In this chapter:
I want my Windows desktop to be just as comfortable and personal as my office. Don't you? Fortunately, Windows lets you do just that...
Your office probably started out looking just like mine: white walls, a cork-covered bulletin board, an empty desk, and some bookshelves--oh, yes, a computer, too. Pretty boring, huh? That's why I've added all sorts of personal touches to the environment. Step into my office and you'll find family pictures, a couple of Dilbert cartoons, a wall calendar, a bunch of framed pictures (I'm partial to racehorses), and a coffee mug that says, "You want it WHEN?????"
It's no problem to personalize your Windows environment, just as you can redecorate your office to make it more comfortable. Replace that boring green background with your favorite picture, change the colors and fonts, even shrink the whole display so you can see more details at once. A few of these changes can actually make you more comfortable and productive. Most, though, are strictly for fun and visual relief.
How much do you want to see on the screen at one time? Well, how sharp is your eyesight? When you first started Windows, it most likely came up using the normal video settings, where everything on the screen is big and easy to see. If you have the right combination of video card and monitor, though, you can change the resolution (Windows calls it the desktop area) and put more pixels on the screen. Is this the right option for you? You'll have to make a trade-off between your eyesight and the convenience of seeing more of your work on the screen.
Plain English, please!Pixels are the small dots of color that make up the image on your screen, and resolution is simply a fancy term for the number of dots that Windows displays on a single screen. Resolution is usually expressed as a measurement--when we refer to 640x480 resolution (pronounce it six-forty-by-four-eighty), that means a display with room for 640 dots from side to side, and 480 dots from top to bottom. Increasing the resolution while using the same monitor means that everything on the screen appears smaller, so you can see more words, numbers, pictures...whatever data you're working with.
Does this screen look familiar? Windows NT lets you personalize practically every
part of the workspace, just for fun. If your hardware allows it, you can change the
screen resolution (increasing the number of dots on the screen means you can
see more details at once) and the color palette (to make photographic
images look more realistic). You can also tell Windows to use a screen saver
that puts something else on the screen if you haven't touched a key or used the mouse
for a while.
If you've ever looked through the viewfinder of a camera, you understand everything you need to know about screen resolution. Let's say you're taking a group photograph at a family reunion; the photograph you get back from the Fotomat is always the same size (just as your computer screen stays a constant size). But depending on where you stand, the image on the photo might be very different.
Stand close to the group and look through the camera--you can only get two or three people in the picture. Take a step back and now Uncle Bill shows up in the frame, but everyone looks a little smaller. Go back a few more steps, and you can squeeze in everyone in the family, including all those cousins and even the family dog, but you'll need a magnifying glass to tell whether that's Uncle Bill or Aunt Hillary in the back row.
Each time you increase the resolution of your Windows screen, it's exactly like stepping back to get more into the picture. Eventually, the image will be so small that it won't be usable. See Figure 13.1 for a graphic illustration of how much more room you have on-screen when you increase the display resolution. Note that at a low resolution the Solitaire window takes up the entire screen, while at a higher resolution there's plenty of room to see more data on the screen. If this were a spreadsheet instead of a card game, you'd be able to see many more rows and columns of data, simply by adjusting the screen resolution.
Table 13.1 describes the four most common choices of screen resolution.
| Number of pixels | How it looks | Use this setting if you... |
| 640x480 | Normal | ...have average eyesight and work with uncomplicated documents. |
| 800x600 | Wide angle | ...regularly cut and paste information between two applications. |
| 1024x768 | Extra-wide angle | ...have a big monitor, and have lots of windows open at once. |
| 1280x1024 | View from the Space Shuttle | ...have a really big monitor, and the eyesight of a red-tailed hawk. |
If your eyesight is 20/20, you can make everything on the Windows desktop smaller--which lets you see more data on the screen.
Right-click any empty spot on the desktop, and choose Properties. Click the Settings tab (see Fig. 13.2) to reveal all the controls for adjusting the image size and number of colors you can see at once.
CAUTION: Be very careful with the box labeled Refresh Frequency! On some monitors, if you specify the wrong number in here, you could end up sending a signal to the monitor that causes some of its innards to literally go up in a puff of smoke. Windows will probably set up the monitor correctly the first time. Unless you're sure you know what you're doing, don't touch this setting.
Fig. 13.2
Use this dialog box to adjust the settings for your screen. Want to see more of what you're working with? Slide the lever to the right. Too small? Slide it back to the left.
Setting the Windows color palette is like shopping for paint to redo your living room. At the lowest setting in the Display properties sheet, you might get your choice of 16 colors that can appear on the screen at once (some video cards won't even offer this paltry choice). That's like doing the walls, the trim, and all the furniture and decorations using only the colors on the sale shelf at the Sherwin-Williams store. It's not a heck of a lot of choices, but you can probably find something you'll like.
When you boost the level to 256 colors, you can take your choice of any combination of colors from the ready-mixed selection in the paint store. In practice, because you're doing the walls and the trim and the furniture and decorations, that means tens of thousands of combinations. Surely you'll find something you like in there.
If you have an expensive video card and monitor, you can boost the color resolution to High Color (65,536 colors) or even True Color (16.7 million colors). That's the equivalent of bringing in your own swatches of color and asking the paint store to match them molecule for molecule.
Why not choose the highest number? Because it might slow down your screen. It's as if Windows has to search through the entire list of colors and calculate all those bits for every dot on the screen; that uses a tremendous amount of computing power. And while Windows is getting a headache sorting through all those colors, it can't do anything else. Most video cards can do just fine at 256 colors or even higher, but if you notice a difference, feel free to change the settings.
For most people, a setting of 256 colors is good enough. That's enough color options to handle the needs of most applications, but not so many that Windows will neglect the rest of its work while it's sorting through the color palette. The option for 65,536 colors will produce more realistic-looking images while possibly slowing down your system slightly.
Unless you're a professional graphic artist, skip the higher palettes. Can you really put 16.7 million colors on the screen? Do they all have names? (Hey, the Crayola Company had to use strange names like Burnt Umber when it got up to 64 crayons, so what could it possibly come up with for the box with 16.7 million crayons inside?) The only time you'll really need to use a lot of colors is when you're working with digital images (like the photographs found on Photo CDs); then you'll appreciate the smoother, sharper, more realistic images. For people who work with a word processor or spreadsheet all day long, 256 is puh-lenty of colors.
Q&A: When I changed the resolution, the color palette changed, too! Why?
Your video card doesn't have enough memory on it to handle all those colors at all resolutions. If you want to see photos in True Color, you may have to choose the smallest desktop area--640 x 480. If you want to pack more pixels on the screen--at 1024 x 768, for example--you'll have to settle for fewer colors.
I don't like wallpaper. If I bought a new house, and discovered that the kitchen walls had been covered with quaint country scenes, I'd spend days scraping it off and repainting. Fortunately, changing the wallpaper in Windows doesn't require a belt sander. Just right-click the Desktop, choose Properties, click the Background tab (see Fig. 13.3), and you can redecorate in a few seconds.
Fig. 13.3
Use the Display Properties dialog box to change the background pattern.
When it's time to redecorate your Windows desktop, you have the same choices you have in your house. You can use a single color for the background, just as you might paint the walls canary yellow. Or you can add artwork--images or patterns--to make the background more interesting.
Windows gives you two choices for images. Background patterns are simple, repeating arrangements of black pixels that create a design when viewed together--like a fancy tile pattern for a kitchen countertop or floor. Your background color shows through behind the pattern (right now it's a dull teal, but you'll see how to change this later in the chapter).
Wallpaper, on the other hand, is an actual graphic image, such as a photograph or drawing, that covers the background color and pattern you've chosen. You can center a single image on your desktop, just as you would hang a large painting on the living room wall; or you can choose a smaller image and let Windows duplicate it to cover the entire surface of the desktop.
Wallpaper is always a separate image file, stored in a format that Windows can recognize. Typically, this is a Bitmap image format file.
CAUTION: Wallpaper and background patterns can make your screen look as sophisticated as the Museum of Modern Art, but they also can make it difficult or impossible to see icons on the desktop. If you choose an intricate wallpaper pattern, be prepared to squint.
That's easy. Just make sure that (None) is selected in both list boxes in the Display Properties dialog box. You'll see a plain background with only the colors you've selected--no patterns or pictures.
Then use one of the Windows background patterns. These work just like a decorative pattern on a kitchen tile. The base color of the tile may be different (depending on what desktop background color you've chosen), but the pattern itself is always black. Choose a pattern from the list, then look in the preview screen above to see what it will look like. Or you can take a close-up look at the pattern (and even make changes to it) by clicking the Edit Pattern button. When you do, you'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 13.4.
Q&A: I selected a pattern and clicked OK, but I don't see it.
Make sure that you don't have any wallpaper selected. Wallpaper always covers up the desktop pattern, which in turn covers up the background color. To clear the selection, highlight the (None) entry in the wallpaper list.
Fig. 13.4
Click the Edit Pattern button to create your own desktop look.
When you have a favorite image stored in the right (bitmap) format, why not use it as the Windows wallpaper? If the image is big enough to take over the screen, then check the Center option in the Wallpaper box. Windows will neatly position the image so it's perfectly centered on your screen, as in Figure 13.5. Unless you've had the foresight to store the image in the Winnt folder, though, you'll need to click the Browse button and track down your work of art.
Some people like to use an image that's slightly smaller than the full screen, as shown in this figure. That way, they can arrange desktop icons like My Computer and the Recycle Bin without having to squint to pick them out against the background image. On the other hand, if you'd like to see the entire image from edge to edge, you can click the Plus! tab and check the box labeled Stretch desktop wallpaper to fit the screen.
Q&A: I have an image that I'd like to use as wallpaper, but it's not a bitmap. What do I do?
There's nothing Windows can do to help you, unfortunately. You'll need an image editing program (CorelDRAW! and Paint Shop Pro are two popular choices) that can open the image file and save it using the bitmap format.
Fig. 13.5
When you ask Windows to center an image as wallpaper, it positions it right smack
in the center of the screen. If the image is smaller than your desktop area, you'll
see some of the background color and pattern as well.
Take your favorite postage stamp, put it in a frame measuring two feet on each side, and hang it on your living room wall. What happens? The stamp practically disappears, of course. The same thing happens if you take a small bitmap image, just 20 or 30 pixels on each side, and try centering it on your screen. The tiny image is overwhelmed by that big desktop.
To make the framed image stand out on your wall, you could use an entire sheet of stamps instead of just one. You can do the same with a bitmap wallpaper image. When you check the Tile option, Windows copies your original image and uses the copies to fill the entire screen, as shown in Figure 13.6. The repetition makes a much better visual impact, because the image gets to fill a proper amount of space.
Fig. 13.6
A small image can look lonely when its centered on the screen
TIP: When you're experimenting with different desktop options, use the Apply button instead of the OK button. That way, you can check out different looks without constantly clicking to reopen the Display properties box.
If you're looking for wallpaper, you can find interesting images just about anywhere. Windows comes with some of its own, including my personal favorites, Greenstone and Santa Fe Stucco, which look great as tiled backgrounds. For a bright full-screen image that's especially effective on a gray winter's day, check out the Swimming Pool file. All three, plus a lot more, can be found in the Winnt folder.
TIP: Can't find the wallpaper files? They probably aren't installed on your PC. To put them on your hard disk, you'll need the Windows NT CD-ROM, and then you've got to go through the following steps. Click the Start button, choose Settings, and click the Add/Remove Programs icon. Select the Windows NT Setup tab, highlight Accessories, click the Details button, and (finally!) check the Desktop Wallpaper box. Click OK to copy the desktop wallpaper to your hard disk.
You can find other images, everything from animals to space shots, in art and photo collections available from a variety of sources: on CD-ROMs, from online services like CompuServe and The Microsoft Network, or even from the Internet. (That's where I discovered those hip Elvis postage stamps.)
You can even make your own wallpaper, if you have a little artistic talent and the Windows Paint program. (See Chapter 11 for more information on how Paint works.) After you've created and saved the Paint image, look on the File menu for the two Set as wallpaper options.
The Windows default colors are pretty boring. Dark green. Blue. White. Yawn. It's almost as bad as a model house, which is designed to be safe and bland so as not to offend anyone.
Want a different look and feel? A purple background? Lime-green title bars? Red letters? Hey, it's your computer. You can use any colors you like, and you can even replace the fonts Windows uses for the labels on icons and folders.
Windows comes with a predefined collection of desktop arrangements, with different coordinated colors and fonts. These collections are called schemes, and you can find them in the Display properties dialog box. If you find a scheme that has some elements you like, use it as the base for your own desktop. Start with the ready-made choices, then add your own options and save the edited scheme under a new name of your choosing, as shown in Figure 13.7.
TIP: If you're not sure what a part of the desktop is called, look in the preview window. All the parts of this window are "live"; if you click the menu bar here, for example, it selects the Menu option in the Item list below so you can adjust its size, color, and associated font.
Fig. 13.7
As you work, watch the example screen change to reflect how your options will look. If you're not happy with the way it's turning out, just click the Cancel button and start over.
It doesn't matter how many colors you've told Windows you want to use. When you pull down the color widget in the Display properties dialog box, you only see 20. What happened to the others? Well, you'll have to mix them by yourself. Here's how:
Fig. 13.8
Don't see the precise color you're looking for? Use the custom colors dialog box to mix it yourself.
Then change the font size. The normal size for window titles, for example, is 8 point. Try bumping it up to 9 or 10 points to make those labels more readable. (Don't know a point from a pixel? See Chapter 16 for more details about fonts.)
You won't find a setting for adjusting the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons. But you can adjust their size just the same: When you change the size of the type in the Active and Inactive Title Bars, the size of the buttons changes, too. To make the buttons bigger, just make the Title Bar font bigger.
Don't like that purple and lime-green after all? I don't blame you... Open the Display properties sheet and choose one of the predefined schemes stored there instead. You can always get back to normal by choosing Windows Standard from the list of schemes on the Appearance page.
TIP: After fiddling with fonts and colors, if you find a group of settings you really like, save it. Give it a name like Favorite Colors. Then, if something happens to your settings, you can always restore the ones you know you like.
CAUTION: If you accidentally make the background color and the foreground color the same somewhere in Windows, you won't be able to see what you're doing. To fix it, just go to the Desktop and restore the Windows Standard scheme.
With Windows 95, Microsoft introduced a special add-on product called Plus! (the exclamation point is part of the name). Some of those fancy features are now part of Windows NT 4.0. To take advantage of some of these slick vis-uals, you'll need a better-than-average video card set to run at High Color or better.
Pop up the Desktop Properties dialog box and click the Plus! Tab. You'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 13.9.
At the top of the Plus! Tab, you can change the icons that Windows uses for My Computer, the Network Neighborhood, and the Recycle Bin. Click the Change Icon button and browse through the available icons (look inside a file called shell32.dll, in the System32 folder, for a particularly rich assortment).
The other options on the Plus! Tab allow you to enhance the visuals throughout Windows. Personally, I have a lot of trouble working with Windows when the box labeled "Show windows contents while dragging" is unchecked. With this option on, you can actually see where the window and everything inside of it will land when you move it. Go ahead and experiment with the other Plus! Settings.
Fig. 13.9
Some of the settings on the Plus! Tab are subtle, but they add some interesting designer touches to an otherwise drab PC.
Computer old-timers will tell you that screen savers are necessary to prevent characters from "burning in" to your monitor. That used to be true, but it isn't anymore. Still, there are two reasons to use a screen saver: for fun or for privacy.
The concept behind a screen saver is simple. When you tell Windows to use a screen saver, it starts a timer each time you tap a key or click a mouse button. When a predetermined amount of time passes without any action, Windows replaces whatever is on the screen with the screen-saver image, usually something that moves.
The most interesting screen savers are the 3D varieties, which draw fancy looping geometric shapes. To install any of them, click the Screen Saver tab in the Display Properties dialog box, as shown in Figure 13.10.
Fig. 13.10
Watching Windows NT draw intricate 3D pipes can be entertaining--and keep passers-by from snooping at your screen.
The following table describes what the options do; as usual, the sample screen shows how the various settings will look after you choose OK.
| Choose this option... | ...and then adjust this screen saver setting |
| Screen Saver | Pick the screen saver you want from this list. |
| Settings | Set preferences here--for example, how fast the image moves and which colors it uses. |
| Password protected | Once the screen saver kicks in, you'll have to press Ctrl-Alt-Del and enter your Windows NT login password before you can get back to work. This feature is handy if you want to be able to walk away from your desk without worrying about snoopy coworkers. |
| Wait | Tells Windows how long you want it to wait before turning on the screen saver. The default setting of 1 minute is a little quick. Try 5 or 10 minutes for starters. |
| Preview | Click to see a full-screen demonstration of the screen saver in action. Move the mouse or tap a key to end the preview. |
Most people don't realize that you can also change the mouse pointers that come with Windows. And that's just one of the changes that are possible. If you sometimes have trouble picking out the pointer on your screen, double-click the Mouse icon in the Control Panel. You'll see a dialog box like the one in Figure 13.11.
Fig. 13.11
Master your mouse! Windows lets you adjust all sorts of mouse options to make it easier for you to find that pesky pointer.
These are some of the options available:
Not every PC keeps perfect time. If you notice that the time on the taskbar isn't quite right, reset it. Right-click the time display and choose Adjust Date/Time. You'll see the dialog box shown in Figure 13.12. Enter a new date or time, if necessary, and Windows will reset the system clock as well as the display.
Fig. 13.12
The Windows clock lets you reset the system date or time without a lot of fuss--if you've been given permission, that is.
CAUTION: You might not be able to change the time on your system clock. That privilege has to be granted to you by the Administrator of your system. If you see an error message when you try to open the Date/Time Properties dialog box, it means you'll need to talk to your network administrator before you can change the time or date.
Why does Windows care what time zone you're in? That can be important if you dial into a network that's in another time zone, or if you send e-mail out over the Internet, where the recipient might be in Arizona or Argentina or even Afghanistan. As long as both computers know about time zones, they'll be able to keep track of which file or message came first.
TIP: If your PC loses track of the right time at an alarming rate, try this trick: Drag a shortcut of the Date/Time icon from the Control Panel into the Startup folder. That way, every time you turn on your PC, you'll get a chance to reset the clock. (And while you're at it, ask your system admin-istrator to see about changing the battery on your motherboard.)
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