit of information, such as telling you a program has crashed or a network has become available. These dialog boxes don't pop up in response to a menu command you've selected; rather, they reflect your Mac's internal state of affairs. You might see a few types of alerts:

Alert.

Before Mac OS 9 came on the scene, alerts occurred in three flavors: Stop, Caution, and Note. A Stop alert, which shows a red stop sign next to some text, comes up to alert you of a problem so big that your Mac can't complete an action. You dismiss Stop alerts by clicking the OK button at the bottom. A Caution alert, which shows a yellow caution triangle, pops up to tell you that something undesirable might happen if you continue, and gives you the option of continuing or canceling the action. A Note alert, with a Note icon (usually a face with some bubble text), comes up to tell you about a minor error or other bit of information that won't wreak havoc if left as is. Most Note alerts have a single OK button at the bottom that dismisses them, although a few have two or more buttons offering you a choice of actions to take.

Notification.

A Notification alert—a small floating window with a gray border, a yellow background, and black text—pops up in the upper-right corner of the screen. This modeless Notification alert was introduced with Mac OS 9.0 and is produced by the notification manager. Notifications are reserved for times when your Mac (or some other program running in the background) has something to tell you—just like an old-style alert. (You can still encounter both kinds in Mac OS 9.) For example, when a previously unavailable AppleTalk network comes back online, it may send you a notification; a shareware program may use one to remind you to pay up. Notifications can also tell you that another program needs your attention—for example, when the Finder has noticed a program crash or when your e-mail program has received new messages. (When a background program asks for attention like this, a diamond will appear next to that program in the Application menu.) To dismiss an alert in a floating window, simply click its close box.

Mac OS X alerts.

Alerts in Mac OS X are similar to Mac OS 9 alerts in that they give you information, tell you about minor problems, and alert you to major errors. Instead of popping up as windows as they do in Mac OS 9, Mac OS X alerts often slide out as sheets, a new kind of Mac OS X dialog box. At heart, though, they're still the same—a message from your Mac, an icon to tell you how serious the problem is, and a button (or two) with choices on how to deal with the alert.

Mac OS X Sheets Mac OS X uses a slick new way of handling dialog boxes (such as Force Quit alerts or Save dialog boxes in which you save a file on your hard drive), called sheets. Sheets slide out from under a window's title bar, revealing the dialog box's controls. A sheet is always tied to the window where the action that brought it up took place. For example, when you save a document, a sheet slides out under the title bar of the window, showing the document you're saving (Figure 1.36). Figure 1.36. Instead of the old-fashioned Save dialog box in Mac OS 9, Mac OS X employs sheets to serve the same purpose. These sheets slide out from under the title bar, and you can expand them by clicking the downward-pointing arrow to reveal a file browser. Sheets are cleverly designed. If the window is too small to contain a sheet, the sheet enlarges as it comes out from under the title window until it reaches its full size. If the window is too close to the edge to allow display of the whole sheet, the window and the sheet slide to the right or left to make room for the whole thing.