For example, in the 90’s it was hard to search the web. Once you found a site, you pretty much had to add it to your “Favorites” list just to find it again. After a while the Favorites list got bigger and bigger, and it was impossible to know if a site had new content, so it became necessary to go back to the favorite sites periodically and check them again. Considering the slow speed of a dial-up connection, something had to change. And it did.

Simply syndicate it

You may have already heard of RSS. It currently stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Early on it stood for “Rich Site Summary” and before that was “RDF Site Summary” (where “RDF” was geek-speak for “Resource Description Framework”).

In simple terms, RSS is a specification for summarizing a website’s contents. The information contained in an “RSS feed” typically includes a list of pages or articles the site contains. The file is a real-time snapshot of the website at the moment it is requested.

To use a website’s RSS feed, you need to “subscribe” to the feed first. Of course there are many ways to do that, but let’s look at the easiest, using Microsoft Internet Explorer. Again, all modern web browsers support RSS by slightly different means, so if you are using Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome or some other browser I’ve never heard of, the steps should be similar.

In the button bar at the top right corner of Internet Explorer, you’ll find the RSS button. The RSS feed button is normally grayed out. However if an RSS feed is available for that website or page, the RSS feed button turns orange and displays a “glint” indicating this is a new feed (new to you at least).

No feed available	RSS feed is available

If you click the little orange icon, your browser will navigate to the site’s subscription page. The page you see is actually generated by Internet Explorer, and it is displaying the contents of the feed file on the page.

As you can see in the image above, the RSS feed subscription page lists the name of the site in the yellow box along with a description of how feeds work. Below that box is a list of articles for the website. If you click on the “Subscribe to this feed” button, you get a dialog box asking you for details about what to name the feed (with the site name as the default) and where to file it. The latter option allows you to create folders within your feed list to keep them organized. But that’s a more advanced topic.

The last step is to click the “Subscribe” button to confirm the details, and you’re good to go. As the subscription dialog tells you, your computer is going to keep track of your subscriptions for you, so all you have to do is to check up on them.

O subscriptions, where art thou?

Now that you’ve subscribed to this column’s RSS feed, you are likely wondering how you check on that subscription. Glad you asked. This is where an “aggregator” comes in. An aggregator is a program that manages and displays your RSS feed subscriptions in a central and easy to access manner. There are more RSS feed aggregators (a.k.a. “news feed aggregators”) that you can shake a stick at, and feel free to take a casual look at Wikipedia for the full up-to-the-minute list.

IE7 Favorites Button	IE8 Favorites Button

Fortunately Internet Explorer (beginning with version 7) and the other big browsers are included in the list. This means that Internet Explorer provides a place for you to view and manage your feeds without having to leave the program. You’ll find this option when you click the star icon in the top left corner of Internet Explorer 7 or later. This opens the “Favorites Center” which consists of three tabs. You are likely most familiar with the “Favorites” tab, which displays the list of websites that you have added to your favorites list. The middle button is “Feeds” which is the one we’re going to discuss next. The third tab button is “History” which is a very useful feature, but we’ll have to defer discussion of that to another tip.

So here’s the beauty part of the feeds tab: when one of your subscribed feeds has updates you haven’t seen yet, the title of that entry appears in bolded text to distinguish that feed has having updated information. If you click on the the feed entry, the browser navigates to that page and the feed is marked as read. If you organize feeds into folders (as is the case of the provided-by-default “Microsoft Feeds” folder seen above), the folder name text will be bolded to catch your eye.

Feeds are great with 8

If you have updated to Internet Explorer version 8, you have another feature available to you called the “Favorites Bar”. It is enabled by default, and is easy to use. If you have a sharp eye you may have noticed that your Subscribe dialog window looked slightly different than it did in Internet Explorer 7:

If you check the “Add to Favorites Bar” option, a shortcut to the feed will automatically be added there. But never fear, if you didn’t check this when you subscribed to a feed, you can easily add it by hand. Open the Favorites Center and select the Feeds tab. Now right-click the specific feed entry to bring up its “context menu” (the context menu is a topic unto itself, so if you don’t understand follow along and we’ll cover that when we’ve got more time). Then click the “Add to Favorites Bar” menu option.

Once the feed is added to your Favorites Bar, you can manipulate it by right-clicking the feed icon and selecting some of the available options. I like to rename my feeds to conserve space on the Favorites Bar, but that is up to your own taste.

When a feed on your Favorites Bar has detected changes, it will blush orange for a few moments, and the text of the title will be displayed in bold as it was in the Favorites Center. If you click on the feed item, it will drop down a menu showing up to the last ten articles in the feed.

From there, you can select any item in the list. New or updated entries will also appear in bold text, so finding the changes is easy.

Other ways to aggregate

I’ve only brushed over the tip of the aggregator iceberg. If you use Microsoft Outlook 2007 or Microsoft Live Mail, your subscribed feeds are listed within those programs and show up as unread mail. Other programs deal specifically with managing large groups of subscribed feeds. Feel free to explore the other aggregators on your own if your browser doesn’t support your needs.

Next time we’ll run with scissors and eat some paste. See you then…

Fortunately Windows provides a great tool that can be enabled to help you recognize when the “Caps Lock”, “Num Lock” or “Scroll Lock” key are pressed. But before we go there, let’s get us all on the same footing for what the purpose of these keys are to begin with.

Locked and loaded

I’m sure we’ve all had adventures with the Caps Lock key before. As I just stated, the purpose of this key is fairly straightforward: when Caps Lock mode is engaged, all alphabetic characters (“a” to “z”) are typed in upper case (“A” to “Z”). With Caps Lock mode engaged, pressing the C key results in a typed capital “C”.  Because pressing Shift + C normally results in a capital “C” being typed, consider the opposite will happen if Caps Lock mode is engaged: the case is still inverted, so if you type Shift + C, you’ll get a lower case “c”.

Note that number keys are not shifted, that is, Caps Lock mode has no impact on number keys with symbols above them. With Caps Lock mode on, Shift + 2 still types a “2” instead of an “@” sign.

Most modern keyboards sport little lights or other indicators to let you know the state of each of the locking keys. The typical place for these indicators is above the numeric keypad on the standard 104/5 keyboard. But keyboard manufacturers have come up with new places to stash them. Some keyboards even have a little LED light on the Caps Lock key. On the keyboard above, the locking indicators appear in the black area above the brand name (inside the red rectangle). Here’s what the icons often look like:

Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock indicator icons:

Before we move on, take a moment right now to look at your own keyboard and find these indicators.

Please don’t shout at me

The Caps Lock key can be one of the more socially dangerous keys, so I’d like to offer a caution: use this key VERY carefully. If you inadvertently type an email message, instant message or whatever using all capital letters, Internet “netiquette” translates this as SHOUTING OUT LOUDLY WITH RAGE! Thus the term “Screaming Caps” has been used online since online began. If you find yourself writing in all upper case letters, take a few moments to make sure that you mean those words to be said very forcefully—that is how they will be perceived by the recipient.

Some people so dislike the Caps Lock key that they disable it entirely. This is beyond the scope of this article, but if you keep reading, I’ll show you an easy way to make yourself more aware of the potential for screaming caps.

Locking numbers

So what’s the “Num Lock” key for? This one requires a little more of a legacy based answer. In the olden days, the computer keyboard only had 84 keys (give or take a few), arranged in a layout similar to but somewhat different from our modern 104/5 keyboards. These earliest PCs didn’t have a separate numeric key pad and arrow key clusters as 104/5 keyboards have. In fact they had ten rather than twelve function keys (F1 through F10), and those ran down the left side of the keyboard in two columns instead of the single line above the number row as we experience now.

So on these old “XT era” keyboards we still needed a way to input numbers if you came from the accounting side of the office and were proficient at keying in numbers on an adding machine (as I was at the time). But we also needed to have access to the arrow keys, Home, End and others that served dual purposes. So the “Num Lock” key was used to shift these keys between the arrow/directional pad and the numeric keypad.

You will notice that this legacy support still exists on modern keyboards. Look at the number pad area of your desktop computer keyboard on the rightmost side. Notice that the keycaps still include the arrows, Home, End, etc. While I don’t know of anyone using this (except perhaps some really intense gamers), it is interesting to note that the tradition and functionality continues to be implemented.

Nowadays the Num Lock key has become important for notebook users who are used to typing on a traditional numeric keypad: notebooks map the M key to 0, J, K and L to 1, 2 and 3, and U, I and O to 4, 5 and 6. Take a close look at your notebook keyboard and you’ll see the numeric glyphs right there on the key caps for those letters.

So on notebooks in particular, the Num Lock key allows you to do rapid entry of numeric data if you are more familiar with a traditional numeric keypad.

Locking the scroll? Huh?

The “Scroll Lock” is a legacy from those old days where we were stuck with green or amber characters on black computer screens. It was useful to modify how the arrow keys worked, but has for the most part been deprecated by Windows, serving no useful function. I understand it has some use within Microsoft Excel and a small handful of programs, but it’s not a high traffic key on my keyboard. As such, it’s usually bundled up with the “Print Screen” and “Pause” keys (three of the cleanest keys on my grungy keyboard).

The Tip: Detecting unexpected keyboard locks

So getting back to the locking keys and how to determine when you press one either on purpose or by accident: locate the Num Lock key on your keyboard. Now press and hold it down for about five seconds. You should get the following dialog window in Windows XP:

Here is the equivalent dialog window in Windows Vista and Windows 7:

As you can read for yourself, you now have the option of turning on “Toggle Keys” mode. This gives you a distinct “beep” from your computer whenever you press any of the three lock keys.  To disable Toggle Keys mode, repeat the five second press of Num Lock. The beep after the count of five tells you that Toggle Keys is disabled.

The Toggle Keys function is just one of many enhancements to Windows that make the environment easier to use for people with disabilities. But many of these features can be leveraged to help us do our daily computer tasks more efficiently with more feedback. Of course we’ll cover more of them in future tips.

Next time we’ll find a simple and easy way to keep up to date when your favorite websites post new information. See you then…

Before we get going too far into this tip, I should point out that if you are using Internet Explorer and you do not see the Menu Bar, press either the Alt key or F10 to force the menu to show itself. The menu can be hidden in Internet Explorer and other programs. I’ll show you how to change this behavior in IE and other programs later in this tip.

Time to take some shortcuts

You have probably noticed that menus don’t always look the same. Sometimes one letter in each word is underlined and sometimes none are. What the heck’s going on here? And what does that underline mean?

First I’ll answer the latter question: the underline is the “keyboard shortcut” for that menu. That underlined letter corresponds to the menu command that will be issued if you press that key on the keyboard. Take a look shortcut cues in this image:

I invoked this menu by pressing Alt + F (underlined in “File”) and releasing the Alt key. In this menu, I can now trigger any of the menu commands by typing the underlined letter. Typing “N” would close my current document and open a new one. Typing “O” instead would open a dialog box asking which file you want to open.

Something that is often overlooked on menu items is the “trailing ellipsis” (“…”) after some menu items. The trailing ellipsis is a visual trigger telling you that this menu item will open a dialog window. Menu items with no trailing ellipsis simply execute an operation without any need for interaction (unless it needs to prompt you to save your file or another important warning).

Menu navigation is easy from here. In addition to using the shortcut letters and numbers, you can use the arrow keys to move to the right and left on the main menu bar, up and down on the dropdown menus, and to the right on a menu with a  black triangle on the right side. This triangle means that there is a sub-menu that can be opened by typing its shortcut key, pressing the right arrow or pressing the Enter key. That sub-menu is similarly navigable with the arrows, and pressing the left arrow closes the sub-menu leaving you on the parent item with the black triangle.

Once you’ve navigated to the menu item of your choice, hit Enter and it’s a done deal. Not liking where this is going and you want to bail on the menu entirely? Hit the Escape key to close the entire menu.

I find this arrow-key navigation for menus particularly useful when I’m looking for a command, but I can’t remember where it’s located. In larger, more specialized applications, it’s a nice way to explore the options without worrying about accidentally letting go of the mouse or having to drag it around the desk.

Safely handling shortcut key collisions

As you see in the previous screen shot, sometimes menu items get long and complex. It does happen occasionally where two menu items have the same shortcut letter assigned. What happens here? If you type that letter key, the selection rectangle will jump to the first menu item with that letter and wait for your next decision. If you press the letter again, it will jump to the next one with that letter and wait again. If you hit the Enter key, the currently selected menu command is executed.

Some menus have no shortcut key underlines. In Internet Explorer, if you select Menu option “Favorites” you’ll note that none of these Menu options have shortcut keys defined. As we did with shortcut key collisions, you can type the first letter of the entry you want to move the selector to the first menu item that begins with that letter. Press the same key again to go to the next one that begins with that letter. Wash, rinse, repeat. Hit the Enter key when you’ve got the one you want selected.

Mutant Menu items

Some menu items are different from others. Some have a checkbox in front of them. Take a look at the next screen shot and observe the results of selecting Menu option “View | Toolbars” (that’s Windows lingo for click on the View menu item and then on the Toolbars item).

The check mark in front of “Favorites Bar” means that the Favorites Bar is currently visible. Similarly the lack of a check mark in front of the “Menu Bar” option means if you select that Menu item, the Menu Bar will be displayed by default. The next time you select “View | Toolbars” you’ll see a checkbox in front of “Menu Bar”—as expected.

Whether you have the Menu Bar visible in Internet Explorer is completely up to you as the user. I’ve become accustomed to the button menus in Internet Explorer, so I leave this option unchecked. Add salt to your own taste.

Playing hide and seek with shortcuts

To answer the question of where do the shortcut underlines go when they’re not in use and why do they hide in the first place, trust me…there’s a secret undisclosed location where we programmers store all of the unused underlines, so they are secured when not onscreen.

But why do they hide in the first place? We have to set the way-back machine to the earliest versions of Windows, when menu options were always visible. Somewhere back around Windows NT/Windows 2000, Microsoft designers decided to tweak the behavior of the menus to make those underlines only appear when they are needed. It left us with less “noise” on the menu, especially when using the mouse to navigate the menus, since the letter shortcut was not needed.

Microsoft gets a lot of feedback from their users on how features are utilized, and this change was a part of streamlining the user experience. When you invoke a menu with the keyboard using either the Alt key or F10, the shortcut underlines are displayed. When you invoke the menu with your mouse, they are hidden. Of course, this can be reconfigured to show the shortcut underlines all the time if you’d like. If so, feel free to ask in the comments section below.

It’s good to know that the keyboard shortcuts still work whether they are displayed or not. You can use the mouse to open the File menu and then press “X” to close the program if you prefer. Or you can use the system command Alt + F4 to close the window. So many choices. So many ways of doing the same thing. Redundancy is alive and well in Windows.

Next time we’ll talk a little on the topic of SCREAMING CAPITALS and how to avoid this embarrassing netiquette faux pas. See you then…

The combination of WinKey + Tab in Windows XP allowed you to switch between applications in a simple way: the combination changes all application icons on the Task Bar to an unselected state, and each additional press of the Tab key cycles the highlight from left to right. When the application icon you want is highlighted, hit the Enter key and that window will be activated. It’s not as pretty as Alt + Tab, but it is still functional.

Enter Windows Vista Aero

Those of you who spent the extra $60 for Windows Vista Home Premium (and have a supported video card) are bathing in new Vista features. Besides Windows Media Center and other fun features like system backup and restore, you get the sleek and stylin’ new Aero interface. Aside from being just so darn pretty, it has additional features like transparent window borders, live thumbnail previews and Aero Flip 3D.

The new Aero Flip 3D mode is triggered when you hit WinKey + Tab with at least one application running. All open windows are animated into a circular queue of the window contents. Pressing Tab again moves you forward through the list. Pressing Alt + Shift + Tab moves you backwards. The effect is so pretty that it was the first big feature touted by Microsoft when giving sneak peaks of Windows Vista to the public.

Once Flip 3D mode is enabled, it will persist until you release the Alt key or hit the Escape key. So once you WinKey + Tab Flip 3D mode, you can use your mouse scroll wheel to flip through the open windows. You can even use the arrow keys to move through the list (although this is not currently working in the Windows 7 Release Candidate…I’ve already reported that this is missing).

It’s your freedom to choose

Whether you change windows using the Task switcher (Alt + Tab) or Aero Flip 3D (WinKey + Tab) is up to you. I love the effect and I’m trying to remember to use it on my Windows 7 notebook, but for my desktop computer it’s more than just relearning.

I have two monitors on this computer because in my programming work it’s very useful to be able to have my development environment program running in the left window and the program I’m working on running in the right window. It’s a single desktop, so only one program can be active at once. But I can easily drag windows between monitors and actually have them straddle the two.

My problem with Aero Flip 3D is that in a multiple monitor environment, the windows fly in front of me very quickly, sometimes travelling literally two feet from the right monitor to the Flip 3D display on the left (where it is always displayed). Dismissing Flip 3D sends the windows back. After a while it becomes a little jarring and a little nauseating. But I am going to try to remember to use it on my single monitor notebook.

Legacy support

If you are a Windows Vista user and you miss Windows XP’s former WinKey + Tab behavior, never fear: you can use the new WinKey + T (the “T” is for “Task Bar”) combination to move focus to the first icon on the Task Bar. You get a live thumbnail of the candidate window. And no surprise, WinKey + Shift + T moves you backward through the icons. You can even use the arrow keys to select a new window to activate. Press the Enter key to activate the window.

This behavior continues into Windows 7, where WinKey + T gives keyboard access to all application icons on the Task bar whether open or not.

We now return you to your life already in progress.  See you for next Monday’s tip!

Let’s say earlier you were reading this tip, and without closing the browser window, you launched Notepad (our favorite demo program).  So you have feverishly been typing away when you suddenly have the urge to switch back here to Dingo Tips and continue reading. You could grab for that mouse, but that’s a lot of work when your hands are already on the keyboard.  So of course, there’s an easier way: press Alt + Tab. That simple keystroke combo switches you back to the last window you were using (Notepad) where you can resume writing your poetry, memoirs or whatever you were doing before.

So you’re an über-multi-tasker? No problemo.

So what happens when you have more than two windows open? You may have noticed when you pressed Alt + Tab that a temporary window opened up in the middle of your screen.  If you hold the Alt key down and keep holding it after you press the Tab key, notice the results:

In the example above, Windows XP displays the “Task switcher” window. By looking at the order of the icons from left to right, we can tell that I was actively working in Notepad before hitting Alt + Tab. Additionally, I was running Internet Explorer to view this site, and Microsoft Paint was also running. If I had more applications open they would appear to the right of the list in a “most recently used” (MRU) order.

The target application (the application that will be activated) is indicated by the blue box around the icon. If I were to release the Alt key, we’d be switched to the blue boxed application. Instead, if I hit the Tab key a second time, the blue box moves to the right. Hitting it a third time brings the box back to the first icon, and Notebook would remain the active application if I let go of Alt.

The text that appears in the box below the icons is the text that is displayed in the application’s Title Bar, generally the document name followed by a hyphen and the name of the application. If you have multiple instances of a program open, you can distinguish between them by examining this text.

Note that in Windows XP, you will only get the Task switcher window if you have more than one program running.

Shift into reverse

As it was way back in the olden days of typewriters, the Shift key is used to select between lower-case (“a”) and the capital or upper-case (“A”) version of letters. Other keyboard keys have two glyphs on them representing the base character and the shift character. The “7/&” key is an example.

With that in mind, take a look at the Tab key on your keyboard. Most current keyboards include a “dual arrow” glyph below or to the right of the word “Tab”. Note the direction of the bottom arrow: it’s pointing to the right. The top arrow points to the left. There’s a reason for that. The Shift key modifies the Tab key to send a “backward tab” command. Turns out this is true all over Windows: Shift + Tab often does the opposite of what Tab key does.

So looking back at the screen shot above, remember I am still holding the Alt key down in the middle of the task switching operation. If I accidentally tabbed past the item I wanted to activate, hitting Shift + Tab moves the blue box to the left.

One last fun fact about the task switcher for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users: while holding down the Alt key, you can use the right- and left-arrow keys to move the blue box to the right or left. If you get many windows open, this can be a time saver.

A hasty retreat

If you find you have accidentally hit the Alt + Tab operation and are still holding down the Alt key, or even if you simply have changed your mind and don’t want to switch windows after all (as Windows users, we are allowed to change our mind), remember our old friend the Escape key. Punch the Escape key and the task switcher window goes away and all is restored as it was before you hit Alt + Tab. As I frequently change my mind, it’s easy to see why the Escape key is perhaps my favorite on the entire keyboard.  But please don’t tell that to any of the other keys for the obvious reasons.

Task Switching: The Next Generation

Users of Windows Vista and Windows 7 have more information in the task switcher window than Windows XP.  In Windows Vista, the task switcher not only has the new glassy look as other elements in Vista, we also get a sneak peek at what the application’s window looks like. The Title Bar text has been moved to the top, and in addition to window peek, the application’s icon shows up in the bottom right corner of each window represented in the task switcher.

As was the case with Windows XP, the entries appear in the most recently used order from left to right, and the application to activate has a blue glass rectangle over it.

With Windows 7, the Task switcher gets a new feature called “Aero Peek” where, if you pause when using Alt + Tab to switch windows, all windows on the screen turn to transparent glass, and the activation candidate window is displayed in full size. As of this writing, Windows 7 is still in Release Candidate mode, so I’ll wait for the final release to show a screen shot of this. Trust me…it’s cool and useful as well.

In both Windows Vista and Windows 7, the Desktop is considered an application, and as such becomes a window to which you can switch. Looking at the above screen shot, the rightmost window is the Desktop, showing an improved integration for accessing this part of the Windows shell.  We’ll discuss the desktop in more detail in a future tip.

Next time, we’ll take a closer look at menus and shortcuts. See you then!

To start on the same page, take a moment to find your Recycle Bin icon.  It’s on the “Desktop” (we’ll discuss the Desktop more in detail in the future, but in a nutshell, it’s the background of your screen including the Task Bar at the bottom).

The Recycle Bin icon looks like a trash can.  The exact picture depends on which version of Windows you are running. In Windows XP (left icon, above), it is installed in the bottom right corner of the Desktop.  In Windows Vista and Windows 7 (right icon, above), it is installed in the top left corner.

There are several ways you can get to your Desktop from here (reading this post in your browser).  The quickest is to hit WinKey + M, and when you are done, pressing WinKey + Shift + M to restore your windows.  Another way is to click on the minimize button in the top right corner of the window to reduce it to an icon on the Task Bar.  Once you’ve located your Recycle Bin, click on the Task Bar icon to bring this browser window back to continue reading. You can move the Recycle Bin to a new location on the Desktop using the same technique as moving a window: click and hold the left mouse button on the icon, move the mouse pointer to the new location, and release the mouse button.

Now that we’ve found the Recycle Bin, let’s discuss it’s purpose before we look inside.  In Windows, when you delete a file from your hard drive, it’s not gone forever.  Instead of deleting the file, Windows simply moves to the Recycle Bin.  It will stay there until the Recycle Bin is “emptied” by you.  Windows allows us to configure the size of the Recycle Bin, but the default setting of 10% of the hard disk space is good enough for most users. If the Recycle Bin runs out of room, it will begin deleting the oldest items in the bin as needed.

If you’ve deleted a file by accident, you recover it from the Recycle Bin easily enough.  Open the bin by double-clicking the Recycle Bin icon (you can also right-click the icon and select “Open” on the Context Menu—more on this shortcut later).  Locate the file and make sure it is selected by clicking on the file name.  Find and click the “Restore this item” task (in Windows XP it is located in the left “Task Pane,” in Windows Vista and Windows 7, it appears just below the address box).

If you have not selected a file, the “Restore this item” option reads “Restore all items,” however I recommend using caution in hitting this option.  If you have many files in your Recycle Bin, you may get unintended results.  Restore all items is an all or nothing deal.

To permanently delete all files from the Recycle Bin, click the task option, “Empty the Recycle Bin” and, after a prompt that you really wanted to do this, all files are gone.

To permanently delete a single file from the Recycle Bin, select the file and press the “Delete” key on your keyboard.

There is a very important caveat here: I’ve been careful to talk about the Recycle Bin only in terms of the hard drive on your computer.  If you delete files from a removable disk (like a floppy disk or “thumb” flash drive), the files are actually deleted instead of moved to the Recycle Bin.  You will receive a warning message telling you the file will be deleted permanently.  This is an important consideration when deleting files.

It’s nice to know that the Recycle Bin is there quietly doing its job.  Now if you accidentally delete a file, you know where to look to get it back.

Next time we’ll talk a little bit about taking a few shortcuts.  See you then!

The mouse began its existence looking much like the familiar object we use daily.  A simple rubber ball inside a small plastic box did the trick. Dragging it around the mouse pad was easy, and mousing quickly became an intuitive means for interacting with the computer.

The original mouse sported a single mouse button.  As the PC mouse evolved, we added a second button and then even later a third in the middle.  They became more ergonomic, getting rid of the blocky feel.  Eventually the third button morphed into the “mouse wheel” that is common to most pointing devices these days. The trackball I use has five buttons, the fourth and fifth of which can be configured to do my bidding.

I say “pointing devices” for a reason: the mouse is not the only pointer-based input device available.  There are trackball devices where you have a marble to roll around with your thumb instead of physically moving the mouse on the desktop.  Many notebooks have track pad that you use your finger to move the pointer around the screen.  Other notebooks have a “Pointing Stick” type of controller that looks like a pencil eraser between the G, H and B keys that allows the user to move the pointer.  My notebook has both, and I use them both.  If you have one of the other types of pointing device, just use that whenever I refer to a mouse.

Standard mouse (3 button): Track Ball (5 button): Notebook Pointing Stick:

In Windows, it’s polite to point

When you drag your mouse around the desktop, the “mouse pointer” on the screen follows your progress.  The mouse pointer can take on many different shapes depending on what it is hovering over and how you are interacting with the system.  For example, the typical mouse pointer is an arrow pointing to the upper left.  As we discussed in Tip 7, if you move the mouse pointer over the edge of a window that can be resized, the default pointer changes to an arrow icon giving visual indication of what clicking that location will do (initiate a window resize).

When Windows is busy doing some processing, the arrow pointer is replaced with an hourglass pointer (in Windows XP) or the infamous “Flaming Doughnut” (in Windows Vista and Windows 7). When something is happening in background, that is to say, if another program is doing heavy processing and the system becomes briefly unavailable, the icon changes to a combination of the default arrow pointer and the wait hourglass/doughnut.

Mouse cursors in Windows XP (default, busy, background activity): Mouse cursors in Windows Vista and Windows 7 (default, busy, background activity):

So what happens if you roll over a text field such as the search bar in your browser or the document area of Notepad or Microsoft Word?  Try it now: open the Run window by pressing WinKey + R. Roll your cursor over the “Open” text box.  The arrow pointer changes to an I-bar pointer indicating that this text can be edited. 

If you click the text box, the I-bar pointer moves the “input carat” (also known as the “insertion point”) to that location and sets “focus” to that text field.  In the above screen shot, the input carat is located between the letters “p” and “a” in the word “notepad".

(If you have never used your Run window, the textbox may not have text in it yet—if this is your case, click the textbox, type “notepad” and click the OK button or hit the Return key (because OK is the default button), close Notepad using Alt + F4, then reopen the Run window using WinKey + R. Then take a deep breath and pat yourself on the back. That’s a whole lot of shortcuts you just took.)

Our focus becomes more clear

Focus refers to which field gets the characters when you type on the keyboard.  By definition, only one “control” (textbox, button, etc.) can have focus at any given time.  So selecting another control causes focus to change to that control. So, if you are working with a more complex form such as an address card, only one of the fields can be active at once. You select the active field by clicking on that textbox, giving it focus.

In this screen shot of an Outlook contact card, note that the first textbox has focus because it has the flashing “|” carat. If you type, that field gets the characters. To type in the Company textbox, you can either click within the textbox with the mouse pointer, or you can simply hit the Tab key.  Changing focus using the Tab key is another can of worms entirely, so as usual we’ll put that topic off for a future tip of its own.

When you are done, close the Run window by hitting Alt + F4, by pressing the Escape key or clicking the Cancel button (so many ways to do it…choose the easiest for you).

A cursor is not a carat!

Now that I’ve defined the input carat, it is time to make a very important distinction between the mouse pointer and the input carat: you move the mouse pointer by moving the mouse.  You give focus to a textbox by moving the mouse pointer over that textbox and clicking once.  Once a textbox has focus, the carat is displayed.  You can move the input carat within a text field using either the arrow keys on the keyboard or the mouse.

The input carat is a very special entity in Windows and deserves its own up close and personal attention, so that will have to wait for a future tip.  For now, you can rest assured knowing that the little “|” you move around when writing letters or emails has a name and a far greater purpose than you ever imagined.

Next time we’ll take a look at living a greener computing existence.  See you then…

As with most core controls like scroll bars, window frames and such, the look of the Task Bar has changed over the years, but the components are for the most part the same.  Consider the next images.  All three current versions of Windows have the same root elements.

Pictured above are taskbars for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.  Perhaps the most radical change has come with Windows 7.

On the left end is the “Start Button” with the Windows logo (in Windows XP it also features the word “start”). Clicking this brings up the “Start Menu” and similarly dismisses the menu on a second click.  This is the same behavior we saw previously by pressing the WinKey.  It’s just another one of those wonderful redundancies built into Windows that means we don’t have to hit the keyboard if mousing or vice-versa.

Where Do Tasks Live?

On the far right is the “Task Notification Area” (also known as the “System Tray” or simply “the Tray”).  The Task Notification Area typically contains the clock, an icon for the speaker volume, as well as optional icons representing your battery status or wireless Internet connection signal strength, etc.  In a perfect world, the Task Notification Area is used by programs that don’t need a window to run.  A perfect example is the system speaker volume icon: it is running from the time you boot up Windows until you shut the computer down, and when clicked provides a simple interface to change the volume.

Sadly some programmers have misused the Task Notification Area, resulting in very crowded and overpopulated conditions down in that corner.   But fortunately in Windows XP we gained the ability to hide unused icons while still having them just a click away.  We’ll cover how to do this in a future tip, so if you’ve got a dozen or so icons in your Tray, patience will be a virtue.

Finally, the Task Bar

The area between the Start Button and the Task Notification is the Task Bar proper. When you have a window open, there is generally an icon representing that window on the Task Bar. Remember in our discussion of window size that you can minimize, maximize, restore or close by right-clicking an icon on the Task Bar. Some dialog windows and other windows don’t have Task Bar icons, but they’re usually not around long enough to worry about.  Below the three versions of Windows with Windows Notepad (a small text editing program) and two “instances” or open windows running Internet Explorer 8.  Note that because Notepad is currently the active application, its Task Bar icon representation is different.

In Windows XP the icon for the “active application”–that is, the window you are currently interacting with—is darker than the other application icons.  In Windows Vista the current application’s Task Bar icon shows up as solid black against the other icons that are more transparent.  Windows 7 again has the most significant change in that it has grouped the two Internet Explorer icons into a single icon with a second “shadow” behind it.  Hovering over that icon pops up a peek at the two windows and allows you to select the one you want.

This “grouping” feature I’ve described in Windows 7 has been around since Windows XP.  To see it for yourself, in Windows XP or Windows Vista, open as many Windows Explorer windows (remember the WinKey + E trick) as you need to until you see them collapse into an icon indicating how many windows are collapsed.  Clicking on the icon brings up a list of the windows by name (in Windows Vista and Windows 7, hovering over an application icon displays a snapshot of the contents of each window).  We can control this feature by customizing the Task Bar options, but we’ll save those details for a later column.

Coming Attractions: Quick Launch

I’ve teased many times about the Quick Launch toolbar and how it is coming more front and center as to how we interact with the Task Bar.  Suffice it to say this is a tip or more by itself, but in case your computer has the Quick Launch toolbar option enabled, I’ll discuss it very briefly.  We’ll take a deep breath and go into much more detail on the Quick Launch toolbar in a future tip.

In a nutshell, the Quick Launch toolbar is a container for “shortcuts” that you might want to have always available for fast  and easy access.  When enabled, the Quick Launch toolbar is usually docked just to the right of the Start button.  If you add your most often used applications here, they are readily available.  Also, as we learned in Tip 3, in Windows Vista you can launch a Quick Launch shortcut by pressing WinKey + # where “#” is a number from 1 to 9 based on the order in the Quick Launch toolbar.  This becomes even more compelling in Windows 7 where the line between the Task Bar and the Quick Launch toolbar is even more blurred.

So just consider that I’m trying to give you a little advance notice of more new Windows-ey goodness coming soon to a computer near you when Windows 7 becomes available.

Next time, we’ll look a little more into the mouse, cursors and pointers. See you then!

The Shift, Control and Alt keys are located in pairs on both sides of the keyboard.  Many notebook computers only have one of each of these keys.  Take a look at your own keyboard and locate these keys now.

Shift into gear

The modifier key that should be most familiar to anyone who used a typewriter (before they were reclassified as “antique remnants of yesteryear”) is the Shift key.  As it has always done, the shift key allows you to type capital letters and special characters.  When you press the key marked “A”, you’ll get a lower case “a” in your window.  To type a capital A, you press and hold the shift key, hit the A key and release the shift key.  Similarly, to get an ampersand character (&), you would hold down shift and press the key with “7” on the lower part and “&” on the upper row.

The shift key is called a “modifier key” because it modifies another key’s action.  That makes sense.  Let’s look at another modifier key.

Take control

The next key to arrive on computer keyboards back in the 60’s when computers first got keyboards was the Control key.  It is named as such because it allowed each key on the keyboard to have a second meaning.  When holding down the Control key (on some keyboards this is abbreviated as “Ctrl”), pressing another key executes a control command.  There are many standard control commands in Windows, and they are consistent across most Windows applications.  Control key shortcuts are generally used for program commands.

For example, Ctrl + S is a standard shortcut for pulling down the File menu and clicking on Save.  Another is Ctrl + P, which opens the Print dialog box.  And don’t forget the old favorite Ctrl + F to open the Find dialog box.  Standard Control key shortcuts are everywhere in Windows, and I’ll be identifying them individually as they come up in the topics we cover.

An alternative

Computers received the Alt key (short for “alternative”) when early IBM PCs became popular.  Like the Control key, the Alt key is used to issue system commands.  The Alt key is a modifier key, so if you hold it down and press another key, a system level command is issued.  Alt key combinations are typical for working with multiple open windows. 

One universal and very useful combination, Alt + F4 is implemented by Windows to close the window you are currently working on, and thus is the same as clicking the red “X” button in the top right corner. To see this in action, press WinKey + E to open Windows Explorer (as we learned in Tip 3).  Click on the Explorer window to ensure it is the active window.  Then press Alt + F4.  Bang.  The Explorer window is closed.

Combining the three

Don’t be surprised to find that modifier keys can be used together.  In some business settings when your computer is connected to an office network, you may need to press Control + Alt + Delete to get a system login window.  To do this, you would press and hold down both the Control and Alt keys and press the Delete key.  Depending on which version of Windows you are running, nowadays that key combination will do one of several things when you are logged on: if you’re on an office system, it will bring up a system menu allowing you to log off, switch users, change your password, etc.  With others versions it may run Task Manager (an internal program that tells an experienced user important information about how Windows is performing).  Try it.  Then use the Escape key to get rid of whatever opened.

The fourth musketeer

If you are using a notebook computer, there is another modifier key often found on the keyboard.  The Function key allows each key on the keyboard to serve yet another purpose.  As notebook computer keyboards get smaller and smaller, manufacturers are finding ways to stack even more functionality onto existing keys.

On notebook computers, the function key (sometimes abbreviated “Fn”) controls additional functions of the computer.  In the image above, note that Fn + F11 key will turn the computer’s wireless networking card on and off, Fn + F12 replicates the Pause/Break key on a normal keyboard, and the two to the right allow “Scroll Lock” and “System Request” to be present on the keyboard.  Granted, these keys aren’t used very much, but it’s worth the time to take a look at your own notebook keyboard and discover what the Function key can do for you.

This should give you a good overview as to how modifier keys can allow other keys to serve more than one purpose. 

Next time we’ll look at a one of the more important parts of the Windows desktop.  See you then…

But how do you change the size of a window?  And while we’re at it, what are those two buttons in the top right of my window (the one that looks like an underscore (“_”) and the one that looks like a little square)?  Let’s take a look.

Window size is a drag away

If you’ve been following this column, you’ll have recognized that a common gesture we do with the mouse is to drag things around the screen and drop them where we want them.  As a definition, a drag gesture consists of moving the mouse pointer to the item to be dragged, clicking the primary mouse button (usually the left one), holding it down and moving the mouse until the thing being dragged is in the correct location.  Letting go of the button is the drop.

To change window sizes, the approach is similar.  If you move your mouse pointer over the border of the window to be resized, note that the mouse pointer changes.  To see this in action, do it now: move your mouse to the right of the browser window you’re reading this column in and notice the cursor change.  The familiar arrow pointer turns into a dual arrow pointing in an East/West direction.  Go to the top or bottom border and the cursor changes to a dual arrow pointing North/South.  Now head to a corner.  Depending upon which corner you go to, you’ll get a NE/SW or NW/SE arrow pointing diagonally.  These cursor changes are designed to give you a visual hint of what will happen if you click and drag.

With your mouse pointer hovering over the right border, press the primary mouse button and hold it.  Sliding left to right will change the size of the window.  Moving it to the bottom or top and repeating the process will change the overall height of the window.  And of course, the corners change both height and width at the same time.

Note that there are some windows that cannot be resized.  You’ll know a window cannot be resized if you hover over a window border and the cursor doesn’t change.

Now you see it…now you don’t

In the last tip I teased that I’d tell you about the other two buttons in the top right corner of most windows.  Well, now is the time for disclosure.  Recall the following screen shot:

In the top right corner of most windows are three buttons.  As we discussed last time around, the red “X” is the window Close button, and will thus try to close the window if you click it.

A window has three “states”.  The normal state for a window is “restored”.  When a window is restored, it is floating on the desktop.  The application’s icon appears in the Task Bar at the bottom of the screen.

To get more working space in your running application, you can click the middle button with the square, also known as the Maximize button.  When a window is maximized, it takes up the entire screen leaving the Task Bar visible at the bottom.  To restore the window to "restored” state, click the middle button again.

When you maximize a window, the middle icon in the top right corner changes.

Normally it appears as a small white box:

When maximized, the middle button changes to two boxes:

I should mention a shortcut here: in addition to being able to maximize and restore a window by clicking on the Maximize button, you can also double-click the title bar to accomplish the same end.  Double-click it a second time to restore the window.

The third state for a window is “minimized” where the window is not visible and is only represented by an icon entry in the Task Bar.  You click the Minimize button to hide the window.  To restore a minimized application, click the icon entry in the Task Bar.  The next image shows what this looks like.

At the risk of overloading you with too many fun facts about Windows, I’ll close this tip off by telling you that these options (Restore, Minimize, Maximize) are available by right-clicking the application icon on the Task Bar (note that even the menu icons are consistent).  Minimize is grayed (disabled) because this window is already minimized.  So we could restore it by clicking the Restore menu item, or we could maximize it by clicking the Maximize menu item.

I hope you have a better idea about how to control the size and appearance of your windows.  When you have more than two or three windows open, your resizing skills should help keep your windows organized and convenient.

Next time we’ll take another look at the keyboard and talk about the modifier keys.  See you then…