will teach you ways to create your own folders and
subfolders, as well as ways in which you can customize your folders
Other bars accessible after you choose View › Explorer Bar from the menu include the following:
Search: Displays the Search Companion described under “Searching for Lost Files” a little
later in this chapter.
Favorites: Displays your list of favorites — things you visit frequently. Chapter 13 discusses
ways to create and manage Favorites in more detail.
Media: Opens a “player” frame for playing multimedia files, such as music and video. If your
computer is connected to the Internet, it takes you to the Microsoft site
WindowsMedia.com, where you can select music and videos to play in Windows Media
Player (as discussed in Chapter 25).
History: Displays a list of Web sites and folders you’ve visited recently, organized and
grouped by day, Web site, and so forth. As in the Folders bar, you can expand and contract
items by clicking them, and jump to a location by clicking its name in the list.
Tip of the Day: Displays a Tip of the Day, and a Next Tip link, at the bottom of the Explorer
window. Tips are downloaded from the Microsoft Web site.

Grouping icons
To group icons in the display, choose View › Arrange Icons By › Show in Groups. This option acts as
a toggle and, once selected, is automatically applied to whichever option you selected from the Arrange
Icons By menu. For example, Figure 2-24 shows the folders in my My Music folder arranged by name,
and displayed in groups. To turn off the grouping, choose View › Arrange Icons By › Show in Groups
again.
The Folders list and other bars
The Folders list available in Explorer provides a quick and easy way to jump to specific areas of your
computer and to folders on your hard disk. To open the Folders list, just click the Folders button on the
toolbar, or choose View › Explorer Bar › Toolbar from the menu. Figure 2-25 shows an example of
the Folders list on the left side of the Explorer window.
Figure 2-25: The Folders list open on one of my computers
You can expand and contract items in the list by clicking the plus sign (+, to expand) or the minus sign
(–, to contract) to the left of the item. The Folders list provides a quick alternative to “drilling down”
through folders to get to a specific subfolder. For example, the computer represented in Figure 2-25 has
a folder named Art Parts within a folder named Clip Art, which in turn is contained within the My Pictures
folder of My Documents. Without the Folders list open, I would have to work my way down to that folder.
Which is to say, that in My Documents I’d need to open My Pictures. Then in that folder I would need to
open Clip Art, and then finally Art Parts. In the Folders list, however, I can just click the Art Parts folder
to jump to it directly, no matter where I happen to be at the moment.

Arranging Explorer icons
You can choose how icons in the right pane of the Explorer window are arranged by choosing View ›
Arrange Icons By from the menu bar. You have the following options:
Name: Displays icons with folders in alphabetic order, followed by files in alphabetic order.
Size: Files are listed in smallest to largest order.
Type: Files are presented in groups by type.
Modified: Displays icons based on the date they were last modified.
These four options are pretty universal. When viewing the contents of your My Pictures or My Music
folder, you’ll also be given options for arranging icons relative to those file types. In My Pictures, for
example, you’ll have the option to arrange icons by the date the picture was taken, and the dimensions
(size) or the pictures. In My Music, for example, you’ll be able to arrange icons based on artist, album,
length, and so forth.

Figure 2-22: The Choose Details dialog box
2. Choose which information you want the Details view to display via the check boxes
provided, or by clicking an option and then clicking the Show or Hide button.
3. To set a default width for the currently selected column, enter a measurement in pixels in
the Width box. Alternatively, leave the setting at zero to allow Windows to size the
column automatically.
Tip A pixel is only one tiny, lighted dot on the screen, too small to even see with the naked
eye. Therefore, when setting a column width, use at least 20 pixels
4. You can reorder the options by using the Move Up and Move Down buttons to move the
current item.
5. To change the order of items in the Details view, click any item you want to move and
then use the Move Up and Move Down buttons to reposition the item.
6. Click the OK button when you finish.
Tip Because the Details view settings apply to the current folder only, you can choose
different details for different types of folders. For example, the details you select for
your My Pictures folder might differ from the details you select for your My Music
folder.
If you’re not already viewing icons in Details view, just choose Details from the View menu or Views
button. The display will now contain all the columns you specified in the Choose Details dialog box. If
necessary, you can scroll left and right using the horizontal scroll bar that appears beneath the list. To
change the width of a column, drag the bar that separates one column heading from the next left or
right. To rearrange columns, drag any column heading to the left or right.
You also can sort (that is, alphabetize) the list by the contents of any column. Just click the column
heading of the column you want to sort. To switch from ascending order to descending order, or viceversa,
click the column heading again.
Most of a file’s details are managed automatically by Windows. However, some details items are up to
you. To view, and optionally change, the details for a single file, right-click the file and choose
Properties. The Properties dialog box for that one file will open. The General tab will contain factual
information about the file, with only a few settings that you can actually change. To fill in personal details
about the file, click the Summary tab. Use the button near the bottom of the dialog box to choose
between a Simple or Advanced view of the information. Figure 2-23 shows both views.
Figure 2-23: The Summary tab of a file’s properties in Simple and Advanced views
You can fill in the blanks for any missing information you want. Then click OK after you have finished.
Note If Windows won’t let you change the file’s properties, clear the Read-only check
box on the General tab.

Figure 2-20: The Filmstrip view of my My Pictures folders
Buttons in the upper pane enable you to move to the next or preceding picture, zoom in on any part of
the picture, and zoom back out, choose between “best fit” and “actual size” for sizing the picture, as well
as to rotate the picture clockwise and counterclockwise. To leave the Filmstrip view, just choose any
other option from the Views button or View menu.
Choosing details to view
As mentioned, the Details view shows details about each icon in the folder you’re viewing at the
moment, as in the example shown in Figure 2-21.
Figure 2-21: A folder’s contents displayed in Details view
You can custom design the Details view for the folder you’re viewing at the moment by following these
steps:
1. Choose View › Choose Details from the Explorer menu bar to open the Choose Details
dialog box shown in Figure 2-22.

Picture slide shows
The View as Slide Show option enables you to view each of the pictures in the folder in a slide show
manner. Each picture — including those in subfolders within the My Pictures folder — appears full size
on the screen for a few seconds. If you move the mouse as the slide show is going by, a toolbar will
appear on the screen, enabling you to pause, restart, or close the slide show, as well as to scroll back to
the preceding picture, or forward to the next picture.
Filmstrip view
A new option, titled Filmstrip, is available when you choose View from the Explorer menu bar. Selecting
that view adds a picture preview screen to the pane, and presents icons for the pictures in a horizontal
strip along the bottom of the pane, like a filmstrip. A horizontal scroll bar appears along the bottom of
the filmstrip to help you scroll through the pictures. Clicking a thumbnail displays a larger view of the
picture in the upper pane, as in Figure 2-20.