How To Talk To Your Children

It is late at night, you are in the middle of an email – and it disappears. Whom do you call? OS Busters? No, only those who would tirelessly listen to your problem: family.

Even family, however, have limits; so try to be as specific as possible, and to that end, we need to describe the elements of a Microsoft window …

Something somewhere that is covering your desktop (the clouds on blue sky, with postage stamp pictures on it that make little sense: “Shortcut to H…”) is a window with a blue stripe along the top. This would be the current task Title Bar. It may not be your current task, but it is to Microsoft – and they’re the ones with the money. Whatever it is you want is either under or below the window/page with the active title bar. If you see more than one blue line, the uppermost one is the one that can save or hurt you.

If you are (or were) writing, there is a Menu Bar usually right under the task bar; typical items are File – Edit – View – Format – Tools. Forgetting all the other teeny-tiny pictures/icons under the menu bar for a minute, everything you can possibly do under that task bar is hidden in the menu bar. It is always a good idea to go over each item, left to right, clicking once, to see if anything in that horizontal list could be what might possibly answer your question. (“Ah, send mail, save draft, add attachment”.

The bottom of the screen consists of four parts. The first, from left to right, is the Start Menu. (There is a seemingly meaningless key next to the space bar – in fact two – with a picture you can barely make out, but is in fact the flying Windows logo – that will also open the Start Menu; no mouse needed.) Pressing this key will often bring back something familiar, if it appears there is nothing but a single picture over your entire monitor.

The second long item is the Task Bar. Generally, if you have lost an email, it can be found by clicking on the email icon in this area. This line has every task on which you are or were actively working. It is highly unlikely you closed it (hit the X in the top right corner) as almost all writing tools ask first if you want to save your work. That is the good news.

The rightmost box with the clock is the System Tray and consists of many (but not all!) of the tasks you are passively doing – whether you meant to or not. Antivirus icons are often found here, as are sound, video, network status. These are most often opened or jumpstarted when you start windows. If you pass your mouse cursor very slowly over each one you can learn what they are; you can also right-click or even double-click to find further information or settings … but probably not a good idea to go there … Too much information …

The bottom-most line is the Quick Launch bar and is a duplicate in many ways of your desktop with the postage stamps. The bar should consist of tasks that you would normally do frequently: write your autobiography, balance checkbook, play solitaire, Google. As there is no way to reasonably see these tasks without a magnifying glass, they should be few and in an order that you can figure out. If all else fails and the email looks gone, hit the windows key, then quick launch Yahoo messenger, pick a buddy, and type “Help”.

There is another alternative, but it is not for the faint of heart and should be done only under a child’s supervision. There is a super toy called RealVNC from ATT (UK) – yes, the old AT&T has a British address. This lovely little piece of software, lets someone, through the internet, to look at your computer monitor and actually operate it. Rather like the old driving school cars, which came with two sets of everything – just for emergencies.

As I would then have to pour out all kinds of boilerplate legalese about the dangers of allowing this, I will stop. In the immortal words of Eleanor Bron, “I can say no more.” If you know enough to be able to Google it, download it, install it, and communicate with your alter ego, then you are probably advanced enough to use it. It can turn a two-hour phone call into a 10-minute solution.

So while you may still know the difference from a boom vang to an outhaul, you really should start learning the parts of the screen for smoother sailing.

Archie specializes in tutoring and training of seniors in PC security, Windows, Internet, and Microsoft Office. He holds the CompTIA A+ certification and is often featured speaker at Goodwin House in Alexandria; he can be emailed at ama3@tfci-us.com

You’ve Got Mail … Someplace Or, Almost As Useful As Stonehenge

I see people able to get to their email page and then feel totally lost – and it is no wonder. First, we are used to television: we sit 6-10 feet away from a screen with an implicit focus. With blooper type programs, we may be fooled by not noticing what is happening behind the focus, but generally, we have adjusted to television and it has adjusted to us. On the other hand, when we read, at a distance of 12-18 inches, we focus on small areas with the assumption that the matter moves from left to right. With web pages, we have no such guidance. Instead, we are staring at the equivalent of a TV screen, two to three feet away with no glasses that work at that distance, and attempting to read left to right, but the screen or page does not let you. The design and presentation of web pages are still in their infancy … (The concepts below apply to many websites, not just mail.)

If there is any possible standard it would be the Stonehenge concept. That is, the top third, half, or even more, of the screen is totally useless, consisting mostly of, what are called, banner ads. Do not click on these. Then there may be two columns approximately two inches wide, one on the left and one on the right. Again one of these columns may consist of nothing but advertising or something often called “sponsored links”. The other column may consist of a table of contents. Generally brown on black or black on cobalt blue and totally incomprehensible (on some web home pages, in particular.) [Hint: if you are very careful, and move your cursor, hold the left mouse button down, then drag the mouse through these columns, much as you would to select text, you will notice that the color reverses, such that black now shows as white. You can also click on View>Text Size on the menu bar where it says File-Edit-View, to enlarge]

Like Stonehenge, the useful part is what is left, the middle column. You will probably have to scroll down (or hit the Page Down or PgDn key once) to see anything of any possible use. Here is where you will actually see something that could possibly be construed as an attempt at mail.

At this point, click on anything that says Inbox, proceed as above/page down, then click once on anything under the Subject or From column to read the mail. Try this slowly, left to right, as you are looking for a change – typically underline or hand – under your cursor. No change, no read. [With Netscape or AOL, you are merely told how many new messages you have – nothing else; click on this message to get to your Inbox.]

Hopefully now you won’t have to wait till the solstice to learn to read your email …

Archie specializes in tutoring and training of seniors in PC security, Windows, Internet, and Microsoft Office. He holds the CompTIA A+ certification and is often featured speaker at Goodwin House in Alexandria; he can be emailed at ama3@tfci-us.com

Outlook Express: Requires a Local Stop

One of the major benefits of the modern computer was the idea of WYSIWYG (“wissy-wig”): What You See Is What You Get. In theory, what you see on the screen is what you should see when you print. Unfortunately, this is increasingly becoming a forgotten rule.

As many users who switch to broadband (DSL or cable) are finding, the “default” mail is typically set up for Outlook Express. You load your install CD for your broadband and you soon see, quite possibly, a new icon, which, in fact, is your new mail service.

Now we can all make the email look larger, to read it more clearly, by simply going to the Menu Bar and clicking View>Text Size and clicking Larger – or Largest. The problem comes in printing the mail in an equivalent size – instead of the, seemingly, default 10-point font that the letter originally came in. (Is this an AOL thing?)

Now I am going to ask for a little help here, as this may not be the most direct route, but there are other uses for this technique – including any webpage. The size that you changed the print for reading has no affect on the letter to be printed. I could find no place where I could change the print-size font, no Properties, not even a Print View screen; so this is what I saw as necessary.

[Oops! There IS a way in Print Preview that can work! Where you might see "Shrink to Fit" in the middle/top, there is a pull-down menu of 100%, 125% ... Sometimes you can get away with 125%, BUT the right-hand side can be cut off. Not a problem if it is nothing but ads ... So there IS a short way to sometimes get items to print larger; it just isn't bullet-proof ...]

Let us say we have a letter on the screen we want to print. First, open a [new] Word – or Works, or whatever writing tool you may have – document. Then minimize it, so that you are back at your letter. Now we have to select the text we want to print; if we want to print the entire document, we can hit Ctrl-A or Edit>Select All, followed by Ctrl-C or Edit>Copy.

Then restore the empty/new Word/Works document. Hit Ctrl-V or Edit>Paste. Once again, hit Ctrl-A or Edit>Select All. Look for the font size next to the font type up in the second or third toolbar; it should be a number like 10 or 12. Normally there is a tiny pull-down menu next to this number, and I would recommend changing the size to at least 12 (if it isn’t already) or even 14. If the letter looks funny, with line breaks, you can change the text as you normally would. Now just hit File>Print for the document. You can close/cancel the document if printing was all you wanted to do, or save it as new file (which will NOT affect your email letter!)

Oddly enough, the closest to WYSWIG in Word, is setting the magnification % (usually next to the paragraph mark on the first/second toolbar) to 75% – not 100%! Hold up your printed page to a 75% magnification and you will see that is the closest one can achieve.


Archie specializes in tutoring and training of seniors in PC security, Windows, Internet, and Microsoft Office. He holds the CompTIA A+ certification and is often featured speaker at Goodwin House in Alexandria; he can be emailed at ama3@tfci-us.com

Rat Out That Mouse! Cursors Again!

One of the more annoying problems with Windows is not knowing where you are. You can move the mouse, change the pointer size, but all that really tells you is were you want to be. There are in fact two points: one (I’ll call the pointer, the one controlled by the mouse) is desire and the other (I’ll call the cursor, the one controlled by Windows) is reality.

Now there are a number of alternate representations for the pointer. If you are in the mood for being overwhelmed, you can go to Start>Settings>Control Panel>Mouse and from there, the tab Pointers. All of these represent the pointer in any given context.

Unfortunately, there is no way, apparently to change the cursor. You are stuck with a very fine vertical line that may be anywhere but where your pointer is. If the pointer does not agree with the cursor, you are changing, leaping, soaring to a location you had no desire to go. One of the delightful abilities of old (non-PC) computers was that you could in fact, change the appearance of the cursor, to flashing, underline, or block, so you really could know where you were. I guess that made it too easy and was dropped in the name of progress …

*** FLASH ****

Turns out there ARE some ways to change the thin vertical line, but it is dependent on the manufacturer of the mouse you are using! Of at least five mice I have used, I found one that has Accessibility Options with a Display Tab and Cursor Option. One can use the slider to make the cursor thinner or wider.

The only problems after making the cursor marker thicker is that it seems to cover the letter AFTER the place one would want to insert. Also, the application is not consistent across all programs; the cursor returns to its old form in, for example, browsers.

*** Now back to our irregularly scheduled program ... ***

The rule is, to change the position of the cursor, you must move the pointer then click it once. (Right or left does not matter, but "right-click" is probably preferable ...)

As I am not a big fan of the mouse (wait, I have a keyboard, with shift, ctrl, alt, windows, fn, and f-keys … now I have to take my hand away?) I would recommend becoming more proficient with the keyboard. In Word, for example, once you have the cursor in place, you can use your arrow keys with greater precision.

Some of the most useful key combinations:

Shift-arrow	selects letter by letter (if left or right arrow)
	selects line by line (if up or down arrow)
Shift-ctrl-end	selects document from cursor to end of document Handy when you have discovered the lovely idea of a template: Open a letter you have written, remove what you have already sent, save under a different name, and type
End	end of current line
Home	beginning of current line
Ctrl-home	put cursor at very top of document (before first character)
Ctrl-end	put cursor at very bottom of document (after last character)
Ctrl-a	select all (useful for cut/copy whole snippets)
Ctrl-x	cut(to move to another spot)
Ctrl-c	Copy (what you have selected, using the shift+arrows)
Ctrl-v	paste (into another letter or an email)

Web browsers:

Backspace	go back to previous window
Ctrl-p	print current page
Pg up/Pg dn	scroll up/down through window

There is another benefit to using keys rather than the mouse: you are more likely to remember what you did to get where you are.

Keys = steps, not motion.



Archie specializes in tutoring and training of seniors in PC security, Windows, Internet, and Microsoft Office. He holds the CompTIA A+ certification and is often featured speaker at Goodwin House in Alexandria; he can be emailed at ama3@tfci-us.com