Windows 7: The Missing Manual

The Fast setting is nice if you have an enormous monitor, since it prevents you from needing an equally large mouse pad to get from one corner to another. The Slow setting, on the other hand, can be frustrating, since it forces you to constantly pick up and put down the mouse as you scoot across the screen. (You can also turn off the disproportionate-movement feature completely by turning off “Enhance pointer precision.”) ••Snap To. A hefty percentage of the times when you reach for the mouse, it’s to click a button in a dialog box. If you, like millions of people before you, usually click the default (outlined) button—such as OK, Next, or Yes—then the Snap To feature can save you the effort of positioning the cursor before clicking. When you turn on Snap To, every time a dialog box appears, your mouse pointer jumps automatically to the default button so that all you need to do is click. (And to click a different button, like Cancel, you have to move the mouse only slightly to reach it.) ••Display pointer trails. The options available for enhancing pointer visibility (or invisibility) are mildly useful under certain circumstances, but mostly they’re just for show. If you turn on “Display pointer trails,” for example, you get ghost images that trail behind the cursor like a bunch of little ducklings following their mother. In general, this stuttering-cursor effect is irritating. On rare occasions, however, you may find that it helps locate the cursor—for example, if you’re making a presentation on a low-contrast LCD projector. ••Hide pointer while typing is useful if you find that the cursor sometimes gets in the way of the words on your screen. As soon as you use the keyboard, the pointer disappears; just move the mouse to make the pointer reappear. ••Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key. If you’ve managed to lose the cursor on an LCD projector or a laptop with an inferior screen, this feature helps you gain your bearings. After turning on this checkbox, Windows displays an animated concentric ring each time you press the Ctrl key to pinpoint the cursor’s location.Tip: You can also fatten up the insertion point—the cursor that appears when you’re editing text. See page 288.Preserving Your Tweaks for PosterityHome Premium • Professional • Enterprise • UltimateThe previous pages describe six ways to modify one of Windows 7’s canned themes.You can change the desktop picture, the window color schemes, the sound scheme,the screen saver, the desktop icons, and the mouse-pointer shapes. The basic conceptis simple: You choose one of Microsoft’s canned themes as a starting point and thenadjust these six aspects of it as suits your mood.

When that’s all over, though, you return to the Personalization box, where all themodifications you’ve made are represented at the top of the screen—as an icon calledUnsaved Theme (Figure 4-10). Figure 4-10: You may notice, after applying a theme, that its name seems to be “Unsaved Theme.” This happens when- ever you apply a theme and then change any single component of it, including the desktop back- ground. Windows takes note and reports the theme you are using as modified.Well, you wouldn’t want all that effort to go to waste, would you? So click“Save theme,”type a name for your new, improved theme, and click Save.From now on, the theme you’ve created (well, OK, modified) shows up in a new rowof the Personalization dialog box called My Themes. From now on, you can recall theemotional tenor of your edited look with a single click on that icon.If you make further changes to that theme (or any other theme), another UnsavedTheme icon appears, once again ready for you to save and name. You can keep goingforever, adding to your gallery of experimentation.You can also delete a less-inspired theme (right-click its icon; from the shortcut menu,choose Delete Theme). On the other hand, when you strike creative gold, you can pack-age up your theme and share it with other computers—your own, or other people’sonline. To do that, right-click the theme’s icon; from the shortcut menu, choose “Savetheme for sharing.”Windows asks you to name and save the new .themepak file, whichyou can distribute to the masses. (Just double-clicking a .themepak file installs it inthe Personalize dialog box.)Note: If your theme uses sounds and graphics that aren’t on other people’s PCs, they won’t see those ele-ments when they install your theme.

Monitor Settings All Versions You wouldn’t get much work done without a screen on your computer. It follows, then, that you can get more work done if you tinker with your screen’s settings to make it more appropriate to your tastes and workload. And boy, are there a lot of settings to tinker with. Three Ways to Enlarge the Screen There are two reasons why Windows 7 introduced a quick-and-easy way to magnify everything on the screen. First, people tend to get older—even you. Come middle age, your eyes may have trouble reading smaller type. Second, the resolution of computer screens gets higher every year. That is, more and more dots are packed into the same-sized screens, and therefore those dots are getting smaller, and therefore the type and graphics are getting smaller. Microsoft finally decided enough was enough. That’s why, in Windows 7, there’s a one-click way to enlarge all type and graphics, with crisp, easier-to-see results. There are also various older schemes for accomplishing similar tasks. Here’s a run- down of all of them: Change the resolution Your screen can make its picture larger or smaller to accommodate different kinds of work. You perform this magnification or reduction by switching among different resolutions (measurements of the number of dots that compose the screen). When you use a low-resolution setting, such as 800 × 600, the dots of your screen image get larger, enlarging (zooming in on) the picture—but showing a smaller slice of the page. Use this setting when playing a small movie on the Web, for example, so that it fills more of the screen. At higher resolutions, such as 1280 × 1024, the screen dots get smaller, making your windows and icons smaller but showing more overall area. Use this kind of setting when working on two-page spreads in your page-layout program, for example. Unfortunately, adjusting the resolution isn’t a perfect solution if you’re having trouble reading tiny type. On a flat-panel screen—that is, the only kind sold today—only one resolution setting looks really great: the maximum one. That’s what geeks call the native resolution of that screen. That’s because on flat-panel screens, every pixel is a fixed size. At lower resolutions, the PC does what it can to blur together adjacent pixels, but the effect is fuzzy and unsatisfying. (On the old, bulky CRT monitors, the electron gun could actually make the pixels larger or smaller, so you didn’t have this problem.)192 windows 7: the missing manual

If you still want to adjust your screen’s resolution, here’s how you do it. Right-clickthe desktop. From the shortcut menu, choose “Screen resolution.” In the dialog box(Figure 4-11), use the Resolution pop-up menu.Tip: Depending on your monitor, you may see a weird Orientation pop-up menu here. Believe it or not, thiscontrol lets you flip your screen image upside-down or left/right, forming a mirror image.These options make hilarious practical jokes, of course, but they were actually designed to accommodatenewfangled PC designs where, for example, the screen half of a laptop flips over, A-frame style, so peopleacross the table from you can see it.In any case, once you choose an orientation and click Apply or OK, a dialog box lets you either keep ordiscard the setting. Which is lucky, because if the image is upside-down on a regular PC, it’s really hard toget any work done. Figure 4-11: Use the Resolution slider to change the magnification of the entire screen. On flat-panel screens, only the highest resolution is sharp, which is a good argument for leav- ing this setting alone.Enlarge just the type and graphicsThis new Windows 7 feature is one of Microsoft’s most inspired, most useful—andleast publicized. It turns out that you can enlarge the type and graphics on the screenwithout changing the screen’s resolution. So type gets bigger without getting blurrier,and everything else stays sharp, too.

To make this adjustment, right-click the desktop; from the shortcut menu, chooseResolution. In the resulting dialog box, click “Make text and other items larger orsmaller.”Now you arrive at a new dialog box; proceed as directed in Figure 4-12. Figure 4-12: Top: Click either Medium or Larger, and then click Apply. A message lets you know, “You must log off your com- puter.” Click “Log off now.” When the computer logs you in anew, you see larger type and graphics. Bottom: If you prefer an in- between magnification, or a higher amount (up to 500%), drag right or left on the ruler until the sample text looks good to you; click OK. Older apps may not respond to the text-scaling feature, so you may get blurry text at large degrees of magnification. The “Use Windows XP style DP scaling” option is sup- posed to fix that, although it has side effects, too; it may produce weird-looking dialog boxes and chopped-off text in some programs.troubleshooting momentBlurry Bigger TextThis business about getting larger, easier-to-read type with- If a particular program is giving you that sort of blurry textout changing your screen’s resolution is a neat Windows 7 after you’ve scaled up your type, you can tell it not even totrick indeed. And it works beautifully on the pieces of your bother. Right-click the program’s icon or its name in the Startworld controlled by Microsoft. menu. From the shortcut menu, choose Properties; click the Compatibility tab.But older, pre-Windows 7 programs don’t know anythingabout the new type-scaling features. If you’ve used one of Turn on “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings.”the type-enlarging features described on these pages, thetext might be blurry just in those apps. Now the app won’t magnify its text at all, but at least what’s there will be crisp.194 windows 7: the missing manual

Tip: The box in Figure 4-12 offers only two fixed degrees of magnification: 125% and 150%. You can actuallydial up any amount you like, though. Click “Set custom text size (DPI)” to produce the dialog box shown atbottom in Figure 4-12.The MagnifierIf your “type is too small” problem is only occasional, you can call up Windows’sMagnifier. It’s like a software magnifying glass that fills the top portion of your screen;as you move your pointer around the real-size area beneath, the enlarged image scrollsaround, too. Details are on page 195.ColorsToday’s monitors offer different color depth settings, each of which permits the screento display a different number of colors simultaneously. You usually have a choicebetween settings like Medium (16-bit), which was called High Color in early versionsof Windows; High (24-bit), once known as True Color; and Highest (32-bit).power users’ clinicSome Clear Talk About ClearTypeClearType is Microsoft’s word for a sneaky technology that In Windows 7, ClearType’s behavior is adjustable. To seemakes type look sharper on your screen than it really is. the options, open the Start menu. In the Search box, type enough of the word cleartype until “Adjust ClearType text”Imagine a lowercase s at a very small point size. It looks great appears in the results list; click it.on this page, because this book was printed at 1,200 dotsper inch. But your monitor’s resolution is far lower—maybe On the first screen, you have an on/off checkbox for96 dots per inch—so text doesn’t look nearly as good. If ClearType. It’s there just for the sake of completeness,you were to really get upclose, you’d see that the because text on an LCDcurves on the letters are screen really does lookactually a little jagged. worse without it.Each dot on an LCD If you click Next, Win-screen is actually com- dows walks you throughposed of three subpix- a series of “Which typeels (mini-dots): red, sample looks better togreen, and blue. What you?” screens, where allClearType does is simu- you have to do is clicklate smaller pixels in the the “Quick Brown Foxnooks and crannies of Jumps Over the Lazyletters by turning on only Dog” example that yousome of those subpixels. In the curve of that tiny s, for ex- find easiest to read. Be-ample, maybe only the blue subpixel is turned on, which to hind the scenes, of course, you’re adjusting ClearType’syour eye looks like a slightly darker area, a fraction of a pixel; technical parameters without even having to know whatas a result, the type looks finer than it really is. they are. When it’s all over, you’ll have the best-looking small type possible.

In the early days of computing, higher color settings required a sacrifice in speed.Today, however, there’s very little downside to leaving your screen at its highest setting.Photos, in particular, look best when you set your monitor to higher-quality settings.To check your settings, right-click the desktop. From the shortcut menu, choose“Screen resolution.” In the dialog box, click “Advanced settings” to open the Proper-ties dialog box for your monitor. Click the Monitor tab, and use the Colors pop-upmenu to choose your color depth.Multiple MonitorsHome Premium • Professional • Enterprise • UltimateIf your computer has a jack for an external monitor (most do these days—includ-ing the video-output jacks on laptops), then you can hook up a second monitor ora projector. You can either display the same picture on both screens (which is whatyou’d want if your laptop were projecting slides for an audience), or you can createa gigantic virtual desktop, moving icons or toolbars from one monitor to another.The latter setup also lets you keep an eye on Web activity on one monitor while youedit data on another. It’s a glorious arrangement, even if it does make the occasionalfamily member think you’ve gone off the deep end with your PC obsession.What’s especially great is that Windows 7 has a wicked-cool keystroke just for setupslike this (two monitors, or laptop+projector): w+P. When you press it, you see thedisplay in Figure 4-13.Tip: Actually, just plugging in a projector generally inspires Windows to present something like the optionsin Figure 4-13. This is an extremely thoughtful touch for laptop luggers, because it avoids the staggeringlyconfusing keyboard-based system you previously had to use. That’s where you’d press, for example, F8three times to cycle among the three modes: image on laptop only (projector dark), image on projector only(laptop screen dark), or image on both at once. Win7’s method is much easier. Figure 4-13: Click how you want your two screens to work: one screen on and the other off, both screens showing the same thing, or some additional real estate.You can also adjust the monitor settings independently for your two screens. To dothat, right-click the desktop. From the shortcut menu, choose “Screen resolution.”In the resulting dialog box (Figure 4-14), you see icons for both screens (or even more,if you have them, you lucky thing). It’s like a map. Click the screen whose settings (likeresolution) you want to change. If Windows seems to be displaying these miniaturesout of sequence—if your external monitor is really to the left of your main screen, and

Windows is showing it to the right—you can actually drag their thumbnails arounduntil they match reality. (Click Identify if you get confused; that makes an enormousdigit fill each real screen, which helps you match it to the digits on the miniatures.) Figure 4-14: When you have multiple moni- tors, the controls on the Settings tab change; you now see individual icons for each monitor. When you click a screen icon, the settings in the dialog box change to reflect its resolution, color quality, and so on.To bring about that extended-desktop scenario, use the “Multiple displays” pop-upmenu. It offers commands like “Duplicate these displays” and “Extend these displays.”Advanced SettingsIf you click the Advanced button on the Settings tab, you’re offered a collection oftechnical settings for your particular monitor model. Depending on your video driver,there may be tab controls here that adjust the refresh rate to eliminate flicker, installan updated adapter or monitor driver, and so on. In general, you rarely need to adjustthese controls—except on the advice of a consultant or help-line technician.chapter 4: interior decorating windows 197

5chapterGetting HelpWindows 7 may be better than any version of Windows before it, but improv- 199 ing something means changing it. And in Windows 7, a lot has changed; otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading a book about it.Fortunately, help is just around the corner—of the Start menu, that is. Windows’selectronic Help system was completely new in Windows Vista and has been furtherenhanced in Win7; it’s got little videos, links to Web articles, and even links that docertain jobs for you. It may take all weekend, but eventually you should find writteninformation about this or that Windows feature or problem.This chapter covers not only the Help system, but also some of the ways Windows canhelp you get help from a more experienced person via your network or the Internet.Navigating the Help SystemAll VersionsTo open the Help system, choose StartÆHelp and Support, or press w+F1. The Helpand Support window appears, as shown in Figure 5-1. From here, you can home inon the help screen you want using one of two methods: using the Search command,or clicking your way from the Help home page.Search the Help PagesBy typing a phrase into the Search Help box at the top of the main page and thenpressing Enter (or clicking the tiny magnifying glass button), you instruct Windowsto rifle through its 10,000 help pages—and many more that reside online—to searchfor the phrase you typed. chapter 5: getting help

Here are a few pointers: ••When you enter multiple words, Windows assumes you’re looking for help screens that contain all those words. For example, if you search for video settings, then help screens that contain both the words “video” and “settings” (although not neces- sarily next to each other) appear. Figure 5-1: The ”, ’, O, and Search controls on the Help system’s toolbar may look like the corresponding tools in a Web browser, but they refer only to your travels within the Help system. Other buttons at the top let you print a help article or change the type size.gem in the roughLinks in HelpAlong with the nicely rewritten help information, you may compass icon, offer you two ways of proceeding: Eitherfind, here and there in the Help system, a few clickable links. Windows can do the whole job for you, or it can show you step by step, using blinking, glowing outlines to show youSometimes you see a phrase that appears in green type; exactly where to click.that’s your cue that clicking it will produce a pop-up defini-tion. There aren’t nearly enough of these automated help top- ics—but when you stumble onto one, turn down the lights,Sometimes you see blue links to other help screens. invite the neighbors, and settle back for an unforgettable 5 minutes of entertainment.And sometimes you see help links that automate the taskyou’re trying to learn. These goodies, denoted by a blue200 windows 7: the missing manual

••To search for an exact phrase, put quotes around it (“video settings”). ••Once you’ve clicked your way to an article that looks promising, you can search within that page, too. Open the Options pop-up menu (upper-right corner of the Help window) and choose “Find (on this page).”Tip: Unless you turn off “Improve my search results by using online Help” (under OptionsÆSettings),Windows ordinarily searches both the Help system on your PC and additional articles online. But it doesn’tsearch the entire Microsoft Knowledge Base, as Windows XP did. (That’s an enormous technical Web sitefilled with troubleshooting and help articles.)You can search it right from the Help screen, though. On the Help-screen toolbar, click Ask, and then click thelink that says “Microsoft Customer Support. ” Then take the phone off the hook for the rest of the afternoon.Drilling DownIf you’re not using the same terminology as Microsoft, you won’t find your help topicby using the Search box. Sometimes, you may have better luck unearthing a certainhelp article by drilling down through the Table of Contents. Figure 5-2: As you arrive on each more finely grained subtable of subcontents, you’ll see a “bread-crumb trail” of topics at the top of the window. These ˘ arrows illustrate the levels through which you’ve descended on your way to this help page; you can backtrack by clicking one of these links.chapter 5: getting help 201

Start by clicking one of the three main browse options: “How to get started with yourcomputer,” “Learn about Windows Basics,” or “Browse Help contents.”Each one lists subtopics. Keep clicking until you arrive at an actual help article (Figure5-2).Remote AssistanceAll VersionsYou may think you know what stress is: deadlines, breakups, downsizing. But noth-ing approaches the frustration of an expert trying to help a PC beginner over thephone—for both parties.The expert is flying blind, using Windows terminology that the beginner doesn’t know.Meanwhile, the beginner doesn’t know what to look for and describe on the phone.Every little step takes 20 times longer than it would if the expert were simply seatedin front of the machine. Both parties are likely to age 10 years in an hour.Fortunately, that era is at an end. Windows’s Remote Assistance feature lets somebodyhaving computer trouble extend an invitation to an expert, via the Internet. Theexpert can actually see the screen of the flaky computer and can even take controlof it by remotely operating the mouse and keyboard. The guru can make even themost technical tweaks—running utility software, installing new programs, adjustinghardware drivers, even editing the Registry (Appendix B)—by long-distance remotecontrol. Remote Assistance really is the next best thing to being there.Remote Assistance: Rest AssuredOf course, these days, most people react to the notion of Remote Assistance with starkterror. What’s to stop some troubled teenager from tapping into your PC in the middleof the night, rummaging through your files, and reading your innermost thoughts?Plenty. First of all, you, the help-seeker, must begin the process by sending a specificelectronic invitation to the expert. The invitation has a time limit: If the helper doesn’trespond within, say, an hour, then the electronic door to your PC slams shut again.Second, the remote-control person can only see what’s on your screen. She can’tactually manipulate your computer unless you grant another specific permission.up to speedHelp for Dialog BoxesIn Windows XP, whenever you faced a dialog box contain- ? button in the upper-right corner of the dialog box and thening a cluster of oddly worded options, the “What’s This?” clicking the element you wanted identified.feature came to the rescue. It made pop-up captions appearfor text boxes, checkboxes, option buttons, and other dialog In Windows 7, there’s still a ? button in some dialog boxes.box elements. But it doesn’t offer anything like pop-up captions. Instead, it opens an article from the standard Windows Help centerYou summoned these pop-up identifiers by clicking the that explains the relevant dialog box as a whole.202 windows 7: the missing manual