[niacin]

Is there a shortcut hey for hiding applications.. instead of me having to move the mouse to the upper right corner and click Hide??

Thanx

[Misha]

Well you can option-click to the desktop (or another app) and that will hide the one in the foreround.

Or you can use Program Switcher, which allows you to program an F-key to hide the foreground app (or all apps, or all apps except for the foreground app, for that matter). Other utilities can do that as well, but I find Program Switcher to be the most slick.
http://www.programswitcher.com/

[Gregg]

For anyone else who does not demand it to be a keyboard function, there is an extension called QuickHide that places an icon in the upper right corner on the menu bar to toggle back and forth between the Finder, and the open applications. The "icon" is just a red or green dot, depending on what mode you're in.

Get it from tucows.com or download.com, or.. who knows where else.

Gregg

AppleWindows available from the ResExellence software archive is the rulingest app for that, you can cofigure it's prefs to have a hotspot in the screen periphery to produce an application menu with windows submenu, keyboard app switching and window cycling in any app and auto hide with exclusion and lots of other options. It dates from 94 and works with all OS to 9.x. I'm baffled why Apple never picked it up, oh yeah and it's free!