 ... Windows Interface ... As he teaches, so he learns.... Recommend this page to a friend. Let's look at the Windows interface (that which comes between you and your computer). The Title Bar Only one window can be active at a time, and the Title Bar is your visual cue. It'll be blue in the standard Windows setup, and gray when not active. The Title Bar includes the name of the program if you're using a program, or the name of the dialog box if that's what's in use. Like it says, it's the "title bar." The little icon you see in the Title Bar is clickable. Many options display themselves, giving you more choices about what to do with the active window. These are options are referred to as being a part of the "control menu." The Control Menu A list of the basic window functions, such as minimize, maximize, Resize, Move, and Close. You can access the control menu via the keyboard if you want. Press Alt-Space, then the corresponding key of any underlined letter to apply that action. Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons are used more than any other, according to the Completely Useless Statistical Resource Center. These little buttons are found on every window in the right side of the Title Bar. The minimize button is commonly referred to as the "minus sign" but that's a kind of symbolic reduction of the item's significance. The Close button is called the "X" button by some, and could be correlated with the X-File if you want to be imaginative. The buttons reside in order: Minimize, Maximize, and Close. Clicking the minimize button will fold up the window into a neat little package that resides in the taskbar in button format. Try it. Click the minimize button right now, and watch it transform itself via the magic of animation. The Maximize button is next to minimize, and its sole purpose is expand the window to full screen. No matter how small or to what size you've adjusted a window, clicking this button will dramatically increase your view. After expansion, the button looks like a double set of maximize buttons, one layered on top of the other. Click again, and the window returns to its previous size. Tip: Double click the Title Bar to maximize or return a window to its previous size. Try it now. Double click the title bar of this window. See? And you didn't belive me. The close button will terminate your program or application. If you haven't saved work, you'll be prompted with a message, so don't worry about losing your valuables. If you see two sets of "X" buttons, such as are common to word processing programs, the lower set will close the document without exiting the word processing program. The Resize Handle is special What? What's a resize handle? It's that little area in the lower right corner of a window that lets you, well, resize the window. Vertical and horizontal dimensions can be changed simultaneously using this handle. Pass your mouse cursor over the resize handle, and it turns into a double-headed arrow. Left click and drag the window to the size you desire. The Menu is complete and available for your selective pleasure. The menu categorizes a program's functions into list format. Commonly, menus are arranged from left to right with File, Edit, View, and Help items. Cascading lists appear when certain items are clicked or pointed to. Programs have become very complex, and faster access to features is obtained through the use of toolbars. Toolbars and buttons are your one-click shopping approach to program usability. Instead of sifting through the menu, punch a button. Buttons make up toolbars, and are generally configurable. If you get lost, the Menu is probably going to be your safety net. It may even be your lifesaver. The menu never changes, but in some programs can be modified. It's a consistent marker on the trail through computer land. Check your status with the Status Bar This is an overlooked part of a window that displays statistical and other information. Things like the time, the size of a selected file, and any other detail oriented info the designers want to include can be found here. Turn the Status Bar on if you want to see it. The bar makes up the bottom portion of an active window. Windows comes out of the box with the status bar turned off. Seems someone thought you'd be overwhelmed with information, and decided to make Windows as plain as possible. There are a lot of nice features that are turned off by default. The Status Bar is one of them. Check any window's View menu to see if an option for using the Status Bar exists. Also, try right clicking the status bar itself to see if any user configurable options exist. Tabs are helpful organizational devices They exist on real files to help you find information, and give you something to grab. In computer applications, they exist to subdivide information within the same window. A perfect example is the Display Properties dialog box (window) with its five tabs, Background, Screen Saver, Appearance, Effects, and Settings. Click any of the tabs for info that's specific to that tab. You can move between tabs and change things, and nothing is final until you click the main OK button on the dialog box. For example, the Display Properties dialog box doesn't set anything in stone until you've clicked its OK button, then the changes you've made under any of the five tabs will actually take effect. Shortcut: To move between tabs within a tabbed dialog box, press the Ctrl-Tab key combination on your keyboard. To move in reverse, press Shift-Ctrl-Tab. Labels are used to label people and things The latter is preferred to the former, however, many of us can't function without the identifier. Huh? Ok, let's make this clear. A label is a piece of text used to describe something that doesn't have a place for a description. The important thing to note is that labels often contain an underlined letter. Holding the Alt key while pressing the underlined letter on the keyboard will cause an action to occur. A Text Box is used to enter text, not to store letters Text boxes are found in different windows, and they operate like a miniature word processor with limited functionality. The same keyboard shortcuts that apply to your word processor apply to text box entries: Ctrl-X for Cut, Ctrl-C for Copy, Ctrl-V for Paste, Ctrl-Z for Undo. Radio Buttons. Why are they called that, anyway? A radio button got its name from the "old days" of automobile radios using pushbutton selectors. You pushed a button, and one station was selected at a time. On the Internet, a web page may have a form that contains radio buttons. Only one can be selected at a time. Radio Button focus is obvious if you know what to look for. How do you know when a radio button has the focus? There will be a thin dotted rectangle around the text, or around the button itself. To choose a different radio button, use the arrow keys or press the Tab key to move to a different group of buttons. Progress indicators gauge progress ...but not always in real time. As a task nears completion, such as the installation of software, the progress bar meter indicates percentages. Some programs aren't as carefully created as they ought to be, and a progress indicator will shoot up to 80%, then take twice as long to complete the additional 20%. Plan on getting some exercise while a task completes itself. Scroll bar The scroll bar is to the right of any program, and the most commonly used scroll bar is probably the one on your browser. You use it to gauge the amount of page you can't see, and can drag it up and down to scroll through text. Clicking on either side of the scroll bar slider will cause the page to "jump" up or down a set distance. Use the up or down arrows to move the scroll bar in increments. Use the space bar to jump down a page in Internet Explorer. If the scroll bar is part of another control, such as a form on a web page, then it can't receive keyboard input. But if it stands alone, you can use the Page Up and Page Down keys to adjust it. Buttons Sew them on, or click them. Either way, they serve a purpose. You click them, and they do what they're supposed to do. If a button has a thin dotted line around it, you can activate the button by pressing the Space bar or the Enter key. A cancel button is activate by pressing the Esc key, regardless of whether it has the focus. You can cycle through the various buttons by pressing the Tab key, and then press the Space bar. The Enter key works, too. Is there any way to remove the Windows stripe from the Start Menu? No there isn't, but you can hide it. Right click the task bar and choose Properties. Check the box that says Show Small Icons in Start Menu and click OK. The stripe that displays the Windows version will be gone, but so will the large icons. Use Windows Update to keep track of Windows .It'll let you know if a newer version of Windows is available, and will tell you what new features or fixes for program it might contain. Check out the Windows Update feature by starting from Start - click Windows Update and watch the action. The Update item is hiding in the Settings group, and takes you to the Microsoft website http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com. The update feature will inspect your computer if you'll let it. This is safe. It scans your system, and takes an inventory of what you've already installed from your current Windows version and compares it with the updated information in its own database. You can select exactly what you want to download to your computer. One category that's quite useful is the Critical Updates area. These are items that the updater has decided you desperately need. Critical Updates will fix any known security problems in Windows as well. You can personalize Windows Update On the web page you visit, you'll see that you can decide on one or many of the update options. If there are certain aspects of Windows that you want updated regularly, just "make them yours" with this personalization feature. Have you ever been using your computer, and in a hurry just shut it off? Then you know that the next time you start, you have to wade through the ScanDisk process. Or worse, you may have been forced into "Safe Mode." That's where Windows runs with its bare bones showing. If this happens to you, simply restart your computer from the Start button. Select Shut Down, and it will reboot normally, assuming mice haven't entered and eaten anything. You can enter Safe Mode at any time Just press the F8 key while your system is booting. You'll have to press it more than once, since timing is the issue here. I just press, press, press and soon enough you'll get a menu where you can select Safe Mode. Press type that number and press Enter. Safe Mode is great for diagnosing problems with your display, or with other hardware. Once you're in Safe Mode, you can right click the My Computer icon, select Properties, and choose the Device Manager tab. See if any of the settings are amiss - you'll see a yellow exclamation mark alerting you of problems - and read the instructions about what could be causing the problem. Windows tries to be as helpful as possible, but it's still no substitute for a real techie. If you are experiencing new problems with some software you just loaded, you may have to enter Safe Mode and uninstall it. This is simple enough. Safe Mode only loads the drivers needed by Windows. It won't load the drivers associated with the software that's troubling your system. Go to Add-Remove Programs in the Control Panel and remove the offending software title. Restart Windows. It should boot into normal mode. All the stuff that makes Windows run is just typed into a computer. Programmers write what are called "lines of code." Each line of code is just that - a bunch of characters occupying a single line. Line upon line. You can write your own programs, or even pseudo programs. I'm going to leave you with a final tip that lets you do just that. All this really does is build your confidence. There's nothing in this code that can break your computer or cause it any harm.
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