Fun with Thumbnails view
Thumbnails view is great for viewing any folder that contains pictures stored as files on your hard disk.
For example, Figure 2-19 shows the contents of my My Pictures folder in Thumbnails view. The icons
for files that contain pictures are actually small thumbnail-sized views of the images themselves. Folders
within my My Pictures folder show up as large folder icons, with an even tinier view of some of the
pictures within those folders.
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Figure 2-19: The contents of my My Pictures folder in Thumbnails view
Notice that the Tasks options in the Explorer bar (now showing as Picture Tasks) offers some unique
options. The Order Prints Online and Print Pictures options start up wizards that will help you do as they
say. Note that, unless you select specific files before you choose one of these options, you’ll end up
with prints of all the pictures in the folder. The section “Select, Then Do” in Chapter 12 explains the
many ways in which you can select file icons in Windows Explorer.
Tip Your My Music folder also offers a couple of unique tasks, including the option to
buy music off the Internet, and to play all the songs in the folder. If you choose the
Play All task, Windows Media Player opens to play the songs (as discussed in

Umpteen ways to view files and folders
Explorer offers many different ways to view the icons in its right pane. Choosing one view over another
is just a matter of what’s convenient at the moment. To change the view, you can click the Views button
in the toolbar and make your selection from the menu that appears. Alternatively, choose View from the
Explorer menu bar and select a view from the menu that opens. Your have the following choices:
Thumbnails: Displays the contents of any pictures in the current folder as small thumbnailsized
images. Folders and files that don’t contain pictures just appear as large icons.
Tiles: Shows information about each file and folder (as available) beneath the item’s name,
as in the example shown in Figure 2-18.
Icons: Shows just an icon and name for each file and folder.
List: Reduces the size of the icons to about the same size as corresponding text, and
presents the information in a list.
Details: Shows detailed information about each icon, including its size (except in the case
of folders), type, and the date and time the item was last modified. Although as discussed
later, you can choose for yourself what you want the Details view to display.
The Thumbnails and Details views offer some extra unique options, discussed in the sections that
follow.

The New Explorer Bar

The Explorer window, shown in Figure 2-18, is currently divided into two panes. The left pane is called
the Explorer bar. The Explorer bar contains three drop-down bars, as described in the following list.
Tasks: Provides quick access to tasks you might want to perform at the moment. The
tasks available to you will change as you make different selections from the rightmost
pane. Clicking an option will start the selected task.
Other Places: Lists other places on your computer that you can jump to within Explorer.
When you click one of those options, the right pane changes to show the contents of that
new location. The Back button in the toolbar takes you back to wherever you just left.
Details: Shows detailed information about the current location, or the selected file or
folder in the right pane.
You can open or close the Tasks, Other Places, or Details portion of the bar by clicking the small button
to the right of the title.
A couple of good things to know about the Explorer bar, right off the bat. . . . First, if you resize the
Explorer window, the Explorer bar automatically disappears (which is helpful if you get to a point when
leaving it open would prevent the contents of the right pane from being displayed). Second, the Explorer
bar is optional and may not be visible at all if someone else has disabled it. If you can’t see the Explorer
bar, no matter how large you make the window, you can turn it back on by following these steps:
1. Choose Tools › Folder Options from the Explorer menu bar.
2. On the General tab, choose Show Common Tasks in Folders.
3. Click the OK button to close the Folder Options dialog box.
The rightmost pane displays the contents of whatever it is you’re exploring at the moment. In Figure 2-
18, for example, I can see that my My Documents folder currently contains several additional folders,
including My Music and My Pictures. There also are a couple of documents in there, named Resume
and My First WordPad Document. Note that the folders all have icons that look like manila file folders.
Documents will have other icons. As you know, you can open any icon just by clicking or double-clicking
the icon. If you open a folder icon, you’ll see the contents of that folder within Explorer. The Explorer title
bar will then display the name of the currently open folder. To return to My Documents, click the Back
button on the Explorer toolbar.
If you open a document icon, the document will open in whatever program is associated with the type of
document you opened. For example, opening the My First WordPad Document icon in the figure opens
that document in Microsoft Word (if it’s installed) or the Windows WordPad program (if Microsoft Word
isn’t available). The program’s window covers (or overlaps) the Explorer window. From within the open
program, you can then edit, print, or do whatever else the program enables you to do. After you have
finished working with the document, you can close the program (by clicking its Close button).

Exploring Your Computer
Now that you have the basic skills to work in the Windows desktop, as well as any dialog boxes that pop
up, it’s time to turn our attention to the one Windows program you’re likely to use more than any other.
Its name is Windows Explorer (or just Explorer, for short). As its name implies, its purpose is to enable
you to explore the contents of your computer.
There are lots of ways to start Explorer, as you’ll learn. For starters, either of these methods will do:
Click the Start button and choose My Documents.
Or, click the Start button and choose All Programs › Accessories › Windows Explorer.
Either way, Explorer will open, looking something like Figure 2-18. Like all windows, Explorer has a title
bar with Minimize, Maximize/Restore, and Close buttons, a menu bar, toolbar, and so forth. Unlike most
programs, however, Explorer doesn’t display its own name in its title bar. Instead, it displays whatever it
is that you’re exploring at the moment. In Figure 2-18, for example, Explorer’s title bar shows the
contents of the folder named My Documents. As you’ll learn shortly, My Documents is a folder on your
computer’s hard disk where you’ll store all your personal files.
Figure 2-18: Windows Explorer currently showing the contents of the My Documents folder, as indicated in
its title bar

Copying text and pictures
The ability to cut and paste into text boxes is also a huge timesaver. If the information that you need to
type into a text box is visible just about anywhere on the screen or available someplace where you can
get it to the screen, there’s never any need to retype it. Just select the text that you want to copy into the
text box by dragging the mouse pointer through that text. Then, press Ctrl+C to copy the selected text to
the Windows Clipboard (which is an invisible placeholder for cut and copied text). Then click in the text
box into which you need to type the text, so it gets the blinking cursor, and press Ctrl+V. The text lands
in the text box.
The Ctrl+C (Copy) shortcut, and Ctrl+V (Paste) shortcut are supported universally throughout Windows
and Windows programs. You can use these keys to copy just about anything to just about anything else.
If you’re not sure, don’t be afraid to try it out. You cannot do any harm by trying! The same technique
works for pictures as well. To select a picture, however, you don’t drag the mouse pointer. Instead, you
just click the picture to select it, and then press Ctrl+C. To paste the picture into a graphics program or
word processing document, click at about where you want to place the picture, and then press Ctrl+V.
Often you can even do it without even touching the keyboard. Just drag the mouse pointer through the
text you want to copy, or click the picture you want to copy. Then right-click the selected text or picture
and choose Copy. Then right-click where you want to paste and choose Paste.
Tip If, for whatever reason, you cannot copy a picture on the screen into the Clipboard,
you can always take a snapshot of the screen and paste that into your word
processing document or graphics program. The section titled “Screenshots” in
Chapter 24 explains how.

Selecting text
To change or delete a chunk of text, you also can select that text first. To select text, do one of the
following:
Drag the mouse pointer through the text you want to select.
Position the blinking cursor to the start or end of the text you want to select and then hold
down the Shift key while you press the arrow keys to extend the selection.
In some cases, you can select all the text in a text box by clicking the label next to the
text box.
Select a single word by double-clicking that word.
The selected text will be highlighted somehow, typically as white letters against a blue background.
Once you select a chunk of text, you can
Press Delete (Del) to delete the selected text.
Or, start typing new text.
When you type new text, whatever you type replaces what was previously selected.
Knowing these simple techniques can actually save you quite a bit of time. When you’re browsing the
World Wide Web with Microsoft Internet Explorer, for example, you often need to type in some fairly
lengthy URLs, such as http://www.microsoft.com. Because so many URLs are alike, however,
you can save a lot of time by selecting just the text you want to change. To change that Microsoft URL
to http://www.coolnerds.com, for example, you could just drag the mouse pointer through
microsoft to select that chunk of text. Then type coolnerds to replace the selected text, ending up with
http://www.coolnerds.com.

Changing text

Several general rules apply to typing and editing (changing) text in text boxes, as well as most forms of
text in general. To make simple changes or corrections, you can position the blinking cursor where you
want to make a change, either by clicking the spot or by using the arrow keys. Then:
To delete the character to the right of the cursor, press the Delete (Del) key.
To delete the character to the left of the cursor, press the Backspace key.
To insert new text, start typing.
To choose between Insert and Overwrite mode, press the Insert (Ins) key.
Let me explain the difference between Insert mode and Overwrite mode. Let’s say a text box already
contains this text:
Wanda Starr
Next, you place the cursor just to the left of the S in Starr. If you then type Bea and a space, in Insert
mode, the new text is inserted, like this:
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Wanda Bea Starr
If you were to type Bea followed by a blank space in Overwrite mode, the new text would replace
existing text, like this:
Wanda Bea r
In the preceding example, the new letters Bea and the blank space that follows have replaced the
letters Star.

Figure 2-16: Scroll bars in this window indicate that’s there more than can be seen at the moment.
Vertical and horizontal scroll bars in the right pane tell me that there are more icons to view both below,
and to the right, which I can scroll into view. All scroll bars consist of a slider box, a slider bar, and a
couple of buttons
Figure 2-17: The anatomy of a scroll bar
The size of the slider box relative to the size of the slider bar gives you a sense of how much additional
information is available. If the slider box is about 10 percent of the size of the slider bar, about 90
percent of the available information is currently scrolled out of view. You can use any of the following
techniques to scroll through the additional information:
To move up or down a little bit at a time, click the up- or down-arrow button at the end of the
taskbar.
To move more quickly than that, drag the slider box through the slider bar.
To jump to a specific part of the list, click within the slider bar at about where you want to
position the slider box.
If your mouse has a wheel, you may be able to scroll vertically by spinning the mouse
wheel. (I say may be able to, because the wheel doesn’t work in all programs.)
Tip If your wheel doesn’t work right off the bat, click the scroll bar, or just to the left of
the scroll bar. Then try again. It might work this time.
If your hands are super-glued to the keyboard and don’t want to use the mouse, you can use the
Page Up (PgUP), ˇ Page Down (PgDn) keys to scroll vertically. To jump to the top of the list, press the
Home key. To jump to the end of the list, press the End key. If a horizontal scroll bar is available as well,
you can use the ‹ and › keys to scroll left and right.
Text boxes
Text boxes appear wherever you need to type in some information. Before you can type in a text box,
however, the blinking cursor needs to be in the text box. To move the cursor into the text box, just click
the text box. Alternatively, press the Tab or Shift+Tab keys to move through the available controls until
the cursor lands in the text box. Then start typing.

Figure 2-15: The Background control here is an example of a list.
To choose an option from a list, click it. If the list has a scroll bar, you can use any of the techniques
described in the next section to scroll through the list and view additional options.
You also can make selections from a list box using the keyboard. Press Tab or Shift+Tab until the focus
(the gray frame) is inside the list box. Then use the up- and down-arrow keys to move the highlighter to
the option you want and press Enter.
Scroll bars
Scroll bars, as mentioned, enable you to scroll through lengthy lists of items. They usually appear to the
right of a lengthy list. However, scroll bars aren’t limited to dialog boxes. They appear any time there’s
more information that can be seen at the moment. In Figure 2-16, for example, I’m viewing the contents
of my My Music folder, using the Windows Explorer program (which isn’t a dialog box at all!). The scroll
bar near the middle of the window is actually attached to the Explorer bar on the left side of the window.
Which tells me that there’s more information below in the Explorer bar.

Spin buttons

If a text box displays a number, a date, or a time, the text box may have a pair of little spin buttons
attached to it, such as the Wait option in Figure 2-14. Click the up button to increase the number, or the
down button to decrease the number. Optionally, you can just drag the mouse pointer through the
contents of the box, and type in a new number.
Lists
A list or list box is a list of alternative options. It’s similar to a drop-down list, except the list is already
open — you don’t need to click any button to view the list. In Figure 2-15, the Background control
presents a list of backgrounds from which to choose. There are more items in the list than are currently
visible, as indicated by the scroll bar to the right of the list.

Figure 2-14:

The Screen Saver control in this dialog box is an example of a drop-down list.
If the drop-down list contains more options than can fit in the drop-down menu, the list displays a scroll
bar that enables you to scroll additional options into view (as discussed later in this chapter).
Like other controls, it is possible to work a drop-down list via the keyboard. The trick is to press Tab or
Shift+Tab until the blinking cursor is inside the control you want. To display the drop-down list, press
Alt+ˇ (hold down the Alt key, press the down-arrow key on the keyboard, and then release both keys).
When the list is open, you can select an option by moving the highlighter up and down using the up- and
down-arrow keys. When the option you want is highlighted, press Alt+Enter.

Figure 2-13: The Screen resolution control in this dialog box is an example of a slider.
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Drop-down lists
A drop-down list (also called a combo box) is a small control containing some text and a button with a
little “v” shape or down-pointing arrow on it. Clicking that down-pointing arrow opens a list of choices. In
Figure 2-14, for example, I have opened the drop-down list for the Screen Saver option on the Screen
Saver tab of the Display Properties dialog box. To make a selection from the drop-down list, just click
whatever option you want.

Figure 2-12: Check boxes in this dialog box enable you to control the appearance and behavior or the
taskbar.
Although the mouse is the simplest way to turn a check box on or off, you also can do so with the
keyboard. Press Tab or Shift+Tab until the option you want has a gray border around it. Then press the
spacebar to select and deselect the check box.
Sliders
Sliders enable you to adjust a setting along some ruler. For example, the Screen Resolution option on
the Settings tab of the Display Properties dialog box, shown in Figure 2-13, enables you to adjust the
screen resolution by dragging the slider left and right across the bar. If you must use the keyboard, you
need to press the Tab key until the slider control is selected. Then you can use the ‹ and › keys to
move the slider left and right.

Check boxes

Check boxes, like the examples shown in the in Figure 2-12, enable you to turn some option on or off.
(That figure is showing the Taskbar tab of the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box.) Unlike
option buttons, check boxes are not mutually exclusive. You can select any combination of check boxes
you want. When a check box is selected (contains an X or a check mark), the option is turned on. When
the check box is empty (clear), the option is turned off. If the check box is gray in the middle, that
usually means that some, but not all, of a subset of options is selected. (Don’t worry about that right
now.) To select — or clear — a check box, click it. Often you can click the text to the right of a check
box to turn it on and off.

Preview area

Some dialog boxes offer a preview area, which is an area of the dialog box that gives you a preview of
how the applied selection will affect the object. For example, the Taskbar and Start Menu Properties
dialog box shown in Figure 2-11 contains a preview of the Start menu. Choosing one of the option
buttons below the preview area shows you how your selection will change the appearance of the Start
menu. Therefore, if you don’t like what you see in the preview area, you can switch back to the other
option before you actually apply the change to the real Start menu.