Section 8- Application Menus

Application Menus

As discussed earlier in the module, every application you open will have its own menu bar. You will see the name of the active application in the menu bar next to the Apple menu. The name of the application is a menu as well and it is called the Application menu.

In the picture below Microsoft Word is the active application because its name appears in the menu bar. By selecting the Word menu we can view the contents of the application menu.

From the Application Menu the user can hide all windows associated with the active application without closing the application itself. To hide an application, open the Application Menu and activate the application you want to hide. Open the Application Menu again and select Hide "application name". In the example below, the active application is Microsoft Word. Under the Application Menu there is now an option to "Hide Word". Once the "Hide Word" operation is complete, the application menu is no longer available in the menu bar and the Microsoft Word icon remains open in the dock, this is indicated by the small triangle underneath the icon.

Instead of hiding or closing all the windows associated with the active application, the user can close all windows not related to the active application. The hidden application will remain open.

To perform this action, select the application you want to keep open from the Application’s icon in the dock. Open the Application Menu and select "Hide Others". In the image below, the Microsoft Word application is active. By selecting "Hide Others", all the windows for the other applications will be hidden. Once the "Hide Others" operation is complete, the “Hide Word” and "Hide Others" options fade out.

Another option available under the Application Menu is "Show All". Selecting this allows all hidden windows to become visible. In the image below, all windows for Microsoft Word and the other applications will appear after the "Show All" action is completed.