This chapter provides a quick overview of the features of the Windows Vista user interface, which should be sufficient to help you become oriented and make the most of the system fairly quickly. Even if you're already familiar with the basic Windows interface, you will learn about the differences between Windows Vista and previous versions, making this chapter worth a read. If you're fairly new to Windows, you should certainly take the time to read this chapter. Concepts that advanced users might consider elementary should prove enlightening. The most important thing is to get a sense of the consistency (or occasionally the lack thereof) in the Windows Vista interface so that you can tackle any new Windows application with ease.
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The Desktop
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Figure 2-1. Windows Vista Desktop features Figure 2-1 shows the main features of the Windows Vista Desktop. The callouts in the figure highlight some of the special-purpose icons and buttons that may appear on the Desktop. view the image gallery | |
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Figure 2-1 shows the main features of the Windows Vista Desktop. The callouts in the figure highlight some of the special-purpose icons and buttons that may appear on the Desktop.
Point-and-Click Operations
Windows Vista offers several settings that affect the way the interface responds to mouse clicks. The default setting (the way it works when you first install Windows Vista) will also be familiar to most users, as it is consistent with the way most operating systems work.Depending on your current settings, however, Windows may respond to mouse clicks differently. See the upcoming "Alternate Behavior" section for differences. Later on, you'll see how to choose between the classic behavior and the alternate behavior.
If you are a new computer user who hasn't used a GUI before, here are some things you need to know:
Default Behavior
The default setting is consistent with most operating systems, including previous versions of Windows. You can tell whether you have the default style if the captions under the icons on your Desktop are not underlined. The alternate behavior (sometimes called the Web View) is discussed in the next section. Here is how Windows Vista responds to mouse clicks by default:
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Figure 2-2 Selecting multiple files by dragging a "rubber band" view the image gallery | |
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Figure 2-3 Folder options, which specify whether to use a Windows ''classic'' view or instead display previews and filters, whether folders should open in new windows, and whether double-clicking or single-clicking selects items view the image gallery | |
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Here are the differences between the default and alternate behaviors:
Windows Vista has more ways to launch a program than just about any other operating system:
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Word, then select the Microsoft Word icon and press Enter.
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Some programs are really "in your face." For example, if you install AOL, it often puts an icon on the Desktop, in the Quick Launch Toolbar, and on the All Programs menu, and even shoehorns an icon into the System Tray, which is normally reserved for system status indicators. Other, less obtrusive programs may be more difficult to locate. In fact, you'll probably find several programs mentioned in this book that you never even knew you had!
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Figure 2-4 The decorations of a standard window: a title bar, title buttons, a menu, and a scrollable client area. view the image gallery | |
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Most types of windows are resizable, meaning that you can stretch them horizontally and vertically to make them smaller or larger. Just grab an edge or a corner and start dragging. There are two shortcuts that come in quite handy: maximize and minimize. If you click the maximize button (the middle button in the cluster in the upper right of most windows), the window will be resized to fill the screen. You can't move or resize maximized windows. If you minimize a window (the leftmost button in the cluster), it is shrunk out of sight and appears only as a button on the Taskbar. Minimizing is handy to get windows out of the way without closing them.
Under certain circumstances, one or two scroll bars might appear along the bottom and far right of a window. These allow you to move the window's view so that you can see all of its contents. This behavior can be counterintuitive for new users because moving the scroll bar in one direction will cause the window's contents to move in the opposite direction. Look at it this way: the scroll bar doesn't move the contents; it moves the viewport. Imagine a very long document with very small type. Moving the scroll bars is like moving a magnifying glass--if you move the glass down the document and look through the magnifier, it looks like the document is moving upward.
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Figure 2-5 Switching among windows using Windows Flip. view the image gallery | |
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There are three other ways to activate (assign the focus to) a window. You can click on the Taskbar button that corresponds to the window you want to activate, and it will be brought to the front. If it is minimized (shrunk out of sight), it will be brought back (restored) to its original size. Another way is to use a feature called Windows Flip. Hold down the Alt key and press Tab, and you'll see thumbnails of all your open windows. Keep holding down the Alt key and pressing Tab until you highlight the window you want to open, then release the keys, and you'll be sent to that window. Similarly, to use Windows Flip 3D, hold down the Windows logo key and press Tab, and you'll see thumbnails of all your windows in a 3D stack. Scroll through them by continuing to hold the Windows logo key and pressing Tab until you get to the window you want. Figure 2-5 shows Windows Flip in action, and Figure 2-6 shows Windows Flip 3D.
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Figure 2-6 Switching among windows using Windows Flip 3D, which works only if you're using Aero. view the image gallery | |
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Often, new and veteran users are confused and frustrated when they try to type into a window and nothing happens--this is caused by nothing more than the wrong window having the focus. (I've seen skilled touch-typists complete an entire sentence without looking, only to realize that they forgot to click first.) Even if the desired window is in front, the wrong control (or even the menu) may have the focus.
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You can configure some windows to be "always on top." This means that they will appear on top of other windows, even if they don't have the focus. Floating toolbars, the Taskbar, and some help screens are common examples. If you have two windows that are "always on top," they behave the same as normal windows, because one can cover the other if it is activated, but both will always appear in their own "layer" on top of all the normal windows.
The Desktop is also a special case. Although it can have the focus, it will never appear on top of any other window. To access something on the Desktop, you have two choices: minimize all open windows by holding the Windows logo key and pressing the D key, or press the Show Desktop button on the Quick Launch Toolbar (discussed in Chapter 3) to temporarily hide all running applications. You can also minimize your current window, although in some instances, that only leads you to the next open window you need to minimize, and so on, until you reach the Desktop.
Many windows have a menu bar, commonly containing standard menu items such as File, Edit, View, and Help, as well as application-specific menus. Click on the menu title to drop it down, and then click on an item in the menu to execute it. Any menu item with a small black arrow that points to the right leads to a secondary, cascading menu with more options. Generally, menus drop down and cascading menus open to the right; if there isn't room, Windows pops them up in the opposite direction. If you want to cancel a menu, simply click anywhere outside of the menu bar. See the next section, "Keyboard Accelerators," for details on navigating menus with keys.
Those who are used to previous versions of Windows may be somewhat confused by the absence of menus--which have now been replaced by new toolbars--in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. New toolbars take the place of menus in them. However, if you're a fan of the old menus, you can still find them; press the Alt or F10 key and they'll magically appear.
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Each window also has a Control menu hidden behind the upper-left corner of the title bar (the bar at the top of the window that contains the filename). You can open the menu by clicking on the upper-left corner, by pressing Alt-space, or by right-clicking on a button on the Taskbar. The Control menu duplicates the function of the maximize, minimize, and close buttons at the right end of the title bar, as well as the resizing and moving you can do with the mouse. Using this menu lets you move or resize the window without the mouse (see the next section, "Keyboard Accelerators," for details). The command line (which you can get to by typing command at the Search box and pressing Enter to open a Command Prompt window) also has a Control menu, which you can access by right-clicking anywhere in the Command Prompt window. It provides access to the Clipboard for cut, copy, and paste actions, as well as settings for the font size and toolbar (if applicable). However, if you have enabled the Command Prompt's QuickEdit Mode (see Chapter 14), right-clicking will paste the contents of the Clipboard into whatever program happens to be running in the Command Prompt.
Windows' primary interface is graphical, meaning that you point and click to interact with it. The problem is that repeated clicking can become very cumbersome, especially for repetitive tasks. Luckily, Windows has an extensive array of keyboard accelerators (sometimes called keyboard shortcuts or hot keys), which provide a simple keyboard alternative to almost every feature normally accessible with the mouse. Some of these keyboard accelerators (such as F1 for help, Ctrl-C to copy, and Ctrl-V to paste) date back more than 20 years and are nearly universal, and others are specific to Windows Vista or a given application.
Appendix B gives a complete list of keyboard accelerators. Some of the most important ones are as follows:
You can also activate specific menus with the keyboard. When you press Alt or F10, each menu item will have a single character that is underlined (such as the V in View); when you see this character, it means you can press Alt-V (for example) to go directly to that menu. Once that menu has opened, you can activate any specific item by pressing the corresponding key (such as D for Details); you don't even need to press Alt this time. The abbreviated notation for this is Alt-V+D (which means press Alt and V together, and then press D). You'll notice that it's much faster than using the mouse.
The other way to activate specific menu items is to use the special keyboard shortcuts shown to the right of each menu item (where applicable). For example, open the Edit menu in most windows, and you'll see that Ctrl-Z is a shortcut for Undo, Ctrl-V is a shortcut for Paste, and Ctrl-A is a shortcut for Select All. These are even faster than the navigation hot keys described earlier. Two notes: not all menu items have this type of keyboard shortcut, and these shortcuts work only from within the application that "owns" the menu.
The special case is the Start menu, which you can activate by pressing the Windows logo key (if your keyboard has one) or Ctrl-Esc, regardless of the active window. You can also click the Start button. The Start menu differs from most other menus because you navigate it graphically, although you can also use arrow keys and Return for navigation as well.
Note that once a menu has been activated, you can mix pointer clicks and keystrokes. For example, you could pop up the Start menu by pressing the Windows logo key, and then click on Control Panel.
If there is a conflict and multiple items on a menu have the same accelerator key, pressing the key repeatedly will cycle through the options. You must press Enter when the correct menu item is highlighted to actually make the selection.
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If there's only one control, such as in a simple folder window, Tab has no effect. In some applications, such as word processors and spreadsheets, Tab is assigned to a different function (such as indenting).
Many application and system windows use a common set of controls in addition to the ubiquitous title bar, menu bar, Control menu, and scroll bars. This section describes a few of these common controls.
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Figure 2-7 Common controls in Windows applications and dialogs. view the image gallery | |
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Some of these controls include:
You can either select the number and type in a new value or click on the up or down arrow to increase or decrease the value.
When a set of buttons is displayed, the default button (the one that will be activated by pressing the Enter key) is brighter than the other buttons. You can move the focus to another button by hovering your mouse over it, typing the underlined accelerator character in a button or field label, or pressing the Tab or arrow key.
In many dialog boxes, the default button is hardcoded--it will always be the same. For example, the OK button is commonly hardcoded to be the default button. To see this in action, right-click on the Taskbar and select Properties. The Taskbar Options tab has the OK button hardcoded as the default. Regardless of which button is the default, pressing Esc always has the same effect as clicking the Cancel button: it cancels the dialog box.
Move the slider to change the setting. In this instance, as you move the slider from Low to High (or vice versa), the text beneath the slider changes to show you precise information about each setting along the way.
Anytime you see a downward-pointing arrow next to a text field, click on the arrow to drop down a list of other values. Sometimes a drop-down list contains a history of previous entries you've typed into a text entry field. Pressing the first letter will often jump to that place in the list, as long as the list has the focus. The down arrow (or F4) will also drop down the currently selected list. The arrow keys will scroll through the stored entries, even if the list is not already dropped down. Microsoft sometimes calls these lists Look In Lists.
For more information on these various user interface features, see -->Chapter 3.
Files are the basic unit of long-term storage on a computer. Files are organized into folders, which are stored on disks. (In DOS, Unix, and earlier versions of Windows, folders were more often referred to as directories, but both terms are still used.) This section reviews fundamental filesystem concepts, including file-and disk-naming conventions and file types.
Disk Names
Like every version of Windows that preceded it, Windows Vista retains the basic DOS disk-naming conventions. Drives are differentiated by a single letter of the alphabet followed by a colon:
By default, drive letters are assigned consecutively, but it's possible to change the drive letters for most drives so that you can have a drive N: without having a drive M:. (See Chapter 4 for details.)
Pathnames
Folders, which contain files, are stored hierarchically on a disk and can be nested to any arbitrary level.
The filesystem on any disk begins with the root (top-level) directory, represented as a backslash. Thus, C:\ represents the root directory on the C: drive. Each additional nested directory is simply listed after its "parent," with backslashes used to separate each one. C:\Windows\System\Color means that the Color folder is in the System folder in the Windows folder on the C: drive. Thus, you can express a path to any given folder as a single string of folder names.
A path can be absolute (always starting with a drive letter) or relative (referenced with respect to the current directory). The concept of a current directory is somewhat obsolete in Windows Vista, as it was in Windows NT, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, with the exception of commands issued from the command prompt. Each Command Prompt window has an active folder associated with it, to which each command is directed. For example, if the current directory is C:\windows, and you type DIR (the directory listing command), you would get a listing of the files in that folder. If you then type CD cursors, the current directory would become C:\windows\cursors.
The fact that the entire absolute path was not needed after the CD command is an example of the use of a relative path.
A special type of relative path is made up of one or more dots. The names . and .. refer to the current directory and the parent of that directory, respectively (C:\windows is the parent folder of C:\windows\cursors, for example). Type CD .. while in C:\windows, and the current directory becomes simply C:\. Use of additional dots (such as ...) in some previous versions of Windows is not supported in Windows XP or Vista. The graphical equivalent of .. is the yellow folder icon with the curved arrow, found in common file dialogs.
The left pane (Navigation Pane) in Windows Explorer (by default) contains a hierarchical tree-structured view of the filesystem. The tree structure makes it easier to navigate through all the folders on your system because it provides a graphical overview of the structure. See Chapter 3 for more information on the tree and Chapter 4 for more information on the Windows Explorer application.
Paths to Network Resources
You can refer to files on any shared network via a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) pathname, which is very similar to a path (described in the preceding section). The first element of a UNC pathname is the name of the computer or device that contains the file, prefixed by a double backslash. The second element is the device's share name. What follows is the string of folders leading to the target folder or file.
For example, the UNC path \\shoebox\o\hemp\adriana.txt refers to a file named adriana.txt, located in the hemp folder, located on drive O:, located on a computer named shoebox.
For more information on UNC pathnames and sharing resources on a network, see Chapter 7.
Short Names and Long Names
DOS and Windows 3.1, the Microsoft operating systems that preceded Windows 95 and Windows NT, only supported filenames with a maximum of eight characters, plus a three-character file type extension (e.g., myfile.txt). The maximum length of any path was 80 characters (see "Pathnames," earlier in this chapter, for more information on paths). Legal characters included any combination of letters and numbers, extended ASCII characters with values greater than 127, and the following punctuation characters:
$ % ^ ' ` - _ @ ~ ! ( ) # &
Spaces were not allowed.
Windows Vista supports long filenames (up to 260 characters), which can include spaces as well as these punctuation characters:
$ % ^ ' ` - _ @ ~ ! ( ) # & + , ; = [ ] .
For example, a file could be named Picture of my Niece.jpg and could be located in a folder named Family Photos. Furthermore, extensions are no longer limited to three characters; for example, .html is perfectly valid (and distinctly different from .htm). For more information on file types and extensions, see the discussions in the next section and in Appendix D.
The maximum length of any path in Windows Vista depends on the filesystem you're using (NTFS, FAT32, etc.).
File Types and Extensions
Most files have a filename extension, the (usually three) letters that appear after the last dot in any file's name. Here are some common file extensions:
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Although each of these files holds very different types of data, the only way Windows differentiates them is by their filename extensions. How Windows is able to determine a given file's type is important for several reasons, especially because it is the basis for the associations that link documents with the applications that created them. For example, when you double-click on a file named donkey.html, Windows looks up the extension in the Registry (see Chapter 13) and then, by default, opens the file in your web browser. Rename the file to donkey.jpg, and the association changes as well.
The lesson here is that filename extensions are not a reliable guide to a file's type, despite how heavily Windows Vista relies on them. What can make it even more frustrating is that, by default, known filename extensions are hidden by Windows Vista, but unfamiliar extensions are shown. Rename donkey.xyz (an unassociated extension) to donkey.txt, and the extension simply disappears in Windows Explorer. Or, try to differentiate donkey.txt from donkey.doc when the extensions are hidden. To instruct Windows to show all extensions, go to Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Folder Options → View, and turn off the "Hide file extensions for known file types" option.
To see all of the configured file extensions on your system, go to Start → Default Programs → Associate a file type or protocol with a program. You'll see a list of all your file types, along with the programs with which they are associated. To change the default program for any file type, highlight the file type, click "Change program," and then select the new program with which the file should be associated.
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Figure 2-8 The updated Windows Explorer view the image gallery | |
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Windows Explorer has received a major makeover with Windows Vista, and although the basic function is the same (navigating through your hard disk, viewing and using files, etc.), the layout and features have changed. (For a detailed look at Windows Explorer, see Chapter 4.) Figure 2-8 shows the major features of Windows Explorer.
Figure 2-8. The updated Windows Explorer
You can turn panes on and off by choosing Organize → Layout, and selecting or deselecting the panes you want.
There's another major change to Windows Explorer with Windows Vista--the menus have vanished. To make them appear for a single task, press the Alt key. To keep them on permanently, choose Organize → Folder and Search Options → Layout → View, and check the box next to Always show menus.
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Figure 2-9 Sort folder listings by clicking on column headers, or change column widths by dragging boundaries between the headers. view the image gallery | |
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If you're looking at a folder full of images, any of the icon views will be most useful. The Tiles view is worthwhile if you want to see small icons in addition to basic file information.
If you want to see previews of the actual content of your files, you can turn on the Preview Pane. It appears on the right and shows a thumbnail of the current file you've highlighted. The Preview Pane works in any view. To turn it on, select Organize → Layout → Preview Pane. The icon next to the Preview Pane on the menu will become highlighted in blue, and the pane turns on. To turn it off, select Organize → Layout → Preview Pane, and the highlight around the icon will vanish, as will the pane.
You can change the columns displayed in the Details view. Right-click on any column, and from the list that appears select the file types you want displayed. In addition, you can change the sort order and display of any column by hovering your mouse over the column until a down arrow appears, then clicking the down arrow. You'll be presented with ways in which you can sort and display that column.
In certain instances you can also turn on a Search Pane, which will appear just above the toolbar. The pane works in concert with the Search Bar. Type in a search term, and the Search Pane lets you easily filter your search results by file type--such as Email, Pictures, and so on--by clicking on the appropriate button. To turn the Search Pane on, select Organize → Layout → Search Pane. The Search Pane icon will be highlighted in blue on the menu, and the pane turns on. To turn it off, select Organize → Layout → Search Pane, and the highlight will vanish, as will the pane. However, the Search Pane is only available this way in a few folders, such as Desktop and Computer. If you choose Organize → Layout in other folders, the Search Pane option will not be available. However, in any folder, if you type any text into the Search box, you can make the Search Pane appear by choosing Organize → Layout → Search Pane. But when you delete the text from the Search box, you won't have the option of turning on the Search Pane, except in a few select folders, such as Desktop and Computer.
Windows Vista will remember the view setting for each folder by default and will display it the same way the next time the folder is opened. (If a long time passes before you open a folder again, though, Windows will forget its settings.) You can turn this setting off by selecting Organize → Folder Options → View, unchecking the box next to "Remember each folder's view settings," and then clicking OK.
The Explorer Toolbar, like toolbars in most applications, provides quick access to some of the more frequently used features. The toolbar is context-sensitive; that is, it changes according to the content of the folder that you're viewing.
The Address Bar does more than just display your current folder; you also use it for navigation. Either move down the "bread crumb" trail that is displayed there, or else type the path to a folder and press Enter, and the folder's contents will be shown in the current window. This is often faster than navigating with the folder tree or using several consecutive folder windows. See Chapter 3 for details on using the Address Bar.
Although each new folder window you open will appear with Microsoft's default settings, it's possible to modify those defaults. Start by configuring a folder according to your preferences: choose the icon size, the sort order, and so on. Then, go to Organize → Folder Options → View, and click Apply to Folders. The setting will then be used for each new single folder window that is opened.
When you open a new folder, it opens in your existing Windows Explorer window. You can, however, have folders open in new windows instead. Choose Organize → Folder Options → General, select "Open each folder in its own window," and click OK.
Keyboard Accelerators in Folder Windows
Some keyboard accelerators are especially useful in Explorer and folder windows. You can use these in addition to the various keys described in "Point-and-Click Operations," earlier in this chapter.
Advanced Drag-and-Drop Techniques
Some of the basics of drag-and-drop are discussed in "Point-and-Click Operations," earlier in this chapter, but you can use some advanced techniques to have more control when you're dragging and dropping items. Naturally, it's important to be able to anticipate what will happen when you drag and drop an item before you actually do the dropping. The problem is that drag-and-drop is handled differently in various situations, so sometimes you'll need to modify your behavior to achieve the desired result. Here are the rules that Windows follows when determining how dropped files are handled:
If you have trouble remembering these rules, or if you run into a confusing situation, you can always fall back on the information Windows provides you while you're dragging, in the form of the mouse cursor. A blue right-pointing arrow appears next to the pointer when copying, and a curved arrow appears when creating a shortcut. If you see no symbol, the object will be moved. This visual feedback is very important; it can eliminate a lot of mistakes if you pay attention to it.
Here's how to control what happens when you drag and drop an item:
Many people who are new to computers will never have heard of the command line, also known as the command prompt, and sometimes (but incorrectly) called the DOS prompt. (DOS was the operating system used by most PCs before Windows became ubiquitous. The command line in DOS was the only way to start programs and manage files, and the command prompt in Windows borrows many of the command names from DOS but with vastly improved capabilities.) Users of older PCs may remember the command line, but they may be under the impression that it's purely a thing of the past. Advanced users, on the other hand--whether they remember the old days of the DOS command line or not--have probably learned the advantages of the command-line interface, even when using Windows Vista on a day-to-day basis.
You can perform many tasks faster by typing one or more commands into the Command Prompt window. In addition, some of the programs in Windows Vista are command-line-based tools, and you can run them from the command prompt as well as from the GUI. For full documentation on the command line and the Command Prompt application, see Chapter 14.
At the command prompt, you can get help on the available command-line options by typing:
commandname /?
You can see a list of all built-in command-line utilities by typing help and pressing Return.
Warning
When you run some command-line programs, such as openfiles, which displays all currently open files, you may get an error message similar to this: ERROR: Logged-on user does not have administrative privilege. You may get this message even if you are using an administrator account. There is a workaround: type cmd at the Start Search box on the Start menu (don't press Enter), right-click the "cmd" entry that appears at the top of the search results, and then choose Run as Administrator. You'll now be able to run any command-line program, such as openfiles, that gives you that error message.
Here are a few examples that show how you can use the command line as an alternative to the GUI:
C:\>mkdir \sampleC:\>copy d:\stuff\*.* \sample
or typing:
charmap
into the Start menu's Search box or Explorer's Address Bar and pressing the Enter key? Typing a command is much faster than carefully dragging the mouse through cascading menus, where an unintentional slip of the mouse can get you somewhere entirely different from what you planned.
Many windows have some degree of online documentation in the form of a Help system that you can access by clicking the small question mark icon in the upper-righthand portion of the screen. The help is context-sensitive and will be relevant to the window from which you've accessed it.
In addition, you can press F1 at almost any time to display help. In some situations, pressing F1 will display only a tiny yellow message (known as a tool tip) with a brief description of the item with the focus; at other times, F1 will launch an online index of help topics. Sometimes F1 will have no effect whatsoever.
Furthermore, if you hold the pointer over many screen objects (such as a window's toolbar), a tool tip may appear. A tool tip may display nothing more than the name of the object to which you're pointing, but in other cases, it may provide additional information. For example, placing the pointer on the system clock pops up the date. You can turn tool tips off in the Windows interface by going to Control Panel → Appearance and Personalization → Folder Options → View and turning off the option "Show pop-up description for folder and Desktop items." Note that this won't necessarily turn off tool tips in other applications--only Explorer.
You shouldn't just turn off the power to a Windows Vista machine, because it caches a lot of data in memory and needs to write it out before shutting down.
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