Windows

From the Start Menu

At the lower left corner of your screen is the Start menu button.

From the Desktop

Programs which you have installed on your computer may have an icon on the desktop. Here the icon for the "Winzip" program is indicated.

From the Run Menu

You can use the Run command to start a program. Click Start

From an Associated File

The ways we have seen so far to start a program have basically involved telling the program file to start. The program file is a named collection of computer instructions that resides on your computer's hard disk.

Stopping a Program

Once you have a program open, there are generally two ways to end it. One way: you can click on the x in the upper right corner of the program window.

Controlling the Program Window

Here is a screenshot showing Wordpad after it is first started up.

Wordpad appears as a square on the screen, with the Desktop showing in the background. This square is called a "Window".

Menus and dialogs

Windows programs have a variety of ways to allow you to control the program. In this tutorial, we will look at three of the most common:

Pulldown menus
Toolbars
Dialogs

Basic Text Input

Basic text entry operations are the same in many programs. This tutorial will show how to enter text in Microsoft Wordpad .

Navigating a Document

As in the last tutorial in this series (Entering Text), we'll use Wordpad to demonstrate navigating through a document. Here Wordad has been opened.

The Clipboard

Windows has a feature called the Clipboard that can be used to store a piece of data from any program. You can store the data, and then take it out again. You can put some data in from one program, and then take it out in another.

Saving a File

Once you have created a document, you need to save it to the hard disk. While you are working, the text and other items you may have entered is stored in the computer's RAM. RAM is a a storage area that operates very quickly, but all data in RAM is lost when the computer is turned off. You need to save the file, that is, write it to your hard disk, if you want to keep it. Also, when you save a file the first time, you give it a name so that you can open it later.

Opening a File

Now that you have saved a file, you can open it again (assuming it isn't already open, that is, you have closed it).

Opening means that the program takes the file off of the hard disk and puts it into RAM, and displays it for you to work on.

Printing a File

To print a document, click File > Print.

(Wordpad is shown in this example, but generally, printing from any Windows program is similar.)

Getting Help

Most Windows programs have a Help item on the pulldown menu for the program. Here the Help item is shown in Wordpad .

Bits and Bytes

This tutorial gives a basic explanation of how computers store information.

Knowing how computers store information is useful when learning how to manage files. You can learn how to manage files without learning about how computers store information, but knowing why things are done as they are can be useful when learning how they are done.

Windows Explorer

After you have created and saved a number of files, you may find that you want a more powerful tool to organize and manage your files than is available just through the Windows Save dialog.

The most powerful tool for managing files in Windows is the Windows Explorer.

Folder views

Here Windows Explorer has been opened.

New Folders and Files

Here Windows Explorer has been opened.

Copying and Deleting

Here Windows Explorer has been opened to the folder shown in the last tutorial.

Selecting multiple files

Here Windows Explorer has been opened showing the files which were used in the last tutorial.

File attributes

Windows Explorer allows you to edit some extra items of information associated with a file. These extra items are called File Attributes.

Searching for files and folders

Using Windows Explorer , you can search for files and folders. You can search by folder or file name, or by the words contained in the files.

Managing your hard disk

Now that you know how to work with files, you'll probably soon be acumulating a lot of files. The files will be saved to your hard disk, and there are two very important facts about hard disks you'll need to be aware of.

Hard disks can get filled with files, which can not only cause you to not be able to save files, but can also make Windows suddenly stop working correctly.
Hard disks can break.

This tutorial will explain how to keep track of how much space your hard disk has and to make sure that it is managing your files efficiently.

A later tutorial in this series Backing Up Files will cover what to do to avoid losing your files in case your hard disk breaks.

Installing Winzip

This tutorial will teach you how to install Winzip. Winzip is not included with Windows. It must be installed separately. It is also not a free program (it is $30, with a 30-day free trial). However Winzip is so useful and so widely used that you may find it worthwhile to download and install.

There are other "zip" programs available. Winzip is one of the most well known.

(Winzip has no connection with Screenbooks)

Zipping Files

Now that you have installed Winzip (as shown in the tutorial just previous to this one) you can use Winzip to zip your files. Zipping means:

Combining files that you select into one "archive" file.
Compressing the archive file.

Unzipping files

Now that you have created a zip file, you can unzip it, that is, extract the zipped files to their original format.

Backing up Files

This tutorial presents a very important fact.

Hard disks break.

Windows Backup

Windows 2000 includes a program called Windows Backup that allows you to select a group of files or folders (or your entire hard disk) and copy them to another storage device attached to your computer or to a networked computer.

You can also have Windows Backup schedule a set of files or folders to be backed up regularly.

Add and remove programs

This is a series of tutorials about working with files.

One special type of file is a program file.

Program files usually have an ".exe" extension. In contrast to, for example, text files that you create with Notepad, program files do not contain data. Instead they contain instructions to the computer. The computer executes these instructions. The instructions tell the computer what windows to put on the screen, what to do when the user enters keystrokes, and so on.

Starting Notepad

Notepad is a basic text editor that you can use to create simple documents. The most common use for Notepad is to view or edit text (.txt) files . Text files are files that contain simply character data, e.g. letters and numbers. So, text files have no pictures, and even no colored text or text of different sizes.

HTML files (web pages) are text files. HTML pages can have pictures and colored text and other features when they are displayed in a browser. But when viewed in a text editor, HTML files are just text with markup. The markup is more text that describes how text is to be displayed. If you right-click on this web page (the one you are looking at now) and choose view source, you can see the HTML text file for the web page that you are reading now. This HTML text file has markup such as the following:

markup

that instructs the browser how it should display the page that you are viewing. The text in angle brackets ("strong") is called "markup".

Many people use Notepad or another text editor to write HTML, although there are also specialized programs for this.

Notepad Basics

Once you have Notepad opened, you can enter text by typing on your computer's keyboard.

Basics

WordPad is a word processing program included with Windows 2000. You can use it to create simple documents like letters and memos.

You can save a document created in Wordpad as a Microsoft Word file, a Wordpad file, or a text file. (For more about text files, see the Notepad tutorial in this series).

Documents

Once you have created a document in Wordpad, you can open a new or existing document.

To open a new document, click File > New.

Print

You can make a paper copy of the document by printing it.

To print a document, click File > Print.

Formatting Text

Once you have created a document in WordPad, you can change the text to make it look more attractive. You can change the sizes, styles, fonts and color of text in your document.

Start Paint

Paint is a simple graphics program included with Windows 2000. You can use Paint to create and edit images. Images you create in Paint can be inserted into other programs, printed or displayed as wallpaper on your desktop.

Although Paint is a simple program, many of the tools and techniques used in the Paint program are used in more sophisticated Windows graphics programs. So, learning to use Paint can be a good way to get started with graphics programs in Windows.

The images created by Paint are bitmap images . Bitmap images cannot be displayed in a web browser, so images you create with Paint cannot be used in a web page, unless you use another program to convert the image from bitmap to another format.

Drawing Shapes

You can draw shapes by selecting one of the Shape tools. Here we will select the Rounded Rectangle tool.

Lines and brushes

You can draw three different types of lines in Paint:

Straight line
Curved line
Pencil line

Text and Fills

You can also add text anywhere in your picture.

Edit Pictures

Once you have created a picture, you can edit it in different ways.

You can move a part of a painting. You can move items with or without their background.

Calculator Basics

Windows provides a Calculator to help you perform calculations. Calculations can be done in either Standard View or Scientific View .

Character Map

You can use Character Map to include special characters (characters not available on your keyboard) in your document .

You can choose from many sets (fonts) of characters.

Japanese Display and Input

You can configure your Windows 2000 system to display and input Japanese. The input and display will work with most Windows programs, including Microsoft Word and Wordpad.

Choose Settings - Control Panel.