View Menu

The view menu allows you to change the current viewable options of the active program you are in. Like all menus, the contents of the View menu change depending upon which program is currently active. This allows you to turn on various toolbars, buttons, dials, wheels that change the various settings in the program. Below is a screenshot of the MacOS 9 view menu.

THE FINDER'S VIEW MENU

There are some differences on the View menu, specifically the check-marks. These check marks (sometimes dots) indicate that a particular viewable option is 'turned on'. The view menu for the Finder shows the options for viewing folders as icons, as buttons, or as a list with file details. As shown above, the checkmark indicates that folders and files are displayed as icons. The window settings are to display the window as a window, not as a pop-up. For the Finder, there is also the following options:

Clean Up

This causes the Mac to move all the icons in the active window around to supposedly 'neaten' things up. This usually isn't quite as neat and pretty as you set things for yourself, but it does unstack icons sometimes and that in itself is useful for users who still haven't mastered the mouse and have accidentally moved icons around until things are a mess.

Arrange

This will arrange (sort) the icons by name, date, size or even priority.

Reset Column Positions

This option is only available when viewing your files and folders as a list. This resets the positioning of the colums for name, date, filesize and other details to their default arrangement.

View Options

This will open a window providing additional viewing options for the current folder.

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