Chapter 2: Organizing Your Interface In This Chapter ✓Taming the super Taskbar ✓Harnessing the power of the Start menu ✓Getting at your most recently used documents quickly ✓Starting your favorite programs with just a click ✓Making workhorse programs start automatically W indows 7 contains an enormous variety of self-help tools that can make your working (and playing!) days go faster. As you become more comfortable with the Windows inner world, you find shortcuts and simplifications that really do make a difference. This chapter shows you how to take off the training wheels. Tricking Out the Taskbar Microsoft developers working on the Windows 7 taskbar gave it a secret internal project name: the Superbar. Although one might debate how much of the Super in the bar arrived compliments of Mac OS, there’s no doubt that the Windows 7 taskbar runs rings around its predecessors. The Windows 7 Super, uh, taskbar, appears at the bottom of the screen, as in Figure 2-1. If you hover your mouse over an icon and the icon is associated with a pro- gram that’s running, you see thumbnails of all the copies of the program. For example, in Figure 2-1, three different instances of Firefox are running, each sitting at a different Web site. Hover your mouse over the Firefox icons and you can see which sites are up for grabs. Slide your mouse over a thumbnail and click once, and Firefox appears with a site loaded and ready for bear. Contents Chapter 2: Organizing Your Interface 247 Tricking Out the Taskbar 247 Customizing the Start Menu 256 248 Tricking Out the Taskbar Thumbnails of running windows Hover your mouse over a taskbar icon to see thumbnails. Lines to the right indicate the program is running. Anatomy of the taskbar The Taskbar consists of two different kinds of icons:  ✦ Icons that have been pinned there: Windows 7 ships with three icons on the taskbar — one apiece for Internet Explorer, Windows Explorer, and Windows Media Player. You can see them on the left in Figure 2-1. If you install a program and tell the installer to put an icon on the taskbar (or on the now-defunct Quick Launch toolbar), an icon for the program appears on the taskbar. You can also pin programs of your choice on the taskbar.  ✦ Icons associated with running programs: Every time a program starts, an icon for the program appears on the taskbar. If you run three copies of the program, only one icon shows up. When the program stops, the icon disappears. In general, you can’t differentiate between the pinned icons and the ones that are just coming along for the ride, except by noting which ones are on the right (the running programs) and which are on the left (the pinned programs). You can, however, tell which icons represent running programs: Windows puts little vertical lines to the left and right of the icon for any run- ning program. If you have more than one copy of the program running, you see more than one line on the right. It’s subtle. In Figure 2-2, the first icon doesn’t have a running program. All the others do. Figure 2-2: All but one icon has a running program. Chrome Word Sticky Notes Firefox Calculator Windows Live Messenger Figure 2-1: The taskbar juggles many different tasks. Book III Chapter 2 Organizing Your Interface 249 Tricking Out the Taskbar In Figure 2-2, Chrome isn’t running (there’s no vertical stripe on the left). Three different versions of Firefox are running, as shown in Figure 2-1. There’s one copy apiece of Word and the calculator. I have Sticky Notes on my desktop. And Windows Live Messenger is running, but not signed in. See how that works? Jumping If you right-click any icon in the taskbar — pinned or not — you see a bunch of links called a Jump List, as in Figure 2-3. Figure 2-3: The Jump List in Word. The contents of the Jump List vary depending on the program that’s run- ning, but the bottom pane of every Jump List contains the name of the pro- gram and the entry Unpin This Program from Taskbar. Jump Lists are new in Windows 7 and more than a little half-baked. Here are your Jump List basics:  ✦ Jump Lists may show you recently opened file history. For exam- ple, the Word Jump List (refer to Figure 2-3) shows you the same Recent Documents list that appears inside Word. The currently open document(s) appear at the top of the list. ✦ It’s easy to pin an item to the Jump List. When you pin an item, it sticks to a program’s Jump List whether or not that item is open. To pin an item, run your mouse out to the right of the item you want to pin and click the stick pin. That puts the item in a separate pane at the top of 250 Tricking Out the Taskbar the Jump List. In Figure 2-3, if I click the pin next to Super sandwich. docx, that document gets pinned to the top of the list. In the future, if I want to open Super sandwich.docx, I just right-click the Word icon and select the document. The Jump List has one not-so-obvious use. It lets you open a second copy of the same program. Say you want to copy a handful of albums from the music library to your thumb drive on F:. You start by clicking Start➪Music. Windows Explorer opens the Music Library. Cool. You could do the copy-and-paste thang — select an album, press Ctrl+C to copy, use the list on the left of Windows Explorer to navigate to F:, and then press Ctrl+V to paste. But if you’re going to copy many albums, it’s much faster and easier to open a second copy of Windows Explorer, and navigate to F: in that second window. Then you can click and drag albums from the Music folder to the F: folder. To open a second copy of a running program (Windows Explorer, in this example), you have two choices:  ✦ Hold down the shift key and click the icon.  ✦ Right-click the icon and choose the program’s name. In either case, Windows starts a fresh copy of the program. Changing the toolbar The toolbar rates as one of the few parts of Windows that’s highly malleable. You can modify it till the cows come home:  ✦ Pin any program on the toolbar by right-clicking the program (say, in the Start➪All Programs list) and choosing Pin to Toolbar. Yes, you can right-click the icon of a running program on the toolbar.  ✦ Move a pinned icon by clicking and dragging it. Easy. You know — the way it’s supposed to be. You can even drag an icon that isn’t pinned into the middle of the pinned icons. When the program associated with the icon stops, the icon disappears and all pinned icons move back into place.  ✦ Unpin any pinned program by right-clicking it and choosing Unpin from Toolbar. Rocket science. Unfortunately, you can’t turn individual documents or folders into icons on the toolbar. But you can pin a folder to the Windows Explorer Jump List, and you can pin a document to the Jump List for whichever application is associ- ated with the document. For example, you can pin a song to the Jump List for Windows Media Player. Book III Chapter 2 Organizing Your Interface 251 Tricking Out the Taskbar Here’s how to pin a folder or document to its associated icon on the taskbar: 1. Navigate to the folder or document that you want to pin. You can use Start➪Pictures, say, to open your Pictures library. You can even make a shortcut to the folder or document. 2. Drag the folder or document (or shortcut) to the taskbar. Windows tells you where it will pin the folder, document, or shortcut, as in Figure 2-4. Figure 2-4: Pinning a folder, file, or shortcut. 3. Release the mouse button. That’s all it takes. Making your own little toolbars You can turn your own folder into a toolbar, which sits on the taskbar. It’s a cool tool if you frequently need to navigate around a hornet’s nest of fold- ers and don’t want to do the navigating from inside a specific program (such as Word or Excel). Instead, you can put a pop-up menu — a new toolbar, in Windows parlance — on the taskbar. This toolbar whisks you directly to a folder, and from that point, subfolders turn into submenus. You can navigate through the folder maze to individual files. The terminology here is confusing because the custom pop-up toolbar you create sits on top of the Windows taskbar. Your folder doesn’t show up as an icon; it appears on the right side of the taskbar with the name of the folder. When you click the name of the folder, you see a navigable list of all subfold- ers and documents. Confused? Take a look at Figure 2-5. For example, in Figure 2-5, I put a shortcut to my Khun Woodys Reserve folder on the taskbar. Digging into that folder is as easy as clicking a toolbar button. Most people don’t need the extra cascading toolbar: You can navigate your program’s usual File➪Open menu with no problem or choose Start➪ Documents and you’re on your way. For most of us, this fancy custom toolbar just takes up room on the Windows taskbar — where space is in short supply anyway. But if you have a bunch of folders that you navigate frequently, it can save a lot of time. 252 Tricking Out the Taskbar In a toolbar, each folder is associated with a flyout menu. Items in the flyout menu match items in the folder. To put a new toolbar on the Windows taskbar: 1. Right-click any unused part of the taskbar and choose Toolbars➪ New Toolbar. You see the New Toolbar dialog box, shown in Figure 2-6. Figure 2-6: Choose the root folder for the taskbar. 2. Navigate to the folder you want as the root of the pop-up menu, and click Select Folder. Figure 2-5: When you create your own toolbar, the entries on the toolbar match the underlying folder structure. Book III Chapter 2 Organizing Your Interface 253 Tricking Out the Taskbar The contents of this folder appear on your new toolbar. Figure 2-5 shows the result of my placing the Khun Woodys Reserve folder on my taskbar. 3. If you want to try to relocate the toolbar, make sure the taskbar is unlocked (right-click an empty part of it and deselect the Lock the Taskbar option). Then click and drag your new toolbar wherever you want. If you play with the toolbar, you see that Windows restricts the place- ment and sizing of the toolbar quite drastically — and it has a habit of dragging out subfolders and files. 4. When you’re happy with the result, right-click an unused spot on the taskbar and select the Lock the Taskbar check box. Try using the new toolbar and see if you get used to it. If you change your mind and want to get rid of the new toolbar, right-click an open place on the taskbar, choose Toolbars, and deselect the option that mentions the new toolbar. It’s hard to wax nostalgic about an old Windows feature, but the old Quick Launch toolbar has been around since 1997, and plenty of people mourn its passing in Windows 7. Quick Launch works differently from the new taskbar, and if you want to continue to use it, you’re in luck. Here’s how to bring it back: 1. Choose Start, immediately type gpedit.msc and press Enter. This step opens the Windows Group Policy Editor, one of those weird, geeky internal things your mother warned you about. 2. On the left, choose User Configuration➪ Administrative Templates➪Start Menu and Taskbar. 3. Near the bottom of the Setting list, double- click Show Quick Launch on Taskbar. 4. Choose Enabled and click OK. 5. Back in Windows, right-click the taskbar and choose Toolbars➪New Toolbar. 6. Navigate to the folder c:\users\<your name>\AppData\Roaming\ Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ Quick Launch and click Select Folder. Quick Launch appears as a new toolbar on your taskbar. You can drag programs on and off the Quick Launch toolbar, just as you did in Windows XP and Vista. Use the tricks described in the ear- lier section “Making your own little toolbars,” to expand the toolbar. If you decide that you no longer want the Quick Launch toolbar, follow the Group Policy Editor steps again and this time, rather than choose Enabled, choose Not Configured. Bring back the Quick Launch toolbar 254 Tricking Out the Taskbar Working with the taskbar I’ve discovered a few tricks with the taskbar that you may find worthwhile:  ✦ When you hover your mouse over an icon, you see thumbnails of the running copies of the program (refer to Figure 2-1). Normally, the thumb- nails disappear when you move the mouse, but if you click the icon once, the thumbnails stay until you click somewhere else.  ✦ Sometimes you want to shut down all (or most) running programs, and you don’t want Windows to do it for you. It’s easy to see what’s running, by looking at the vertical lines to the right of the icons (refer to Figure 2-2). To close down all instances of a particular program, right-click its icon and choose Close Window or Close All Windows. The terminology is a bit screwy here. Normally, you would say “Exit the program” or “Choose File➪Exit” or “Click the red X” or some such. When you’re working with the taskbar, you say “Close all windows.” Different words, same meaning.  ✦ To get a quick look at all running programs, slide your mouse along the row of taskbar icons.  ✦ To bring up the last window that was open in a particular program, hold down the Ctrl key and click the program’s icon. For example, if you Ctrl+click the Word icon, Word appears with the most recently viewed document open. I have no idea why Microsoft calls it Aero Peek (marketing Kool-Aid, no doubt), but if you swing your mouse down to the lower-right corner of the screen — at the right end of the taskbar — Windows 7 turns all open win- dows transparent so that you can “see through” the open windows and view the icons and gadgets below. Elsewhere, Windows calls the same feature Show Desktop and Desktop Preview — both of which sound better, to me, than Twin Peaks, er, Error Peek. If you drag your mouse to the lower-right corner and then click, Windows minimizes all open windows. Click again, and Windows brings back all mini- mized windows. Controlling the notification area Windows 7 finally (finally!) gives you some specific control over the contents of the notification area — the glob of icons down near the clock that used to be known as the system tray. Windows 7 ships with a small handful of visible notification icons — for the Action Center, the Network Center, and the master audio volume control slider. That’s it. If you see any additional icons, your computer’s manufacturer Book III Chapter 2 Organizing Your Interface 255 Tricking Out the Taskbar probably put them there. When you install a new program that has an icon for the notification area, the icon is placed in the box that you can see when you click the up arrow at the left edge of the icons. If you’re tired of seeing a useless icon in the notification area — or if you know that you want to see an icon all the time — you can take control. Here’s how: 1. Click the up arrow at the left edge of the icons. If you see an icon in the box that you absolutely must have visible all the time, simply click and drag it into the notification area, near the clock. If you later change your mind, you can click and drag the icon back from the notification area into the box. 2. Choose Customize. Windows shows you the Notification Area Icon Zapper box — that’s what I call it, anyway (see Figure 2-7). 3. Find the icon you want to zap and, in the drop-down box, choose Hide Icon and Notifications (to turn off the beast completely) or Only Show Notifications (shows the balloon warnings but doesn’t show the icon). Figure 2-7: Control notification area icons here. 256 Customizing the Start Menu 4. Click OK. The icon changes its wayward ways immediately. Customizing the Start Menu I give you a brief overview of the Start menu in Book II, Chapter 1. In this chapter, I take a look at the beast in far greater detail by explaining what makes it tick and how you can use this newfound information to practice a little Start menu mind control so that the menu reflects the way you use your PC. The tricks you find in this section should appeal to you especially if you bought your PC with Windows 7 preinstalled, because the PC manufacturer probably stuck some programs on the Start menu that didn’t originate with Microsoft. If you want to take control of your Start menu, follow the steps in this chapter to get rid of the stuff you don’t want or need. It’s your Start menu. You can’t break anything. Take the, uh, bull by the horns. To change the Start menu for everyone who uses your computer, you need to be a designated administrator. Find out more about becoming an adminis- trator in the section on choosing account types in Book II, Chapter 2. Genesis of the Start menu Although the Start menu looks like it sprang fully formed from the head of some malevolent Windows god, in fact Windows creates much of the Start menu on the fly, every time you click the Start button. That’s why your com- puter takes a little while between the time you click the Start button and the time you see the Start menu on the screen. Here’s where the various pieces come from, looking from top to bottom (see Figure 2-8):  ✦ The name and picture in the upper-right corner are taken from the Windows sign-on screen. You can change them by following the pro- cedure described in the section on changing user settings in Book II, Chapter 2.  ✦ You can pin a program or shortcut to the upper-left corner of the Start menu. After being pinned, it stays there until you remove it. I go into pin- ning details in the next section of this chapter.  ✦ The recently used programs list maintained by Windows goes on the left side of the Start menu, at the bottom. Although you have a little bit of control over this list, Windows (or your PC manufacturer) may stack the deck, by loading favored programs first, whether you use them or not. Most of the time, you probably let Windows take control of the [...]... fundamentally different ways of looking for information on a computer: ✓ Scanning: Involves looking through each file, one by one, and trying to find what you’re looking for Think of Diogenes walking through the marketplace of Athens, in broad daylight, with a lantern, seeking an honest man Sometimes Windows 7 stumbles upon the things you seek Sometimes it doesn’t Every time, it takes forever ✓ Indexing: Involves... search string business Except Except Windows 7 doesn’t quite work that way When you type an asterisk in a Windows 7 Search box, Windows uses the characters following the asterisk to match any part of a filename Permit me another example If you type *dum in a Windows 7 Search box, here’s what happens: ✦ Windows looks inside files for the text dum, but the text has to appear at the beginning of a word... on other kinds of search in Windows 7 If you type in the Start Search bar and press Enter, the Windows 7 reaction depends on the results you can see at that point If the results include any programs or Control Panel applets, Windows 7 runs the top program on the Indexing for Fun and Profit 277 list when you press Enter If the results don’t include any programs, pressing Enter throws you into a simple... search, covering everything in the Windows 7 search index, as shown in Figure 3 -4 Note that the search shown in the figure covers all indexed locations — it isn’t tied to a particular folder or library Figure 3 -4: A full search that started in the Start menu Indexing for Fun and Profit Similarly, if you tell the Start menu’s Search bar to look for the word water, Windows 7 consults its index and knows... computer: You wouldn’t want to index, oh, the text of Windows warning messages or the patterns of bits inside picture or music files Searching Your Computer At the heart of the Windows 7 search feature sits the index Much like the index in this book, the Windows 7 index stores references to the book’s contents If you’re looking for information about the taskbar, check the index in the back of this book and... idea Stepping through a basic search Windows 7 packs Search boxes everywhere, most noticeably at the bottom of the Start menu and in the upper-right corner of every Windows Explorer window If you type something in a Search box, Windows 7 immediately runs to the index, looking for matches in the current folder and all folders underneath the current folder It searches for all kinds of files — documents... the indexer is supposed to index Then, and only then, is the file added to the index You have control over both processes: ✦ Tell Windows 7 to look in specific locations for files it should index ✦ Tell Windows 7 that it should or should not index specific filename extensions The rest of this section goes into details Indexing for Fun and Profit 279 Goodbye scanning, hello-o-o-o (improved) indexing... should Windows 7 incorporate into the index, and what can be safely left aside? When Windows 7 builds and maintains its index, it keeps track of the files going into and being removed from specific locations on your computer When a file is added or removed from one of the locations that the indexer tracks, Windows 7 looks to see whether the file type (which is to say, if the filename extension for the... Menu\Programs folder for you, which is in the C:\ Users\\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft \Windows folder ✦ The Start Menu\Programs folder for Windows itself, which is in the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft \Windows folder If you can’t see the AppData folder, you haven’t told Windows 7 to show you hidden and system folders Follow the instructions in Book II, Chapter 1, to get Windows 7 to show you all your data... bloody indexer: You’d be typing along, pause a few seconds to think, and — WHAM! — all of a sudden, this crazy program had taken over your machine Resume typing, and you had to wait an eternity to regain control of your PC That situation has improved significantly in Windows 7 Really A good discussion of the techniques involved is on the Microsoft Engineering Windows 7 blog at tinyurl.com/3mdfs4 and . than Twin Peaks, er, Error Peek. If you drag your mouse to the lower-right corner and then click, Windows minimizes all open windows. Click again, and Windows brings back all mini- mized windows. Controlling. clearing the list and then telling Windows 7 to start showing it again, you get rid of all the bad karma, er, salted programs, and Windows 7 starts keeping track of the programs you use. 2 64 Customizing. and all pinned icons move back into place.  ✦ Unpin any pinned program by right-clicking it and choosing Unpin from Toolbar. Rocket science. Unfortunately, you can’t turn individual documents