TE RI AL Managing the Windows Desktop Chapter 3 GET THE SCOOP ON... Configuring the basic desktop ■ Making the Start menu and taskbar work for you ■ Enhancing Windows with PowerToys ■ Managing applications ■ Improving performance “Y CO PY RI GH TE D MA ou don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.” This saying has never been truer than with an operating system.
60 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Resolution, icons, wallpaper, screen savers, and themes Personalizing a desktop is a fun way to make a computer “yours.” You can change nearly everything you see on the desktop, including the wallpaper, icons, and desktop resolution. If you don’t like something you see, odds are you can change it with a few judicious clicks.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 61 Figure 3.1. The most common desktop resolution settings are readily accessible in the Display Properties dialog box. Next, your LCD will look its best at its native resolution which should be listed on the box or at the manufacturer’s Web site.
62 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Video cards, drivers, and management applications Most new video cards come with comprehensive drivers and management programs that can adjust nearly every aspect of a card’s performance. Frequently, they install tabs in place of the standard Windows ones that change desktop resolution, color quality, and monitor refresh rates for you. If you have one of these programs installed you should use it to fiddle with your adapter’s settings.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP Figure 3.2. ClearType can help you see text better on LCD screens. Figure 3.3. Increasing your monitor refresh rate reduces eyestrain and fuzzy screen objects.
4 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Icons The Windows XP icon set is colorful and sometimes fun to watch. Most people will never change the icons that are applied to any application, file, or shortcut on the desktop. However, like many things in software, the default icons are ones that a developer thought would look good with an application, not necessarily what is informative or helpful to you. Windows and Windows applications use four sizes of icons.
CHAPTER 3 Inside Scoop ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 65 Inside Scoop Some system icons can be changed only through Display Properties. Click the Desktop tab and then click Customize Desktop. You can also choose which of these icons you want displayed (or not) on the desktop from this dialog box. If you don’t like the limited selection of icons, you can browse to other applications or even Windows system libraries.
66 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION the Desktop tab and then Customize Desktop (see Figure 3.6). Click Clean Desktop Now, and Windows sweeps the icons away for you. Figure 3.6. Use the Clean Desktop Now feature instead of dragging all those icons to the Recycle Bin. Be warned: The wizard scans and removes icons that apply to single users as well as all users of a computer.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 67 personalize their desktop with pictures of family, pets, travel destinations, hobbies, or inspiring artwork. You can access the basic wallpaper settings by right-clicking the desktop, clicking Properties, and then clicking the eponymous Desktop tab. You can choose which wallpaper to display, and the mini-monitor gives you a preview of what it will look like.
68 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION (In)Active Desktop When Windows 95 first shipped, someone had the bright idea of creating the “Active Desktop.” The concept was to bring Internet content directly to the desktop so that users could have an ever-changing stream of information that connected people with things that were useful or helpful to them.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 69 Figure 3.7. The “Mystify” screen saver uses few computer cycles but still looks good. Themes Themes affect nearly every aspect of the desktop, including wallpaper, icons, audio events, transitions, effects, and other glitz and sizzle that give you the feeling of looking at a completely different version of Windows.
70 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Figure 3.8. You can switch between Windows themes or third-party themes if you have them installed. Oddly, Microsoft has stashed several color schemes that were found in earlier incarnations of Windows 9x. From the Display Properties dialog box, click Appearance.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 71 Themes, schemes, and styles Someone at Microsoft was aiming for job security when the design specifications for themes, schemes, and styles were created. The technologies are interrelated, affect each other, and cause customer confusion rather than clarity. Quick — where do you change title bar colors? Answer: any or all three will do the trick. Here is an attempt to explain the difference.
72 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Figure 3.9. Switch to the Windows Classic style and you unlock Windows color schemes that can charitably be described as “blinding.” Themes, schemes, and skins Microsoft uses the terms themes and schemes to mean different subsets of technology, though to most end users the difference is academic. In the rest of the software world, anything that changes the look and feel of an application is called a skin.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 73 Highly regarded theme management programs include WindowBlinds at www.stardock.com and StyleXP at www.tgtsoft.com. Both are shareware, cost $19.95, and occasionally have the odd operational discontinuity (bug) to work around; but the sites also have libraries of themes that you can browse and download for free. Finally, if you want additional themes, Microsoft encourages you to give them more money for the privilege.
74 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION The Taskbar and Start Menu Properties dialog box appears, with the Start Menu tab selected (see Figure 3.11). Figure 3.11. The Start menu can display the new look or the classic look. New look or old look? Your first choice available is to switch between the Windows XP menu system and the Windows 2000 menu system. Some people find the Windows XP look a real mess; others find it useful.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 75 You can customize either menu by clicking the Customize button. Most of the settings differ between the standard and classic menus; those that occur on both, such as Display the Run command, are not persistent between the dialog boxes, so if you change a setting in one it will “mysteriously” change when you switch between them. The Start menu’s basic customization (see Figure 3.
76 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Figure 3.13. Use the Customize Start Menu dialog box to change your basic menu options, such as icon size and number of most-recently-used items. Figure 3.14. Save yourself some clicks and enable the Administrative Tools menu items.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 77 Bright Idea You can pin any program to the top-left part of the Start menu by dragging it onto the Start button, or by right-clicking a shortcut and clicking Pin to Start menu. Right-click the icon and click Unpin from Start menu or right-click it in the menu and click Remove from this list. The Classic Start menu’s Customize button has fewer options than the Windows XP one (see Figure 3.15), and some of the options are not as clear as to what they do.
78 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Minimalist at work As a writer I make my living writing books about software. I launch and close applications, flip between windows, and in general put the desktop through a solid workout every day. Anything that gets in the way or slows down a train of thought is dispensed with. So nearly all of the ooh-ahh things that Microsoft built into the operating system are banished immediately.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 79 Hack The best way to clean up clutter is to prevent it. When asked for a folder for the program icons during Setup you can type in any location, such as \Programs\Fun Stuff\. This makes it easier to categorize your applications to match the way you work. Some menu items can be turned off or disabled as shown in the previous section, but most of the annoyances can be resolved only through judicious pruning of the Start menu.
80 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Figure 3.16. Windows Explorer is the fastest, easiest way to rearrange or delete Start menu items. With the Classic view, you are given a wizard to create or remove new folders and shortcuts. In the Classic view, right-click Start, click Properties, and then click the Customize button. At the top of the Customize dialog box are the Add and Remove buttons that walk you through the steps needed to, well, add or remove items in the Start menu.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 81 It’s our policy to say no Group policies are used by Windows-centric environments to define and control just about every aspect of the operating system and related software. The Group Policy Editor (GPE) is the tool used to define and apply policies to computers and users and is especially helpful in locking down unneeded services or restricting the damage that end users can accidentally do.
82 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Figure 3.18. The Group Policy Editor is the industrial-strength Windows settings editor. A cautionary note to the casual hacker: Sometimes the language in the GPE uses double negatives, which means that “enabling” a setting doesn’t always do what you think it might. For example, when you enable a Remove option, it means you remove the object. If you select disable, that means the Remove item will be present on the menu.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 83 Run! Run! Unless you have really good reasons to hide the Run command from users (pesky inquisitive children, for example), you should think twice before disabling it with either the Group Policy Editor or Tweak UI. The Run command is like a bridge between the GUI world and the command line, capable not only of saving you time but opening up powers you didn’t know you had.
84 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION top of the All Programs menu. Click one of these icons or open the Control Panel and click the icon in the left-hand column. Figure 3.19. The Set Program Access and Defaults dialog box lets you specify non-Microsoft programs to use for key Internet functions. There are three configuration radio buttons listed. The first is the nothingbut-Microsoft option.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 85 you decide to lock out a program using this method. Besides, if it’s a nonMicrosoft program and you don’t want access to it, why not just uninstall it? One interesting behavior is that the Start menu icons reappear every time you install or reinstall a service pack. If it bothers you, use Tweak UI or the Group Policy Editor to get rid of them.
86 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION With the taskbar unlocked, you can also resize it. Click and drag the edge to resize it to show as much or as little information as you like. This tends to have better results when the taskbar is at the sides of your screen, rather than the top or bottom, but it’s a matter of personal preference. When you have it resized, you can re-lock the taskbar so that it keeps its size and location.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 87 and a down-pointing arrowhead. When you click the button, a document list appears, and you can click on the necessary document to jump to it. Turn this option off and you go back to the Windows 2000 default behavior, where “button crunch” is the normal state of being. The other setting is to show the Quick Launch toolbar (see Figure 3.22).
88 ■ PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Quick Launch. The single most useful toolbar in the bunch. This lets you add any program, document, or URL onto it that you want. If you are always opening budget.xls, for example, you can put a shortcut to it here so that you are never more than one click away. Figure 3.23. Revealed at last: the “hidden” toolbars of Windows XP. If you have installed Windows Media Player 10, you will have a Windows Media Player toolbar listed.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 89 You add items to all toolbars but the Address toolbar by dragging and dropping an icon onto them. The easiest way is to open the toolbar, click Start, browse to the icon you want to add, and then drag the icon onto the appropriate toolbar. Left-clicking and dragging automatically creates a shortcut; if you right-click and drag, a menu appears, giving you the option to move the icon to the toolbar rather than just copying it.
90 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION To hide or unhide icons, or to hide only inactive icons, click the Customize button. You are presented with a list of icons that have made an appearance at one time or another in the notification area. Click an entry and then click the drop-down list and change its status to whichever one suits your needs (see Figure 3.26). Figure 3.26. You can change the way icons appear in the notification area.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 91 Hack Want to get rid of the notification area completely? Open gpedit.msc and browse to User Configuration\Administrative Templates\Start Menu and Taskbar. Change the policy in the Hide the notification area to Enabled and reboot. Two other ways of reducing the number of icons are to tell applications not to use the notification area (either when minimizing or when just plain running), and to reduce the number of applets that load at startup.
92 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Watch Out! Although PowerToys are written by Microsoft and available from Microsoft, Microsoft lets you know in no uncertain terms that all PowerToys are unofficial and unsupported. If you install one and Windows breaks, you’re on your own. Figure 3.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 93 the Start menu. You can eliminate little-used applications and keep the clutter minimized. Double-check this section every now and again, as new options are added as you install and use additional programs. ■ Logon. You can choose which accounts are visible in the workgroup’s logon screen. This is nice for those occasions when you don’t want your kids attempting to hack the Administrator account (hidden by default).
94 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION A grab bag of PowerToys PowerToys are additional programs that Microsoft developers worked on after Windows XP was released to manufacturing. They add missing functionality to Windows, and even make Windows fun in some cases. The PowerToys collection is updated from time to time as new applets are built, or as existing PowerToys gain some features or bug fixes. Here is a list of PowerToys currently available: ■ RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 95 ■ Image Resizer. This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. This is a fast and easy way to resize images for Web pages, or to reduce the size of image attachments in e-mail (such as when you send your newest pictures of the kids to the grandparents). ■ CD Slide Show Generator. With this PowerToy you can view images burned to a CD as a slide show.
96 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION desktop, it’s more for development efforts than for actual serving of content on the Internet. It all starts with the Add or Remove Programs dialog box. Click Start, click Control Panel, and then click Add or Remove Programs (see Figure 3.29). The default view shows you which applications and software updates you have installed on your computer.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 97 Figure 3.30. The wizard shows you a list of Windows components to install or remove. Removing hidden Windows components Older versions of Windows allowed you to select components such as games, the Briefcase, and WinTV (remember that one?) at installation time. Windows XP sped up the installation process by removing the component selection process.
98 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Manage applications with Task Manager Task Manager is a jack-of-all-trades application that provides a wealth of information about the overall health of Windows. Most frequently it is used to kill applications and processes that have crashed and are no longer responding. You can launch Task Manager (see Figure 3.31) in three different ways: Right-click on the taskbar and then click Task Manager; press Ctrl+Shift+Esc; or press Ctrl+Alt+Del.
CHAPTER 3 Inside Scoop ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 99 Inside Scoop Because Task Manager displays CPU usage and helps identify misbehaving applications, I put a shortcut to taskmgr.exe in my Startup folder. That way information about my system and misbehaving applications is just one click away. Task Manager and then click End Task. The application may close right away, or you may receive a system notification that “This program is not responding.
100 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION easy to determine if a particular service or application is needed, and lets you undo any changes if you find your system is less stable or less functional without the applets. You can also control these services and applets using the Services Manager and RegEdit (see Chapter 11 for more information on these applications).
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 101 Hack Want a fast way to bypass loading all those applets at boot time? Hold down the Shift key when your computer is booting. MSCONFIG’s other tabs go into detail on legacy startup files, services, and boot configurations. It is best to leave these alone unless you have some experience with legacy applications, hacking boot files, and working with startup diagnostics.
102 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Figure 3.33. You can instruct Windows how to optimize its performance: for applications or for services. The next group of settings is in the same general area but pertain to video performance. From the Performance Options dialog box, click the Visual Effects tab (see Figure 3.34). Here you can fine-tune the amount of eye candy you want when you use Windows.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 103 Figure 3.34. Select the visual effects you want displayed. If you play computer games, there are two additional changes you can make that will help with performance, especially if your system is on the borderline for the game’s hardware requirements.
104 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION These settings are found in your video card’s management applet or on a special tab in the Display Properties dialog box. Deselect these options and you will gain some additional cycles without drastically reducing image quality. Running old DOS or Windows applications With Windows 2000, Microsoft removed the support for older DOS and 16bit Windows applications that was in Windows 9x and Windows Me.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 105 you have already installed. This option is best for older Windows applications. The second option is for programs on a CD that are not yet installed, whether Windows or older DOS applications. The third option is for programs not installed but present on your hard drive; this is the best option for all older DOS applications. Assuming you’re working with an older Windows application, choose the first option and then click Next. 3.
106 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION You can configure compatibility for any application without using the wizard. Right-click on an executable or a shortcut that launches it and then click Properties. Click the Compatibility tab (see Figure 3.36) to show the compatibility mode options on a single dialog box page, make the necessary selections, and then click OK. Clicking the executable or the shortcut will launch your application using the compatibility mode settings. Figure 3.
CHAPTER 3 ■ MANAGING THE WINDOWS DESKTOP 107 Application Compatibility Toolkit If you don’t want to spend your time adjusting settings repeatedly in order to find what works, there may be an easier way to create a compatible environment for your older applications. Microsoft offers an advanced set of tools, intended for system administrators, called the Application Compatibility Toolkit. Its core application, the Compatibility Administrator, contains a number of settings and fixes for many applications.
108 PART I ■ INSTALLATION, CONFIGURATION, AND CUSTOMIZATION Just the facts ■ Nearly every aspect of the Windows basic look and feel can be configured. ■ Additional wallpapers, themes, and icons can be added to further customize Windows. ■ With the addition of a few PowerToys you can tweak the last 10 percent of the Windows settings. ■ It is easy to take control of applications and system applets so that Windows works the way you want it to.
