The Wonders of Right Clicking – part 2

Right click on your desktop and go to the properties link. Have you been here before? When Windows XP came out it offered a way to change all of these options without having to go through the Properties Window. Your mission today is to play around with your display properties.

(A word of caution: before you start making changes, it’s a good idea to write down on a piece of paper the original settings you see BEFORE YOU MAKE CHANGES. This will assure that if you make a change you don’t like, you can go back and fix it…an added bonus is that by writing it down, it might help you understand it better as you have to take the time and really look at the current settings.)

Although the first tab is Themes, let’s skip that one and move right on over to Desktop. This is where you get those nifty wallpapers for your desktop. If you have a picture stored somewhere on your computer that you would like to have as your wallpaper, this is the place to do that. Click on the Browse button and search your computer for the picture you want to use. Double click on it and you should see it in the little screen. You can then use the Position drop-down menu to center, tile, or stretch the image. Click on the Apply button and your changes will be made. You can also choose the Customize Desktop button and play around with your icons.

Next tab over is Screen Saver. You can play around with these to your heart’s content. Plus you can use your own images to create a slide show screen saver that will be uniquely yours.

Next tab over is Appearance. This tab works in conjunction with the Themes tab. The Themes tab changes EVERYTHING about the look and feel of your menus, fonts, etc., while the Appearance tab allows you to change things individually. The Advanced Button is a bit tricky, so not for the faint at heart. Just remember, if you don’t like the individual changes you make, you can always go back to the Themes Tab and get your original theme reloaded.

Last is the settings tab. The most important thing on this tab is your Screen Resolution. What is screen resolution you ask? Well the images you see on your computer screen are made up of pixels. Pixels are just little blocks of color all put together to make an image. Screen resolution is how many pixels wide by how many pixels tall your desktop is. Your resolution could be viewed at 800 x 600 pixels, 1024 x 768 pixels, 1280 x 1024, or maybe even 1440 x 900. When those of us who are in the web page building business who are purists build our pages, we like to fit them at the 1024 width pixel resolution, however, since a lot of people still have their screen resolution set to 800 width pixels you would have to scroll horizontally to see a page built at the 1024 width. If your resolution is set to 1024 pixels and a web page is built to 800 pixels, you will see white space. If you are set to 800, try changing to the 1024 for a while. If it hurts your eyes and you have to strain, change it back. You might find that you like being able to see more! — Jill

The Wonders of Right Clicking

Do you use your right mouse button? Are you aware of the power it holds? The right mouse button is something you should experiment with. When you are thinking of selecting something, stop, take a moment, and right click to see what happens.

Today I’d like to talk about right-clicking on the desktop. Go to your desktop and right click. The first choice is “Arrange Icons By.” This is a great tool to clean up your desktop and organize all those pesky icons. Your choices are name, size, type and modified. You don’t need to select any icons to make these organizational moves. Just try them. Your icons will go flitting across your screen into new columns.

Some other options for cleaning up your desktop under the “Arrange Icons By” selection are Auto Arrange and Align to Grid, Show Desktop Icons, Lock Web Items on Desktop and Run Desktop Cleanup Wizard. Some of these may already have check marks next to them and you can uncheck them.

Take a few minutes and try all these tools for organizing your desktop. Next time I’ll talk about the Properties of your desktop. — Jill

Keyboard Shortcuts

I love keyboard shortcuts, they take me back to the days when I had a computer that didn’t even have a mouse! I’m going to list a few of my favorites today that you can start using immediately!

First of all you need to become familiar with your Ctrl key on your keyboard. This key does lots of magical things just like right-clicking your mouse does. When we use keyboard shortcuts, we are going to be using the Ctrl key a lot. So find it on your keyboard now.

Let’s start with cut, copy, paste and undo.  Open up a document that has text in it. Using your mouse select a word anywhere in the document by double-clicking on it. Now hold down your Ctrl key and press the X key. Did the word disappear? You just Cut the word. Now click your mouse somewhere else in the document and hold down your Ctrl key and press the V key. Did the word reappear? You have just performed Cut and Paste with keyboard shortcuts. To undo what you just did hold down the Ctrl key and press the Z key – do it again. You just undid your previous two tasks and your document should now be exactly as it was when you started. Now for copy – select a word again by double-clicking on it. This time hold down your Ctrl key and press the C key. Move your cursor anywhere else in your document and hold down the Ctrl Key and press the V key. Copy and Paste!

Anytime you need to undo (Ctrl Z), cut (Ctrl X), copy (Ctrl C), or paste (Ctrl V)  you can now use these keyboard shortcuts. Once you start using them, especially Ctrl Z, you will find how much easier it is to complete some of your tasks without even touching the mouse button. In my next post I’ll tell you how to select text using your keyboard. — Jill

More on Shortcuts

Yesterday I talked about keeping a neat desktop by moving icons to your Quick Launch toolbar. Today I want to talk a little bit more about shortcuts.

Shortcuts can be defined two ways in Windows. First, you have icon shortcuts – these are the icons with the black arrow in the left corner that live on your desktop. Second, you have keyboard shortcuts – these are techniques to use your keyboard, without touching your mouse.

To create an icon shortcut you just need to find the program, document, or whatever you want to make a shortcut to. There are two ways to make a shortcut depending on where you are pulling from. From the Program menu, right click on the program name and look for the the Create Shortcut option. Click on that and a second icon will appear on your program menu. You can now drag and drop that to your desktop or your Quick Launch bar. The second way to make a shortcut is to just click, drag and drop. This will, however, often remove the icon from where you took it. So be careful with the click, drag and drop method. Always try the right click option first.

I’ll write about keyboard shortcuts in another post where I’ll teach you how to cut, copy and paste without having to go to those pesky menu bars. — Jill

How Messy is Your Desk?

I’ll admit it, I am a total neat freak – I am a librarian for goodness sake! What really amazes people though is my computer desktop. Usually the only icon on there is the Recycle Bin. So how do I keep my desktop clean? I use the Quick Launch option in Windows and an organized file system.

First the Quick Launch. This little bar lives down on your Taskbar. To check if yours is on, you should see some program icons on your taskbar like the big blue E for Internet Explorer. If you don’t seen any program icons you can turn it on by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting Properties. Under the Taskbar tab check Show Quick Launch.

Now that it is turned on you can move icons from your desktop to Quick Launch. Click on one of your Program Icons, hold the mouse button down, and drag the icon to the Quick Launch bar and drop it. The program will now be accessible from the Quick Launch bar and the icon should still be on your desktop. If you want, you can now delete the icon from your desktop.

A lot of people are afraid that if they delete something from their desktop, it will go away forever…this is usually not the case, plus Windows will stop you and ask you if you really want to delete something forever.

Icons that can be safely deleted have a little black arrow in the left corner of the icon. These are usually shortcuts to programs that are also available from your Program menu. It’s a good idea to check your program menu first, before you delete any of those icons.

For file organization I think of my hard drive as a giant filing cabinet where I can create an endless number of folders and put an endless number of things in each folder. To learn how to organize your entire life I recommend reading Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity by David Allen. This book can change your life!

So try cleaning up your desktop. — Jill