 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Tips and tricks George Skarbek gskarbek@melbpc.org.au |
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Windows 95 natural keyboard
shortcuts
Many users who use Windows 95 and have the Windows 95 keyboard (the one that has two keys marked with the
Windows logo - WIN key) do not make much use of the extra keys.
These keys can be used for shortcuts such as:
- Pressing the Windows key and E launches Explorer
- WIN+F launches the Find File program
- WIN+M minimises all open programs
- Shift+WIN+M undoes "minimise all".
Screen dumps from Windows
In DOS, when you press the PrintScreen key the current screen is printed. In Windows the PrintScreen key copies an image into a buffer but does not print it. To print that information you must open up a suitable program, such as Word, Paint, Write etc, and paste the image into that program by using Ctrl+V or selecting Edit, Paste.
Producing a screen dump of the active window
Often it is nice to do a screen dump of a small open window, but not of the entire desktop behind it. Just press Alt+PrintScreen to copy the active window into the buffer. This can save a lot of time in cutting and pasting to extract the information from the full screen dump.
Cutting and pasting from a Win 95 DOS box
It is quite easy to copy text from a DOS program and use that text in a Windows 95 program. Run the DOS program in a window, not full screen. Press Alt+Enter if it appears in full screen and you can adjust the size of the window and text.
Click on the Mark icon (that's the dotted line box) and highlight the text that you want, then click on the Copy icon (or Ctrl+V) then open the Windows application (or Alt+Tab to it) and use Edit, Paste (or Ctrl+V) to import the DOS text.
Adjusting Win 95 time
Right click on the time in the bottom right hand corner of the task bar and select Adjust.
Adjusting Win 95 time format
If you don't like the 24-hour display on the task bar, you can change the display mode. From Control Panel, Regional settings, Time, select Time style. You will probably see either HH:mm:ss or H:mm:ss. Alter it to read h:mm:ss and then click on apply. To get more help on this, click on the question mark next to the X in the top corner and then click on the time panel to get more options.
Adjusting Win 95 daylight saving
If you want Win 95 to correctly adjust for daylight saving next summer then use a program called TZedit. It has been released by another team from Microsoft who thought the Powertoy group was getting too much publicity. It is free and is obtainable from http://microsoft.com/windows/common/a2730.htm and also from the new OEM version of Win 95. Although it is theoretically possible to hack into the registry, this data is stored in hexadecimal form and is extremely difficult to decode. Using TZedit it becomes a breeze.
(Daylight saving starts on the last Sunday in October and ends on the last Sunday in March.
Saving pictures in Netscape Gold
Many users save an interesting Web page so that they can refer to it later, and save the pictures by right-clicking. When they open that file, sometimes the pictures are missing. Whether or not they appear is determined by how the original document was created. If they do not appear, it means that in the original document the images were stored in another folder and Netscape is looking for that folder. To fix this, after saving normally, open the document in the Editor, not Browser, and right click on the symbol where the image is supposed to be and select Image Properties. Eliminate the folder information from the image file name and save. Do this for each image. Now when you open, or switch to the browser, all images will be visible. Note that this only works with the Gold version of Netscape.
More on saving pictures in Netscape
There is a better way of saving the images. From Netscape Gold Version 3 when you wish to save, select File, Edit document and then save it. In this way all pictures are saved in one hit rather than having to do it individually.
Shrinking self-extracting executable
When files are sent as attachments via the Internet they are Zipped, to save transmission time for both sides. To make it easier for a new user to work with these files, they are usually converted from a ZIP file to an EXE file by using the ZIP2EXE program that comes with PKZIP. However, even experienced users who know most PKZIP switches do not know that ZIP2EXE has two. The one to use is the -J (junior) switch as this will result in about a 15 KB reduction.
Reprinted from the July 1997 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
