Spring CUE Conference May 19, 2001 Doug Prouty Contra Costa County Office of Education http://www.cccoe.

e.net/workshop Creating Desktop Shortcuts Without The Desktop Being In View From a Windows Explorer or the normal My Computer window, for example, simply right-click the filename for which you want to create a Shortcut and choose Send To->Desktop As Shortcut. Everything else is then done for you. You can then rename the shortcut later if it is necessary. Creating Document Shortcuts With some programs, like Word 97, you can create a Shortcut by selecting a block of text, rightclicking the selection, and dragging it to the desktop. When you release the button, Windows opens a menu. Choose the option Create Document Shortcut Here. When you're ready to work with the file again, choose the Shortcut. Windows doesn't only launch the program for you and load the document; it will also return you to the passage you originally selected when you created the Shortcut. Using An HTML Document As Desktop Wallpaper The Active Desktop lets you have a HTML page as your desktop wallpaper. And you can take advantage of any links defined in the document. Click on a URL in the wallpaper, for example, and Windows calls up your browser and connects to that address. To use this feature, first create the document and move it to the Windows\Web\Wallpaper directory or wherever you choose. Then right-click the desktop and choose Properties to open the Display Properties dialog box, with the Background tab showing. If you put the file in the Wallpaper directory, Windows will list it in the text box labeled "Select An HTML Document Or Picture." If you put it elsewhere, choose the Browse button to find it. Select the file and choose OK. If you don't have the Active Desktop enabled, Windows will ask if you want to enable it. Answer Yes. That's all there is to it. Windows will now use the document as your desktop background. Using A Web Site Page As Desktop Wallpaper You can also download a Web page to use as wallpaper. Go to the Web page of your choice using Internet Explorer and choose File|Save As. Navigate to the directory you want to save the file in (preferably Windows\Web\Wallpaper), enter a filename, and choose Save. Then follow the instructions above, and the Web page will display as your desktop background. Maximize, Minimize & Close All Windows This is common. You have a handful of applications, which you want to close. Surely you don't close each Window one by one?. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on the applications you want to close on the taskbar. Right-click one of them. There will be a context menu for you to Close, Minimize or Maximize. You can also right-click on the gray area of the taskbar and choose Minimize All Windows Get A Nice Wallpaper If you like cartoons, Plus98! themes should keep you contented. But if you want some awesome and stunning artwork, art gallery sites such as Digital Blasphemy (http://www.digitalblasphemy.com), offers breath-taking 3D rendered artworks for wallpapers.

Windows98 Tips and Tricks

Nice wallpaper can eat up to a gigantic 3-5 megabytes. This will consume a lot of system resources. If you have a graphic conversion program, convert it to JPEG or GIF. This will compress up to 10 times the original size and won't suffer quality loss. Less Clutter, More Space (And Speed Too!) A very cluttered desktop makes things hard to find and might even cloud a beautiful wallpaper. Only the most important icons should stay on the desktop. The rest must go. And also remember that the less active desktop components are there, the better because they can cause the desktop to be complicated and slow. You will find that a clean desktop will look very neat and the refresh and startup loading rate will be much faster because there are less items. If You Don't Need It, Don't Use It If you don't need the active desktop, you can't disable your desktop as web page. All you need to do is to right-click the desktop, select Active Desktop and check off View As Web Page. You will find that it will speed up the desktop dramatically. Window Key (WinKey) Shortcuts WinKey WinKey+E WinKey+R WinKey+Pause WinKey+F WinKey+Ctrl+F WinKey+M WinKey+D WinKey+Shift+M WinKey+Tab WinKey+F1 Open Start Menu Open an Explorer window Open the Run dialog Open the System Properties Find: All Files Find: Computer Minimize all open windows Show/Hide Desktop Undo minimize all open windows Cycle through taskbar program buttons Open Windows Help

Adding Shortcuts To Your Start Menu You can drag and drop to insert a Shortcut in a Start menu submenu very easily. To place a Shortcut in your Programs group, for example, drag the filename to the Start button, hover over it until the Start menu opens, then drag the filename to your Programs menu and hover over it until the Programs menu opens. You can then drag the Shortcut to any spot on the Programs menu or hover over one of the third-level menu items to open it and then drag the Shortcut there. Again, as you drag the Shortcut, Windows inserts a divider to indicate the Shortcut's position. Moving Shortcuts Around Windows will automatically place shortcuts in alphabetical order. If you have a program you use more frequently, just drag it to the top of the order as shown above. Now, we all know we can add items to the start menu as first-level items. However, all items will be placed above the Programs menu separated with a divider. You can actually drag an item between the Run and Programs menu and it will stay there!

Moving About And Copying Shortcuts You can move items that are already in your Start menu by dragging and dropping in Windows 98. You simply point to an item in your Start menu, click the left mouse button, and hold it down as you drag. As with adding a Shortcut, when hovering over a submenu item it opens that submenu, and Windows displays a divider to indicate where the item would appear if you dropped it. To copy a menu item rather than move it, hold down the Ctrl key as you release the mouse button. Removing Items In Your Start Menu Windows 98 now lets you delete items from the Start menu thanks to the Internet Explorer shell. To delete an item, simply right-click it and choose Delete. Then just answer Yes when Windows asks if you are sure you want to delete that item. Choosing Toolbars By default, Windows will come with the Quick Launch toolbar installed. The most useful button is perhaps the "Show Desktop" button. Click on it to show the desktop. Click again to switch back to your applications. To create toolbars, all your need to do is to right-click any empty space of the taskbar, select Toolbars, and select any toolbars you want. Managing Toolbars All the items in the toolbars are manageable. Right-click on buttons to rename, copy, cut, delete and view properties. Next, to change the appearance of the toolbar, right-click on the toolbar and you can decide whether you want large icons or small icons, show or hide titles or show or hide text. Custom Toolbars You can create any toolbar by right-clicking the taskbar, select Toolbars, New Toolbar... and select folder. The contents of the folder will be displayed as buttons. The catch? The toolbar becomes the real thing - if you delete or add items to the toolbar, it will be removed or added into the folder itself. Great of you want to manage your folders from the taskbar. Else, you will find this a big annoyance. The solution out is to create a folder just for toolbars. Dump just shortcuts into it and you no longer have to worry about messing up your original files. Slide & Stack If you have a bunch of toolbars, you will notice that you can actually stack toolbars on top of each other to save space. A small arrow will appear for you to scroll the toolbar from end to end. Just double-click on any toolbar and they will slide to full view. The best way is to enable the "Show Title" option and size it until only the title is in view. Now, whenever you need it, just double-click it to slide out and double-click again to slide back. The drawback here is that all other toolbars in front of the sliding toolbar will slide with it. When you slide that toolbar back, the other moved toolbars however won't slide back with it. So, try to make the more frequent sliding toolbar towards the left side to prevent from moving other toolbars as well. Out Of The Taskbar Toolbars don't have to stick to the taskbar. They can be independent toolbars on the desktop. Just create a toolbar and then drag it to the side of the desktop. It will be something like the taskbar itself but only just buttons. Right-click and select Auto Hide and Always On Top and you have a power-toolbar even that will appear when the desktop is out of sight or IE in full screen. Your don't have to worry about the toolbar popping out at wrong time because you will have to

go to the very edge of the screen to do that. Try having toolbars at all 3 sides (excluding the taskbar of course). Floating Toolbars If your run out of space for your toolbars and you have a uncluttered desktop with a high resolution (800x600 or higher), try dragging it to the desktop. You now have a floating toolbar on your desktop. Resize this properly and place it where you don't have icons interfering. The catch about this trick is that when you click on the "Show Desktop" button on the taskbar, the toolbar will disappear as well. Click on the button again to restore it. Utilizing The Send To Menu One of the coolest things you can do with Windows is the Send To menu. You can add shortcuts to the Send To menu and if you have a unknown file format, you don't have to search for the application to open it up. Just right-click the item and select Send To | Application. It is that simple. To customize the Send To menu, go to c:\window\sendto directory and start creating shortcuts to your frequently used applications. Once it is done, you can now right-click any unknown file and open them without further trouble. You can also add items to the Send To menu without opening up Explorer! Create a shortcut on the desktop to your Send To directory. Dump this shortcut in the Send To directory itself. Name this shortcut Add to Menu. The next time you want to add an item to the Send To menu, rightclick select Send To | Add to Menu add the item will automatically be added! Associating & Re-associating Files If you have once opened an unknown file, Windows will prompt you to open that file with another program. If you like to always open that file under that program, check Always use this program to open this type of file and Windows will do that. Windows In Full Screen To activate the Full Screen mode use the F11 key. This will work on any window including the Explorer. It is best used when presenting a Web page or reading one that requires a great deal of scrolling. Press it again to restore it back to the Window mode. Enabling Thumbnail View If you have a directory just for storing images or HTML files, you will find the preview Window on the left a very good help. But to view them you must highlight them one by one. For a better option, right click any blank space of the window and select Properties. Check the box Enable thumbnail view and click on OK. On the Explorer menu, click on View and you will find a new option - the Thumbnails view. The setting requires you to specify enable Thumbnails view on a folder-by-folder basis. Change the size of Desktop Icons and their Titles To change the size of the Icons on the Desktop: 1. Right-click on the Desktop 2. Choose Properties from the context menu. On the Appearance tab look in the Item list box. Once you find Icon you can choose the size from the Size box. Next change the font type and size. 3. To hit the Apply button, once you are satisfied hit OK

One Click Shut Down or Restart To Shut Down or Restart Windows with one mouse click: 1. Right-click the Desktop and select New > Shortcut 2. In the Command line box type:
rundll.exe user.exe,exitw indow s

for one click shut down

rundll.exe user.exe,exitw indow sexec

for one click restart

rundll.exe shell32.dll,SHExitWindow sEx 0

for one click Log off 3. Click Next and give it the appropriate name (Shut Down or Restart) To change the icon on the shortcut, right-click on the shortcut, and select Change Icon. Some nice icons can be found in \Windows\System\shell32.dll. Using the SHIFT Key You can use the Shift key for many additional features. Try some of the following tasks while holding down the Shift key: Hold down the Shift key when you delete a file. This will keep the file from being sent to the Recycle Bin. Beware, this means that the file has actually been deleted and can no longer be restored Hold down the Shift key when you double-click on My Computer, Network Neighborhood or the Recycle Bin. This will open these items in the dual-paned Windows Explorer Hold down the Shift key when you double-click on any Folder. This will open the folder in the dual-paned Windows Explorer Hold down the Shift key when you click the Yes button from within the Shut Down Windows dialog box when you select Restart. This will restart Windows only (not completely re-boot the computer). This is useful if all you want to do is just activate some Windows-only changes If you hold down the Shift key when you right-click on an icon, the option Open with... will be available so that you can open the file using a program other than the program normally associated with that file

Changing the Sort order in Explorer To change the sort order of the right window of Explorer simply click on one of the buttons underneath the toolbar to change the sort order from ascending to descending. To make the columns fit the largest item in the column, just Double-click on the column heading separator.

Print Screen with Windows 98 When you press the Print Screen button on your keyboard while you're in Windows 98, your screen is copied to the clipboard. Now start the Paint program (click Start > Programs > Accessories > Paint) and from the Edit menu select Paste. Now you can print your screen. If you only want to print an open window, and not the whole screen, hit Alt+Print Screen. Desktop icon for screen saver for Office users If you use Microsoft Office you can create a shortcut on the desktop called, say, "Screen Saver", with the following command line. "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office\OSA.EXE" -s (or substitute the location of your Office installation). This activates the default screensaver. Common shortcut keys Function Access Start menu Switch between programs New Document Open Document Close Document Close a Window Save Print Quit a program Force quit an app or shut down Restart Copy Cut Paste Select all Find Focus to pulldown menu Roll through active windows Picture of Screen Picture of Active Window Resources: Windows 95/98 Tips & Tricks http://www.activewin.com/tips/ Infini Source: Windows Help.Net http://www.windows-help.net/windows98 Windows 98 & NT Tips and Tricks http://www.cs.umb.edu/~alilley/tips.html Keyboard Strokes Ctrl - Esc Alt - Tab Ctrl - n Ctrl - o Ctrl - w Alt - F4 Ctrl - s Ctrl - p Alt - F4 Ctrl Alt Del Ctrl Alt Del (twice) Ctrl - c Ctrl - x Ctrl - v Ctrl - a Ctrl - f Alt and select using arrows Alt - Esc PrintScreen Alt - PrintScreen