Address Bar

The Address Bar (see Figure 3-4) is a special toolbar with an input field and (optionally) an arrow. It appears in Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and, if you’ve right-clicked on the Taskbar and selected Address from the Toolbars menu, on the Taskbar. When you type an Internet address, the name of a program, or the path of a folder, and then press Enter, the Address Bar will respond in one of many ways, depending on its location and your system’s settings.

Figure 3-4. The Address Bar, shown here on the Windows Taskbar

Although the Address Bar’s main purpose is to make it easy to type in a web address and point your browser to that address, or to navigate through folders on your hard disk, you also can use it to type a command or application to launch, just like typing it into the Start Search box on the Start menu or the command line. This means that you can easily choose between point-and-click and command-line operations—whichever is easier for completing a given task.

One major difference between the Start Search box and the Address Bar is how they treat an unknown address or command. The Address Bar in Internet Explorer assumes that any unknown text string is a web search. So, for example, typing oreilly in the Address Bar will launch an Internet search, using your default search engine. In Windows Explorer, if you type in a text string, the Address Bar appends an http:// in front of it, and a / to the back of it. So typing oreilly.com will bring you to http://oreilly.com, which is a legitimate web address, but typing oreilly will bring you to http://oreilly/, which is not a legitimate web address and will display an error message.

If you type the same string at the Start Search box, you’ll get a list of all documents, files, and folders that include oreilly in them, as well as any web sites you’ve visited with that word in them. You can, however, also use the Start Search box to search the Web. Type in the term and select Search the Internet, and it will perform an Internet search, using your default search engine.

The Address Bar features a drop-down list containing the history of all recently entered URLs and command lines. Click the down arrow at the far right of the Address Bar for the list. Pick an item from the drop-down list to re-execute the command or revisit the specified web site.

Although it is useful for running command-line programs, the Address Bar does have one drawback when you use it in this fashion. When you issue a command, the command opens in a new window. Once the command has finished, that window closes instantly. If you are issuing a command that does not normally leave the window open, but you need to see a response (such as ping or dir), you’ll have to have very fast eyes. For these types of commands, you’re better off using the command prompt.

Bread Crumbs

Windows Explorer now includes bread crumb navigation along the top, which shows you the complete path to your current location, as shown in Figure 3-5. Click on any spot back along the path, and you’ll navigate directly there. Click the arrow next to any spot on the path, and you’ll see a drop-down list of all the subfolders under that location.

Figure 3-5. Bread crumb navigation

See also

"Address Bar"

Buttons

Just click a button to make it do what its label says. In Figure 3-6, the Browse button is typically used to display a file dialog box. When you choose a file and click OK, the name and location (also known as the path) of the file are automatically entered into the text field. This synergy of controls is common, saves typing, and prevents typos. Some applications place a small folder icon next to a text field rather than the full-size text field, but the usage is the same.

Figure 3-6. The Browse button marked with ellipses ( . . . ), implying that another window will appear when it is clicked

If the button has the focus, press the Space bar, press Enter, or click the button with the mouse to activate it. In dialogs with more than one button, often one of them has a color that fades in and out (usually the OK button)—this is the “default” button and you can activate it by pressing Enter, regardless of which control has the focus. Similarly, there is usually a cancel button (typically labeled “Cancel”) that responds to the Esc key but has no visual distinction. If in doubt, use Tab to cycle through the buttons and then press the Space bar.

Following is a more detailed explanation of buttons and their uses:

Change Your Color Scheme

Change the color and “glassiness” of windows, the Start menu, and the Taskbar.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization → Window Color and Appearance

Right-click the Desktop and choose Personalize → Window Color and Appearance

Description

One of the most notable changes in Windows Vista compared to earlier versions of Windows is its transparent windows, courtesy of Windows Aero. You can change their colors and transparency from the Window Color and Appearance page, shown in Figure 3-7.

Figure 3-7. The Window Color and Appearance page, where you can customize Windows Aero’s transparency and colors

Click a color to choose a new color. If you want to further customize the colors, click “Show color mixer,” and controls will let you choose the precise colors of your windows. To change the transparency of windows, use the Color intensity slider. Move the slider to the left to make windows more transparent and to the right to make them less transparent. To change the colors and fonts of all screen elements in pretty much any way you’d like, click “Open classic appearance properties for more color options,” and you’ll open a dialog box from Windows Vista that lets you customize all elements of your screen.

Checkboxes

Checkboxes are generally used for on/off settings. A checkmark means the setting is on; an empty box means it’s off. Click on the box to turn the labeled setting on or off.

In some instances, instead of a checkmark in the box, the box will be a solid blue. This means that the value is neither on nor off. Here’s an example: select some files in Explorer or on your Desktop, right-click on one of them, select Properties, and you’ll get a dialog similar to Figure 3-8. The checkmark is missing for the Hidden attributes, but the box is a solid blue for the Read-Only attribute because some of the selected files have it enabled, and others don’t.

Figure 3-8. Checkboxes, for turning settings on or off

Clipboard

A shared, system-wide storage area for temporarily holding and moving data.

To open

Edit → Cut (Ctrl-X)

Edit → Copy (Ctrl-C)

Edit → Paste (Ctrl-V)

Description

The Clipboard is an invisible portion of memory, used to temporarily hold data as it’s moved or copied from one application to another. Although you will never “see” the Clipboard, it’s used every time you cut, copy, or paste something.

Using the Clipboard is easy. Select a portion of text in your word processor, an image in your graphics program, or a file in Explorer, and then select Cut from the Edit menu; the selected object(s) will disappear and be stored in the Clipboard. (Use Copy instead of Cut if you don’t want the original data erased.) Then, move to another location and select Paste from the Edit menu to place a copy of the object on the Clipboard in that location. You can paste the data as many times as you like.

Notes

Combo Boxes

See "Listboxes,” later in this chapter.

Computer

In Vista, the Computer icon in Windows Explorer and the Computer link on the Start menu have replaced the My Computer icon used in Windows XP. It is solely a navigational icon and has no program associated with it. Right-click it and choose Properties, and you’ll open the System Control Panel applet. (You can also get to the applet by choosing Control Panel → System and Maintenance → System.) This applet, shown in Figure 3-9, shows you basic information about your system and includes links to many other applets, controls, and menus that let you customize the use of your computer.

Figure 3-9. The System Control Panel applet

Notes

Context Menus

In Figure 3-10, I’ve right-clicked on the Recycle Bin icon to display its context menu, which is a list of special actions or commands that affect only that object. The idea is that the options available for any given object in Windows depend upon the context, the set of circumstances under which you’re operating. The Empty Recycle Bin option is shown here, because it is relevant to the context of the Recycle Bin. (If the Recycle Bin were empty, the option would be grayed out [disabled].) Nearly all objects in Windows have their own context menus, which are almost always accessible with the right mouse button. See "Windows Explorer,” in Chapter 4, for details on customizing the context menus for your files, folders, and certain Desktop items, and see Chapter 12 for details on the way Windows stores file type information.

Figure 3-10. The Recycle Bin’s context menu

When a file or other object is selected (highlighted), press Shift-F10 to display the context menu. If you have a special Windows keyboard, there is a special key for this purpose, usually located to the right of the Space bar. The most frequently used item in most context menus is Properties, which you can access quickly by pressing Alt-Enter. Other shortcuts for context menu items include the Delete key, F2, Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V for Delete, Rename, Cut, Copy, and Paste, respectively.

Notes

Control Menus

See "Windows,” later in this chapter.

Control Panel: windowssystem32control.exe

The central interface for most of the preferences, hardware configurations, and other settings in Windows Vista.

To open

Start → Control Panel

Windows Explorer → navigate to the DesktopControl Panel folder (it’s not available in the Users username Desktop folder, however)

Search box or Command Prompt → Control

Search box or Command Prompt → filename.cpl

Usage

control [filename.cpl] [applet_name]
control [keyword]
filename.cpl

Description

The Control Panel has no settings of its own; it’s merely a container for any number of option windows (commonly called applets or Control Panel extensions), most of which you can access without even opening the Control Panel folder. Unfortunately, the Control Panel can look vastly different from one computer to another, based on preferences scattered throughout several dialog boxes. Furthermore, the default settings vary, depending on how Windows Vista was installed (see Figure 3-11). To simplify notation in this book, I’m making certain assumptions about your preferences. It’s best to familiarize yourself with the various options described here so that you won’t be confused when a setting in the Control Panel is referenced.

Figure 3-11. The normal view of the Control Panel

The Control Panel has two views: the normal view and the “Classic” view. In the normal view, you see major categories and click through to subcategories until you find the setting or applet you’re looking for. Windows Vista changes Control Panel behavior to a certain extent compared to Windows XP, because even at the category level, there are applets you can click without having to drill down. The Classic view, by way of contrast, presents a simple, alphabetical listing of all Control Panel applets. Figure 3-11 shows the normal view, and Figure 3-12 shows the Classic view. To switch from the normal view to the Classic view, click the Classic View link. To switch from the Classic View to the normal view, click Control Panel Home.

Figure 3-12. The Classic view of the Control Panel

There are several different ways to access the Control Panel and its contents:

Categories and navigation

The contents of the Control Panel are divided into discrete categories (System and Maintenance; User Accounts and Family Safety; Network and Internet; and so on). Click a category and you’ll come to a group of subcategories. For example, click Appearance and Personalization, and you’ll come to subcategories including Personalization, Taskbar and Start Menu, and Ease of Access Center, among others. Click any subcategory to either accomplish a task or see a list of applets.

As you navigate up and down through categories and subcategories in the Control Panel, the bread crumbs at the top of the Control Panel show where you are, including your complete path. You can jump anywhere back along that path by clicking it in the bread crumb. For example, if you’re in the Personalization section, you’ll see the bread crumb path of Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Personalization. To jump back to Appearance and Personalization, click it in the bread crumb trail; to jump to the top of the Control Panel, click it in the bread crumb trail. You can also use the arrow keys to the left of the bread crumbs to move backward and forward in the same way you can use them in Internet Explorer.

Once you move down into the category level in the Control Panel, you’ll find links to all Control Panel categories on the lefthand side of each Control Panel window.

In addition to containing the icons for most of the standard Control Panel applets, the categories have additional links based on the task to be performed. Essentially, these links point to the same icons, only using different descriptions. The same holds true at the top level of the Control Panel.

Some people prefer the Classic view to the normal category view, because the applets are always presented consistently, no matter how the Control Panel is opened.

Regardless of the setting you prefer, it’s important to understand the notation adopted throughout this book. For example, the following instruction shows the category name in square brackets (commonly used to denote an optional step or parameter):

If you are using Control Panel categories, include the step in brackets; if you have categories turned off, ignore the bracketed step.

Control Panel changes in Vista

The Control Panel has been given a thoroughgoing redesign in Windows Vista. Categories have been added, taken away, and altered; navigation has changed with the addition of bread crumbs; it’s now easy to jump from any level of the Control Panel to get directly to an applet; and the Control Panel offers a much more comprehensive way to perform tasks and customize Windows Vista.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that under the hood, the Control Panel is now something of a mess. It’s made up of a collection of category pages and applets that have accumulated through various versions of Windows. As you’ll see shortly, in “Command-line usage,” in some cases you can run an applet directly from the command line by typing the name of the applet itself. In other cases you can run an applet by typing in Control and then a keyword, such as telephony. And in yet other cases you can’t run an applet from the command line at all. Making matters more confusing is that in some instances, running an applet from the command line leads to a traditional dialog box (such as main.cpl for the Mouse Properties dialog box), but in other instances it leads to a subcategory that is actually a folder along the Control Panel bread crumb path (such as powercfg.cpl, which leads to the folder/subcategory Control Panel → Hardware and Sound → Power Options). The upshot? Like it or not, it may be easier to use the Control Panel itself rather than the command line for running applets.

Command-line usage

This section explains how to use control.exe from the command line. By command line, I mean the Address Bar or Start Search box as well—both will accept commands. And you can also use filenames for creating Windows shortcuts to specific Control Panel applets.

Note that you cannot launch all applets from the command line; see the upcoming “Notes” section for a workaround. Control.exe supports two command-line methods (see “Usage,” at the beginning of this section), but no method covers all applets.

Control.exe accepts the following parameters:

See Table 3-1 for a list of Control Panel applets that you can run directly from the command line, and the category in which you can find them. Not listed are applets that you cannot run from the command line.

Notes

Date and Time Properties: windowssystem imedate.cpl

Set your system’s clock, choose a time zone, and enable Internet time synchronization.

To open

Control Panel → [Clock, Language, and Region] → Date and Time

Right-click on the time in the notification area, and select Adjust Date/Time.

Command Prompt → timedate.cpl

Command Prompt → control date/time

Description

The Date and Time dialog is pretty straightforward. Set your system’s clock and time zone with the Date and Time tab, add additional clocks with the Additional Clocks tab, and automatically synchronize your PC clock to the true time over the Internet with the Internet Time tab.

The Date and Time tab is as simple as it gets: click “Change date and time” or “Change time zone” to make your changes.

The Additional Clocks tab, shown in Figure 3-15, lets you add up to two additional clocks, both of which can be from many places throughout the world. The “Enter display name” field lets you type in a name for your clock—for example, Gabe’s time. The clock will then display that label. By default, the names for the two clocks are Clock1 and Clock2. If you delete the names, the clocks will not display any labels.

Figure 3-15. The Additional Clocks feature in Windows Vista, which lets you display up to two additional clocks from throughout the world

Hover your mouse over the time, and the time of your additional clocks pops up in a small display. Click the time for a fuller display, shown in Figure 3-16.

Figure 3-16. The full display of the additional clocks you’ve added

The Internet Time tab allows you to synchronize your PC’s clock with one of several Internet time servers automatically. If you turn on the “Synchronize with an Internet time server” option, Windows will synchronize your clock once a week. Naturally, you must be connected to the Internet for this option to work; if you’re not connected when Windows attempts to connect to the time server, it will just try again next week. Also, your time zone and daylight savings settings must be set properly; otherwise, the time synchronization will set the wrong time.

Notes

See also

"Control Panel"

Desktop

The Desktop is the basis for the modern graphical user interface (GUI) paradigm. It is considered a container for all other resources on your computer, as well as a backdrop for your Windows workspace. The Desktop is always underneath any open windows—to access it if it’s covered, you need to minimize or close any open windows. Press the Windows logo key and the D key to accomplish this quickly. If the Desktop icon is visible in the Quick Launch area, clicking that will accomplish the same thing. Both of these actions work like toggles, so you can use them to switch back and forth between the Desktop and your open window or windows.

As shown in Figure 3-17, the Desktop contains two types of icons: namespace icons and file icons.

Figure 3-17. Namespace icons and file icons

File icons can be files or folders (actually located in your Users username Desktop folder on your hard disk). You can drag and drop a file icon to and from the Desktop as though it were any other ordinary folder. The Desktop is a good place to store newly downloaded files from the Internet, email attachments, items from floppies, and other files you’re currently working on.

Namespace icons, on the other hand, such as the Recycle Bin, aren’t files but rather specific resources built into Windows. You can rename and hide all of these icons. As a general rule, to rename a namespace icon, right-click it, choose Rename, and then type in the new name you want to appear. To hide it or make it appear, use the Personalization Control Panel applet. (See "Personalization,” later in this chapter, for details.)

As with most other components of the Windows interface, the Desktop has properties you can customize. Right-click on an empty portion of the Desktop and click Personalize to change the wallpaper, color, screensaver, settings for the display, and more. (This is the same applet that you will get by choosing Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization.)

You can also change the appearance, size, and display order of the Desktop icons. Right-click the Desktop and choose View to change the size of the icons as well as how they should be arranged on the Desktop. From the View options, select Align to Grid if you want the icons to go into neat rows automatically; unselect it if you want to be able to drag them anywhere on the Desktop. When the Desktop is full, Align to Grid stops working.

To change the order in which the icons appear, right-click the Desktop and choose View → Auto Arrange. Now right-click the Desktop again and select “Sort by.” You’ll be able to arrange the icons by name, size, date modified, and file extension.

Notes

See also

"Control Panel,” "Personalization,” and "Taskbar"

Desktop Background

Change the background of your Desktop (sometimes called wallpaper).

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization → Desktop Background

Description

Desktop Background (Figure 3-18) allows you to select a background image, or color. The background image (also called wallpaper) can be centered (displayed in its actual size in the middle, surrounded by the background color if it’s not big enough), tiled (repeated so that it fills the screen), or stretched (displayed once, but enlarged or shrunk so that it fits the screen exactly). Windows Vista comes with a wide variety of backgrounds; select a category from the drop-down box, browse to the one you want, and click it to choose it.

Figure 3-18. Choosing a background for your Desktop

You’re not bound to the background listed here; you can use any picture on your PC in the .bmp, .gif, .jpg, .jpeg, .dib, or .png format. Click the Browse button, and use Windows Explorer to select a new picture.

Notes

See also

"Control Panel" and "Personalization"

Desktop Icons

Select which Desktop icons to display.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization → Change desktop icons (located in the task list on the left)

Description

When you install Windows Vista, the Recycle Bin is the only system Desktop icon displayed on the Desktop. You can, however, choose to display any system Desktop icon, and even change which icon is displayed for it, using the Desktop Icons setting page (Figure 3-19).

Figure 3-19. Selecting which Desktop icons to display, and which to hide

Check the boxes next to the icons you want to display; uncheck the boxes next to those you want to hide. To change the icon associated with any of the objects, click it, select Change Icon, and choose which to use. For more details about changing icons, see "Icons,” later in this chapter.

See also

"Icons"

Details

See "Listboxes,” later in this chapter.

Dialog Boxes

Dialog boxes are temporary windows that applications use to request your attention or input. Dialog boxes usually don’t have a resizable border (although File Open/Save dialogs do), and they often have OK, Cancel, and Apply buttons. They are usually modal, which means that when they’re open, you can’t use any other part of the owning application until they’re closed. See “Windows,” later in this chapter, for more information.

There are several different kinds of dialog boxes in Windows. Many dialog boxes offer help with configuration—for example, using the Internet Options dialog box to select from a variety of options from inside Internet Explorer. These have the OK, Cancel, and Apply buttons.

Another kind of dialog box appears when you need to take an action of some kind—for example, if you want to save changes to a file. In Windows Vista, Microsoft has introduced a new style of dialog box for this, designed to provide more information to help you decide which action to take. In past versions of Windows, dialog boxes have not always been a paragon of clarity, and have at times confused users about the consequences of choosing different actions. The new-style dialog boxes introduced in Windows Vista use up more screen real estate to explain the consequences of each action more clearly. They sometimes also recommend which action to take.

Figures 3-20 and 3-21 show the difference between the old- and new-style dialog boxes.

Figure 3-20. Old-style dialog boxes, which offered no information to help you understand the consequences of taking actions

Figure 3-21. New-style dialog boxes, which offer more information to help you understand the consequences of actions you take

Windows Vista itself uses the new-style dialog boxes. But applications written by third parties do not necessarily use the new-style dialog boxes. Any application written before the release of Windows Vista, for example, will use the old-style dialog boxes. And even applications written after the release of Windows Vista may use the old-style dialog boxes as well; which style to use is entirely up to the developers themselves. Microsoft encourages the use of new-style dialog boxes, but doesn’t require them.

Display Settings

Change the settings for your monitor and screen.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization → Display Settings

Command Prompt → control desk.cpl

Description

Display Settings allows you to change your display hardware settings (see Figure 3-22). Here, you can choose the resolution and color depth of your screen. There are two limitations of your video card that may affect the settings here.

Figure 3-22. Display Settings, where you can choose your screen resolution, color depth, and multiple-monitor setup

First, the amount of memory on your video card dictates the maximum color depth and resolution you can use. As you adjust your color depth, Windows may automatically adjust other settings depending on your card’s capabilities. If you increase your color depth, your resolution might automatically decrease; likewise, if you raise the resolution, your color depth might go down.

If you are using a CRT (glass) monitor, the second limitation that may affect your available settings is the refresh rate that your card will be able to generate (LCD panels generally operate at a 60 Hz refresh rate no matter what resolution they are set to). Although the maximum refresh rate does not depend on the amount of memory your card has, you may have to lower your resolution to achieve the desired rate. Windows should automatically adjust your refresh rate to the highest setting your card and monitor support, but this is not always the case. If you notice that your display appears to be flickering, especially under fluorescent lights, you’ll need to raise your refresh rate either by adjusting the refresh rate setting directly or by lowering your resolution or color depth. (Note that this does not apply to LCD and laptop displays, which never flicker.)

If you hear a slight whine from your monitor, it means your refresh rate is too high (if you hear a whine even at reasonable resolutions, your monitor needs repair). The minimum refresh rate you are likely to tolerate is around 72 Hz at 1024 × 768 (higher resolutions will need a higher refresh rate). People with corrective lenses seem to be more sensitive and might require a higher setting to be comfortable. Most cards available today support refresh rates of 75 Hz and higher, so this is usually not a problem. Click Advanced Settings and choose the Adapter tab. If your display driver supports it, you can adjust your refresh rate with the Refresh Rate setting. If the setting is not there, you’ll need to either obtain a more recent video driver from Windows Update or the manufacturer of the card, reduce your resolution or color depth, or get yourself a better video card or monitor.

If you have more than one monitor, using either two separate video cards or a single video card that supports two monitors, all configured screens will be shown in the preview area. Click any screen icon to activate it; the settings below the icon apply only to the selected monitor. You can even drag and drop monitor icons to rearrange them so that, for example, a different monitor assumes the role of the one pictured on the upper-left part of the screen. Click Identify Monitors if you’re not sure which monitor is #1 and which is #2.

The Advanced Settings button allows you to view the hardware properties for your video adapter(s) and monitor(s). You’ll never really need to adjust these settings unless you’re updating a driver for your monitor or display adapter, adjusting your refresh rate (as discussed earlier), configuring color profiles (for matching the color output of your printer with your scanner and monitor), or tweaking advanced 3D settings for your card. If you use some video cards, such as those made by NVIDIA and ATI, you may also see additional settings or tabs.

Drop-Down Listboxes

See "Listboxes,” later in this chapter.

Ease of Access Center

Make it easier to access your computer.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Ease of Access Center

Description

If you have problems with your vision, or other issues that make it difficult to interact with your computer, the Control Panel’s Ease of Access Center (Figure 3-23) will let you change your settings to make it easier to use your PC.

Figure 3-23. The Ease of Access Center, which makes it easier for you to use your PC if you have problems with your vision, or other issues that make it difficult to use your PC

The center offers these settings. Select any of them, and they will automatically be turned on when you boot up your PC:

Perhaps the most useful part of the Ease of Access Center is the links that appear at the bottom of the screen: “Use the computer without a display,” “Make the computer easier to see,” and “Use the computer without a mouse or keyboard.” Click any of these links, and you’ll come to a constellation of settings for each purpose. For example, “Use the computer without a display” optimizes Windows Vista for users who are blind.

Notes

File Open/Save Dialogs

There’s a reason why File Open and File Save dialogs look the same in nearly all applications; they’re common dialogs provided by Windows. Strangely, one of the few applications that doesn’t use these common dialogs is Microsoft Office, which instead employs custom dialogs that actually have more limited functionality than their standard counterparts.

The main part of the standard file dialog is really just a folder window, as shown in Figure 3-24; you can even drag and drop items into and out of this window, as well as display the contents in the same Tiles, Details, and variously sized Icons views found in Windows Explorer. That’s because the dialog box is, in essence, Windows Explorer.

Figure 3-24. Standard File → Open, File → Save, and Browse dialogs

Another standard component in file dialogs is the list of folders and objects on the left side, called Favorite Links. Here, eight (or more) shortcuts to special system folders are shown; click an icon to quickly jump to the corresponding location. You can also display a list of all of your folders, beneath those Favorite Links, by clicking the small up arrow next to the word Folders. Better yet, you can add any folder or object to your Favorite Links by displaying your folders, then dragging any folder or object to the Favorite Links list. A shortcut to the folder or object will then appear in Favorite Links.

Navigating to find or save files in the dialog boxes works exactly like it does in Windows Explorer. Use the “bread crumbs” navigation at the top to quickly jump to parent folders, and click the down arrow next to the bread crumb trail to drop down a list of folders you’ve used recently. Windows Vista also solves a problem with past Windows versions in that the full path of the current folder is shown in the bread crumb trail—something you didn’t see in previous Windows versions.

You can type any filename into the “File name” box, including the full path desired, to open or save. Directly to the right of the “File name” box is a list used to filter the display of files in the main listing. This is often the most confusing part of this window for new users, because in most cases, only certain file types are shown—those that match the file types that can be opened by the application you’re using. So, for example, in Notepad you’ll see only .txt files, but in WordPad you’ll see a wider variety of files, including .rtf, .wri, .txt, and .doc. If the file you’re looking for does not match the file type selection, it won’t show up at all. Typically, the last entry in this list is All Files (*.*); choose this item to turn off the filter and display all files, regardless of type.

Notes

See also

"Windows Explorer,” in Chapter 4

Font Viewer: windowssystem32fontview.exe

Display a preview and summary of any supported font file.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Fonts → Double-click any font file

Usage

fontview [/p] filename

Description

It’s easiest to use Font Viewer by double-clicking on a font file (see Figure 3-25). You can view any font formats normally supported by Windows Vista, including TrueType fonts (.ttf), bitmap fonts (.fon), and Type 1 fonts (.pfm).

In addition to the font name and summary information displayed at the top of the report, a preview of the font is shown with the full alphabet in upper- and lowercase, the full set of numbers, a few symbols, and the phrase “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. 1234567890” in several different sizes.

Figure 3-25. Double-clicking on a font file to view a preview

To run Font Viewer from the command line, you must specify the full path and filename of the font file, including its extension (such as .fon or .ttf). To send the report to the printer, use the /p option (which is the same as clicking the Print button in the Font Viewer window).

Notes

See also

"Fonts Folder,” discussed next, and "Character Map,” in Chapter 10

Fonts Folder

Display all the installed fonts.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Fonts

Command Prompt → control fonts

Command Prompt → explorer windowsfonts

Description

The Fonts folder is merely a folder on your hard disk (specifically, Windowsfonts). However, when viewed in Explorer, it’s configured to display a list of installed fonts instead of a list of the contents of the folder. (The two aren’t necessarily the same thing.) Select View → Details for a view that, among other things, allows you to match up a font name with the file in which it’s stored. Use the Preview Pane to see a preview of the font (see Figure 3-26).

Figure 3-26. The Details view of the Fonts folder, which shows the relationships between your font names and font filenames

Right-click a font file and select Properties to see additional information pertaining to the font, such as hinting and font-smoothing properties, copyright information, font vendor information, and whether such fonts can be embedded.

To view a preview of an installed font in large size, just double-click its name; see "Font Viewer,” earlier in this chapter, for more information. To delete a font, delete it as you’d delete any file (press the Delete key or drag and drop it into the Recycle Bin).

To install a font (as long as it’s one of the supported types), just drag and drop it into the Fonts folder. Supported typeface formats include TrueType (.ttf), Adobe Type 1 (.pfm and .pfb), OpenType (also known as TrueType v2), and ugly old raster fonts (.fon) used in early versions of Windows.

Notes

See also

"Control Panel"

Gadgets

See "Windows Sidebar and Gadgets,” later in this chapter.

Icons

Strictly speaking, an icon is any small picture used to symbolize an object or a function in the interface. Icons commonly appear in menus and on toolbars, but the term is most often used to describe the objects that represent files and folders on your Desktop and in Windows Explorer.

Chapter 2 covers the basic use of icons, especially in the way you can open, move, copy, and delete them. Right-click any icon to display its context menu. (See "Context Menus,” earlier in this chapter.)

The image used for a given icon depends on the type of object it represents, as does the procedure for customizing that icon. For example, you can customize the icons for My Computer, Recycle Bin, and other Desktop namespace objects by right-clicking on an empty area of the Desktop and going to Personalize → Change desktop icons (this option is in the Tasks list on the left side of the Control Panel). From there, you’ll be able to determine which to display on the Desktop and which to hide, as well as which icon to use for each individual namespace object. For details, see "Personalization,” later in this chapter.

The icon used for a document depends on its type; all .txt files use the same icon, all .jpg files use the same icon, and so on. In Windows Explorer, though, with many file types, you’ll see an actual thumbnail of the file itself rather than its icon, particularly when the file is a graphics file.

You can change the icon for any Windows or Internet shortcut by right-clicking and selecting Properties → Shortcut → Change Icon. If the shortcut is for a program that’s been installed on your Desktop, the Change Icon dialog box usually points to a location specified by the installation program. If it’s a Windows shortcut, by default the Change Icon dialog box for a shortcut usually points to WindowsSystem32shell32.dll, which contains more than 200 different icons, including the standard icons for folders, disks, and so on (see Figure 3-27).

Figure 3-27. To find icons to use on the Desktop, browse to WindowsSystem32shell32.dll, which contains more than 200 different icons

A Browse button in the Change Icon dialog box lets you search for other sources of icons, but where do you browse? You can store icons in a variety of files, including .exe and .dll files (program components) as well as .ico files (standalone icon files). You can even use .bmp (Windows bitmap) files for icons. Browsing for icons can be time-consuming, though, because the Change Icon dialog can look inside only one file at a time. The alternative is to use Explorer; the standard file icon for .ico files is the actual icon it contains, making it easy to peruse an entire folder full of icon files (you’ll have to use any of the Icons views or the Tiles view to see thumbnails of your .bmp files).

Although other Windows files (such as windowsexplorer.exe) have additional icons, you may want to look on the Web for decent icons to decorate your workspace; there’s no end to web sites that contain freely downloadable icon libraries.

Notes

See also

"Personalization"

Input Fields

As the name suggests, input fields are small controls (usually found in a dialog box in which you provide required information; see Figure 3-28). A text box is one of the most common forms of input field. Essentially a miniature word processor, the text box is used for entering text. Most input fields allow only a single line of text (such as the Address Bar or the Filename field in File Open/Save dialogs), but some allow multiple lines. You can almost always right-click in a text box to display a quick menu for Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Select All (see "Clipboard,” earlier in this chapter). The menu also offers other options, such as inserting special characters and even changing the reading order from left to right to right to left.

Figure 3-28. A simple input field (text box), which allows you to type a small bit of text; right-click to display Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and Select All

There are four common variations of input fields. The first type includes input fields made to look like labels (see the next section, "Labels“). The second is combo boxes (see "Listboxes,” later in this chapter). The third is known as counters, which are simply input fields with up and down arrows to the right, allowing you to increment and decrement a numeric value without typing (some even have a tiny divider between the arrows, allowing you to quickly “scroll” to any value). Finally, we have password fields (Figure 3-29), which look and act just like standard input boxes except that their contents are masked with asterisks or dots to hide them from prying eyes.

Figure 3-29. Password fields, which work like standard input fields except that the characters you type are masked with asterisks

Notes

Labels

Labels are basically noninteractive pieces of text placed on dialogs used to describe a control (such as the sliders shown in Figure 3-30) that doesn’t have a place for a description. Clicking labels usually has no effect.

Figure 3-30. Labels used to describe sliders

Some labels contain a single underlined letter. Holding Alt and pressing the key for that letter will send the focus to the next control. This is useful because the input field in this example doesn’t have a shortcut key of its own.

Notes

Listboxes

A listbox is a list from which you can choose one item or many. There are four common types of listboxes:

Live Taskbar Thumbnails

This feature of Windows Aero displays a thumbnail of the contents of any window on the Taskbar when the mouse hovers over the window. Above the thumbnail is the name of the application and open file. The thumbnail is actually live, as it shows what is currently happening in that window, unless the window is currently minimized. So if a video is playing, you’ll see the video playing in the thumbnail, as shown in Figure 3-34. Live Taskbar thumbnails work only when your PC uses Windows Aero.

Figure 3-34. Live Taskbar thumbnails, which show you the content of any window and even the video playing inside it

See also

"Windows Aero" and "Taskbar"

Log Off

Logs off the current user.

To open

Start → [Click the right arrow] → Log Off

Ctrl-Alt-Delete → Log Off

See Chapter 10 for more information on logging on, logging off, and managing multiple users.

Menus

The menu is a place where you can cram all the functionality of a program. Rather than all of the available commands littering your screen, they are categorically arranged into cascading lists, as shown in Figure 3-35. Modern applications have become so elaborate, however, that menus are often very complex, making it a pain to have to sift through them all to find the command you want. Thus, designers invented toolbars (discussed later in this chapter) as shortcuts for the items we actually use. It makes us wonder, then, why we need menus in the first place.

Figure 3-35. Nested (cascading) menus, which provide access to all options and features of an application

Microsoft has apparently wondered the same thing, because it has done away with menus in two of its most important applications in Windows Vista: Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer, shown in Figure 3-36. In both instances, toolbars replace menus, although if you’re the kind of person who really does like menus, you can still make them appear by pressing the Alt key.

Figure 3-36. Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer use toolbars instead of menus

However, menus remain in other Windows Vista applications, and in other applications as well. If you ever get lost, menus tend to be pretty consistent across applications. For example, you can almost always find Open, Save, Print, and Exit in the File menu, just as Cut, Copy, Paste, and Undo are always in the Edit menu.

See Chapter 2 for more information on using menus. See "Context Menus,” earlier in this chapter, for details on the menu that appears when you right-click on something.

Press F10 or Alt (by itself) to enter the menu, use the cursor keys to navigate, and press Enter to select an item. Once you’re in the menus, press the underlined letter of a menu item to quickly jump to that item, or if no letter is underlined, press the first letter of the item’s caption. You can also jump right to a specific menu from anywhere else in the application by pressing the key of the underlined letter while holding Alt. Look to the right of many menu items for additional keyboard shortcuts. For example, open the Edit menu in most applications and you’ll see Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V alongside the Cut, Copy, and Paste commands, respectively.

See also

"Windows Explorer,” in Chapter 4, and "Internet Explorer,” in Chapter 5

Network

The Network icon in Windows Explorer has replaced the My Network Places icon used in Windows XP. Click it and you’ll see a list of all the computers connected to your network.

Notes

See also

“Network and Sharing Center,” in Chapter 7

Notification Area

The notification area, commonly known as the Tray, is the small area at the far right (or bottom) of the Taskbar that, by default, holds the clock and the tiny, yellow speaker icon, among other possible icons. With the exception of the clock, the purpose of the tray is to hold status icons (see Figure 3-37) placed there by Windows and other running applications. Hold the mouse cursor over the clock to see the date temporarily or click it to see a full clock. Right-click on an empty area of the Taskbar and click Properties to turn the clock on or off and to change other settings (for more details, see "Taskbar,” later in this chapter).

Figure 3-37. The notification area (Tray), which holds the clock and icons for some running processes

The Tray can be a convenient place for applications to display information and provide quick access to certain features, but there is little standardization among Tray icons. Some icons are clicked, others are double-clicked, others require a right-click, and some don’t get clicked at all. Some flash, some don’t. You can disable most of them, but some just won’t go away. Most support tool tips, so you can find out what each icon does by holding the mouse over it for a second or two.

The notification area also often has a small arrow at its extreme left. If the arrow points to the left, it means that you can display additional icons by clicking on it. If it points to the right, it means that you can hide some of the icons by clicking on it.

You can customize which icons will be displayed.

The only way to turn off the notification area completely is to hide each icon (and the clock) individually. However, you can selectively hide icons by right-clicking the Taskbar and choosing Properties → Notification Area tab. See "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties,” later in this chapter, for more information.

Notes

See also

"Date and Time Properties,” "Taskbar,” and "Taskbar and Start Menu Properties"

Personalization

Personalize Windows Vista’s appearance.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization

Command Prompt → control desktop

Description

This Control Panel category (see Figure 3-38) serves as the central location for customizing the way your Desktop and Windows Vista look and sound, and it contains a variety of applets that let you change everything from your desktop background to your display settings, font size, and more.

Figure 3-38. Command central for personalizing your Desktop and Windows Vista

See also

"Control Panel,” "Display Settings,” "Change Your Color Scheme,” "Desktop Background,” "Screen Saver,” and "Theme Settings"

Progress Indicators

The progress indicator is a linear gauge that graphically shows the progress of a particular task, allowing you to roughly estimate the time to completion. In some cases, the indicator doesn’t actually show the estimated time to completion but merely shows that it’s searching (see Figure 3-39). The annoying part is that the accuracy of progress indicators is typically not very good; the value (0 to 100 percent) displayed by an indicator is based entirely on approximations the application has made. What’s worse is that some programs, especially application installers, often have several consecutive progress indicators; unfortunately, these display only the progress of a particular task rather than the entire process, which obviously is not terribly helpful.

Figure 3-39. A progress indicator

Properties

The Properties window (sometimes called the Properties sheet) is a dialog box that serves a very specific purpose: to display and allow changes to the settings associated with a file, folder, or other object in Windows. Most objects have Properties sheets, which are almost always accessible by right-clicking and selecting Properties, as shown in Figure 3-40. (You can also display Properties by holding Alt and double-clicking, or if the item is already highlighted, by pressing Alt-Enter.) You can access some items in the Control Panel quickly by right-clicking on various interface elements and selecting Properties. For example:

At minimum, most Properties sheets will have a General tab, but most have more. Note that the particular information and settings available depend entirely on the object that was clicked.

Notes

Radio Buttons

Radio buttons are used for mutually exclusive settings. Clicking on one causes any other that has been pressed to pop up, just like on an old car radio. The button with the dot in the middle is the one that has been selected (see Figure 3-41). Sometimes you’ll see more than one group of buttons, with a separate outline around each group. In this case, you can select one radio button from each group. Functionally, a group of radio buttons works like a standard listbox.

Figure 3-41. Two radio buttons are used to allow you to choose only one of the available options

Navigating radio buttons with the keyboard can be confusing. When using the Tab key to jump between controls, Windows considers a group of radio buttons to be a single control. When the Tab key places the focus on a single radio button, you’ll need to use the arrow keys to select a different one; otherwise, another press of the Tab key will jump to a different control, seemingly skipping a whole bunch of radio buttons.

Recycle Bin

In the early days of computing, once you deleted a file it was gone. An unerase tool (available as part of Norton Utilities) was commonly used to recover accidentally deleted files. Microsoft caught on, though, and a while back gave Windows its own Recycle Bin—a feature that gives nearly every file a second chance, so to speak.

Drag any item from the Desktop to the Recycle Bin icon to delete it, as shown in Figure 3-42. When you drag the item and hold it over the Recycle Bin, an arrow appears next to the item. Drop it in the bin and the item disappears. Selecting File → Delete on the menu bar of a folder also moves items to the Recycle Bin, as does selecting the item and then pressing the Delete key. By default, files are not deleted immediately but are stored until the Recycle Bin runs out of space, at which point they are deleted, oldest first, to make space. Until that time, you can retrieve them by double-clicking on the Recycle Bin icon, browsing through the contents of the Recycle Bin window, and dragging or sending the file elsewhere.

Figure 3-42. Dragging an icon onto the Recycle Bin deletes the icon

When you open the Recycle Bin by double-clicking it, you’ll see that it’s a specialized version of Windows Explorer, shown in Figure 3-43. Buttons let you empty the entire bin at once or restore all items at once. You can also right-click any file and select Restore.

Figure 3-43. A specialized version of Windows Explorer, with buttons for emptying the Recycle Bin and restoring all items

To access the Recycle Bin with the keyboard, it’s easiest to simply open Windows Explorer and navigate to Desktop → Recycle Bin.

Each user account has its own Recycle Bin. So if there are two accounts on a Windows Vista PC, one named Gabe and the other Mia, when Gabe is logged in he’ll see files that he’s deleted but not ones that Mia has deleted, and vice versa.

The Recycle Bin’s Properties window has one tab, General. This tab has entries for the current user as well as for local volumes, as you can see in Figure 3-44.

Figure 3-44. The General Tab of the Recycle Bin Properties sheet, which shows you recycle bins for the current account as well as local volumes

The General tab lets you customize how the Recycle Bin works in the following ways:

Notes

Regional and Language Options: windowssystem32intl.cpl

Language and localization settings affecting the display of numbers, currency, times, and dates.

To open

Control Panel → [Clock, Language, and Region] → Regional and Language Options

Command Prompt → intl.cpl

Command Prompt → control international

Description

Numbers, times, dates, and currency are displayed differently in different parts of the world, and the Regional and Language Options dialog (see Figure 3-45) allows you to choose your display preferences in painful detail.

Figure 3-45. Choosing the way dates, times, and currency are displayed with the Regional and Language Options dialog

This dialog has the following tabs:

See also

"Control Panel"

Screen Saver

Choose a screensaver and change its behavior.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization → Screen Saver

Description

Years ago, monochrome monitors, when left on for long periods of time, would be ruined when the images displayed would get “burned in.” So, screensavers were invented to blank the screen after a certain period of inactivity. It wasn’t long before screensavers started showing animations instead of just a blank screen. Today, the concept of monitor burn-in is obsolete, but screensavers are still fun and can even provide security from prying eyes by obscuring the screen when you walk away from your computer. Choose from one of the available screensavers here and click Settings to configure it or Preview to see it in action (see Figure 3-46).

Figure 3-46. The Screen Saver tab, where you can select and configure a screensaver

Choose the length of inactivity before the selected screensaver is activated. A computer is considered inactive if no mouse or keyboard entry is received; updates to the screen, such as progress indicators or animations, don’t count and won’t stop a screensaver from being invoked. Use the “On resume, display logon screen” feature to lock up access to the computer once a screensaver has been invoked.

Click Settings to configure how the screensaver will run. In many instances, you won’t be able to configure the screensaver, but in others you may be able to change things such as its motion and speed.

Note that the screensaver can interfere with some programs, so you may want to temporarily disable it if you’re experiencing a problem backing up to tape or burning a CD, for example.

You also can start any particular screensaver from the command line or from Windows Explorer by launching the corresponding .scr file.

See also

"Control Panel,” "Display Settings,” "Change Your Color Scheme,” "Desktop Background,” and "Personalization"

Scroll Bars

A scroll bar (see Figure 3-47) is a vertical or horizontal bar on a window with a little box inside it (called the slider or thumb) that you can drag along it with the mouse. Applications use the scroll bar not only to set the position of something (such as the text cursor in a text box or the currently displayed page of a word processor document), but also to give you visual feedback of where you are and how much stuff you can’t see. The thumb shows you where you are in the entire piece of text, and the size of the thumb shows what percentage you’re viewing. (A large thumb means that most of what’s there is visible and a small thumb means that there’s a lot you can’t see.) The scroll bar usually becomes disabled (grayed out) if there’s no scrolling to be done.

Figure 3-47. The scroll bar, which lets you view all of the items in a folder when the folder window is not sufficiently large

Click the up or down arrow to move the scroll bar incrementally, or drag the thumb with the mouse to move to the desired position. You can also click in the gray areas between the arrows and the thumb to move up or down a page at a time.

It is possible to use the cursor keys and PgUp/PgDn keys to control the scroll bar if it has the focus. If the scroll bar is part of another control, it cannot receive the focus to receive keyboard input directly. Instead, use the cursor keys to navigate in the listbox or input field with which the scroll bar is associated. The thumb blinks if it has the focus.

Send To

Send a selected item to a program, disk drive, folder, or email recipient.

To open

File or folder’s context menu → Send To

Description

Right-click on any file or folder and select Send To to send it to any one of several locations, people, or programs—including any disk drive, any folder, an email recipient, or a fax recipient—as well as create a shortcut to it on the Desktop or compress it in a ZIP archive. For example, if the destination is an application, the application will be started and the selected file(s) will be opened. If the destination is a folder or a drive, the item(s) will be copied or moved (depending on several circumstances described in Chapter 2). When you install a new program, it may install an entry in the Send To menu so that you can right-click any file and select the new program’s entry in Send To, and that program will open the selected file. Figure 3-48 shows the Send To menu.

Figure 3-48. The Send To menu

When you select an item from the Send To menu, you’re in fact sending it to one of the shortcuts in your Send To folder, located in Users username SendTo. The result of using Send To is the same as dragging and dropping the icon onto the shortcut, but of course, it’s far more convenient to use Send To than to have to drag items to that folder.

Notes

Shortcuts

A shortcut is a link to a program, file, folder, drive, system object, printer, or URL. Shortcuts are actually small files that come in two flavors: Windows shortcuts (.lnk) and Internet shortcuts (.url). (See Figure 3-49.)

Figure 3-49. A standard shortcut icon, distinguishable from other icons by the little curved arrow

Although you can start a program or open a folder by double-clicking on its icon on the Desktop or selecting its icon in the Start menu, odds are that the application is stored elsewhere and you’re using a shortcut only to access the application executable. If you find that there’s a program, document, folder, or web site you use often, it’s easy to create a shortcut to the object.

There are several ways to create a shortcut:

Users commonly place shortcuts on the Desktop and Start menu for quick access to programs and documents, but you can really place them anywhere. One of the purposes of having a central Documents folder is to enforce the notion that you should arrange documents and personal files by project, not by application. This means that you might place Internet shortcuts and Windows shortcuts in the same folder as WordPerfect and Excel documents, making it easy to group all the resources for a particular project together and decreasing the time spent repeatedly trying to locate files and data.

You can also create a shortcut to a local or network printer. Dragging a file onto the shortcut sends that file to the printer without requiring you to open the associated program, which is handy if you do a lot of printing. Putting printer shortcuts in your Send To menu lets you conveniently send files to printers other than your default printer.

Shortcut properties

Shortcuts have a small curved arrow superimposed on the lower left of their icon, and the label “Shortcut” is added after the name of the object (for example, Budget.doc - Shortcut). This arrow helps distinguish shortcuts from the files to which they’re linked.

To get more information about a shortcut, go to its Properties sheet (right-click it and select Properties). Figure 3-50 shows an example of the second page of a shortcut’s properties. The sheet will vary slightly, depending on the object for which a shortcut has been created. For example, a program’s shortcut Properties sheet contains a tab that a file’s sheet doesn’t—the Compatibility tab, which lets you change how earlier programs run to ensure that they will run properly in Windows Vista.

Figure 3-50. The second page of a Windows shortcut’s properties

Here are the options available for a shortcut:

Notes

Shut Down

Shut down the system, restart the computer, log off, switch to another user account, lock the computer, or put it into a power-saving mode.

To open

Start → Click one of the Shut Off buttons, or the right arrow next to them

Description

You should never simply turn off a Windows Vista machine, because the system caches data in memory and needs time to write it out to disk before it is turned off. Always use a Shut Down option before you turn off the power.

Windows Vista has significantly changed the way you turn off your computer, and it may at first be disconcerting to those who are used to the simpler Windows XP shutdown procedure. Click the Start button, and on the far right two buttons and a right arrow appear, as shown in Figure 3-51.

Figure 3-51. Windows Vista’s new shutdown options

Here are your shutdown options:

Start Menu

The central location for your application shortcuts and many Windows features.

To open

Desktop → Start

Press the Windows logo key, if you’ve got one.

Ctrl-Esc

Description

The Start menu was one of Microsoft’s answers to the growing size and complexity of the Windows operating system when it was introduced in Windows 95. Since then, other features have been introduced to compensate for the Start menu’s inadequacies, such as the Quick Launch Toolbar, the new Windows Vista-style Start menu, and the new Start Search input box.

Here is a quick rundown of the items you’ll find in the Start menu, shown in Figure 3-52. Note that some of these items may be hidden as a result of changing the Start Menu settings.

Figure 3-52. The basic, unadorned Windows Start menu

Notes

See also

"Taskbar and Start Menu Properties,” "Start Search,” "Log Off,” "Control Panel,” and "Network,” in this chapter, and "Search,” in Chapter 4

Start Search

Windows Vista integrates its search directly into the user interface itself, through the Start Search input box that appears when you click the Start button (see the preceding section, "Start Menu“). Type in the first few letters of the term you’re searching for, and a list will appear of matching objects, organized by category: Programs, Favorites and History, Files (which includes folders), and Communications (which includes email and newsgroup posts). As you type in more letters of your term, your search narrows. Click the file, folder, program, or communication you want to run or open. Figure 3-55 shows a typical example of a search.

Figure 3-55. Typical search results

When you use the Start Search box, you also have the choice of searching the Internet or the index on your PC. Choose Search the Internet, or Search Everywhere. For details about the index and searching, see Chapter 4.

The Start Search input box has obvious uses for finding files and emails, but don’t overlook its capability to help you run programs as well. The Start menu lists many common Windows Vista applications and accessories, plus any third-party applications you’ve installed. It is far from complete, though, and navigating to the program you want is often fairly tedious. The Start Search box can cut through that tedium.

Ironically, the increasing complexity of the system pushes even the most graphically oriented user back in the direction of the command line. Just about the quickest way to run any program that isn’t already on your Desktop is to type the name of the program at the command line. Windows Vista offers two different command lines: the Address Bar and the Command Prompt window. You can use the Start Search box on the Start menu as a quick and convenient command prompt as well.

If you keep an Address Bar visible at all times (see "Address Bar,” earlier in this chapter), it is by far the most convenient of the three command lines. The Start Search box is a close second. However, if you are a heavy user of command-line utilities, you may still find a Command Prompt window most useful. The Command Prompt window has an advantage in that it provides useful file management commands such as dir, del, copy, and so on.

For the most part, though, you can use the three command lines interchangeably. If you type the name of a Windows GUI application, it will launch in its own window. If you type the name of a text-based program (for example, ping) it will display its output in the current Command Prompt window or, if issued from the Address Bar or Run dialog, will launch its own Command Prompt window, which will last only as long as the command itself executes.

If you use the Start Search box to run programs from a command line, you won’t have to type their full names. Just type the first few letters, and a list of matching programs, files, folders, and web sites you’ve visited will appear. Click the program you want to run, and press Enter.

Notes

See also

"Address Bar,” earlier in this chapter, and "Search,” in Chapter 4

Status Bar

The Status Bar is a panel at the bottom of each window (part of the same frame that contains the title bar) that gives information about the contents of the window. The standard Status Bar shown in Figure 3-56 has several sections, each of which is used to show a relevant statistic or setting.

Figure 3-56. The Status Bar, which often shows useful information

Some elements of the Status Bar respond to clicks and double-clicks, although there’s no standard for any user interaction. If an application has a Status Bar, you can usually hide it or make it visible as an entry in the View menu. Some programs even let you configure the Status Bar with the information that is important to you. (Try right-clicking on the Status Bar for configuration options.)

The Status Bar changes according to the program or application in use. The Status Bar in Windows Explorer also changes according to what object is currently highlighted. For a file, for example, it shows name, date modified, file size, date created, and so on. For a folder, it displays the number of items.

System Tray

See "Notification Area,” earlier in this chapter.

Tabbed Dialogs

Tabs are used in dialog boxes when there are too many settings to fit on the same page (see Figure 3-57).

Figure 3-57. Tabbed dialogs

Activate a tab by clicking on it. The active tab (or page) is visibly more prominent than the rest, and the displayed settings typically fall within the category depicted by the caption of the selected tab.

When changing settings in a dialog box, the rule is that all settings behave as though they were on the same page. That is, if you change a setting under one tab, switch to another tab and change a setting there, and then click OK, both settings will be implemented. Unfortunately, some application developers don’t follow these rules. Sometimes the tab selection itself is a setting; in the example just given, this means that only one of these settings would be implemented and the other would be lost. The other problem occurs when settings are saved when you flip between tabs.

Press Ctrl-Tab to move to the next tabbed page or Shift-Ctrl-Tab to move in reverse.

Taskbar

The Taskbar, shown in Figure 3-58, contains the Start Menu button, buttons representing all open application windows, the notification area (also known as the Tray, discussed earlier in this chapter), and any optional toolbars (see "Toolbars,” later in this chapter).

Figure 3-58. The Taskbar, with buttons that appear for each open window

The Start button isn’t terribly complicated: just click on it to open the Start menu (discussed earlier in this chapter).

You can keep track of all running applications by looking in the portion of the Taskbar between the Start button and the Tray. Nearly every currently open window is represented by a button on your Taskbar. Click the button of a corresponding window to bring that window to the top (if it happens to be obscured) and shift focus to that window. If the window is currently active, clicking its Taskbar button will minimize (hide) it. The currently active window appears pushed in, and any others appear as normal buttons. If a window has been minimized (see "Windows,” later in this chapter), it will also appear as a normal button, indistinguishable from those for visible windows. Right-click on a Taskbar button to access the window’s control menu (also covered in "Windows“), allowing you, among other things, to close a window without first having to restore it.

A notable change in the Taskbar with Windows Vista is what Microsoft calls live Taskbar thumbnails (you need to be running Aero for this to work). Hover your mouse over an active window in the Taskbar and a thumbnail of the window appears, with the name of the file or windows showing above it, as shown in Figure 3-59. These thumbnails really are “live”—if the window is performing an action, such as playing a video, for example, the thumbnail will display the live contents of the screen. Thumbnails are not updated for minimized applications.

Figure 3-59. Hover your mouse over a button for the open window, and a thumbnail appears above it

By default, the Taskbar appears at the bottom of the screen, but you can drag it to the top or to either side by grabbing any empty portion of the Taskbar with the mouse (unless it’s locked; see the upcoming discussion). You can also resize the Taskbar by grabbing its edge.

Right-click on an empty area of the Taskbar to pop up its context menu. Here are the available options:

Notes

Taskbar and Start Menu Properties

Change the appearance and behavior of the Taskbar, notification area, and Start menu (see Figure 3-60).

Figure 3-60. Use Taskbar and Start Menu Properties to specify your preferences for your Start menu, Taskbar, and notification area (Tray)

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Taskbar and Start Menu

Right-click on an empty portion of the Taskbar → Properties

Right-click on the Start button → Properties

Start → Settings → Taskbar and Start Menu (Classic Start menu only)

Description

The Taskbar is the bar, typically appearing along the bottom edge of your screen, that holds the Start button, the notification area (commonly known as the Tray), and the task buttons (one for each open application window). It has four tabs: Taskbar, Start Menu, Notification Area, and Toolbars. The settings for each tab are as follows.

Taskbar

Start menu

Notification area

See also

"Control Panel" and "Taskbar"

Text Boxes

See "Input Fields,” earlier in this chapter.

Theme Settings

Choose a theme.

To open

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Personalization → Theme

Description

A theme is a name under which a collection of display settings is saved, including menus, icons, backgrounds, screensavers, sounds, and mouse pointers. After you’ve selected these preferences through the various applets in the Personalization Control Panel category, go to Theme Settings (Figure 3-65) and click Save As to create a new theme. Then, if you ever make a subsequent change, you can easily revert to your saved preferences by selecting the desired theme from the Theme list.

Figure 3-65. Create a new theme or choose an existing one

Saving your theme is a good idea, as it will allow you to restore your settings easily if they’re ever changed. It also allows you to quickly switch among multiple groups of settings, which is useful, for example, if you use two different monitors. When you click Save As, you’ll be prompted to enter a filename with the .theme filename extension. However, the default folder for these files is My Documents, which is not where Windows looks for themes when it populates the Theme drop-down listbox. To have your theme listed in the Theme list, save your .theme file in the WindowsResourcesThemes folder.

You can also select existing themes from the Theme Settings tab, including the Windows Vista theme and, for those who prefer the retro look, the Windows Classic theme.

See also

"Control Panel,” "Display Settings,” "Change Your Color Scheme,” "Desktop Background,” and "Personalization"

Title Bars

See "Windows,” later in this chapter.

Toolbars

Toolbars are used to provide quick access to frequently used functions in a program. Windows comes with several toolbars, including those found in Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, WordPad (and other applications), and the Quick Launch Toolbar on the Taskbar (see Figure 3-66).

Figure 3-66. WordPad’s toolbar, which provides access to 11 of the most commonly used functions, such as Open, Save, Print, and Find

In some programs, the buttons in a toolbar don’t provide any functionality that isn’t otherwise accessible through the menus or via a keystroke or two. Toolbars are almost exclusively mouse-oriented, so a toolbar that works with the keyboard is a rare occurrence.

Windows Explorer and Internet Explorer have received new toolbars with Windows Vista, and these toolbars are the primary way that you interact with both programs—so much so that the traditional menus have been done away with, although you can make them appear by pressing the Alt key.

The toolbars in most modern applications are configurable; that is, you can rearrange the tools to your liking, add new items, and remove the ones you don’t use. It’s definitely worth taking a few minutes to configure the toolbar with the features you use the most, especially because the default toolbars in most applications are set up to showcase the most marketable features of the product rather than to make the program easier to use.

The configuration and features of a particular toolbar are typically the responsibility of the application that owns it, although most modern applications use Microsoft’s toolbar controls, which afford a good degree of consistency.

You can often right-click on an empty portion of a toolbar to change its properties or to add or remove buttons. You can usually “dock” toolbars to the top, bottom, or sides of an application, or they can float. Play around with toolbars to get a feel for how they respond to being dragged and resized; there’s no substitute for 30 seconds of fooling around. You can “lock” some newer toolbars so that you can’t accidentally move, resize, or close them.

Many larger applications, such as Microsoft Office, support multiple toolbars, including custom toolbars you can create as needed. You can typically rearrange these toolbars by dragging them around, although you may not get any visual feedback until you let go. To hide a toolbar, try right-clicking on it, or just drag it (if it’s docked) so that it floats and then click the Close button in the toolbar’s title bar.

Toolbars on the Taskbar

In addition to the Desktop and Start menu, you also can place shortcuts to frequently used programs in configurable toolbars that are either docked on the Taskbar (discussed earlier in this chapter) or allowed to float.

By default, there are six Taskbar toolbars. Right-click an empty area of the Taskbar and select Toolbars to show or hide any of them. The six toolbars are as follows:

You can create your own custom toolbars by right-clicking on the Taskbar and selecting Toolbars → New Toolbar. Simply specify an existing folder whose contents you want made into a toolbar (such as Control Panel, Dial-Up Networking, or one of the folders in your Start menu), or click Make New Folder if you want to start with a blank toolbar.

One limitation of custom toolbars is that if they’re ever closed, Windows won’t display them on the list of available toolbars, as with the preconfigured toolbars discussed here. If you ever close a custom toolbar, you’ll have to start over and go through the New Toolbar process to get it back (though all your shortcuts will still be there).

Once a toolbar is enabled, you can right-click on an empty portion to display a context menu with several options. (Right-clicking one of the toolbar buttons is the same as right-clicking the corresponding shortcut in Explorer.) In addition to the standard entries on the Taskbar context menu (see "Taskbar,” earlier in this chapter), you’ll find the following. Note that not every toolbar has all of these options, and the exact options available to you vary from toolbar to toolbar. Also, you may be able to see all these options only if you first unlock the Taskbar by right-clicking it and unchecking Lock the Taskbar.

Notes

Tray

See "Notification Area,” earlier in this chapter.

Trees

Many different parts of the Windows Vista interface are represented by hierarchical trees, such as the one in Figure 3-67. You can find this collapsible tree interface in the Registry Editor (representing Registry keys) and in the Device Manager (representing installed devices). Windows Explorer uses a modified version of the collapsible tree interface as well. (This is a change with Windows Vista; in every version of Windows up until now, Windows Explorer used the same tree representation used by the Registry Editor and Device Manager.)

Figure 3-67. The Folder Tree, an efficient and useful way to visualize and navigate a hierarchy, as seen here in the Registry Editor

In most cases, displaying all entries in all branches of a tree would take too much time and would certainly be unwieldy. Instead, branches are “collapsed” and only the top levels are shown; you can expand any branch by clicking the plus sign (+), and then collapse any branch by clicking the corresponding minus sign (−). You can also double-click any branch to expand it, and again to collapse it. If no + sign appears, the entry has no “children” and cannot be expanded further.

In Windows Explorer, the + and − signs have been done away with. It uses small, hollow, right-facing triangles for + signs. When you click one to reveal the folders beneath, the triangle turns solid and faces at a downward 45-degree angle. And when you move the mouse away, the triangles fade away (see Figure 3-68).

Figure 3-68. Windows Explorer’s slightly modified version of the hierarchical tree for browsing

Navigating trees with the keyboard is often more convenient than using the mouse. As with listboxes (discussed earlier in this chapter), you can jump to any branch by typing the first letter (or first few letters) of its name. This works regardless of the depth of the entry, but only on entries that are currently visible. Use the right arrow key to expand the currently selected branch, or the left arrow key to collapse it; if the branch is already collapsed, the left arrow key jumps to the parent. The Backspace key also jumps to the parent, but it never collapses branches.

Turn Off Computer

See "Shut Down,” earlier in this chapter.

User Account Control Buttons

On many buttons throughout Windows Vista, you will see a small shield next to many settings. The shield means that the setting is protected by a User Account Control (UAC), which pops up warnings and asks for passwords when certain setup or customization screens or features are accessed. For more information, see "User Account Control,” in Chapter 8.

Windows

The window is the basis for the GUI. This style of interface was first popularized by Apple and later by Microsoft, but Xerox developed the first graphical windowing operating system more than a decade before the first Mac or Windows computer ever saw daylight.

Most windows are rectangular, but irregular shapes are allowed, too. Standard windows have a title bar across the top that, in addition to identifying the window and the currently open document (if applicable), is used as a handle with which to move the window around the screen (see Figure 3-69). The title bar also shows which window is currently active; in the active window, the text is darker than in other windows. (Small floating toolbars in some applications ignore this rule, always appearing either inactive or active.)

Figure 3-69. A garden-variety window, complete with title, menu, and client area

Windows Vista brings one big change to the appearance of windows. When you use Windows Aero, the title bar as well as the entire outside border of each window is slightly transparent so that you can see through to whatever is underneath. This doesn’t really serve any useful purpose, but it is a very pleasing piece of eye candy and makes the operating system more enjoyable to use. You can change the color and transparency (which Windows Vista calls glassiness) of windows by going to Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Personalization → Window Color and Appearance.

In addition, in Windows Aero and Vista Basic, when you hover your mouse over a button in a window, the button illuminates so that you know the button has the focus. In Windows Aero, the Minimize and Maximize buttons glow blue, and the Close button glows red. When you hover your mouse over an item in a window that is live—that is, one that will perform an action when clicked upon—the item will be highlighted in blue.

The elements commonly found on window title bars are described in the following list (any or all might be missing, depending on the type of window):

You can resize most windows by grabbing any edge with the mouse and dragging. Some windows have an additional resize handle on the lower-right corner, which can be a little easier to get a purchase on than the edges.

Multiple document interface (MDI) applications have windows within windows, usually allowing multiple documents to be open simultaneously. The MDI parent window, the container of the document windows, usually has a Window menu that allows you to switch to any open documents and provides some features to arrange the documents visually (Cascade, Tile, etc.). Some applications (Corel’s WordPerfect and Qualcomm’s Eudora, to name a couple) have incorporated a clever Taskbar for their MDI applications, making it easy for you to manage several documents without having to use the somewhat awkward Window menu.

See "Taskbar,” earlier in this chapter, for more information on MDI applications and how some newer Microsoft applications are abandoning this design.

Here are some keyboard shortcuts for working with windows:

Notes

See also

“Menus,” "Taskbar,” "Windows Aero,” and "Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D"

Windows Aero

Windows Aero (sometimes referred to as Aero Glass) represents a significant change in the Windows interface. It adds a variety of new features, including transparent windows, live Taskbar thumbnails, and Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D, some of which are designed to make it easier to navigate and find useful information (live Taskbar thumbnails and Windows Flip 3D) and others that are designed to make the overall experience more visually pleasing (transparent windows and animation).

You don’t have to run Windows Aero when you run Windows Vista; you can run Windows Classic, Basic, or Standard instead. (For details, see Chapter 1.) But the vast majority of people will use Windows Aero. Following are its primary features:

Notes

See also

"Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D,” "Live Taskbar Thumbnails,” and "Personalization"

Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D

Preview open windows and switch among them.

To open

Alt → Tab (Windows Flip)

Windows logo key → Tab (Windows Flip 3D)

Click the Windows Flip 3D icon in the Quick Launch area

Description

The old Alt-Tab method of switching among windows in Windows XP has been replaced by the far more useful Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D in Windows Vista. They each let you see thumbnails of your windows before you switch among them, making it easier to decide which window you want to switch to. Windows Flip shows the thumbnails side by side (see Figure 3-72), and Windows Flip 3D shows the thumbnails stacked in three dimensions (see Figure 3-73).

Figure 3-72. Windows Flip, which shows thumbnails side by side

Figure 3-73. Windows Flip 3D, which shows thumbnails stacked in three dimensions

You activate Windows Flip by using Alt-Tab. In addition to showing you thumbnails of all your windows, it also shows your Desktop; if you switch to your Desktop using Windows Flip, all of your windows will be automatically minimized. Switch among your windows by pressing the Tab key as you hold down the Alt key or by clicking on one of the windows with your mouse.

You activate Windows Flip 3D by using the Windows logo Key-Tab combination. Press the combination once and remove your hands from the keys, and the windows stay stacked; switch among them using the mouse’s scroll wheel or by using the arrow keys. You can also switch among windows by holding down the Windows logo key while you press the Tab key.

You also can activate Windows Flip 3D by clicking the Windows Flip 3D icon in the Quick Launch area. It’s located to the right of the Show Desktop icon.

Notes

See also

"Windows Aero"

Windows Sidebar and Gadgets

Gadgets perform automated tasks and display information; they live in the Windows Sidebar on the Desktop.

To open

Double-click the Windows Sidebar icon in the notification area.

Control Panel → [Appearance and Personalization] → Windows Sidebar Properties → Start Sidebar when Windows starts

Start → All Programs → Accessories → Windows Sidebar

Description

One of Windows Vista’s most useful new features is the Windows Sidebar and the Gadgets that live there. Gadgets are mini-applications that automatically perform a variety of useful tasks or display helpful information; many of them are designed to connect to the Internet in order to grab information for you. For example, they can fetch and display current stock information, news, and traffic reports. They can also play live slideshows of pictures on your PC and display information about how your system is currently performing. And they can integrate with your applications to give you a quick way to interact with them, for example, by displaying Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds from Internet Explorer, or displaying recent emails. (For more information, see "RSS Feeds,” in Chapter 5.)

Gadgets live in the Windows Sidebar on the right side of the screen, although you can move the Sidebar to the left. Make the Sidebar and Gadgets appear by double-clicking the Windows Sidebar icon in the notification area or by right-clicking the icon and choosing Bring Gadgets to Front. (Make them disappear by double-clicking the icon again.) Choose new Gadgets by clicking the + sign at the top of the Sidebar, and a gallery of available Gadgets appears. Drag a Gadget to the place on the Sidebar where you want it to appear. Figure 3-74 shows the Windows Sidebar, along with a gallery of Gadgets.

Figure 3-74. The Windows Sidebar and Gadget gallery

The Gadgets that ship with Windows Vista are only a few of the Gadgets that are ultimately expected to be available. Click “Get more gadgets online” at the bottom of the Gadget gallery, and you’ll be sent to a web page with a list of more Gadgets you can download and use.

To remove a Gadget from the sidebar, hover your mouse over it and click the X that appears just above it. To customize how the Gadget works, click the checkmark, and a dialog box appears, like the one shown in Figure 3-75. This box will vary from Gadget to Gadget, depending on each Gadget’s function.

Figure 3-75. Customizing how a Gadget works

Via the Windows Sidebar Control Panel applet, you have some basic control over how the Windows Sidebar works. Choose Control Panel → Windows Sidebar, or right-click the Windows Sidebar icon, and choose Properties. The applet will let you control whether the Windows Sidebar should automatically display every time you start Windows, whether to always keep the Windows Sidebar on top of other windows, whether to display the Windows Sidebar on the right side of the screen (the default) or the left, and, if you use more than one monitor, it will let you determine on which monitor the Windows Sidebar should be displayed. There’s also a View list of running Gadgets button that will show you a list of all the Gadgets currently on the Windows Sidebar, and let you remove any. (Removing one removes it only from the Windows Sidebar, not from your PC.)

Notes