iPod: The Missing Manual

Get the scoop on iTunes 9 and all of the newest iPods with this bestselling Missing Manual. Apple's gotten the world hooked on portable music, pictures, and videos with its amazing entertainment center, but one thing they haven't delivered is an easy guide for getting the most from it. iPod: The Missing Manual gives you a no-nonsense view of the latest iPod line, with expert guidance on the most useful things your iPod can do.

Get a Birds-Eye Look at Your Collection With Grid View

Although it’s been around since iTunes 8, Grid View is still probably the most eye-catching way to see your media library. It’s like laying out all your albums on the living room floorâ??great for seeing everything you’ve got, without the hassle of having to pick it all back up. More picturesque than List View and not quite as moving as Cover Flow, Grid View is the middle road to discovering (or rediscovering) what’s in your iTunes library.
iTunes offers four ways to see your collection: grouped by album, artist, genre, or composer. Click each named tab to see the music sorted by that category. (If you don’t see the tabs, choose View-->Grid View-->Show Header.) Here’s how to work the Grid:

1) Hover your mouse over any tile on the grid to get a clickable Play icon that lets you start listening to the music.

2) Double-click a cover in Albums view to display both the cover and song titles in List View.

3) If you have multiple albums under the Artists, Genres, or Composers tabs, hover your mouse over each tile to rotate through the album covers. If you want to represent the group using a particular album cover or piece of art, right-click it and choose Set Default Grid Artwork. You can do the opposite for art you don’t want to see: right-click it and choose Clear Default Grid Artwork.

4) Adjust the size of the covers and art by dragging the slider at the top of the window. One thing about Grid View, though: It’s pretty darn depressing unless you have artwork on just about everything in your collection. (If you don’t, and you see far too many generic musical-note icons there, Chapter 5 shows you how to art things up.) And if you hate Grid View, don’t use it iTunes just defaults to whatever view you were using the last time you quit the program.

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