Changing the Size of the iTunes Window on a Mac

When you use iTunes on a Mac, you can change the window’s size in the following ways:
■ You can hide the application. Press „+H to hide the application. Its window will be hidden from the desktop. You can control iTunes by using its Dock menu. Click the iTunes Dock icon to show the window again.
■ You can toggle the size of the window. If you click the Toggle Size button (the green “light”) on the window’s title bar, the iTunes window will collapse so that only the playback controls and the Information window are shown. Click the button again to open the window to its full size.
■ You can change the size of the window. In either the full or collapsed state, you can change the size of the window by dragging its resize handle located in the bottom-right corner of the window.

Changing the Size of the iTunes Window on a Windows PC

As you use iTunes, keep in the mind the following tips for keeping the window out of your way:

• You can minimize/maximize the window. Use the standard Minimize and Maximize controls in the iTunes window to hide it or make it full-screen size.
• You can make the window smaller. If the iTunes window is in the resize mode (click the Maximize button so the window’s size is maximized, then click it again), you can drag its resize handle to make the window smaller until it reaches the smallest possible size (see Figure). Then, you can slide the window out of the way.

Setting General iTunes Preferences

On the General pane of the Preferences dialog box are several settings you might want to use:

• Source Text—Use this drop-down list to change the size of the font of the sources shown in the Source List. The options are Small (default) and Large.
• Song Text—This setting changes the size of the text used in the Content pane. Again, your options are Small and Large.
• Show Genre When Browsing—Earlier, you learned about the Browser. This check box controls whether the Genre column appears in the Browser (the check box is checked) or not (the check box is not checked). I like the Genre column, so I leave this checked, but if you don’t, you can uncheck the check box.
• Connect to Internet When Needed—If you don’t want iTunes to try to connect to the Internet automatically, such as when you are using it on a laptop, uncheck this check box. Because iTunes uses the Internet to get CD information, provide Internet radio, and access the iTunes Music Store, you should leave this check box checked whenever you are using iTunes on a computer that can connect to the Internet.

Playing Around with Internet Audio

You can do a couple other things with Internet audio using iTunes. If you want iTunes to be used to play Internet audio by default, open the Preferences dialog box (Ctrl+, on Windows computers or „+, on Macs). Open the General pane. Then check the Use iTunes as the Default Player for Audio Files check box (Windows) or click the Set button (Mac). When your browser hits an audio file that iTunes supports, iTunes should play it.
You can also play audio streams for which you have a URL within iTunes. To do this, use the following steps:

1. Find the URL pointing to the stream to which you want to listen. Hopefully, you can copy the URL from the Address bar of the Web browser because that is a lot easier than trying to remember the URL or writing it down and then typing it in.
2. Choose Advanced, Open Stream. The Open Stream dialog box will appear.
3. Paste in or type the URL in the URL field.
4. Click OK. The stream will play.

Configuring iTunes for a Slow Internet Connection

If you use a slow Internet connection, such as a dial-up account, traffic on the Internet can cause the stream of music to slow or even stop, resulting in pauses in the music, even if you choose a lower bit-rate channel, such as 32Kbps. If this is a problem for you, perform the following steps:

1. Choose Edit, Preferences (Windows) or iTunes, Preferences (Mac). The Preferences dialog box will appear.
2. Click the Advanced tab (Windows) or the Advanced icon (Mac). The Advanced pane will appear (see Figure).
3. On the Streaming Buffer Size dropdown list, choose Large. This increases the amount of buffer space used to store a stream before it actually starts to play.
4. Click OK. The dialog box will close.

Hopefully, this will eliminate any pauses in the streams to which you like to listen. If not, choose a different stream or one with a lower bit rate.

Refreshing Your Radio

When you choose the Radio source, the Action button becomes the Refresh button. When you click this, all the genres are refreshed with the latest content. If you leave the Radio source selected for a long time, you might want to click the Refresh button once in a while to see if new channels become available. (Each time you select the Radio source, it is refreshed, so you don’t need to click the Refresh button if you have recently selected the Radio source.)

Playing Your iTunes Radio

To tune in iTunes radio, perform the following steps:

1. Open iTunes and select the Radio source by clicking it. The Content pane will contain the list of genres available to you. The column headings will be updated to be appropriate to the content. For example, you will see Stream, Bit Rate, and Comment.
2. Click the expansion triangle for the genre in which you are interested (see Figure). iTunes will connect to the Internet to update the list of channels for the genre you selected, and the genre will expand. You will see the various channels it contains. Look at the stream name, bit rate, and comment for the channels to decide which you want to try. Usually, the comment will provide a description of the kind of music the stream contains.
3. To play a channel, select it and click Play or double-click the stream you want to hear. The channel will begin to play (this will be instantaneous if you have a fast connection to the Net, or there will be a slight delay if you use a dial-up connection). Just like when you play a song on a CD, the speaker icon will appear next to the channel to which you are listening. Also just like when you listen to a CD, information about the channel will appear in the Information window. This includes the stream name, the song currently playing, and the Web site with which the channel is associated.

You can use the Volume slider to change the volume level and the Stop button to stop playback. The Rewind and Fast Forward buttons work a little differently than you might expect. Rather than moving you in the selected stream, they instead take you to the previous or next stream, which makes sense when you think about each stream as being like a track on a CD.