Chapter 2 Windows

MICROSOFT WINDOWS

Microsoft Windows operating system was developed by Microsoft to overcome the limitations of its own MS-DOS operating system. First successful version of this operating system was Windows 3.0, released in 1990. Subsequently released versions were Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows XP Professional, and Windows Vista. The numbers associated with some of these released versions indicate their year of release. Main features of Microsoft Windows are as follows :

1.                                      1.  Its native interface is a GUI. Hence, for a new user it is easier to 

                                              learn and use a computer system.

2.  Microsoft Windows was designed to be not just an operating system but also a complete operating environment. That is, all its  programs  conform  to  a  standard way of working. For example, a Microsoft Windows word processor works similarly the way a Microsoft Windows spreadsheet (or any other type of Windows program) works. This means that experience gained by learning one Windows program is useful while using any other Microsoft Windows program.

3.  It is a single-user, multitasking operating system. That is, a user may run more than one program at a time. For example, while editing a file in foreground, a sorting job can be run in background. Monitor's screen can be partitioned into multiple windows and progress of different programs can be viewed on different windows.

Parts of Windows Desktop

Following are the main parts of windows desktop.

1.          Icons: An icon is a small graphic lying on the desktop which is actually an application or utility at rest. You can simply double click the icon to run the associated application. The icons can be further classified into application icons, shortcuts and document icons. There is no limit to the number and type of icons you can place on your windows desktop.

2.          Wallpaper: A large graphic file that spreads over entire screen of  your monitor   is called wallpaper.  Windows enables  you to  change  your desktop  wallpaper according to your choice. Many readymade wallpapers are inbuilt to windows. You can  also  download images from the Internet and set them as wallpaper. You can also transfer images from digital camera and set them as wallpaper. You can even create your own paintings in Paintbrush and set them as wallpaper.

3.          Taskbar: Taskbar is a horizontal bar situated at the  bottom  of  Windows desktop. It enables you to manage multiple applications which  are  running  simultaneously. As Windows is a multitasking  operating  system,  multiple  applications may be running at one time. Just click on the application name on the taskbar to activate the application.

4.          Start Button: Start button is a small button present on the left of taskbar. You  can click it to display a popup menu that contains many options  like  programs,  documents, settings, help, run, find and shutdown. Each of these options has a specific functionality. Following are the components of start menu

                           COMPONENTS OF A WINDOW

An application window is the rectangular area that contains an application. For example, when you open paintbrush from Start □Programs □Accessories □Paint, it is opened in an application window. The application window that is currently receiving the user input is called Active Window. Multiple application windows may be opened at a time but only one widow can be the active window. This means, you can supply input to only one window at one time. The application window can contain multiple instances of application at one time. Just click on the window to make it active.

Parts of Application Window

Each application window has a Title Bar, Menu Bar, Tool Bar, Minimize button, Restore button and Maximize button. The figure 1 displays an example of My Computer window. The application window has the following main parts:

1. Title Bar: It is a horizontal bar on the top of the  window. It displays the title  of  the window. In figure 1, the dark strip containing the title  My Computer is title bar. Title  Bar also contains window buttons and it also shows control menu when  you click its icon on the title bar.

2. Menu Bar: The menu bar contains different menus with different options to perform  different commands. A  drop down list of options is displayed when  you click on   a menu item. Each of these options represents a command.

Parts of Window

3. Toolbar: Toolbar is a horizontal bar with various command buttons. These buttons provide a shortcut to access to commonly used menu commands. A click on the particular button is required to trigger the command associated with it. For  example, clicking on the Open icon will bring Open dialog box.

4. Address Bar: It is a horizontal bar under the toolbar that displays the path or name of the current folder. It is present in some special type of applications. In figure 1(b), My Computer has been displayed in the address bar. If you are working in a folder Windows under C drive, the address bar will show C:\Windows.

5. Minimise Button: It is the first out of the three buttons displayed on the right    end of title bar. A click on this button will deactivate the current window and place it on taskbar. The minimised application will display its name. The figure 2 displays a taskbar having notepad application in minimised form.

6. Restore (Maximized) Button: It is the second button out of three buttons displayed on the right end of title bar. On clicking this button the size of current window       is restored (reduced) from maximized state and maximized from  reduced  state.  The figure 2 displays the application name on the taskbar of a maximised window.

7. Close Button: It is the third button out of three buttons displayed on the right end of title bar. A click on this button will close the current window. The keyboard shortcut for this command is ALT + F4.

8. Status Bar: The status bar is displayed at the bottom  of  the  window.  It  provides additional details about the window. The contents  of  status  bar  may  be  different for different windows.

9. Scroll Bars: Scroll bars are displayed on the right as well as bottom end of screen. The scroll bars are displayed depending upon the  size  of  the  window.  These bars display the contents of the current  window  when the  size of the  window  is small  and the contents are more. In this case,  the  contents  are  slided  by  using  scrollbars. The vertical scrollbar moves the contents in up and down direction  and  horizontal  scrollbar moves the contents to right or left direction.

10. Window Borders and Corners: Every application window has a well  defined size and border. The size of the  window can  be increased  by stretching it from  any of  the four corners or border walls. Widows are generally resized from their corner points because the height and width of the window increases or decreases in equal proportion. This topic has been discussed in detail in the following pages.

Taskbar States with Minimised and Restored Application

Parts of Start Menu

The Start menu of Windows XP has a dynamic icon area. This area lists the shortcuts to frequently used applications. Windows automatically changes the contents of this area, depending on the applications used by the user. Refer to figure 5 which displays Calculator, Command Prompt, Notepad etc in the dynamic area.

1. All Programs: Displays a list of programs or applications installed on your computer. This list may vary from one to other computer depending on the number of software installed. The Accessories menu contains submenus for accessibility, entertainment, communication and system tools. These submenus further contain application shortcuts.

2. My Recent Documents: Displays a list of last 15 accessed files. This provides  an easy access to frequently used files. To open any of them, just point and click on its entry in this menu. The associated file will be opened.

3. Control Panel: This option opens Control Panel  of  windows.  The  Control Panel contains options to define settings for windows based computer. You can add or remove programs, add or remove hardware, change the appearance, configure audio devices and security and manage users and regional settings through control panel.

4. Search: The Search utility of windows enables  you to search for a particular   file or a group of files stored in secondary storage of computer. It has various types of options to search for various different types of files in Windows. For example, you can search printers, computers, music files, documents or  all  files.  Windows  support wildcards to specify the search criterion. The Search  feature  has  been  explained  in  detail in the following pages of this chapter.

5.  Help and Support: The Help and Support option takes you to complete online help for the users. We can search the help database to  find  answers  to  our  queries about working in windows, different applications,  utilities  and  troubleshooting  devices  etc. Just type your query in the text area and click Search button  to  search  for  the relevant topics. You can also select a topic from Pick a Help topic. You can even get support from windows support site through Internet. Refer to figure. 

Start Menu

STARTING A PROGRAMME

This enables us to run a particular application from its associated executable file. For example, if you type WINWORD in the run dialog box and click OK. MS Word will be started. This is because winword.exe is the name of executable file required to run MS Word. You can select the desired executable file by clicking the Browse button.

You can also use Run dialog box to directly open a particular folder of a drive. Type the path of folder and click OK to view the contents of the folder. For example, if you type C:\Windows and click OK, the contents of Windows folder under C drive will be displayed. Refer to fig.

Run Dialog box

Shutdown: This option displays a dialog box that is used to turn off the computer, restart the computer or put it on standby mode. Shutdown is very important for any windows (95 or later version) based computer as it makes sure that no data remains unsaved and every application has been properly closed

•  Standby option will put your computer on standby mode. This mode is used  when the computer is idle. In this mode, the monitor and  hard  disks  are  powered off and the computer consumes less power. On pressing a key from    the keyboard or moving a mouse, the  computer  switches  back  to  normal  mode

Shutdown option will turn off your computer.

Restart option will restart the computer after shutting down.

Log Off option enables you to login with another username and                 password.

   File 

 Information on a computer is stored in the form of files. A file may include

pictures, data and even songs. It is similar to a physical file that you use for storing

relevant information. A computer represents files with icons. By looking at the file's

icon, we can immediately tell what kind of file it is.

                            FOLDER

A folder is like a container in which you can store similar types of files. It helps in arranging the files into organized groups which makes it easy for the user to locate any particular file.

 

Folders

VIEWING THE CONTENTS OF A HARD DRIVE

Viewing the contents of a hard drive is possible using Windows Explorer, a tool integrated into Windows operating systems since Windows 95. The step by step procedure to view contents of a drive is as follows:

                            1. Click "Start" and select "Computer" to open Windows Explorer .

                            2.  Click "Tools" from the toolbar and select "Folder Options."

                            3.Click the "View" tab.

                           4  Click "Show Hidden Files, Folders, and Drives" from the Hidden Files and Folders                             list as shown below:

5. Click "Apply", then "OK" to apply the setting changes and exit the window respectively.

 6.  Double-click the hard drive under the right panel's Hard Disk Drives list to view its contents. To view files within folders, double-click the folder.

SEARCHING FILES AND FOLDERS

Windows offers a number of ways to find files and folders. Search Box offers the most direct way to locate a file. Use 'Search Box' if :

                            •            You are looking for common file types.

                            •            You remember all or part of the name of the file or folder you want to find.

                            •             You know the date when you last modified a file

                            •            Click on Start button. You will feed the Search Box located at the bottom of                                          left pane.

                            •            Type either a part or complete name of the file or folder, or type a word or                                        phrase that is present in the file.

                            •            As you type, the items that match your text will appear on the Start menu.

                            •            Click on the desired file/folder, it will open in a new window.

                           •            Click on See More Results link to get a detailed list of searched file/folders. 

                                         The Search Results window will open.

                            •            Now, just click on a search result to open it

                            •            In case you know only a part of the file name,  you can  use wildcard                                               characters to locate  all files  or folders that  contain that part in  their                                               name. '*' and  '?' are  two wildcard characters commonly used in searching                            information.

                                                                                  Search Box

                                                                     Search Results Window

                                         For Example:

•            L*.* will search all files whose names start with 'L' followed by any number of characters and has any extension. E.g., Letter.doc, Lottery.ppt, Locality.txt etc.

•            *.doc will search for all the files whose extension is.doc (Word files).

•            L*.doc will search for all the files whose extension is.doc and their names begin with the letter 'L'.

'?' means any one character in its place. For Example:

•            ?,*will search all files whose names contain only one character. E.g., L.doc, R.pps, E.txt etc.

•            Kips?.doc will search for all the files whose names begin with 'Kips' followed  by any one character and extension is doc.E.g., Kips1.doc, Kips2.doc, etc.

Tip : You can also find a file/folder by clicking the Search box at the top of every window and typing the relevant keyword or text.

SEARCHING A FILE

The step by step method to find a file in Windows XP system is:

1.         Click Start, and then click Search.

2.         Click All files and folders.

 Important : If you do not see All files and folders, you have probably changed your default search behavior.

a.         Click Change preferences.

b.         Click Change files and folders search behavior.

c.          Click Standard, and then click OK.

d.         Click All files and folders.

3.         Type part or all of the name of the file or folder, or type a word or phrase that  is in the file.

4.         If you do not know either piece of information or want to narrow your search further, select one or more of the remaining options:

·           In Look in, click the drive, folder, or network you want to search.

·           Click When was it modified? to look for files that were created or modified on or between specific dates.

·           Click What size is it? to look for files of a specific size.

·           Click More advanced options to specify additional search criteria.

5.         Click Search.

FORMATTING A FLOPPY DISKFloppy disks usually need to be formatted before you can use them, although some blank floppy disks do come pre-formatted, at some point in the future the user may want to format on his own. The Windows XP operating system makes it easy to format floppy disks. The straightforward process is as follows:

         1. Insert the floppy disk. Ensure that the disk is inserted rightside-up. Make sure that the disk lock is not engaged before inserting the disk. When formatting a disk, all the information contained on it will be erased,  so make sure you've backed up anything you need to save.

       2. Click on the START button, then click on My Computer on the start menu.

       3. Right-click on the disk.

       4.  Left click on the Format option from the menu that appears. A format dialog box will open up.

       5. Click Start. A warning, informing that all data on the floppy disk will be deleted, will be presented assuming there is no data on the floppy that you need, click  OK.

       6. The floppy disk will start formatting. When finished click Close.The floppy disk is now formatted and can be used to store files.