Multiple instances of an application

[Curiosity]

With some applications, you can have multiple windows. Many graphics viewers will open a new window for each new picture that you open with them. If I want more than one Firefox or Finder window, I use Command-n to open another one. With text editors that can handle more than one documet at a time, I cannot make a new window.

[whitesaint]

You can run multiple instances of the same application, although it's a little unorthodox. I wouldn't recommend doing it for Carbon or big apps such as Office or Adobe's apps. You can just copy the application (Alt/Option + Drag the Application to where you want it, or just hit Apple/Command + D) and that will make an exact copy of the application. You can then have more than one of the same application running at once. This probably works best with Cocoa applications.

[Dan Penny]

I'm a long-time Windows user who just bought a Mac. Since I haven't figure out how to specify the download folder dynamically, I create a folder called DOWNLOAD as the target for all downloads. After multiple downloads, I would then double-click "Macintosh HD" icon twice to launch two Finder windows to help move files from DOWNLOAD from one Finder window to some other folders in the other Finder window. It's been working without problems so far. Can this Windows mentality cause me problems?

[Giaguara]

Hi Dan,

Which version of Mac OS X are you using?

If it's 10.5 there should be ~/Downloads already.
(~ as for your user home folder)