In this chapter:
With a name like Windows NT, it only figures that the program's main building blocks are--you guessed it--windows...
Windows (with a big W) uses lots of individual windows (with a small w) to hold all the different things you're trying to juggle at once. One window might contain a memo to your boss, while another one might have a spreadsheet with the numbers you're supposed to put in that important memo. At the same time, you might have four or five folder windows open while you search for the memo you wrote last month. That's at least six windows already, and we haven't even counted that Solitaire game you've been playing while you thought no one was looking.
Sound complicated? It's not, really. Keeping track of five or ten windows and switching from one to another is no more difficult than zapping from CBS to NBC to HBO to the Home Shopping Network on your 163-channel cable TV system.
Of course, whether you're sitting in your living room or sitting in front of your PC, it helps to have a good remote control. And working with Windows' remote control (the taskbar) is a snap, once you know which buttons to push.
Whenever you double-click a folder, Windows draws a neat little rectangle on the screen and arranges the contents of the folder inside. That rectangle is a window. The same thing happens when you double-click a program icon--the program opens in a window. Think of a window as an enclosed patch of land where your data can roam freely. The outside edges of the window, called borders, act like fences to keep the window's contents from wandering onto the desktop or into another window by accident.
Windows are incredibly versatile spaces that hold data, programs, lists of files...you name it. You can move them around on the screen, arrange them side by side, make them bigger or smaller, or expand them to fill the entire screen. When you want to move a window out of the way, you can even stuff it into a box and store it (temporarily) on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen.
No matter what you do with a window, though, the contents always stay inside the
window's borders.
Before we tackle the hard scenario--juggling a whole screen full of windows--let's try something simple: working with a single window.
You'll notice that it takes a few seconds before WordPad appears; that's because Windows has to go find the program on your hard drive and load it into your computer's memory.
When WordPad started up, it opened into a timid little window that only used part of the screen. Hmmm, that's not exactly what we wanted, is it? We want to devote our full attention to WordPad, and we don't need to see any other distractions on the screen. So let's maximize WordPad.
Look at Figure 7.1. See the three buttons at the far right of the WordPad window's title bar? The one in the center (it looks like a box with a thick border along the top) is the Maximize button. Click that button and stand back as the WordPad window zooms out to take over the entire screen.
The buttons at the far right of the top of each window change, depending on whether you've maximized the window or not. The Maximize button is in the center of the bottom set; once the window's maximized, Windows puts the Restore button there instead (top set), so you can switch back to a smaller window when you're ready.
That's much better, isn't it? The effect is just the same as if we'd clicked Channel 2 on our TV's remote control to watch David Letterman. The WordPad window now occupies the full screen, covering up everything except the taskbar down below.
When you maximize a window, it takes over the entire screen. As long as the window is maximized, there are a few things you can't do:
Fig. 7.1
To enlarge a window so it takes up the entire screen, click the Maximize button.
TIP: Are those tiny buttons too small to hit without squinting? Make the little suckers bigger:
1 Click the Start button and choose Settings, Control Panel.
2 Double-click the icon labeled Display.
3 Click on the tab labeled Appearance and watch the contents of the window change. Aha! Now click any of those pesky tiny buttons. If the box labeled Item contains the words Caption Buttons, you succeeded; otherwise, try again.
4 Now click the number in the box labeled Size, then press the up and down arrows to make the buttons grow and shrink.
5 When you're happy with your new, extra-large buttons, click OK.
There are more goodies you can change to make Windows your own--check out Chapters 13 and 14 for details.
To open a second window, we don't need to do anything with WordPad. Let's just leave it there, and use the Start menu to run Paint, Windows' built-in drawing program. Click the Programs menu, then Accessories, then Paint. Here, too, we'll have to wait a few seconds while Windows reads the Paint program from your hard drive and loads it into the computer's memory.
Just like WordPad did, Paint starts in a small window, which means we can still see Wordpad in the background. Since we don't want any distractions, let's click the Maximize button to zoom Paint to full size, too. Now it's occupying the entire screen, just as if we'd switched to Channel 4 to watch Jay Leno.
What happened to WordPad? Nothing. It's still there in the background, waiting patiently for us to pay attention to it again. But the only thing we can see besides Paint is the taskbar, just below the maximized Paint window. If we wanted to, we could start another program right now. For now, though, let's stick with just two windows.
Plain English, please!You can use Windows to do two, three, five, even twenty things--all at the same time--on your PC. Sometimes one or more of the windows in the background are actually working, doing things like formatting a floppy diskette, downloading a file from the Internet, or crunching a big batch of numbers. This frenzied, everything-happening-at-once activity is called multitasking. If there's nothing going on in the background windows, you're simply task-switching when you move from one program to another.
TIP: The taskbar is anchored to the bottom of the screen when you start Windows, but you can move it if you'd like. Aim the mouse pointer at the taskbar, click and hold the left mouse button, and then drag the taskbar to any side of the screen you'd like. It'll "stick" to the top, bottom, or either side.
Now that both programs are running, it's time to start zapping back and forth between them. For that, we'll need to use the taskbar.
The taskbar works just like your TV's remote control. Each time you press a button on the remote control, the entire contents of the screen change. Click! There's David Letterman! Click! There's Jay Leno! Click! There's Dave again! Each time you click a button on the taskbar, one (and only one) program comes to the foreground, and everything else seems to disappear. You know you can switch between programs any time, but as long as Dave is on the screen there's no sign of Jay, and as long as WordPad is showing, there's no sign of Paint.
How can you tell when a button on the taskbar (or anywhere else, for that matter) is "pushed"? The trick is to recognize some of the special effects that Windows uses to fake a three-dimensional look. And unlike those cheesy 3-D science fiction movies that were popular in the '50s and '60s, you don't need special glasses to see them.
When you look carefully at the Maximize, Minimize, and Close buttons in any window, you'll notice a thin white line that runs along the left and top edges of each button, and a corresponding thin black line that runs on the right and bottom.
The effect of these matching lines is to create the illusion that the button is sitting on top of the title bar, catching rays from a light that shines from the top left corner of the screen.
When you "push" a button, the lines reverse, with the left and top edges turning dark, and the bottom and right edges turning light. The image on the button's face also shifts slightly to the right. To your eye, which still thinks the imaginary light source is shining from the top left, it looks just as if the button is now depressed below the surface of the title bar.
Along the taskbar, the effect is more noticeable and a bit more dramatic, thanks
to the lighter background behind the "pushed" button.
There's an ultra-cool way to switch from one window to another without using the mouse or the taskbar. (In fact, it's so cool that the official Microsoft name for this little trick is Coolswitch.)
When you have more than one window open, hold down the Alt key and press the Tab key. Keep holding the Alt key down, but take your finger off the Tab key. A box will pop up in the center of the screen with the icons and labels for all your open windows (see Fig. 7.2 for details). To switch programs, hold down the Alt key and just keep hitting the Tab key until the icon that represents the program you're looking for is highlighted. Once you let go of the Alt key, the Coolswitch box will go away and your window will pop instantly into view.
Fig. 7.2
Bet your TV's remote control can't do this! Hold down Alt and press the Tab key repeatedly to zap among every window you have open.
When you want to switch away from one window and start working on something else, Windows lets you set the first window aside temporarily. It's out of sight, but not out of memory. When you minimize a window, it's just as though you've taken the contents of that window, stuffed them into a box, and placed the box down on the taskbar. Everything in that window is still on call; you just need to push a button to bring it back.
Let's minimize both WordPad and Paint. To get Paint out of the way, push the Minimize button in the top right corner of the Paint window (it's the one with the small horizontal line along the button--the design is supposed to remind you of the taskbar). Do the same with WordPad.
Now press either button on the taskbar, and watch the same effect in reverse, as the window instantly zooms back up to its previous position.
There's a critical distinction between minimizing a program and closing it. Remember how it took a few seconds for WordPad and Paint to load from the hard drive? In contrast, reloading either minimized application by pushing its taskbar button was nearly instantaneous.
When you close a window, you unload it from your computer's memory. In effect, you're telling it to go home and relax. If you decide you need it again, you'll have to wait while it wakes up, gets dressed, has a cup of coffee, and drives back to work. With a bigger program (like Microsoft Word or Excel, for example) it could take a minute or even longer for the program to go through all the rigmarole it requires to get up and running.
When you minimize a window, on the other hand, you leave it in memory. You're telling the program to go sit on the taskbar and take a quick coffee break. The next time you call, the program is still wide awake, fully dressed, and ready to get right back to work. Whatever documents you were working with are right there where you left them. If you had shut down the program, you'd have to find your file again, open it, and scroll down to the place you were working.
TIP: You've probably had it drilled into you since you were a kid: Clean up after yourself. Well, don't do it here. As long as your computer has enough RAM, don't close programs--instead, get in the habit of minimizing them. You'll save time, and as long as you have enough memory you have nothing to lose. How do you know when you're running low on memory? If Windows tells you it's run out of memory or system resources, or if you hear the hard disk chugging away continually, and there's a long delay every time you try to switch between programs, it's time to close a few windows (see "How do I close a window?" for more information). Of course, eventually you'll have to close those windows and save any open files before you shut down your computer.
TIP: When you've got a lot of windows open, the buttons on the taskbar become unreadable. No problem--just point to any button and let the pointer sit there for a few seconds. Eventually, a little label called a ToolTip will pop up, telling you the full name of that button, including the name of the program and the document you were working on within the program (see Fig. 7.3 for an example). After the first tip appears, you can slide the pointer from button to button, and the remaining ToolTips will appear instantaneously.
Another fix for a full taskbar is to increase its height. Point to the top border of the taskbar, until you see a double-headed arrow. Then click and drag the edge of the taskbar upward to make the taskbar tall enough for two rows of minimized programs.
Fig. 7.3
Let the mouse pointer sit on top of any button for a few seconds, until the ToolTip label pops up; now you can slide the pointer from side to side to see what's what.
When you're absolutely, positively sure you're all done with a window, it's OK to close it. To make it disappear, press the Close button, which is the one labeled with a big X. The X means "go away." All done. Cross it off your list.
You can't get into trouble by pressing the Close button. If you've got unsaved work in the window you're planning to zap, Windows will give you the opportunity to save it before it goes away.
If you prefer to use the keyboard instead of the mouse, you can almost always use the keyboard shortcut Alt+F4 to close a window, too.
TIP: There's another way to minimize, maximize, or close a window: Every window has a Control menu that you can pull down by clicking the small icon at the far left of the title bar. Frankly, it's easier to use the buttons on the right side, but there is one time when it helps to know about the Control menu: If your mouse stops working, you can open the Control menu with Alt+spacebar.
CAUTION: There's one last way to close a window, but it's strictly for emergencies. If a program just stops, with no explanation, and won't go away, here's how to shut it down--losing all your data along with it, unfortunately. Press the Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys simultaneously, then click the button labeled Task Manager. Choose the name of the "stuck" window from the pop-up list of Applications and click End Task. Don't even think of selecting an item on the Processes tab, though! The Task Manager should only be used as a last resort, when you're absolutely sure it's stopped working.
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