 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Making the Most of your Windows Peter Stanski |
Most people appreciate Windows 95's much improved graphical user interface
(GUI). The GUI shell and the Windows Explorer, which add to the desktop metaphor, are very closely related.
This article gives you some handy and useful tips on getting much more from your Win 95 environment.
Jumping to Win 95
When you first install Windows 95 over your Windows 3.x (this may be too late for most users), you can still
use your old program groups. To do this, simply copy the *.GRP files to your Win 95 directory and then start
GRPCONV.EXE from Start/Run. All groups will be automatically added to your Start menu. This
very handy utility saves you manually re-creating program and group entries.
Browsing the file system
Most people are now used to browsing directories visually, but those still living in an MS-DOS box often
prefer to "CD" to their favourite directories. So, to ease the transition to visual browsing, you can open
any directory visually by going to Start/Run and then enter the directory name like C:\WINDOWS. This
will not work in a DOS shell but works quite well from the Run menu. It's also worth mentioning that
you can browse MS-Network connections by supplying the server and directory name such as
\\SERVER_NAME\SHARED_DIR
This saves you visually browsing the network neighbourhood and allows you to go to your directories much
faster.
Quick properties
To find the properties of an item, most people still use the right-click and select Properties method. Those
familiar with Win 3's way of life may have found pressing Alt+Enter on the currently selected item yields the
properties. But there is another, faster method. Simply hold down the Alt key and double-click the item -
almost the same as the Alt+ Enter method without the Enter key.
Starting Explorer faster
Going to My Computer (or desktop links to drives) and pressing Shift while double-clicking on a hard
drive, starts up Explorer at the root directory for the selected drive. If you are really in a hurry, you can
even multi-select several hard drives and start an Explorer for each drive. Additionally, if you can't find
the Explorer icon on your desktop or in your programs, right click on the start button and select it from
there. You can even open the Start menu from here or the Find files assistant.
Explorer managing
For those still struggling with one Explorer window, why not start two, side-by-side? You can quickly browse
in one and drag-and-drop to the other. To do this magic, minimise all windows except for these two Explorer
windows, and right-click on the task-bar selecting Tile vertically or horizontally. This will auto-arrange
the two windows for you. You can also use this method to quickly cascade or arrange all windows. You probably
knew this already, right?
The task bar
If you are tired of having the task bar at the bottom of the screen, just click on it and drag to the top,
left or right edge of the screen. And if you ever run a lot of applications and find yourself with many
minimised apps, enlarge the task bar just as you would any window. Position the pointer over the edge of the
bar and, when it changes shape to a double-ended arrow, click and start dragging. It is also convenient that
each of the four possible locations of the bar remembers the size you have selected.
Explorer folder joys
Using Explorer can be rather annoying as all folders are not fully exposed. A stray finger pressing a "*" or
"+" reveals all subdirectories for the currently selected drive or folder. To compact them, use the "-" key.
Can I safely assume that everyone knows that F5 refreshes the Explorer window, F2 renames items and F3 opens
Find File assistant?
Customising the Start menus
Those used to Xwindows under UNIX are probably familiar with customising pop-up menus. We can do this under
Win 95 with Explorer. Within your Win 95 directory (C:\WINDOWS for most users) take a look at the Start Menu
directory. In here a directory corresponds to a pop-up menu under the Start button. Adding directories or
Shortcuts (links) in this or any sub-directories adds them to the menus. So much easier than hacking UNIX
scripts.
Making it more like a Mac
Macintosh users may be used to seeing small thumbnails of pictures stored on their drives. Many Windows users
don't know that we also have this facility. By editing the registry we, too, can enjoy seeing thumbnails for
any BMP file on our system. Do this by starting up the REGEDIT.EXE (registry editor) application from
Start/Run menu. Then search for Paint.Picture or manually go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Paint.Picture/DefaultIcon
location in the registry tree. Change the value for DefaultIcon to %1, which forces Windows to use the file
as its icon. When you browse your hard disk, you'll find all BMP files have thumbnails. This may degrade
performance on slow systems with lots of bit-maps or minimal memory.
Drag-and-drop
Drag-and-dropping has more applications than just copying and moving files. You can create scrap notes by
selecting text (highlighting) in applications such as Word or Write, and then dragging it onto the desktop.
This creates post-it-note-like document scraps. Double-clicking them brings them up in their respective
editors. Another handy use is to drag application links (shortcuts) into editors like Word. The application's
icon appears in the text and can be activated by double-clicking. OLE, or should I be MS-correct and call it
COM power?
Customising the Starting and Shutdown screens
If you don't know how to change your starting and shutting-down Windows pictures, look for C:\LOGO.SYS
(loading), C:\WINDOWS\LOGOW.SYS (please wait while..) and C:\WINDOWS\LOGOS.SYS (switch off) files. Make sure
that your new images are 256-colour BMP files with a resolution of 320 x 400 pixels.
Fast reboot
Finally, those who have had the pleasure of installing Windows always dread the cold system reboots when
adding/removing hardware. You must remember to say NO to the automatic system reboot after making changes and
manually initiate system Shut Down. In most versions of Win 95, when you see the Shut Down
Windows window, select the Restart the Computer option, and press Shift while clicking the
Yes button. This will not reboot your machine, but merely shuts down Windows and restarts it as if after
a clean boot. It's worth remembering that this may not always work, because some hardware or system changes
require a cold boot. This works quite well as a substitute for most reboots, without waiting for the whole
system to re-initialise.
About the author
Peter Stanski is a freelance computer consultant and developer. He is currently working towards his Ph.D at
Monash University.
Reprinted from the February 1998 issue of PC Update, the
magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
