The JDS provides three ways to start programs:
Click on the Launch menu and follow the menu selections to the desired program. Many JDS users choose this method because it provides an intuitive interface for the large number of JDS programs.
Select icons, called launchers, from the desktop or from the lower bar panel. Those who prefer pictures or symbols like this option; it’s also the quickest way to start an application and allows for fewer hand movements.
Enter a command on the command line from a window called a Terminal. This is necessary for applications that are not available through the other two methods.
We start by using the Launch menu, which holds most of the common applications you want to use, such as your word processor, email and calendar, and web browser. Let’s take a quick look at the menu, shown in Figure 2-6, which appears when you click on the Launch button.
In Figure 2-6, we can see the selections from which to start a program. Beginning at the top, three of the most commonly used programs are listed. Below these is an icon for Applications, which you will use frequently. Figure 2-7 shows some of the JDS applications listed here. (Please note that the applications listed may differ on your system, depending on the options chosen during installation.) For instance, if you want to use the JDS word processor, select Launch → Applications → Office → StarOffice 7 → Text Document and just start typing your text into the window that appears.
Further down the Launch menu is a Folder icon labeled Open Recent. Most JDS users find this an easy way to start documents on which they have recently been working, as illustrated in Figure 2-8. Place the mouse pointer over the icon next to the document you want to open, click once, and the document opens in the appropriate application.
When you open an application on the JDS desktop, it has several buttons in an outer frame around the edges. These buttons, along with scrollbars for windows displaying large amounts of data, are the same for every application. In addition, inside this outer frame, each application displays a variety of buttons that are specific to that application. In this section, we look at a simple application to give you a feel for how to manipulate applications on the JDS desktop.
This application, called gedit, may also be useful to you if you have to edit plain text files. For instance, suppose you want to compose a long email message in plain text. The word processor saves its text with extra formatting, so it’s better as an email attachment than as a source of plain text for email. The gedit utility lacks the formatting that a word processor provides but offers powerful features and convenient keystrokes for editing plain text. Another use of gedit is to edit configuration files (software settings), in the rare cases when your desktop does not let you configure something through dialog boxes.
Start the editor with Launch → Applications → Accessories → Text Editor, as shown in Figure 2-9. The window, shown in Figure 2-10, is the result. We’ve typed some text into the window to show what it looks like while you’re working.
Once the Text Editor window opens on the desktop, the Launch menus close. There are several things you can do on the outer frame, which, as we’ve said, is the same for every application. These functions are familiar to most users of a desktop system, but we focus on some details in the following section.
A window is any box on the desktop that shows a running program, a file, an icon, a dialog box, or some other graphical element. Windows can move around the desktop, so you can manage your space. Many of the window components and commands are the same in all the most popular JDS programs, which makes it easy for you to manage your work. Yet keep in mind that, although most windows appear similar, some of the menu bars may vary, depending on what tasks need to be done in that window.
As we have already demonstrated in this chapter, you can open, close, reduce, enlarge, and move most windows on the desktop. Let’s practice these.
With the window open for gedit or any other program of your choice, you can perform the following operations:
To move the window, press the mouse over the top bar that contains the window’s title and move it. If necessary, first reduce the window from full screen size.
To maximize the window (to make it take up the entire screen of your monitor), press the middle button of the three that appear at the top right. Press this button again to return the window to its previous size.
Press the button to the immediate left to minimize the window. It disappears from the screen, and the title of the window is placed in a box on the lowest panel of the desktop. Click on this small box to bring the window back on to the desktop to its original size.
Minimizing allows you to essentially clean off your desktop so that you can work on one window at a time. With more of your desktop screen open, you can see the icons on your desktop that were hidden by the larger windows. For beginners, it is easy to confuse the two concepts of minimize and unmaximize. Just practice it a bit, and the two become familiar to you.
If you want to view a window that is partially covered by another, click anywhere within the bottom window, and it will move to the top, possibly covering other windows.
All the windows open in the current workspace have icons that appear on the panel on the bottom of the screen. You can bring any window to the forefront by clicking on its icon.
All these functions are also accessible by right-clicking on a window or icon. The menu that comes up contains some other functions that you may also find useful, such as menu items that move the window or icon to a different workspace.
If you open a number of windows, notice that their identifying boxes fill up the bottom panel; the boxes get smaller and smaller, and the titles are harder to see. This is one of the many reasons to use the Workspace Switcher, located on the bottom right panel. This feature is described in Chapter 1. It lets you place your windows in a more organized fashion for retrieval.
Most windows have scrollbars and arrows on one or two sides of the frame. These allow you to roll up and down the screen or pane, as needed, when the full page within the window is not visible. Place your mouse pointer over arrows and click them to move the window’s content in the directions they indicate (up and down, or side to side). Or drag the scrollbar in the same manner. But sometimes resizing or maximizing a window is better than using scrollbars to see all the content.
To resize a window, place the mouse pointer anywhere on the edge or corner of the window. You know that your mouse pointer is in the right position when the pointer arrow changes into an arrow pointing in both directions. You may want to practice sizing a number of windows to fit on the desktop.
Applications offer toolbars just below the title bar. Some toolbars have menu items such as File and Window, while others show the same features as icons. The main toolbars’ contents vary from window to window, so it is a good idea to click on the toolbars and explore your options as you begin to use the various applications. Some windows have only one toolbar, whereas others have two or three rows, and even a side toolbar. The toolbars for the main programs are discussed at greater length in following chapters.
The major operations provided by gedit, like most applications, are available from a menu bar at the top. For example, choose Edit → Preferences to see some of this program’s options. The result is Figure 2-11. Feel free to explore the various options available in gedit through the drop-down menus.
Like other applications and windows in JDS, you can close gedit in several ways. We illustrate three of these methods in Figures Figure 2-12 and Figure 2-13.
Click on the close button at the top, righthand corner of the window.
Click on File → Quit, shown in Figure 2-13.
Press CTRL-Q. This is not available in all applications. If you look closely at the drop-down menu in Figure 2-13, you notice that it mentions
Ctrl-Qas a keystroke equivalent, or shortcut, for File → Quit. Such key combinations for performing tasks are called shortcuts.
If you entered any text into gedit before closing it and failed to save the text in a file, you see the dialog box shown in Figure 2-14. Many (but not all) applications under JDS protect you from losing data by reminding you that you haven’t saved your changes.
JDS provides an excellent graphical user interface (GUI). In most cases, you can perform any task you need by simply using the keyboard, mouse, and icons. But you shouldn’t ignore the features made available by JDS’s underlying Linux operating system, which you can access through a terminal.
The JDS Terminal is an application that allows you to type commands to the system. As many Apple Macintosh OS X users have discovered, the Terminal can provide you with many powerful functions. Linux commands are beyond the scope of this book, but if you know what you want to do, we can show you how to access the Terminal and use it as another alternative to starting and terminating a program. A selection of useful commands is in Appendix A.
You can access the Terminal through a series of menus, shown in Figure 2-15. Figure 2-16 shows the terminal itself. The window doesn’t have many interesting features because it exists merely as a place to type in your commands.
In Figure 2-16, we have opened a Linux terminal, which placed us in our home directory, typed the command gedit, and pressed the return key. This starts a new window (not shown here) exactly as if we had chosen the text editor from the Launch menu, as in the previous section.
At this point, you do not need to have much understanding of the Linux Terminal other than to know that it exists and that you can start a program using it. If you learn more about Linux, you can learn to do many exciting things you didn’t know existed with your personal computer.
The icon on the desktop labeled This Computer provides access to disks, files, and folders throughout your computer. For instance, if you want to open files on a floppy disk or CD-ROM, you can find them on the appropriate icon under This Computer. It also contains tools needed to set up, manage, and control your user settings. So let’s take a look at this folder by clicking on the This Computer icon, located on the desktop. It typically looks like Figure 2-17.
If you have used Microsoft Windows, notice that JDS’s This Computer somewhat differs in its look and feel from Microsoft’s My Computer, but the functions are similar. The icons in JDS look different, which you can see by comparing Figures Figure 2-17 and Figure 2-18.
Another difference between the two systems is in the names of the items used to configure systems elements. JDS’s Preferences, shown in Figure 2-19, behave similarly to the Control Panel found in Windows’s My Computer. Figure 2-20 shows a Windows XP Control Panel.
