This section of the course will look at various tips and tricks which will help you to get the best out of Windows 95. The notes for this section are in a different format to the previous ones, as some of these items need a more detailed explanation, and the slides do not give any additional useful information.
Note that in the various descriptions below, any actions with the mouse are assumed to be with the left button unless stated otherwise (unless you have reversed the buttons via the control panel).
Also note that these methods apply to the standard version of Windows 95. If you are running the Internet Explorer 4 desktop enhancements, or using Windows 98, some of the methods will be slightly different.
If you don't like the way your Start Menu is organised, you can easily change it. If you have the Internet Explorer 4 "desktop enhancements" installed, it is very easy - you simply click and drag on the menu items (using the left mouse button) to move them around.
If you have not got the desktop enhancements installed, it's a little more involved, but still not hard. You need to understand that each menu and sub-menu corresponds to a folder on the hard disk, and the menu structure represents the structure of the folders. The main start menu contents are (usually) located in:
C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\
Each sub-menu which opens up from the start menu is equivalent to a sub-folder with the same name as the sub-menu inside this folder. Each program item on a menu represents a shortcut in one of these folders.
An example may clarify this. Consider a program called "Wordproc", which is found on a sub-menu called "Word Processors" inside the "Programs" sub-menu on the start menu. This would correspond to a shortcut called "Wordproc" in a folder with the following path:
C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\Word Processors\
To start this program, you would have to click the start button, then choose "Programs", then choose the "Word Processors" sub-menu, and then select "Wordproc". If you used this program a lot, you might prefer to have it on the first level of the start menu, so that you can simply choose "Start" and then "Wordproc"
To do this, find the above folder using "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer". A quick way which opens Explorer at the start menu folder is to right click the Start button and choose "Explore". Then use drag and drop (or cut and paste if you prefer) to move (or copy) the "Wordproc" shortcut from:
C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\Programs\Word Processors\
to:
C:\WINDOWS\Start Menu\
Wordproc will now appear on the main start menu.
The various icons on the desktop can be dragged around using the left mouse button in the normal way. If you like your icons neat and tidy, you can then line them up in neat rows and columns by doing the following:
However this will not work if "Auto Arrange" is turned on on the desktop. If all your icons insist on lining up at the left hand edge of the screen, then that is what is happening. To turn "Auto Arrange" on or off:
If Auto Arrange is on, there will be a tick beside it.
Some people like to have the shortcuts to the programs that they use the most often on the desktop. To do this, use Explorer to open the start menu folder as described in the previous section. Then copy the shortcut (using drag and drop or copy and paste) from the folder out onto the desktop. You can also rename the shortcut if you wish, in the same way as you would rename a file - it will not affect the operation of the program.
The "wallpaper" is the background colour, pattern or picture on the desktop. To change it or the screen saver:
There may also be other tabs. These will not be covered here.
If you don't like the taskbar where it is, just move it! All you have to do is left click and drag on a blank part of the taskbar and you can move it to any edge of the screen. You can also make it bigger or smaller by dragging the edge of it.
If you would like it to only appear when you need it (to save wasting screen space) this is also possible. Right click on a blank part of the taskbar and choose "Properties". Then click in the box marked "Auto Hide" and click OK. Now the taskbar will only appear when you move the mouse pointer to the relevant edge of the screen. To return it to normal, do the same again.
A useful trick if you have lots of windows open and you want to get to an icon on the desktop is to "minimize" all the windows at once. This will leave all the programs open but the screen will be clear. There are two ways of doing this:
To return to the programs or windows that you have open, use the taskbar.
Of course, since you will have followed the advice on "organising your files" in the previous section of the course, you will never have any trouble finding the file you are looking for…will you? On the odd chance that you do occasionally need a little assistance, here are some tricks to help you.
If you click the start button, one of the items on the first level menu that you see is called "Documents". Select this, and another menu will appear with a list of files on it. These are shortcuts to the files which have been most recently modified, no matter where they are stored. Clicking on one of them will open that file with the program usually used for that type of file.
This is useful if, for example, you wish to carry on working with a file you were working with earlier on, or perhaps the previous day. Rather than digging through your folders to find it again, simply go to the "Documents" menu and click on it.
This is a useful trick if you have a large number of files in a folder. You can arrange the files in order according to…
To do this, either in Windows Explorer or in a "My Computer" style file window…
Some people like to see all the files on their computer. However, as we have discussed earlier, you should leave system files completely alone. It is possible to hide some (though not all) of these files if you prefer.
To do this…
Find is another item on the Start menu. Choose it and another menu will appear. Some of the entries on this menu are of little use to most people, but one that is very useful is "Files or Folders…". You can use it to search for a file if you can't remember where you saved it, or even it's name. In fact, you can search for a file based on…
When you have found a file using "Find", you can check where it is using the information that "Find" gives you in the results box, or you can simply open it directly from "Find", by double-clicking on it in the results box.
When you select the "Files or Folders…" item on the "Find" sub-menu, a tabbed dialogue box appears. The first tab is "Name and Location". You can type a file name, or part of a file name into the "Named" box, and choose a disk or folder to start searching from in the "Look in" box. The easiest way to do this is to click the "Browse…" button and choose the disk or folder you want to search using the explorer-type window that appears. If you want to search all the folders inside the chosen disk or folder as well (which you usually will), make sure that the "Include Sub-folders" box is ticked - click on it if it is not. Then click the "Find Now" button and Windows will display a list of all the files which match the name you have typed inside the folder(s) that you selected. Note that it can take a little while for Windows to complete the search, especially if you search a large number of folders.
Note (1): It may seem that you cannot search the whole computer, as Windows refuses to accept it if you click "Browse" and then choose the "My Computer" icon in the explorer-type box. However, there is a way to do it. Click on the button marked with a triangle at the right hand end of the box labelled "Look in" and a list will appear. At the top will be "My Computer". Select this and you can search the whole computer. You can also use this method as a quick way of selecting an individual disk to be searched.
Note (2): You can use "wildcards" in the filenames that you type if you want the search to match several similar file names, or if you can only remember part of a name. A ? character in the file name will match any single character, whilst a * will match any sequence of characters. This will not be covered in any more detail here - if you want to get the hang of it, try it out!
If you select the "Date Modified" tab at the top of the Find dialogue box, you can restrict the files which will be found to ones modified between or after particular dates. If you have already filled in a name in the box on the "Name and Location" tab, then the search will be restricted to files which match both the name and the date. If you want to search for all files created by or after a given date, then leave the "Named" box on the first tab blank. Note however that the folder or folders selected on that tab still apply.
There are two ways of searching for a file according to it's type:
It is possible to find a file without any idea of it's name, date or type, if you can remember some text that was in it. This is one of the most useful and powerful ways of searching, but can also be rather slow - a complete search can last several minutes.
To do this, simply choose the "Advanced" tab and type the text that you remember into the "Containing text" box. Then click "Find Now". Remember that anything typed in the boxes on any of the other tabs will still apply, so if you have typed a name in the box on the "Name and Location" tab, then only files with matching names will be examined to see if they contain the text that you type. Again, if you want to search all files, leave the name box blank.
This is perhaps not so useful, but is mentioned for completeness. On the "Advanced" tab, there are two boxes marked "Size is". One of them allows you to enter a size in kilobytes, whilst the other lets you choose "At least" or "At most" if you don't want to search for an exact size match (use the triangle button to fill in this box).
Windows 95 is a multi-tasking operating system. This was discussed earlier in the course - basically it means that you can have several programs running at the same time, or sometimes even the same program running several times! This is useful if you want to move information between programs, which will be discussed later on in the course. It can also be useful simply to save time - for example, if you are in the middle of doing something with one program and you need to check something with a different program, you don't have to close the first program down to access the second one. For example, you may be half way through writing a document and you need to check some figures from a spreadsheet to put in the document. With a multi-tasking operating system, you don't have to close the word processor to start the spreadsheet program.
That's all very well, but how do you switch between programs? There are several methods…
This method is particularly useful if you are switching back and forth between two programs, as the first program selected when you hit "Alt+Tab" is the last one you were using before the current one. Thus each type you hit "Alt+Tab" (with a single tap on "Tab"), you will swap to the other program.
If you open My Computer and then double-click one of the disk drives in it, one of two things may happen:
or…
You can choose which of these behaviours you prefer as follows:
If you choose the single window option, you will need to use the "Up one level" button if you want to close a folder and return to it's parent folder. This is a button with a picture of a folder with an arrow inside it on the toolbar.
The My Computer and Windows Explorer toolbar contains several useful buttons. It is not always visible, though. To turn it on or off:
To find out what the buttons do, simply move the mouse pointer over them without clicking on them and keep the mouse still. A "tool tip" will appear and tell you what the button does. Some of them are covered in the following sections.
The icons in a "My Computer" or "Windows Explorer" window can be displayed in several different views. You can choose between:
To change between these views, you can use one of three methods:
You can also turn "Auto Arrange" on or off from this menu. If it is on, then when you are in "Large Icons" or "Small Icons" views, the icons will always line themselves up in neat rows across the window.
When you are in "Details" view, there are a couple of extra useful tricks…
Changing column widths: You can change the widths of the columns using the column header bars at the top of the columns (the ones with the words "Name", "Size", Type" and "Modified" in them). Click and drag on the dividing line between two column header bars and the column to the left of the mouse will change width. Alternatively, double-click the column divider, and the column will automatically be re-sized to a "sensible" width for its contents.
Quick sorting in details view: Click on a column header bar and the list of files will be sorted by Name, Size, Type or last Modified date, depending on which one you clicked. Click the same column header again, and the sort order will be reversed. For example, if you click the "Name" column header, the files will be arranged in alphabetical order, with the A's nearest the top. Click it again, and the order will be reversed so that the Z's are at the top.
Here is a trick which may prove useful to people who like to use Windows Explorer, especially if you were used to the Windows 3.1 File Manager and like using drag and drop to move and copy files..
A word of warning here: do NOT be tempted to use the old Windows 3.1 file manager with Windows 95 for day-to-day file management. It is still present, hidden away in the Windows folder, and some people who were familiar with it try to use it. However, it will reduce your long file names to the old style eight letter file names, and as well as being very inconvenient, this can also cause problems with some other programs. You have been warned!
Some people miss the old "Tiled" view of File Manager, which allowed two different folders to be displayed in different windows, one in the top half of the screen and the other in the bottom half. Well, there is a way to emulate this under Windows 95. It's a little clumsy to set up, but may be useful if you are moving a lot of files around. Here's how you do it…
You will now have two copies of Windows Explorer, one above the other, each with a "tree" view of the folders on the left and a file window on the right. You can use the tree views to change to the folders you want displayed in the two windows on the right, and then drag and drop files between them, just like File Manager. If the tree windows on the left are two large or too small, you can drag the dividing line left and right by using the mouse - just click on the line with the left mouse button and drag.
Note that one of the main differences between the old File Manager and Windows Explorer is the way in which you switch between disk drives. With file manager, there is a button at the top for each disk drive. However, with Windows Explorer, all of the drives appear in the tree view on the left, under "My Computer".
It is occasionally possible for Windows Explorer or a My Computer file window to get "confused" when another program creates or removes files from a folder. If you are not convinced that it is really showing you the current contents of a folder, click on "View" at the top of the window and select "Refresh". Windows will then check the contents of the folder and correct the view on the screen if it is wrong.
This should not normally be a problem, but it does happen occasionally, especially on computers connected to networks, and it's worth knowing what to do about it.
Are you the sort of person who likes to take things steadily and make sure you have got everything right, or do you like to do things quickly and get irritated by things which slow you down? The answer to this will probably decide which of the following options you prefer.
When you try to delete a file or files in a My Computer or Windows Explorer window, one of two things will normally happen…
or
You can choose which behaviour you prefer as follows…
IMPORTANT: Some files are flagged as "read only". If you turn delete confirmation off, you will not be warned even if you try to delete a read only file - it will just be deleted.
Read only files were covered in the first part of the course under
the topic called "File Attributes" in the section called
"An Introduction to Computers Part 3 - Files, Folders, Disks
and Programs".