Now that you're set up, we're going to actually do something. We'll take you through a little tour of XP and introduce you to some basic terminology that we will, hopefully, build off very fast.
This is a window. It's square in size, and has a blue bar running around the outside. Why they call it a window is beyond me. Perhaps it could be thought of as a "window" into the computer, with information being displayed onto the screen through the "window". Who knows. Starting from the top, with the blue window handle (it's a handle, because you can grab and move the window with it), we see:
we can see that there are three buttons (widgets1) that appear on every window:
This button can kill the window. It might ask if you want to kill it first (would you like to save?) but if you're persistent, you can kill, anhilate the window. That's why it's red (danger!) and has an X through it2.
It does what the title implies: it makes the window fill up the entire screen. Fairly straight forward.
Hitting this button will make the window disappear! If you minimized this window, then you'll notice that 1. you can't read anymore, and 2. if you clicked:
your wonderful reading experince came back. The blue bar is called the taskbar, and whenever you open an application, a new little section pops up that represents the window. You can right-click that section, and get essentially the same options the window handle gives you. It's just another way of doing things.
If you look around the window, you'll notice that those widgets are not the only objects on the screen. There are more widgets; just look below the window handle, and we run into...
Most windows have these:
right below the handle. They look like text, but if you click on one:
It's like a jack-in-the-box! Now, you can either select an item from the menu (doing something, in this case undo), or follow a submenu:
Later, we're going to tell you "such and such thing is in a submenu", and it would be tedious to say "the thing is in this submenu which is in this submenu which is...", so we use a little shorthand:
menu>submenu 1>submenu 2>item
So, if I told you to open up paint and change the attributes, I would say:
Start>All Programs>Accessories>Paint
And then
Image>Attributes...
Get that? If not, just find where paint is, and where the attributes are, and try again. If paint isn't where it's supposed to be... well, maybe you could replace 'paint' with 'notepad', and take a look around there.
These are straight forward:
They do something when they are told (when you click on them) and usually, hovering your mouse on it will tell you what it does. The only caveat is that some menus are disguised as buttons:
Which is only a minor annoyance. A group of buttons that can be moved around in a collective is known as a toolbar:
The ridge at the end of the bar is the handle of the toolbar, meaning you can drag it nearly anywhere on the screen, independent of the window. It can be great fun:
If you've used word or notepad, when you were writing your research paper or report, you were writing into the textbox.
Textboxes come in all shapes and sizes.
There isn't too much to textboxes. Just type away!
Now, this sort of widget is rare, but it shows up in media editing:
It designates a 'low' and 'high' side, and moving the slider between the two will choose a value between the low and the high. Yet Another Caveat is when the slide is partioned, most likely to allow only integers (whole numbers) to be chosen:
So there's no point trying to get 2.5 of a value.
Your widgets are well covered (by no means exhaustively), and before we move on to the wider world of the desktop, we'll take a look at two special classes of windows you'll probably encounter.
If you've clicked on your fair share of buttons, then you'll notice only some (a minority, in fact) actually go and do some action. Others pop up a dialog of some sort:
which lets you choose the terms on which the computer completes the action (In this case, closing a file). These don't have a string of menus below the handle, and usually have only the close widget on the handle. They also usually don't show up on the taskbar (they belong to their "parent" window) although a fair amount do.
An alert is similar to a dialog, except simpler.
All you can do is hit okay, cancel, or the close button (which is redundant). Nothing more to it.
Just like windows, the purpose of calling the desktop a desktop eludes me. Perhaps it's where you can access everything easily, just like on a desk, but why not a 'workspace' or something whimsical like 'play area'? Anyways, you've already been introduced to one component of the desktop, the taskbar. The only new part, the file viewer (the large part that has a (hopefully) beautiful background), isn't too hard to grasp either.
Well, first of all, what is a file? Let's say you wrote a report, played a game that saved your new high score to disk, and ripped some music to your computer. How does your computer know what information is your report, your hight scores, and your music? By putting them into "files", of course! Each file is a little packet of information that tells the computer "I'm a document" (or a music clip, or a list of high scores) and what information that document/music clip/high score list contains. On the desktop, these are what some common files look like:
As you can see, there are two parts to files; the icon (the picture that represents the file) and the actual name. Double clicking the icon will open the file with the right program.
Now, let's say we wait for a month, and we've written a whole lot of reports. Some of them belong to one project, and others to another project. Folders3 are the way to keep the documents organized; let's try right-click on desktop>new>folder. Type a whimsical name for the folder ('bannanas' works), and open (double click) it. An explorer window should pop up. Now, try right-click file viewer>new>text file. Name that one, too, and now you have a file in a folder!
We only have one file, though. Let's have another file: click the text file you just made, and while holding the control (ctrl) key, drag the file to some other part of the explorer window. Tada! you should have two files now. If it doesn't work, make sure you drag inside the white area. Now, you can rename your copied file (probably named something uninspiring like "copy of original file"), by either right-click>rename, or clicking directly on the file name twice (slower than a double click. It's hard to get it right the first time).
As a quick note, the menu system of menu>submenu>... works here too, albeit as folder>folder>file. Unless otherwise specified, the system will start from the desktop.
There's a special sort of file (actually, there are two) that, instead of being a holding information (I am a document) it's the set of computer instructions that tells the computer how to open files (this is how to open a document). Such files are called programs4 For example, let's go to My Computer>C:>WINDOWS>notepad5. Tada! That is where notepad, the program, lives. But wait, you say. Start>All Programs>Accessories>Notepad also exists. What gives? Well, the start menu only has a...
Like the name implies, links hook from one place on the computer to another, allowing access to things otherwise hard to find. They usually look like this:
With the little shortcut square ontop of the icon of the thing they point to, in this case a folder. If you were to follow a link to a file, you would essentially be opening that file. If you followed a link to a folder, you would essentially enter that folder. If you were to follow a link to a program (like notepad) the program would run. Despite the closeness of links to the content they link to, if you delete a link, the original file stays in the original place. Making your own links is easy: find the file or folder you want to link to, and right-click>Create Shortcut. Now, there should be a link that is named "Shortcut to...", and you can place the link somewhere convinient.
The way windows knows what file is what is what type is through file extensions. Right now, all you see are file names: bob, mike, and jimmy. What Windows sees is: bob.txt, mike.doc, jimmy.bmp. The part after the . is the extension that tells the computer that bob is a text file, mike is a document, and jimmy is a picture. If you want to see your file extensions everywhere, open up explorer, Tools>Folder Options>View>uncheck Hide extensions for known file types. Tada! You can also edit the file extensions when you rename files. Cool, eh?
Now, you notice that the large part of the taskbar has already been introduced. However, the two parts at the ends might warrant some explanation.
Hopefully, you've figured out what the start menu does already. The things next to it, the quick start pad, is a collection of buttons that launch your favorit applications. If you can't see it, right click an empty spot on the taskbar>Toolbars>Quick Launch if it isn't already selected.
Try dragging the icon in the quick launch into the desktop. They should pop out and become links. That's all the icons on the quick lanuch are: links. You can remove and add links to your heart's desire, especially as pre-packaged computers come with alot of junk preloaded.
This end contains the clock, the system tray, and if you can type in another language, the language bar. The clock is a simple widget: it keeps time. The system tray, on the other hand, might not have anything in it right now. Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete, and the task manager should pop up. If you look at the system tray, a little green box should have shown up also. Closing the task manager should also kill the box in the system tray. IM clients and downloaders use this feature to keep out of your way, but also provide a way to interact with the program.
The language toolbar is self explanatory: if you don't have it (and you need it) just enable it in the same way you enable the quick start. Then, right-click>settings>add should bring you a choice of languages you can type in6.
While we've mostly talked about files, folders and windows today, the real movers in computing are programs. We'll talk more in detail about programs tomorrow, but today we'll talk about how to install and uninstall (add and remove) programs, and how to keep them running in tip-top shape.
So you know that you have a bunch of programs preloaded, but let's say you buy a new program from your local technology store, or you download a program. How do you use them? Some programs don't need to be installed, and you just have to put it somewhere safe with an accessible shortcut to it. Otherwise, if the program is on an install cd, just plug in the cd and follow the instructions. If the program comes from the internet, first, make sure it's not malicious and just double-click the installer and follow the instructions. It's very straight forward.
If you decide the program doesn't suite you, then there's one place to uninstall everything: Start>Control Panel>Add or Remove Programs, and find the offending program and tell the computer to uninstall. Some uninstallers will ask if you would like to uninstall or repair the installation, but just select uninstall. If you didn't have an installer in the first place (ex put the program somewhere safe and make a shortcut) then you just have to delete the program and the link, and all other presence of the program.
There's something wrong with your computer. If you leave it be, it won't gain weight. If you spend time with it, though, it'll get more bloated and slower as time goes on. First, adding more and more files will cause file fragmentation7, which slows down the computer, and adding programs but never removing them8. The second is easily solved by removing programs you don't use anymore. The first is solved by a tool appropriately called a defragger, which resides in Start>Control Panel>Performance and Maintenance>Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster. Select your main hard drive, and defragment it.
Before we go onto installing font files, we simply must introduce you to these keyboard shortcuts. They are essential, and they can speed up your work (or make it feel faster). Here they are:
These keyboard shortcuts can be used most everywhere; cut, copy and paste commands can be used in the explorer with files and folders, for instance. Just experiment with them in your favorite text editor, as it can take a little getting used to. Once you get the hang of it, however, you'll wonder how you lived without them.
Before we leave you today, we'll be using everything we learned today to install some new fonts. Have you ever seen some exotic font and wondered where they come from? Or perhaps wanted it for yourself? You can find and install fonts by going here and finding a font you like. Download it, and right-click>Extract All..., accepting the defaults for the following dialoug. Now, enter the file the extraction wizard10 and look for the file that looks like this:
and copy that file. Moving to My Computer>C:>Windows>Fonts, paste the file there. Now, delete the folder that holds mostly junk now. If you open up your favorite text editor, your font should show up as an option in the font menu.
Great! You've survived your second tutorial. Tomorrow, we'll be talking about various programs that you can use to do everyday (and not-so-everyday) tasks. Until later!