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Class Three: Using Your Computer

I. Word Processing

As an example of how to work in a Windows application, we will consider word processing. This is probably the application that most people use computers for most frequently. There is a whole continuum of word processing applications, from the simplest to the most complex and powerful.

At the simple end, all versions of Windows include Notepad. This is actually a text editor rather than a word processor; that means that it writes to an ASCII text file (extension .txt) without any formatting characters. This is the only program that you want to use to edit files that the computer will have to read itself and execute, such as configuration files, because the formatting characters added by actual word processors will cause errors. Notepad is the default application for opening .txt, .sys, and .log files. You wouldn't want to rely on Notepad as you main way of writing, because it doesn't format text, and because prior to Windows 2000 it was limited to very short documents.

The next step up is Wordpad, also included in Windows. (An earlier version called Write was included in Windows 3.x.) This is a fairly rudimentary word processor, but it has enough formatting tools for the occasional letter writer, and the advantage that anyone with Windows can read the files without needing any additional software. If you don't have MS Office, Wordpad is the default application for .doc files. It is also the default for the old Windows 3.x .wri files.

Both Notepad and Wordpad are accessed from Start, Programs, Accessories.

In practice, almost any computer seller will include (bundle) a better word processor than Wordpad. The least expensive, sub-$1000 computers will probably include an integrated Works program, such as MS Works. These packages include a basic, but very adequate word processor, spreadsheet and database.

More expensive computers will include one of the three major office suites, which all contain full-featured word processors and spreadsheets, along with various extras which vary from one to the other. The three are Microsoft Office, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, IBM's Lotus Smartsuite, which includes Wordpro, 1-2-3, and Freehand, and Corel WordPerfect Office, which includes WordPerfect, Quattro Pro, and Presentations. There is also a free office suite called Open Office, which can be downloaded from the Internet and makes a very acceptable alternative for those who do not get one of the commercial suites with their computer.

Compatibility used to be a major consideration in deciding which suite you wanted, but today all three can open and write to each other's formats. They tend to play leapfrog, so the best suite is always the last one to be upgraded. Probably the best bet is to find one you like and stick with it.

[Demonstration of fonts, basic formatting, saving files, cutting and pasting in Word]

Notes to Word Processing

Fonts

A font is a collection of characters of the same style. It will include a number of characters besides the letters, numbers, and punctuation marks available on the keyboard. These can be accessed in any program by typing a code, Alt + a number on the numeric keyboard (not the numbers on top of the regular keyboard.) To find what the codes are for a given font (and what characters are available) you can use a program called Character Map (Start, Programs, Accessories) This is not always installed, so you may have to install it from your Windows CD. Alternatively, the major word processors usually have a built-in way to access the other characters. There are some fonts which are entirely made up of symbols rather than letters, such as Wingdings and Zapf Dingbats.

There are a number of kinds of fonts, but only three are common; the System fonts, which are used by Windows for on screen display (a small number), Adobe Type 1 fonts, and Apple and Microsoft's True Type fonts. (These formats were developed by Adobe, and by Apple and Microsoft, respectively, but the fonts themselves can be made by anyone who knows how.) True Type is the most common type on both Windows and Macintosh computers, but you can use Type 1on both as well. (You can't use the same font files on both, however; they are specific to one platform or the other.) Type 1 fonts are generally used by graphic arts people who print to Postscript printers; they are sometimes called Postscript fonts. On Windows, they require a program called Adobe Type Manager. (ATM is optional on the Mac.) A new type of font called Open Type has recently been developed by Adobe and Microsoft; it is compatible with both True Type and Type 1, and has cross-platform compatibility between Windows and Macintosh.

From Windows 95 on (unlike Windows 3.x) you can install as many fonts as you like, but if you install more than a thousand or so you may slow down the system. You will also have a problem with your drop down boxes in your applications if you have thousands of fonts installed.

Where do you get fonts? Windows includes a fair number already installed. Your printer software will install more, and most word processors and desktop publishing apps install their own. You can buy CD's with five or ten thousand fonts at Walmarts (about $9.95) and you can download free fonts from the Internet (start at alt.binaries.fonts).

Fonts are installed and uninstalled with the fonts applet in Control Panel; there are also third party utilities which can organize fonts and install and uninstall them in groups, say if you use certain fonts only for certain projects.

OLE

When you do a simple paste, the text or object just becomes a part of your document, and you can only change it if it is the kind of thing that program works with (e.g. text in a word processor.)

Windows also uses a technology called OLE - Object Linking and Embedding. This is usually accessed with commands called Paste Special, Paste Link, Place, Insert, or Import, depending on the program. OLE will let you link or embed an object (a file of some sort) into a document, and then edit it with the original (server) program from within the second (client) application. With linking, the object is not actually in the second document; rather there is a link pointing to its actual location on the disk. This saves space in the document, but also means you can't send it to someone else without the additional files. It also means you will have to fix all your links if you move the original file somewhere else on your disk. If the linked object is changed, the version in the document changes as well, since it is just a link to the original. This is useful when you need to update a number of documents with new data, for example. With embedding, on the other hand, the object is actually in your document. Changes to the copy in your document do not affect the original, and changes to the original do not affect the copy in your document.

II. Files and Folders

Now that you know how to use basic Windows applications, the next step is manipulating the resulting files on your hard drive.

Files are single objects - documents, programs, graphics, etc. Files are organized into folders and subfolders. (These used to be called directories in DOS and Windows 3.x) Folders are organized into a hierarchy.

The complete description of a file is called the file path. It would be something like C:\folder\subfolder1\subfolder2\filename.ext

In DOS and Windows 3.x, filenames (and directory names) had to follow the DOS names convention, also called 8.3 names. The name had to be between one and eight characters long, which could be letters, numbers and a small set of other characters (including !,_,~) with no spaces. It could be, and usually was, followed by a period and three more characters, called the extension. The extension is generally standard for a particular type of file, so that the user - and programs - could tell what type of file it is. For example, .exe is a program file, .txt is a text file, .doc is a Word (or some other word processor) file, etc. The last class in this series will be on different file formats and what they are.

Beginning with Windows 95, in imitation of the Mac and OS/2, you can use long filenames - sort of. Unlike the Mac, Windows, being based on DOS, can't really use long filenames as such; it converts them to truncated DOS names internally and keeps a list to match them up. If you right click on a file and choose Properties, you will see what the file is really named.

If you still run Windows 3.x programs, and you save a file with a long filename in one of these programs, it will be changed to the DOS name.

The DOS - and Windows - root directory can hold a maximum of 512 items, files or directories. But a long filename counts as more than one item, because it takes one for the "real" DOS name and one or more (usually more, since the long name is longer than the DOS name) for the long name. So if you have a lot of folders with long names in the root directory, you can run out of space. And if you do, the computer will stop working.

This only applies to the root directory; folders can have any number of subfolders and files. So in naming your highest level folders, you're better off using DOS names, only eight letters, no spaces, no characters except letters and numbers. Also, you need to type them all in capitals, because if you mix capital and small letters, Windows takes that as a long file name.

III. Windows Explorer and My Computer

Windows has two ways to show files, My Computer, which shows the files in a single pane, and Windows Explorer, which also has a left pane showing the entire hierarchy of folders.

My Computer is accessed by an icon on the desktop. The easiest way to get to Explorer is to right click on that same My Computer icon and choose Explore from the context menu. (Or if your computer has a Windows key (the one with the Microsoft flag on it) you can press Windows + E.)

Both can show files and folders in several ways, which you can choose from the View menu. Personally I prefer to use Explorer rather than My Computer, and to use the "Details" view. When I work with files, I like to have all the information I can available. Also, I recommend unchecking the Hide extensions for Known File Types box under View, Folder Options, View. (Checked is the default.) The extensions are very useful for figuring out what a file really is, as we will see in the last class. The information in Details view is Name, Size, Type, and date Modified.

To open a file from My Computer or Explorer, it has to be associated with a program. Many types have a default association already. If you double-click on the filename, the program will open them. If there is no association, you will get a dialogue box asking what program to use. If the program you want does not appear, you use the Browse button to find it. (The window that comes up is arranged just like the left panel in Explorer.) If you check the box, "Always use this program to open this kind of file", Windows will create an association, and then you just double click the files of that type in Explorer.

To change an existing association, you have to Shift + Right click on the filename, and choose Open With from the context menu. Then follow the same procedure as above, and check "Always use this program..."

The most important use of Explorer is to organize your files. You can move and copy files by dragging and dropping them. The left mouse button will

move files on the same drive (except .exe files)

copy files to another drive (except .exe files)

make a shortcut to .exe files in both cases

To copy files on the same drive, or move them to another drive, shift + left drag.

You can also right drag and choose move, copy, or make shortcut from the menu.

Why not have the same buttons do the same thing all the time? This is why people resent Microsoft.

To select multiple files, If they are in sequence, click the first file, then shift + click the last file; if they are not in sequence, then Control + click on each file. Then you can move, copy, etc. all of them at once.

I mentioned above that you can move or copy to another drive; the left panel in Explorer has your drive A (floppy) and your drive E (Zip drive or the like, if you have one) as well as drive C. To copy to a floppy or Zip drive (or from one to the hard drive) you just have to drag and drop.

To delete a file, select it and hit delete, or right click and choose delete, or go to File, delete, or drag to the Recycle Bin. To restore a "deleted" file, just go to the Recycle Bin, click on the file you want, and go to File, Restore. The files are not permanently deleted until you clear the Recycle Bin, which you do by clicking File, Empty Recycle Bin. You can bypass the Recycle Bin by holding down the shift key as you hit delete. You should be aware of three problems with the Recycle Bin:

1. While most Windows programs delete by sending to the Recycle Bin, or give you a choice, DOS and Windows 3.x programs delete by just deleting.

2. Windows has no undelete program such as DOS and Windows 3.x had. (You can buy an undelete program as part of one of the third party utility suites, such as Norton System Works.)

3. Deleted files from a floppy or Zip disk also do not go to the Recycle bin.

To create a new folder, just select the folder you want as the parent directory (i.e. the folder that you want the new folder in) and either go to File, New, Folder or right click and choose New, Folder. Type in a name and hit enter.

To rename a file (or folder), either select it and go to File, rename or right click and choose rename, or click twice (but don't double click) on the filename, then type the new name. In Windows 3.x, you could rename a whole group of files with a wild card, but in Windows 95 on you have to rename them one at a time. You could use DOS if you know how, or use a third party utility. I use a nice program called Rename-it.

IV. Organizing Your Hard Disk

Now that you know how to create directories and move and copy files, how should you organize your hard disk? There are no hard and fast rules, but I would suggest that you decide at the beginning, when you first start out with a clean, empty disk, how you want to organize it and create your directories and even some subdirectories before you start putting your programs and data on. If you just put things on randomly and let programs install at their default locations, you will end up with a disk which is hard to back up and you will be likely to lose data you've forgotten about. Once you have a lot on the disk, it is a pain to reorganize, because at the least you will have to redo shortcuts, reassign working directories, and fix broken links in OLE; and with program files you may have to uninstall them and reinstall them where you want them, or edit their registry keys (which is way beyond the scope of this class.) So start out with a plan. A good idea is to keep your data files in a single folder, divided into subfolders by type or program or project or whatever. Programs, with the possible exception of some big programs like Office suites or desktop publishing programs which may deserve their own folders in the root directory, should go in a Programs folder, which you can divide into types such as Internet, Utility, Graphics, etc. Decide ahead of time, and then force the programs to install where you want them when you run the install shields. Most programs give you a choice of where to install, but in many cases the default is the root directory, which is not where you want them.

V. Installing Software

The "right way" to install software is probably to go to Start, Control Panel, Install/Remove Programs. Actually, I seldom do that except for programs on the Windows CD, which can't be easily installed any other way, as they are in compressed .cab files which are hard to identify.

Installing from CD's is easy; just pop in the CD and it autoloads, then you see the Install Shield, a standardized installation program that is used with almost all commercial Windows programs. You just follow the simple directions, remembering to change the folder to wherever you want the program to install.

However, there are a few precautions to take:

First, before installing a program, close down all your other non-essential programs. This is not as vital as the install shields claim, but it is a good idea, especially if you're running a program which is similar to the one you're trying to install. One exception: do not, even if (or especially if) the program tells you to, turn off your antivirus program. (There was a legitimate reason for this with older antivirus programs, which worked by observing changes in .exe files, but most antivirus programs today do not use this strategy unless you specifically set them up to.)

Secondly, if possible, do not install a lot of new programs all at once. If you do, and something goes wrong, you won't know which program is the problem. If you are installing several programs- ideally even if you are installing one - do a backup of your data first.

The same things apply if you are installing from a floppy or from a download; but you also should be sure, if your antivirus program doesn't do it automatically whenever you load a floppy or download a file, that you run a scan on the files before installing them.

To install from a floppy, either use the Add/Remove Programs applet, or type A:\install (first choice) or A:\setup in the Start, Run box.

To install downloaded software, look for a file called install or setup. If there is only one file, double-click that; if it is a zip file, you will need to have an unzipping program on your disk. WinZip, a shareware program, is the most popular choice, although there are commercial programs which have fancier capabilities. There are other compression types also which will be explained in the last class, but zip is by far the most common in Windows. (.hqx, if you see it, is a Macintosh only format; .sit is probably, but not always, a Macintosh file.)

When installation finishes, you may need to reboot before you can use the program; another good reason to shut down any other programs before installing software.

Remember to keep the installation files from downloaded software in case you need to reinstall them; I keep some Zip disks devoted to this purpose.

To uninstall a program, you want to either use the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel, or the program's own Uninstall Program (which is usually in the same folder as its .exe file.) Do not just delete the program's folder; this worked fine for old DOS programs, but most Windows programs have files in your Windows folder and elsewhere, and entries in your Registry, which can cause problems if they are left behind after the program is removed (and at best will take up space on your disk.)

Many, but not all, programs put their own entries into the Start/Programs menu when you install. Some also put in things you don't need there - like their read-me file, their help file, their uninstall file, even their register-me document. And some even put themselves on to the top of the Start menu. Arrogant! So this is the place to discuss organizing the Start menu.

VI. Organizing the Start Menu

To organize the Start menu, go to Start, Settings, Taskbar, Start Menu. Ignore the Add and Remove buttons; go right to "Advanced". It's easier, really. This gives you a window which looks a lot like Explorer, and works the same way. You can delete unwanted shortcuts, add folders, and move and copy by dragging and dropping.

Remember, though, that you are just working with shortcuts. Deleting a shortcut just removes it from the Start menu; the program on your disk is not affected. Your start menu organization can be totally different from the way the programs are organized on the hard disk. So organize it however it seems easiest to find what you're looking for.

To add a new shortcut, just right click in a blank part of the right pane, and click new, shortcut. Then find the program file with Browse, wherever it is installed, click on it, give the shortcut a name in the box (I usually just delete the extension) and hit O.K.

When you're done with organizing the Start Menu, just keep hitting O.K. until you get out, then go to Start, Programs and check that it's set up the way you want.

VII. Adding Icons

Adding icons to the desktop - or in a folder - is done by right clicking wherever you want the icon to go, choosing new, shortcut and browsing to the file. If you like the default icon and the default name, click O.K. Or change the name, or click Change Icon. You can also change the name later, just by clicking twice (not double-clicking) on the name and typing a new one. To change the icon, right click and choose Properties, Change icon.

The selection of icons that comes with Windows is pretty pathetic, but there are good collections available free on the Internet. Check out the ones at pcworld.

VIII. Maintenance

The most important maintenance chore you can do is to back up your data files regularly. If you have a small amount of data, just back up on floppies. A backup and restore program comes with Windows - it's in Start, Programs, Accessories. If you have a lot of data, you may want either a Zip or Jaz drive, or a tape backup unit. Tape backups are cheaper and faster, but the units aren't good for anything else but doing backups. A Zip or Jaz drive can double as a general storage system as well, for things you don't need to keep on your hard drive. Tape drives come with their own backup software. Zip and Jaz drives come with a program called One-Step Backup, but you are better off to go to Iomega's website and download the Backup 98 program for Ditto (it works with Zip and Jaz drives as well, better than One-Step. This advice comes from Iomega's tech support.) An even better option might be a CD recordable or rewriteable drive; however, not all include useable backup software - Windows' backup program doesn't work with CD's.

The important thing about backups is to do them on a regular schedule, so you don't put it off. You can schedule the computer to do a backup by itself at night, if it will fit on a single tape or disk. A good idea would be to do a full backup at longer intervals, and then schedule automatic incremental or differential backups, which are more likely to fit on a single disk, at shorter intervals. (An incremental backup backs up files which have changed since the last backup, a differential backup backs up files which have changed since the last full backup.) What intervals are best for you depend on how much you use the computer and how much work you can afford to lose if you have a problem. If you have enough tapes or disks, the ideal procedure would be to have two sets and alternate, so you always have a complete set if one is defective. For a business, you could keep one set "off-site" in case of a fire or break-in.

There are also Internet back up services available, but the pricing makes them more practical for businesses than individuals.

The next most important item is virus scanning. Everyone should have an antivirus program. DOS and Windows 3.x came with their own (not particularly great) antivirus programs, but with later versions of Windows you have to buy your own third party program. The one which is usually recommended is Norton Antivirus from Symantec, and of the ones I have used it is certainly the best. This involves two parts, one runs all the time and scans your floppy drive and any downloads from the Internet automatically, as well as watching the memory for virus-like behavior. The other is a full scan of all your program files and Microsoft Office documents, which you should schedule or do manually at least once a week. Again, you can use either the scheduler which comes with the program or the Scheduler program which comes with Windows (Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools) to schedule these for overnight (or during the day, while you're at work.)

Since new viruses are always appearing, it is important to keep your anti-virus program updated. With most anti-virus programs, there is a simple, built-in way of doing this over your Internet connection. The documentation for your program will explain how to do this and the recommended intervals.

Finally, at least every few months you may want to defragment your disk. This is less important in modern versions of Windows than it was in Windows 3.x, because they have a more intelligent way of storing data on your hard disk, but over time, especially when you are low on disk space and trying to increase your space by deleting old files, even these will get fragmented files. This is because the system saves files in the first available clusters (units of fixed size on the hard disk) that it comes to, without trying to move data around to make room for contiguous data. This is what the defragmenter will do; move around all the data so that files are stored in contiguous clusters. It is found in Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools. Using it is very simple, but it may take a long time to run (up to several hours, if you have a very large hard drive) and you should not do anything else with the computer while it is running. Why does it matter if your files are fragmented? Because the hard disk will take longer to find the parts, slowing down the system.

It's a good idea to defragment your disk before you do a full backup, since continuous files copy faster and more reliably, and before you install large programs (such as an Office suite, for example) so that the program will be all together and load more quickly. This is also a good time to "clean-up" your hard disk by deleting abandoned temp files (located in the Windows/Temp folder), clearing out your browser caches (which will be covered in next week's class), emptying the Recycle Bin and the trash folder in your e-mail program, and generally getting rid of anything you don't need to keep.