Hi GlennRoslindale
Here are the steps to running dual monitors in Leopard, hopefully they'll help you.
Firstly it's best to disable Spaces if you have it running as it can be a bit confusing at first. You can enable it when you feel comfortable using dual monitors.
Next open
System Preferences ~> Displays and tell it to
"Detect Displays". Unless there's something unusual about your monitor, that's all you need to do.
A desktop and a Display Preferences window should pop up on the new monitor. If it does not, click
"Gather Windows" to bring that Preference dialog back onto your main screen - it will probably be slightly behind your main monitor's preferences, but it should be there. Adjust resolution, colors and Refresh Rate if necessary. You'll notice a
"Rotate" button also - I'd stay away from that just now too unless you have put your monitor on its side or upside down.
Back on your main display's Preferences you'll see
"Arrangement". It makes sense to arrange the screens to match their physical location. Your Mac doesn't know where the cable goes, so you need to drag the screens so that they make sense - because it is moving your mouse off your main screen that lets the cursor get to the second monitor. If the Mac thinks the other screen is to the right, you need to move the mouse to the right.. and just keep going at the edge of the screen and your cursor suddenly will appear on the other monitor.
The Dock and the Menu Bar stay on the main screen, that is the way it works, however, if you can't acclimate, take a look at
DejaMenu, a utility made just for this problem.
If you feel comfortable, turn Spaces back on (and start up Parallels too). Spaces is really neat with dual monitors because the new monitor space is just part of the Spaces real estate: so when you switch to a different Space, your other monitor switches to whatever it displays in that Space. Confused? Play with it and you'll see what I mean.
If your monitors don't use the same resolution you will find that Spaces will annoyingly resize things - I don't know any way around that other than matching resolutions. But even at that, dual monitors are still great to have.
One more thing to watch out for: if you've left something in the other monitor and disconnected it, it can be impossible to get to that app's window until you click "Detect Displays" again. That's all you need to do: everything will return to the main display immediately.
Hope this helps
