Using Your Desktop and Windows: Basic Control

 

Getting To Know the Desktop

On this page we will go over some of the basics of the desktop and the windows. Between this page and learning about the mouse, you can have enough understanding of what you're seeing to get around.
We will be looking at these items in Windows XP, since it is the newest, and currently the most common, version of Windows. Older versions of Windows back to 95 look very similar and generally work the same way.

GETTING TO KNOW THE DESKTOP

You can mouse over the areas outlined in red to see what they are called. Each section is discussed below.

 

DESKTOP The desktop is where all of your open windows will appear. Contained within a window is the Graphic User Interface, or GUI, that any given program, or application, uses. The desktop also contains icons, which are shortcuts that you click on with your mouse in order to open a file or program. It's small, but you can see the icon for the Recycle Bin in the lower right-hand corner of the graphic above.

 

START BUTTON AND MENU The Start Button brings up the Start Menu when clicked. This is where you can find and run the programs that have been installed on your computer, as well as tools that help you with some of the technical aspects. This menu can be customized in many ways. You can drag items around, delete them (right-click>Delete), and add items.

 

When you click All Programs toward the bottom of the Start Menu, you will get a list off ALL the software that is installed. This can (and should) be customized, because if there are many programs installed, this list can get rather unwieldy.

 

 

TASKBAR The Taskbar displays the programs that are open and running on the desktop. You can click the button of the program that you want to bring to the front to work in it. The Taskbar can be customized with different toolbars, and it can be resized or even moved to one of the four sides of your monitor screen.

 

SYSTEM TRAY The System Tray, at the far right end of the Taskbar, contains your system clock, as well as programs that are running in the background, meaning that they likely don't show up in the Taskbar as active programs. This is another area that can indicate a source of problems if your computer is slow. These are all programs that are running in the background, therefore they are using system resources. Many of them are unnecessary, and thanks to many software companies who think that their software is the only stuff you need, this can mess things up in a hurry.

FEELING BRAVE? You can reduce the number of programs that help themselves to your system resources by running MSCONFIG, a utility within Windows that will control what starts at bootup. Visit NetSquirrel for good instructions.