MS-Windows 95 Tips
		c2000 ~ mswindow ~ tips

Details taken directly from the Centreline 2000 RAPID-RESPONSE HELP-LINE and available to you. You can subscribe to the HELP-LINE here. An end to Shortcut to.... 1 An end to Shortcut to.... 2 Associate more than one action with a file Buy Plus! By-pass the association Change time Change your exit screens Change your icon size Close a window Control your recycle bin Copy objects between folders Copying diskettes the quick way Create a new document quickly Curse your animators Disable that clock Drivespace - you don't always have to use it..... Get the date Have fun with names - 1 Have fun with names - 2 How many clipboards? Keyboard Shortcuts - 1 Keyboard Shortcuts - 10 Keyboard Shortcuts - 2 Keyboard Shortcuts - 3 Keyboard Shortcuts - 4 Keyboard Shortcuts - 5 Keyboard Shortcuts - 6 Keyboard Shortcuts - 7 Keyboard Shortcuts - 8 Keyboard Shortcuts - 9 Making the most of floppies Monitor your resources No Auto-play No little arrows on Shortcuts Powertoys Powertoys - contents Quick close on folders Quick delete Quick Eject a CD-ROM Quick properties Quick Restart Quick way to display settings Recycle bin and multiple drives Run command remembers last 10 Send to Oblivion Shortcuts Start Menu short cut Switch windows Taskbar change Use long filenames Last Updated: 08-06-1996 An end to Shortcut to.... 1 You can stop Windows 95 adding the text "Shortcut to" each time you create a shortcut in two ways. You teach it by creating half a dozen shortcuts in succession, and delete "Shortcut to" each time. Windows gets the idea and stops adding it! See next item for the other way..... Return to index An end to Shortcut to.... 2 You can stop Windows 95 adding the text "Shortcut to" each time you create a shortcut in two ways. Download the Powertoys from the Microsoft web site (www.microsoft.com) or they can be found several magazine cover disks. One of these is TweakUI (very powerful) which allows you to stop Windows adding the text. Return to index Associate more than one action with a file You can have many different choices of action with a given file. For instance, you may have a choice of graphical editors depending on whether you want to make a simple change, or a complex transformation. In the Explorer, select View|Options. Click on your chosen file type. Select "Edit...". Select "New". You can now type the description and choose the application. When you right-click on this type of file in future, you'll see your new option on the context menu. Return to index Buy Plus! A cynic might say all the good bits are in Plus! so that you pay even more money to Microsoft. Whatever the motivation, Plus! is an essential part of Win95 offering new system utilities and the desktop themes. Some of these are a bit twee, some are nerdy, but they are fun. The new version of Drivespace is included with a range of compression options, often doubling the amount of free space on an existing compressed drive. Return to index By-pass the association If you want to by-pass the default association for a file when opening it, hold the SHIFT key whilst Right-clicking it. You will get a menu option to "Open With" allowing you to choose the application. Return to index Change time Double click on the time on the taskbar to get a dialog to change the time, timezone and date. Return to index Change your exit screens The screens you see when you reboot or stop Win95 are actually editable bitmaps. They are saved as LOGO.SYS and LOGOW.SYS in the Windows directory, presumably to stop you thinking you can edit them - you can. However, if you want to change them, don't change the proportions! Return to index Change your icon size On the desktop, right-click and select Properties. Select the Appearance Tab and under the drop-down menu select Icon. This allows you to adjust Icon appearance. Return to index Close a window Not only can you close a window with "X" in the top right corner, double clicking anywhere on the title bar will do the same. Return to index Control your recycle bin You can limit the space used by the Recycle Bin - in fact you should! Select properties from the context menu for the Recycle Bin on your desktop to select options such as how much disk space the bin can have. Return to index Copy objects between folders If you want to drag an object to a minimised folder, pick up the item and drag it to the minimised folder on the taskbar. After a few seconds, Windows will open that folder for you. Return to index Copying diskettes the quick way Create a shortcut on your desktop with the command "diskcopy a:" (assuming your floppy drive is called a:). Then use the shortcut whenever you want to copy a diskette. Return to index Create a new document quickly To create a new document you don't have to open the application! Use the right-click on the desktop, select new, and Win95 will allow you to create a new document for and "registered" application. This actually creates a short-cut on the desktop which you can save for future use. Return to index Curse your animators You can use animated cursors in Win95. Select Mouse|Pointers from the Control Panel, or use Start|Find and search for *.ANI. If you install the Plus! pack you get special cursors as part of the desktop themes. Return to index Disable that clock If you don't like the clock, right-click on the taskbar, select properties and you'll have an option to turn off the clock. Return to index Drivespace - you don't always have to use it..... Disk compression comes at a price - performance. By all means use the disk compression, but with disk drives selling at around &163;30 per 100 Mbyte (as of January 1996 - they're sure to come down, you should consider keeping a drive uncompressed for you most important or large applications. You could keep a small (say 210 Mbyte) C: drive to boot from and run Win95, MS Office etc. and then have a second compressed drive for less essential files (there are always lots of these!). Return to index Get the date Hold your mouse over the time taskbar - the date will appear Return to index Have fun with names - 1 Work should be fun - shouldn't it? Get used to using long file names. Give you temporary files really stupid names just for the hell of it. Take out your frustrations by calling your files things like "My boss is a complete %$@!%+$" - you'll smile every time you see the file in a folder. Create a file called hell and drag onto your desktop and you'll have a Shortcut to Hell! Return to index Have fun with names - 2 If you have multiple disk drives, give them fun names. If you compress a drive you'll end up with drives (usually C: and H: for the first drive). Try calling them Tom and Jerry or Pinky and Perky. Anything to cheer you up when you switch the machine on! Return to index How many clipboards? As many as you like! With any application cut/copy selected text and drag it onto the desktop to create a document "scrap" that can be then pasted into any other OLE2 compliant application. Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 1 CTRL-ESC - Opens the Start menu Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 10 SHIFT-F10 - Brings up the context menu (right click) Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 2 ALT-SPACE - Opens the control menu for a Window Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 3 ALT-ESC - Cycles through the items on the taskbar Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 4 ALT-TAB - Cycles between running items Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 5 ALT-ENTER - Selects properties for the current object Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 6 F1 - Opens the Help window Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 7 CTRL-TAB - Cycles through the tabs on a dialog box Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 8 ENTER - opens current taskbar item Return to index Keyboard Shortcuts - 9 F10 - opens the pull-down menus Return to index Making the most of floppies Drivespace can be used on floppies as well as hard drives, giving you more space on them. However, remember to use Drivespace to format them. Return to index Monitor your resources On the CD version of Win95 there is a program called RSRCMTR.EXE which will monitor your system resources. If you put it in your Startup folder, then you will see a little icon on your taskbar with three or four (hopefully!) green bars indicating the state of your resources. Double click on this icon for a more detailed look at the resource levels. Return to index No Auto-play If you want to stop the Auto-play feature when inserting a CD, hold the SHIFT key when you insert the CD. Return to index No little arrows on Shortcuts To have regular icons for the short cuts, use TweakUI (see Powertoys) which has an option under the explorer tab to select the overlay icon - or have none at all. Return to index Powertoys The powertoys are probably the best bits of Windows 95 (see references in this Notice Board). These are the really useful utilities you always wanted. The Win95 development team came up with these too late for inclusion in the final cut. You can download the Power toys from the Microsoft web site (www.microsoft.com) or they can be found several magazine cover disks. NOTE: Microsoft doesn't support these tools, but they are worth their weight in gold! Return to index Powertoys - contents TweakUI: A control menu that allows you to modify the User Interface of Win95 Fast Folder Contents: A quick way to view the next level contents of a folder Flexi-CD: A taskbar icon to control audio CD's Cabfile Viewer: Allows you to view the contents of the Microsoft Cabinet files used on the Win95 distribution media Roundclock: The old Windows clock, but this time appearing as a circular window! Xmouse: Strictly for X-Windows users - Windows focus follows the mouse Quickres: change the resolution of your display without re-booting plus many more....... NOTE: Microsoft doesn't support these tools, but they are worth their weight in gold! Return to index Quick close on folders Hold down the SHIFT key when closing a folder to close all the "parent folders" that you opened as well. Return to index Quick delete To really delete a file, hold down the SHIFT key when you select YES from the dialog querying whether you want to delete. This will by-pass the recycle bin. Return to index Quick Eject a CD-ROM To eject a CD-ROM from the drive, select the CD-ROM drive in My Computer and right-click. Select eject from the menu. Return to index Quick properties The get the Properties of an object press ALT+ENTER on the current object. Return to index Quick Restart If you need to restart Windows to let settings changes take effect, you don't have to reboot the machine. Instead select Shut Down from the Start menu and the hold down the SHIFT key and click on the Restart Computer option. Then, whilst still holding down the shift key, select OK. When you get a message saying "Windows is now restarting" you can let go of the SHIFT key. Return to index Quick way to display settings On the desktop, right-click and select Properties. This takes you to the display settings, just the same as selecting display from control panel. Return to index Recycle bin and multiple drives Be sure and select the option for one recycle bin for all drives (right click the recycle bin to get properties), that way you know all deleted files are going into a central, easily managed, recycle bin. Return to index Run command remembers last 10 Unlike the old Windows 3.1 RUN command the Win '95 version of RUN remembers the last 10 commands you have run. Click on the button to the right of the entry box to see the list. Return to index Send to Oblivion Copy any shortcut into the Windows\Send To folder and that option will now be available under the context menu. If you try and copy the Recycle Bin you'll actually get a short cut to the recycle bin - just another way of deleting files! If you rename this shortcut Oblivion you can select objects (files, folders, shortcuts etc) and Send them to Oblivion! Return to index Shortcuts Many of the old Windows 3.X shortcuts work in Win95. Try, for instance, F5 in explorer, which refreshes the view just as it did in File Manager. Return to index Start Menu short cut Press CRTL-ESC to select the Start Menu, then use the underlined letters or arrow keys to get to your required option. Return to index Switch windows Having the windows visible on the taskbar is useful, but it can fill up quickly, and you may not want to change the size. You can still switch using ALT+TAB, and you even get icons for your active applications. Return to index Taskbar change You change the size and/or position of the taskbar just as you would any other window. To move it, click, hold and drag it - for instance to the side of your desktop. To change the size, click on a border and drag it out to the required size. Return to index Use long filenames For instance, when making a backup copy of, say, "Autoexec.bat", don't call it "Autoexec.bak", call it "Autoexec.bat saved copy on January 20th 1996 to install QEMM.bat". Makes it easy to decide which copies to keep and which to delete. Return to index

 

	Centreline 2000 - Uniplex, Unix, Windows and Internet Arle Court, Hatherley Lane, Cheltenham, GL51 6PN Tel: (UK) 01242 255 000
	URL: www.c2000.com/mswindow/msf_idx2.htm © 1995-2001 Centreline 2000 Last Updated: 1st August 1997