When you switch on your computer,
it will normally open with the desktop in view on the screen.
Just like your physical desktop in your office at work, this
virtual desktop is where you open documents and do your work.
Here is a picture of my desktop
which I shall use to introduce the desktop's main features:
Starting in the top left hand
corner and moving in a clockwise direction we have:
The My Computer icon. You can
use this to navigate around the tree structure in which
all the programs and documents are organised on your hard
disk.
The Floppy Disk icon. Double
clicking on this will open your floppy disk, if you have
one inserted in your computer. Of course there are many
other icons on the desktop in addition to My computer and
the Floppy Disk Drive. Double click on any of them to
open them.
The Microsoft Office Toolbar
is one place from which you can open programs such as
Word, Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, etc.
The Taskbar is very important.
When you have a program, a document or any other window
open or your desktop, an icon for it appears on the
Taskbar. Even if you minimise a window that is open, you
can still make it pop up onto the screen by clicking once
on its icon on the Taskbar. Remember to look here when
you want to know what is open on your desktop.
Icons of windows that are
open on the desktop. As you can see, the Taskbar in the
above example tells me there are 3 windows open on the
desktop at the moment, though you cannot see them as they
are all minimised.
Start Button. This is very
useful for opening programs and many other things. We
will refer to this more during this training course.
MOVING AN ICON AROUND ON THE
DESKTOP
When you are sitting at your real
desk, you often want to move things around on it to make life
more comfortable. You put your papers over here, your coffee cup
there, the vase of flowers there, etc. We can do the same on our
computer desktop to make life easier.
To move an icon on the desktop:
Place your cursor over
the icon you want to move, click and hold down the left
mouse button.
Now drag the icon
around on the desktop
When you release the
mouse button, the icon will stay where you put it.
OPENING AND CLOSING SOMETHING
BY CLICKING ON ITS DESKTOP ICON
You can open any of the programs,
folders, documents, etc which have an icon on the desktop by
simply double clicking on them with your left mouse button.
To close them, click on the close
button in the top right hand corner of the window.
Try clicking on some
different icons to see what they are and then closing
them using the close button.
USING THE MINIMISE AND FULL
SCREEN/WINDOW BUTTONS
As you will have noticed, there
are two more buttons next to the close button which you have just
been using.
Minimise button
The one on the left is the
minimise button.
Open Internet Explorer
by double clicking its icon on the desktop.
Then click once on its
minimise button and it will disappear.
However the window is still open.
This is clear when you look at the task bar at the bottom of the
screen, where you will see the window has an icon. In this
example you can see that Internet Explorer is open at Phil Brabbs'
homepage.
Click once on the
Internet Explorer icon on the task bar to make it
reappear on screen.
Full screen/window button
The other button, the one in the
middle, is the Full screen/window button. When the window fills
the screen, the button looks like this:
When the window does not fill the
screen, this button looks like this:
Try clicking repeatedly on
this middle button , and watch what happens.
RE-SIZING A WINDOW
We can change the shape and size
of a window as follows:
Open Internet Explorer
if it is not open already.
Make it into a window
which does not fill the screen. Remember the middle
button in the top left hand corner should now look like
this:
Now place your cursor
anywhere over the edge of the window so that it becomes a double
headed arrow, something like this:
Then click and hold
down the mouse button and drag the edge of the window to
increase or decrease its size.
Repeat this procedure
on all 4 edges of the window and also on the corners,
where the cursor will change to a double headed arrow but
at an angle of 45 degrees:
MOVING A WINDOW ON THE DESKTOP
In the same way that we can move
icons around on the desktop, we can also move windows around. To
do this:
Make sure your Internet
Explorer window does not fill the screen.
Click on the title bar
at the top of the window and hold down the mouse button.
Drag the window around
the screen in the same way as you moved the icons earlier
and then release the mouse button.
Then close the window
by clicking on the close button.
WORKING WITH SEVERAL WINDOWS
OPEN AT THE SAME TIME:
In this exercise you are going to
open three different windows and then practise switching from one
to another.
Open Internet Explorer
and minimise it using the minimise button
Open My Computer by and
minimise it using the minimise button
Open Word and minimise
it using the minimise button
You have now got three windows
open, but not visible on the screen because they are minimised.
Your Taskbar at the bottom of the page should look something like
this:
Click on Internet
Explorer on the Taskbar (next to the Start button in the
above graphic) and make sure it is a window that does not
fill the screen. If it does fill the screen, click on the
middle button in the top right hand corner:
Now do the same for My
Computer and Word.
Move the windows so you
can see all three of them at the same time by clicking on
their title bars and dragging them, as you did earlier.
Your screen should now look something like this:
Moving between open windows by
clicking on the windows themselves
Now practise moving
from one window to the other by clicking anywhere in each
window in turn. (Notice how the window you click on
appears on top, its title bar becomes highlighted and its
icon on the task bar goes light grey.)
Moving between open windows by
clicking on their icons on the Taskbar.
Now practise moving
from one window to another by clicking on the icons on
the Taskbar:
Moving between full screen open
windows by clicking on their icons on the Taskbar.
Click on the Internet
Explorer window to make it the active window. (It should
now be on top with its title bar highlighted and its icon
on the Taskbar light grey).
Make the Internet
Explorer window fill the screen by clicking on the middle
button in its top right hand corner.
Now minimise the
Internet Explorer window.
Repeat this process for
both the My Computer and Word windows.
Finally click on each
of the three icons on the Taskbar so that all the windows
are open and cover the whole screen (ie maximised). NB
you will now only be able to see one of the three windows,
ie Internet Explorer, My Computer or Word.
Now move between each
full screen window by clicking on its icon on the Taskbar.
When you are satisfied
that you can move from window to window, close all three
windows.
OPENING PROGRAMS
There are several different ways
of opening a program. Here are 3 different ways of opening
Internet Explorer:
Double click on the
icon on the desk top and then minimise the window.
Click once on the
Internet Explorer icon on the Microsoft Office Toolbar
and then minimise the window.
Click on the Start
button. Then run your mouse up and over Programs (without
clicking). Find Internet Explorer in the list on the
right and click on it once. Minimise the window.
Now click on all three
Internet Explorer windows in turn on the Taskbar and
close them.
If you want to practise
this again, try opening Outlook Express in the same three
ways.
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORD WINDOW
The Word window is a little
different to the other windows in that it contains two sets of
buttons in the top right hand corner, like this:
The top set of buttons operate the
program window, the bottom set operate the document window which
is inside the program window. Let's practise using these two sets
of buttons.
Open Word by one of the
three methods you used to open Internet Explorer above.
Remind yourself how the
top three buttons (which operate the program) work and re-open
Word if you close it.
Now try out the lower
set of buttons in this order - left hand button, middle
button, right hand button.
When you click on the right hand
button, your Word screen will go grey, like this
This is because Word is open, but
there is no document running in it. To open a new document:
Click on the New Blank
Document icon in the top left hand corner of the Word
window:
This will open a new blank
document. NB Every time you open Word from scratch, it
automatically opens a blank document for you. And every time you
open a new blank document using the white page icon, it will have
a different number such as Document 2, Document 3, etc.
CLOSING WORD
If you type some text into your
new blank document and press the close button for the document or
the program, then a dialogue box will appear on screen asking you
if you want to save the changes you made to the document, like
this:
For the moment:
Click on "No"
which means that the document will
be thrown away. (NB you would usually click on Yes to save your
changes, but we will leave that option till later).
PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER
Finally, let's put all this
together into a real life situation:
Open Word and start
writing a document.
You remember you have
to send an email. Don't close Word, just minimise it
Then open your email
program
Now, imagine you have
finished writing your email. Don't close the email
program, just minimise it.
Go back to writing your
document.
Then you remember you
need to check something on the Internet. Don't close Word,
minimise it.
Open Internet Explorer.
Then go back to writing
your document.
Finally, close all the
programs (throw the Word document away)
That is the end of
this worksheet. I hope you have been successful. If you have
found any inaccuracies or found any of the instructions confusing,
please contact me, Phil Brabbs, at brabbs@volny.cz
