Windows tips and tricks

Maybe it's just the search terms I've been trying, but...

I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
the upper left corner closes the window.

I've found a lot of sites that list the common things, like the buttons,
etc., but that's not what I'm looking for. :-(




--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 42.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Ken Springer wrote:
Maybe it's just the search terms I've been trying, but...

I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
the upper left corner closes the window.

I've found a lot of sites that list the common things, like the buttons,
etc., but that's not what I'm looking for. :-(





Bored?

--
John Q. Public

| I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
| desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
| navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
| adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
| the upper left corner closes the window.
|

I can't think of any especially useful and esoteric
tweaks offhand, nor of sites that list them specifically
for Explorer windows. (I assume that's what you're
talking about -- Explorer folder windows and not
the Desktop window itself.)

A few thoughts that might be of some use:

http://www.mdgx.com/0.php -- Formerly "Axcel's
Max Speed". More focussed on XP and earlier, but
lots of tweaks, lots of links, and many Explorer tweaks
work work in all versions, anyway.

http://www.pctools.com/guides/ -- Some useful
stuff, especially the Registry guide section.

http://www.shellcity.net/ -- Shell Extension City.
A very interesting site, around for many years. A
shell extension is any custom "plugin", like menu
bars, exploror bars, toolbars, property sheets,
drop handlers, etc.

I used to customize Win9x by editing the folder.htt
file. A folder window then was literally a webpage
with a fileview control in it. So the customizing
options were unlimited.

For XP/7 I wrote an Explorer Bar to provide various
functions I wanted. That only runs under 32-bit
Explorer:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/jsfv.php5

For more options and 64-bit Explorer Bars or
similar, you might find possibilities at Shell Extension
City.

In both cases -- editing folder.htt and writing
an Explorer Bar shell extension -- I did it because
Microsoft seemed to be wasting the real estate
on the left side. For instance, I find custom links
to other folders *very* useful, but Microsoft have
never added that to their standard Explorer Bar.

Unfortunately, over the years Microsoft have
been gradually limiting functionality, in some cases
for security, but also for consistency. They seem
to want the Windows UI to be a consistent and
recognizable element, so options are reduced and
customization is made more difficult outside of
official channels.

On 1/3/16 11:24 AM, John Q. Public wrote:
Ken Springer wrote:
Maybe it's just the search terms I've been trying, but...

I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
the upper left corner closes the window.

I've found a lot of sites that list the common things, like the buttons,
etc., but that's not what I'm looking for. :-(





Bored?

LOL. No.

No, I'm creating a kindergarten level series of computer classes that
cover "The Things They Don't Teach You Anymore". People just seem to
assume everyone knows how to do the simplest of things.

Things like Copy and Paste between folders and windows. You'd be
surprised how many people that use computers can't do things like this
because they don't have easy access to the info. Since they don't know
these things, they also don't know how to access any help. Mfgrs.
stopped including that kind of info, so many users are clueless as to
where to start.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 42.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 03/01/2016 19:34, Ken Springer wrote:



No, I'm creating a kindergarten level series of computer classes that
cover "The Things They Don't Teach You Anymore". People just seem to
assume everyone knows how to do the simplest of things.


Have you thought of the fact that they don't teach something because
there is no need for it to be taught? Some old people need to be
realistic and stop wasting time on things that are not needed in the
modern world.

Things like Copy and Paste between folders and windows. You'd be
surprised how many people that use computers can't do things like this
because they don't have easy access to the info. Since they don't
know these things, they also don't know how to access any help.
Mfgrs. stopped including that kind of info, so many users are clueless
as to where to start.



Again you are wrong and the old age is showing all over your face.
Modern kids are smarter than you give them credit for. All the people
today who are billionaires started when they were kids with lots of
natural hair and still in their frst year at college. They even started
corporations like Microsoft or Facebook when they couldn't even wash
themselves up properly.

By the way Happy New Year and please make sure we know your true age so
that we can compile a list of Inventory of people who may not be around
this year!!!. I use simple statistics and rule of thumb to do this!!!
No need for your computer classes for this.

--

1. /*This post contains rich text (HTML). if you don't like it then you
can kill-filter the poster without crying like a small baby.*/
2. /*This message is best read in Mozilla Thunderbird as it uses 21st
century technology.*/

| No, I'm creating a kindergarten level series of computer classes that
| cover "The Things They Don't Teach You Anymore". People just seem to
| assume everyone knows how to do the simplest of things.
|
|
| Have you thought of the fact that they don't teach something because
| there is no need for it to be taught? Some old people need to be
| realistic and stop wasting time on things that are not needed in the
| modern world.
|

What he's doing is exactly what the "For Dummies"
books do. They fill an important need. Everyone
has to learn these things at some point -- young
or old. And many people never do. I don't know
many people who even know that they can create
folders and decide where to store things. That's why
there's My Documents, My Pictures, etc.

The first time I used a Windows computer I spent
an entire evening trying to figure out how to get
a file from a floppy disk to the Desktop. It wasn't
in the Windows help. (Which was a printed book at
the time.) The "office" metaphor of the Windows
desktop is not at all intuitive. It must be learned
from scratch.

| Again you are wrong and the old age is showing all over your face.
| Modern kids are smarter than you give them credit for.

Many people assume kids are computer experts.
In most cases they're just experts at doing the
things they want. (I was just reading about a
7-year-old who racked up a $5,900 bill buying
imaginary dinosaurs on an iPhone game, using his
father's iPhone. I'd say both father and son have
something to learn in that case.

| 1. /*This post contains rich text (HTML). if you don't like it then you
| can kill-filter the poster without crying like a small baby.*/

No, actually it doesn't contain either rich text or
HTML, for all practical purposes, in most cases. Rich
text usually refers to RTF text, like Wordpad produces.
Your email doesn't contain RTF. It contains HTML,
but for the majority of people, reading newsgroups as
plain text, your post shows up perfectly normal. The
HTML content is dropped out. Don't get that? You
might want to sign up for Ken's "HTML for Beginners"
class once he gets it set up. After that, sign up for his
class on MIME standards, paying close attention to
the lessons on multipart MIME content types. Then
you'll be able to hack your own posts so that they
don't post as multi-part and only show up as HTML.
But be warned: In that case most people won't see
anything at all in your posts.

On 1/3/16 1:40 PM, Good Guy wrote:
On 03/01/2016 19:34, Ken Springer wrote:



No, I'm creating a kindergarten level series of computer classes that
cover "The Things They Don't Teach You Anymore". People just seem to
assume everyone knows how to do the simplest of things.


Have you thought of the fact that they don't teach something because
there is no need for it to be taught? Some old people need to be
realistic and stop wasting time on things that are not needed in the
modern world.

Things like Copy and Paste between folders and windows. You'd be
surprised how many people that use computers can't do things like this
because they don't have easy access to the info. Since they don't
know these things, they also don't know how to access any help.
Mfgrs. stopped including that kind of info, so many users are clueless
as to where to start.



Again you are wrong and the old age is showing all over your face.
Modern kids are smarter than you give them credit for. All the people
today who are billionaires started when they were kids with lots of
natural hair and still in their frst year at college. They even started
corporations like Microsoft or Facebook when they couldn't even wash
themselves up properly.

By the way Happy New Year and please make sure we know your true age so
that we can compile a list of Inventory of people who may not be around
this year!!!. I use simple statistics and rule of thumb to do this!!!
No need for your computer classes for this.

For an obviously intelligent person, you offer some of the most idiotic
and disrespectful replies I see.

WTF is your problem?



--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 42.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 1/3/16 2:08 PM, Mayayana wrote:

snip

He/she knows this stuff, but for some reason he/she wishes to present a
persona of stupidity and disrespect for others.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 42.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

On 1/3/2016 3:13 PM, Ken Springer wrote:
On 1/3/16 1:40 PM, Good Guy wrote:
On 03/01/2016 19:34, Ken Springer wrote:



No, I'm creating a kindergarten level series of computer classes that
cover "The Things They Don't Teach You Anymore". People just seem to
assume everyone knows how to do the simplest of things.


Have you thought of the fact that they don't teach something because
there is no need for it to be taught? Some old people need to be
realistic and stop wasting time on things that are not needed in the
modern world.

Things like Copy and Paste between folders and windows. You'd be
surprised how many people that use computers can't do things like this
because they don't have easy access to the info. Since they don't
know these things, they also don't know how to access any help.
Mfgrs. stopped including that kind of info, so many users are clueless
as to where to start.



Again you are wrong and the old age is showing all over your face.
Modern kids are smarter than you give them credit for. All the people
today who are billionaires started when they were kids with lots of
natural hair and still in their frst year at college. They even started
corporations like Microsoft or Facebook when they couldn't even wash
themselves up properly.

By the way Happy New Year and please make sure we know your true age so
that we can compile a list of Inventory of people who may not be around
this year!!!. I use simple statistics and rule of thumb to do this!!!
No need for your computer classes for this.

For an obviously intelligent person, you offer some of the most idiotic
and disrespectful replies I see.

WTF is your problem?




His problem is that he has a very serious mental disorder, He hates old
people and Canadians.
I wonder if he hates his Mom and Dad also?
I guess he must hate himself more and more as he grows older.
I'm sure glad I'm not him, Thank the deities

Regards, Rene (at 81 going on 82)

..

On 1/3/16 12:26 PM, Mayayana wrote:
| I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
| desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
| navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
| adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
| the upper left corner closes the window.
|

I can't think of any especially useful and esoteric
tweaks offhand, nor of sites that list them specifically
for Explorer windows. (I assume that's what you're
talking about -- Explorer folder windows and not
the Desktop window itself.)

Explorer Windows!!!! That's the search term(s) I should have been
using. While I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for, the first
search has turned up some of the things I'm interested in.

A few thoughts that might be of some use:

http://www.mdgx.com/0.php -- Formerly "Axcel's
Max Speed". More focussed on XP and earlier, but
lots of tweaks, lots of links, and many Explorer tweaks
work work in all versions, anyway.

http://www.pctools.com/guides/ -- Some useful
stuff, especially the Registry guide section.

http://www.shellcity.net/ -- Shell Extension City.
A very interesting site, around for many years. A
shell extension is any custom "plugin", like menu
bars, exploror bars, toolbars, property sheets,
drop handlers, etc.

Those are good sites, but couldn't get into Shell City directly. But
being redirected from another site worked.

I used to customize Win9x by editing the folder.htt
file. A folder window then was literally a webpage
with a fileview control in it. So the customizing
options were unlimited.

For XP/7 I wrote an Explorer Bar to provide various
functions I wanted. That only runs under 32-bit
Explorer:

http://www.jsware.net/jsware/jsfv.php5

Given any thoughts to updating for 64 bit, and Win 8/10? Utilities like
this is what makes computers enjoyable for me, and probably would for
others if they could easily learn about them.

For more options and 64-bit Explorer Bars or
similar, you might find possibilities at Shell Extension
City.

In both cases -- editing folder.htt and writing
an Explorer Bar shell extension -- I did it because
Microsoft seemed to be wasting the real estate
on the left side. For instance, I find custom links
to other folders *very* useful, but Microsoft have
never added that to their standard Explorer Bar.

Unfortunately, over the years Microsoft have
been gradually limiting functionality, in some cases
for security, but also for consistency. They seem
to want the Windows UI to be a consistent and
recognizable element, so options are reduced and
customization is made more difficult outside of
official channels.

The lack of little tweaks like this in OS X, AFAIK, is a negative for
me. But there's no darned constant updates or patches, which is why an
almost 6 year old Mac is still my main computer.


--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 42.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

| Explorer Windows!!!!

Yes. They're also scriptable. That may not be of
any interest to you. I don't know.

.... This goes off on a tangent. Ignore it if you're
not thinking of teaching any scripting tricks...

Windows Script Host still maintains an Explorer/IE
relationship left over from the days of Active Desktop.
The Shell.Application object is a wrapper around Explorer
functionality. It can return a windows collection that
represents all instance of IE and Explorer currently
open, returned as InternetExplorer objects. With IE
one can get access to the document object. With
folder windows the document object if actually the
ShellFolderView object, which represents Explorer's
access to the folder content, such as what the
currently selected item is. The Win32 API version
of the same thing is what gives Explorer Bars much
of their functionality.

........... end of tangent .................................


| For XP/7 I wrote an Explorer Bar to provide various
| functions I wanted. That only runs under 32-bit
| Explorer:
|
| http://www.jsware.net/jsware/jsfv.php5
|
| Given any thoughts to updating for 64 bit, and Win 8/10?

Probably not. It will run under Explorer32 on Win64,
but I'm not sure MS even allows that to happen
anymore. (Even though it was the default in the early
days of Win7. There were no 64-bit ActiveX controls.)
It would probably be fine on Win8, but I'm not sure
there's any Win8-32.

It's a long story, but the gist of it is that I don't care
for where MS is headed and they're making it harder
not to follow them into the limited world of Metro
trinket apps. Also, they're no longer providing good
tools for Desktop software because they want people
to write the Metro [aka modern aka universal] apps.

Meanwhile, most 32-bit software works fine on
Win64 and on Win8/10, anyway. I can write software
that runs on Win95 to Win10 in most cases if I have to.
Running on WinXP to Win10, 32-bit or 64-bit, is almost
always easy. Shell extensions are a rare exception
because they must run in the Explorer process, and a
process can only be 32 or 64, not both. So for several
combined reasons there's just no payoff for me in making
a move to 64-bit software.

| The lack of little tweaks like this in OS X, AFAIK, is a negative for
| me. But there's no darned constant updates or patches, which is why an
| almost 6 year old Mac is still my main computer.
|

I can understand those mixed feelings. Lockdown
is what makes Macs so boring and annoying, and
limited in terms of software. They're designed as
consumer devices, while Windows is targetted to
business users who often want to write their
own custom software. But Mac lockdown is also
what makes them more stable.

On Sun, 3 Jan 2016 11:24:17 -0700, Ken Springer wrote:
Maybe it's just the search terms I've been trying, but...

I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
the upper left corner closes the window.

I've found a lot of sites that list the common things, like the buttons,
etc., but that's not what I'm looking for. :-(

Shouldn't all of the Windows functionality usage been convered in the
documentation? Or is it that Microsoft got lazier on making a proper docs?

On 1/3/16 3:51 PM, JJ wrote:
On Sun, 3 Jan 2016 11:24:17 -0700, Ken Springer wrote:
Maybe it's just the search terms I've been trying, but...

I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
the upper left corner closes the window.

I've found a lot of sites that list the common things, like the buttons,
etc., but that's not what I'm looking for. :-(

Shouldn't all of the Windows functionality usage been convered in the
documentation? Or is it that Microsoft got lazier on making a proper docs?


IMO, MS no longer knows the meaning of "docs". :-(

--
Ken
Mac OS X 10.8.5
Firefox 42.0
Thunderbird 38.0.1
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

In message , Mayayana
writes:
| I'm looking for a web source that lists all the things you can do to a
| desktop window. Not just the items you can do like show/hide the
| navigation pane, preview, etc., but the lesser known ones, such as
| adding "JPG" in the path and have only jpegs show, or double clicking in
| the upper left corner closes the window.
|

I can't think of any especially useful and esoteric
tweaks offhand, nor of sites that list them specifically
for Explorer windows. (I assume that's what you're
talking about -- Explorer folder windows and not
the Desktop window itself.)
[]
Alt-space is useful, and little-known. What it brings up (same as
clicking the top _left_ corner) has been there since W3.

(I find Alt-space then C easier than Alt-F4; the three keys are close
together. Though being left-handed may be relevant.)

The Move and Size parts - especially with use by keyboard - are useful
when a window has for some reason gone off-screen, or too big, or you
can't see its title bar.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I am what I am - I am my own special creation;
I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses.

In message , Ken Springer
writes:
[]
The lack of little tweaks like this in OS X, AFAIK, is a negative for
me. But there's no darned constant updates or patches, which is why an
almost 6 year old Mac is still my main computer.

And XP for me. (OK, I have the POS tweak. And yes, I know that in
theory, I'm endangering the web for you all.)

--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

I am what I am - I am my own special creation;
I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses.