Learn to Use your Computer

Shop Shop Till You Drop

The internet has changed our buying habits. Many people have found the convenience of online shopping to be a great experience. You can easily click and see the product. You have a fun time shopping, browsing, reading and getting informed about products. And you don’t have to take time out from your busy schedule to fight traffic, crowds and lines to buy the perfect gift for your recipient.

No wonder Internet business generated $301 billion in revenue last year, by a University of Texas estimate.

If you compare shopping online to offline you would think as far as security goes, it would favor offline shopping, right? Not really.

In the years past, shoppers were more reluctant to do their shopping online – now things have changed greatly. And that confidence in consumers directly reflects the enormous growth of online sales.

I have a friend who took his wife out for a romantic evening to a local restaurant. The last place you would expect credit card fraud to happen. By the time he noticed they had charged him double the amount for their dinner, it was too late to go back to the restaurant. He rang me and we concluded that it must be a mistake. It was later that we found out that the restaurant owner’s reputation was a bit shaky. Apparently he frequently overcharged customers in the hope they wouldn’t notice.

I don’t know. It’s a funny world we live in.

Does this mean the internet is safe? Relatively yes, but don’t forget, the Internet is an open field and there are some bad elements out there.

We have been shopping online for years. We never had a problem with credit card fraud on the Internet. But then again, we always take precautions. From this point forward, you will see 10 checkpoints online merchants have to pass to secure our business...

1. Will your credit card details be safe?

Reputable companies online know that one of the things preventing customers from placing orders with them is customers not been sure whether their credit card details will be safe. Responsible companies have taken this concern onboard and have set up their systems to provide the customer with maximum security.

How would you know if you are entering your payment details on a secure page?

You should see a picture of a lock on the bottom right hand side of your screen. This lock will appear on the page that you fill in when ordering and ensures that your name, address and credit card information is being sent to the online store through encrypted code. This encrypted code means that a hacker will not be able to steal your credit card information.

2. Does the online store value your privacy and confidentiality?

Prior to the internet days, when I used to order something from a mail order company, mysteriously I would be sent advertising from companies that I hadn’t done business with. Back then I didn’t know that companies sold your personal information for advertising purposes to other companies.

Receiving junk mail was annoying but because of the cost involved, it didn’t happen constantly. Imagine now if you do business online with a company that doesn’t respect your privacy and sells your email address.

Next time you open your email software, you are bombarded with emails ranging from a dozen to hundreds. Now that’s not annoying – it’s intolerable.
So moral of the story here, make sure your email address won’t be sold.

Ensure the online store has a privacy statement which would state they will maintain your personal details in the strictest privacy and confidentiality.

3. Does the online store have contact details?

You may think, of course an online store would display their contact details on their website. You would be surprised. I was. No email address, nothing. This is a sure red flag.

Reputable companies will have contact details.

4. Do they have a refund policy?

Offline stores have a refund policy and you go into the store, physically select the product and are then allowed to return it for whatever reason. If a refund policy is important in offline stores, it’s twice as important for online stores.

The internet in convenience surpasses the offline world when it comes to shopping - but one thing it can’t match is that offline you can physically touch the product. Therefore a refund policy of 30 days is great, more is better. No refund policy and I would stay away.

5. Do they send you some sort of confirmation when you place your order?

When you place your order what you need is something to tell you they have receive it, a receipt if you like.

A reputable company will either issue you one via email or display a new page of their website where they thank you and tell you the order went through okay and your product is on its way.

6. When do they deliver?

What times do they deliver during the day? Do they deliver on the weekends? Can you choose a time to have your gift delivered? Will it be delivered personally to the recipient intended or will the courier leave it outside their door?

7. How will your gift arrive?

If its flowers, will it come with a vase or in a nice box or wrapped? Will your bouquet contain flower care instructions? How about flower food to make your flowers last longer?

If you’ve ordered another gift product, will they wrap it? In what kind of material will they deliver it?

Do they tell you these things on their website?

8. How long have they been in business?

This may not mean too much. There are companies that start off and surpass all others. But perhaps for your peace of mind, you may want to use an online store that has been in business for some years. To check the history of the company is easy.

You can go to networksolutions.com and click on "whois" on the top bar. You will be taken to a page where you can enter the web address of the online store you want to check and you will receive the relevant information.

9. Is the online store’s site easy to use?

Is navigating easy? Is looking for products easy? Do their graphics download in a reasonable time?

A sure sign of an amateur sight is if they have their website cluttered with information.

10. Have they gotten any bad reviews?

A reputable company isn’t necessary one that hasn’t any bad reviews to its name. It’s virtually impossible to please everyone.

There have been companies I have bought from and absolutely loved. So it surprises me sometimes when I stumble on a bad review about their products or even bad comments about them.

So when is a bad comment about a company worth considering?
I take note of reviews where the writer complains of

 not receiving the product
 not receiving a refund
 not having their emails answered

If you want to see what kind of reviews a company may have, click on alexa.com. When you get to the website, type in the address of the store you want to check out. This will also show you how long the company has been in business.

Online shopping is fun. Take a little care and make it an experience! Happy shopping!

# posted by John @ 5:32 PM 0 comments

A URL (pronounced You-Are-Ell), or Uniform Resource Locator, is a fancy way of saying an address for information on the Internet. If you hear URL, just think "address" or "location." URLs differ based on how specific you need to be.

URLs can be absolute (complete) or relative (partial):

• If you're creating a document that you want to publish on the Internet, you use an absolute URL so that anyone — anywhere in the world — on the Internet can find the page.

• If you're creating links to other files within the same folder or on the same server, you need to provide only a relative URL. Remember that you're already in the same directory (or folder or general vicinity) as the file to which you're linking.

All HTML documents can use URLs to link to other information. URLs, in turn, can point to many different things, such as HTML documents, other sites on the Internet, or even images and sound files.

URLs are case sensitive. On some computers, typing a filename such as Kitten.html is very different from typing kitten.html. If you create a filename that uses special capitalization (instead of, say, using all lowercase characters), you must use this same capitalization the same way every time you link to the document. (It'd be easier for you and your readers to use just lowercase.)

If you're not used to them, URLs can be pretty odd looking. Each part of a URL has a built-in specific meaning, however, much like each part of your home address. The street address "12 Fritter Lane, Apartment G, Santa Clara, CA 95051," for example, provides a postal carrier with essential and complete information — the specific apartment in a specific building on a specific street in a specific town in a specific state in a specific ZIP code. Specifically.

URLs work the same way by providing a browser with all the parts it needs to locate information. A URL consists of the protocol indicator, the hostname, and the directory name and/or filename. The following (fictitious) URL is an example of an absolute URL:

http://cat.feline.org/fur/fuzzy.html

Following is a description of each URL part:

• http:// portion (protocol indicator): Tells the server how to send the information. The protocol indicator is the standard used by Web servers and browsers that lets them talk to each other. If you're creating HTML documents, people point to them by using http:// as the protocol indicator. You might notice that the http:// protocol indicator often is omitted by publications, both for space and because most URLs (at least those published in the media) tend to be http:// -type URLs.

Note: Even though you can leave the http:// off the URL in casual usage, you must include it when linking to another Web site.

• cat.feline.org portion (hostname): Specifies a computer on the Internet. If you publish an HTML document, you're placing it on a computer that "serves" the document to anyone who knows the correct URL. This computer has an address that's common to all documents that it stores. The server thus "hosts" all these documents and makes them accessible to users.

To obtain the hostname of the server on which you place your files, check with your system administrator.

• fur portion (directory name): You may not need to show a directory name, or you may have several that represent directories inside directories (or folders inside folders). If you have an account with an Internet service provider, your directory name may also begin with a tilde and your user name, yielding something such as http://cat.feline.org/~lucy/, assuming, of course, that lucy is the account name.

• fuzzy.html portion (name of file located on the host computer): Sometimes you don't need to provide a filename — the server simply gives out the default file in the directory. The default filenames are usually one of three: index.html, default.html, or homepage.html, depending on which kind of Web server the files are located. The filename is like many other files; it contains a name (fuzzy) and an extension (.html).

Sometimes, URLs have a hostname with a port number at the end (for example, cat.feline.org:80). This number gives the server more precise information about the URL. If you see a URL with a number, just leave the number on the URL. If you don't see a number, don't worry about it.

Try to avoid creating directory names or filenames with spaces or other unusual characters. Stay with letters (uppercase and lowercase), numbers, underscores (_), periods (.), or plus signs (+). Some servers have problems with odd characters. In addition, if you do use any capitalization in your filenames, you must also use the same capitalization in any links pointing to those files because some servers require consistent capitalization.

# posted by John @ 6:19 PM 0 comments

Most people aren't paranoid enough about their connection to the Internet. The chances of suffering from some type of Internet hack are rising, especially when you connect to the Internet using cable or DSL. Most people are surprised when they discover that their newly installed personal firewall reports that their home computers are getting scanned or probed from the Internet multiple times per day.

Features of personal firewalls

Some personal firewalls are not very secure. Some are even outright insecure, providing only a false sense of security, which may even be worse than no firewall at all! Some start only when you log onto your computer. This means that, depending on the kind of Internet connection you have, you may be exposed to the Internet before you log on.

The ideal personal firewall has the following features:

• Inexpensive: Several personal firewalls are free for personal use, and charge something like $40 for business use. Although downloading the free personal firewalls and using them for a test-run is easy, be sure to look at the ones that aren't free as well.

• Easy to install and use: The installation of the firewall software and the use of the firewall should be fairly simple. The personal firewall should contain good documentation on how to use it; what the various firewall settings; and explanation about the concepts behind firewall security. This makes it much easier to understand the alerts you may receive or the severity of detected scans.

• Easy to configure: Nobody wants to read an 800-page manual before the Web browser can be configured to access the Internet. And you shouldn't have to draft several pages of firewall policy either before you can distill what network traffic should be allowed in and what should be allowed out. Many personal firewalls have some sort of learning mode in which they offer to add rules for the application that was just blocked at the firewall.

• Monitor incoming traffic: The firewall should look at all network packets coming from the Internet and allow only

• Those network packets received in response to requests you sent out to the Internet.

• Those packets for which you have configured rules at the firewall.

• Monitor outgoing traffic: Personal firewalls have their own special version of scanning for outgoing traffic. Whereas enterprise firewalls define allowed outgoing traffic in terms of protocol, user, time of day, or addressed Web site, personal firewalls are often application-aware. They allow only outgoing traffic from applications that are on a trusted application list. This is an important measure if you want to prevent Trojan horse programs from communicating with the Internet. It also stops so-called adware or spyware programs that connect to their home server on the Internet to relay the list of sites you have visited or something similarly inappropriate. Anti-virus programs usually don't scan for these adware programs.

Some adware or spyware programs are getting smarter and know that certain personal firewalls look only at the filename of the application to decide whether outgoing traffic is allowed. They can easily rename themselves to something innocuous-looking like iexplore.exe, the filename of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. If you think that detecting outgoing traffic is an important feature of a personal firewall, be sure to get one that decides about outgoing access based on a checksum of the entire application executable file, instead of just the filename.

• Detection intrusion attempts: Besides monitoring incoming network packets and deciding which should be allowed in and which should be blocked, a personal firewall may also go one step further and scan for patterns of network traffic that indicate a known attack method or intrusion attempt. The personal firewall may even have an updateable list of intrusion-detection signatures to respond to newly discovered attack methods.

• Alert the user: When something suspicious is detected during the monitoring of the incoming and outgoing network traffic or while scanning for known attack patterns, the firewall usually alerts the user. It can do this either by displaying a dialog box or by flashing an icon on the Windows system tray in the lower-right corner of the screen. Whereas enterprise firewalls tend to concentrate on creating extensive log files, personal firewalls like to get the user into the live action. Initially, it may scare you how often the firewall deems things important enough to warn you about. Those are usually automated scripts or bots scanning your ports. In fact, this "knob rattling" may happen so often that you don't pay attention to it anymore.

You don't need to do much when your firewall alerts you that something is up. You may temporarily disconnect the computer from the Internet, but the idea is that the firewall will prevent anything bad from happening. Some firewalls offer to backtrack the alleged intruder to find his IP address, computer name, and perhaps user name. This information may help if you want to contact the intruder's ISP to report the excessive intrusion attempts.

• Performance: Of course you want performance, but this usually isn't a problem for personal firewalls. With enterprise firewalls, many users use the same firewall to access the Internet, but in the case of a personal firewall, you are the only user. The firewall can easily handle that.

Take precautions

You can be safe when you connect to the Internet. Following are some precautions you can take:

• Back up important data files.

• Install the latest patches and updates for your operating system (especially if those updates are security-related, and they usually are). If you use Windows, go to WindowsUpdate to make sure you have the latest updates.

• Disable or unbind the File and Printer Sharing component (or Server Service in Windows NT 4.0) if you don't use that function.

• Select and install a good personal firewall.

• Select and install a good anti-virus program. Some personal firewalls have this function built-in, but many folks prefer to keep the firewall function and the anti-virus functions separate.

• Be careful with files that you download and files with attachments in e-mail messages. These could be stealth Trojan horse programs to trick you into opening up access to your computer, or they could be plain malicious viruses.

• Never reveal your computer password or ISP password to anything or anyone. Never use the same password for two different purposes. Ideally, you should use different passwords for every program or Web site that needs it. If that's too much to remember, write down your passwords somewhere on a piece of paper that you keep hidden.

If that's still too much work, use at least four different passwords:

• Password to log on to your computer

• Password to log on to your ISP

• Password to use in applications that want a password to encrypt stuff, such as Word to encrypt a document or WinZip to encrypt the files in the Zip file

• Password to use on Web sites that ask for a password

• Even if you use a personal firewall and have an always-connected subscription for a cable connection or DSL line to the Internet, consider switching off the computer when you're away for a longer period of time.

# posted by John @ 10:14 AM 0 comments

• Match megapixels to your use. A 2-megapixel camera is fine for snapshots, though models with that resolution are becoming less common. If you want to produce 8-by-10-inch prints, you'll need at least a 3-megapixel camera. Four- or 5-megapixel cameras will yield even larger prints and allow you to blow up a part of an image with less likelihood that the print will be blurry.
• Look for rechargeable batteries and a charger. The cost of disposable batteries adds up over the long run. Some cameras can use AA batteries of any type--disposable or rechargeable. That capability can be helpful if your rechargeable batteries run out of juice and you don't want to wait while they replenish.
• Get at least 2X optical zoom. Nearly all cameras offer digital zoom, but it results in photos that aren't nearly as good as those produced with an optical zoom.
• Look for a low-light focusing aid. Some cameras have auxiliary lights that help them focus in dim settings. That's important for many indoor shots.
• Make sure you can use removable storage media. While the camera may have on-board memory, a memory card allows you to expand the storage capacity.
• Avoid cameras that use floppy disks or compact discs. Floppy disks are inexpensive, but they won't hold many images, and the cameras that use them typically take relatively low-resolution photos. Cameras that use compact discs are typically bulky and slow.
• Try the camera before you buy. Some cameras have commands and menus that are easier to use than others, a comparison you can only make with a hands-on trial. Also evaluate the lag time between when you press the shutter button and when the camera actually takes the picture. Try out the zoom lens--does it operate quickly and smoothly? Find out how long you must wait between taking pictures. And try the LCD viewfinder--in the sun if possible--to determine how easy it is to read.
• Give extra consideration to a camera with image-editing software. Look for useful packages like Adobe Photoshop Elements and Ulead PhotoImpact.
• Insist on a camera with an LCD display. It allows you to review your photos on the spot--and delete the ones where your cousin kept blinking when the flash went off.
• Don't base your decision on video capability. Any still camera's ability to take moving pictures is extremely limited. If you want to shoot video, invest in a camera dedicated to the job.
• Consider investing in a memory card reader. These readers act like an external hard drive attached to your PC or laptop, allowing you to download pictures directly from the storage media your camera uses. Many newer laptops have one or more memory card slots built right in. That saves time downloading images, and since the camera doesn't have to be on, saves battery life, too.

# posted by John @ 6:19 PM 0 comments

A digital camera's megapixel count remains its most important spec--but it is by no means the only one. Start with pixels, but make sure to check a few other important numbers when considering a purchase.

A camera's megapixel rating is another way of expressing its resolution. The higher the megapixel number, the higher the resolution. In general, higher-resolution cameras let you produce larger, higher-quality prints. A 2-megapixel camera can produce images of about 1600 by 1200 pixels, allowing for high-quality 5-by-7 prints. A 3-megapixel camera can produce images of about 2048 by 1536 pixels, allowing for crisp 8-by-10 prints. The tradeoff is that higher-resolution images take up more space on your camera's memory card, so you may only be able to take a small number of shots before you have to download them to your computer. The solution, of course, is to purchase a larger-capacity memory card.

So if you're interested in producing mostly small snapshots or images to send via e-mail or post on the Web, you probably don't need anything better than a 2-megapixel camera. If you want to create large copies of your masterworks, you'll want a camera that captures 4 megapixels or more.

# posted by John @ 6:16 PM 0 comments

After you figure out the mechanics of your camera — how to load the batteries, how to turn on the LCD, and so on — taking a picture is a simple process. Just aim the camera and press the shutter button. Taking a good picture, however, isn't so easy. Sure, you can record an okay image of your subject without much effort. But if you want a crisp, clear, dynamic image, you need to consider a few factors before you point and shoot.

Parallax

You compose your photo perfectly. The light is fine, the focus is fine, and all other photographic planets appear to be in alignment. But after you snap your picture and view the image on the camera monitor, you see something different from what you saw through the viewfinder. The framing of the image is off, as though your subject repositioned itself while you weren't looking. You're not the victim of some cruel digital hoax — just a photographic phenomenon known as a parallax error.

On most digital cameras, as on most point-and-shoot film cameras, the viewfinder looks out on the world through a separate window from the camera lens. Because the viewfinder is located an inch or so above or to the side of the lens, it sees your subject from a slightly different angle than the lens. But the image is captured from the point of view of the lens, not the viewfinder.

When you look through your viewfinder, you should see some little black lines near the corners of the frame. These lines indicate the boundaries of the "real" image — the edge of the frame as seen by the camera lens. If you don't pay attention to these framing cues as you shoot, you can wind up with subjects that appear to have been lopped off at the top.

The closer you are to your subject, the bigger the parallax problem becomes, whether you use a zoom lens or simply position the camera lens nearer to your subject. Some cameras provide a second set of framing marks in the viewfinder to indicate the framing boundaries that apply when you're shooting close-up shots.

If your camera has an LCD monitor, you have an additional aid for avoiding parallax problems. Because the monitor reflects the image as seen by the lens, you can simply use the monitor instead of the viewfinder to frame your image. On some cameras, the LCD monitor turns on automatically when you switch to macro mode for close-up shooting.

Light

Digital cameras are extremely demanding when it comes to light. A typical digital camera has a light sensitivity equivalent to that of ISO 100 film. As a result, image detail tends to get lost when objects are in the shadows. Too much light can also create problems. A ray of sunshine bouncing off a highly reflective surface can cause brown highlights— areas where all image detail is lost, resulting in a big white blob in your picture.

When you take digital pictures, capturing just the right amount of light involves not only deciding whether to use a flash or external photographic lights, but also figuring out the right exposure settings to choose.

Keep in mind that you can correct minor lighting and exposure problems in the image-editing stage. Generally speaking, making a too-dark image brighter is easier than correcting an overexposed (too bright) image. So if you can't seem to get the exposure just right, opt for a slightly underexposed image rather than an overexposed one.

Exposure

Exposure refers to the amount of light captured by the camera. Most consumer-level digital cameras feature autoexposure, sometimes known as programmed autoexposure, in which the camera reads the amount of light in the scene and then sets the exposure automatically for you. In order for your camera's autoexposure mechanism to work correctly, you need to take this three-step approach to shooting your pictures:

1. Frame your subject.

2. Press the shutter button halfway down and hold it there.

The camera analyzes the scene and sets the focus and exposure. After the camera makes its decisions, it signals you in some fashion — usually with a blinking light near the viewfinder or with a beeping noise.

If you don't want your subject to appear in the middle of the frame, you can recompose the image after locking in the exposure and focus. Just keep holding the shutter button halfway down as you reframe the image in your viewfinder. Don't move or reposition the subject before you shoot, or the exposure and focus may be out of whack.

3. Press the shutter button the rest of the way down to capture the image.

On lower-end cameras, you typically get a choice of two autoexposure settings — one appropriate for shooting in very bright light and another for average lighting. Many cameras display a warning light or refuse to capture the image if you've chosen an autoexposure setting that will result in a badly overexposed or underexposed picture. Higher-priced cameras give you more control over autoexposure.

# posted by John @ 10:51 AM 0 comments

In Windows XP, Internet Explorer is not the only Microsoft browser you can use to visit your favorite Web sites. This version of Windows also offers you the opportunity of using MSN Explorer to do the job. Using MSN Explorer to surf the Internet is a little different from using Internet Explorer. For one thing, each time you use MSN Explorer, you must sign in using a Hotmail user ID and password (which, if you don't already have one, you sign up for the first time you open MSN Explorer). For another thing, each time you sign on, MSN Explorer takes you to a version of the MSN.com Web site customized to your locale (as indicated by your local address and ZIP code that you give as part of the sign-up procedure) so that the opening page displays your local weather and top news stories along with the general topics.

To start MSN Explorer, click the Start button on the taskbar, point at All Programs, and then click MSN Explorer on the All Programs continuation menu. When you click this button, Windows opens the MSN window. To sign in and open the MSN.com Web site, you click your button (indicated by your Hotmail ID) to display an Enter Your Password text box and Sign In button shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: The MSN log-in page.

Type in your Hotmail account password and then click the Sign In button to connect to the Internet and go to a customized version of the home page of the MSN.com Web site (that says, "Good Morning," or "Good Afternoon," or "Good Evening," upon loading). Figure 2 shows a customized opening page, showing the weather at the Point Reyes Lighthouse and news stories for Santa Rosa, California.

Figure 2: A customized MSN home page.

MSN Explorer is divided into two main sections: a My Stuff pane on the left side and the main browsing area on the right. At the top of the browsing window, you find a toolbar with the following buttons:

• Go Back to Previous Page to return to a previously viewed page.

• Go Forward After Going Back to return to the page you just left by clicking the Go Back to Previous Page button.

• Home to return to your customized MSN home page.

• E-mail to get your Hotmail messages and to send new e-mail using this account.

• Favorites to display a list of links to the favorite pages you mark in MSN Explorer or to add Web pages that you visit to your list of favorites.

• Online Buddies to select an online buddy or add a new buddy for doing instant messaging with MSN Messenger Service.

• People & Chat to open the People & Chat page where you can locate and join an online chat or locate and join an online community with which to communicate.

• Money to open the MoneyCentral page with links for finding out all the latest financial news and for tracking your stocks and portfolio.

• Shopping to open the eShop page, where you can locate all sorts of online retailers ranging from Apparel & Accessories to Toys, Games, and Education.

• Music to open the Music page in the WindowsMedia.com site where you can purchase your favorites tunes or download the latest music and videos.

Beneath this toolbar, right above the main browsing area, you find a second toolbar that contains these buttons:

• Address bar: Enter the URL address of the Web site you want to visit in the Address bar.

• Go: Click the Go button to visit the Web site whose URL address is listed in the Address bar.

• Stop: Click the Stop button to stop loading a Web page that is taking a long time to display.

• Print: Click the Print button to print the Web page currently displayed in MSN Explorer.

• Refresh: Click the Refresh button to reload the page and to update the content currently displayed in the MSN browsing window.

• More Choices: Click this button to display a pop-up menu of choices, including New Window, to open a new browsing window, E-mail This Page to send the Web page to someone, and Find on Page to search for some text in the current Web page.

When you first start using MSN Explorer, the My Stuff area on the left side contains the following four buttons at the top of the bar:

• My Calendar: Use this button to set up your future appointments and then have the MSN Calendar remind you of them.

• My Stocks: Use this button to add all your favorite stock symbols to a pop-up list so that you can view the latest selling price simply by clicking the My Stocks button. To add stock symbols to this pop-up list, click the Go to My Stocks hyperlink at the bottom.

• My Web Sites: Use this button to list all of the online communities that you join (in wide-ranging areas from Business to Sports and Recreation). To browse and join communities of your choice, click the My Web Sites button and then click the Open My Web Sites hyperlink at the bottom of the pop-up list. To visit the Web pages for a community that you join, click that link in the pop-up list.

• My Photos: Use this button to create Web pages for your favorite photos that you can share with everyone on the Web.

These buttons are followed by a Search the Web text box that you can use to search for new sites and a collapsed version of Media Player, which you can use to listen to online audio and video that you access with the browser.

To customize the buttons in the My Stuff bar, click the Help & Settings button on the right side of the MSN Explorer title bar to display the Member Center page. On this page, click the Personalize My Stuff hyperlink (numbered 8 in the list of things you can customize).

Selecting this link takes you to a Choose Content for the My Stuff Area page that shows the current list of buttons and is followed by a list of the other buttons (from My Files to My Mobile) that you can add. To add a new button to the My Stuff area, click the Add This button beneath the icon used to represent the area (for example, underneath the football and basketball icon used to represent the My Sports button).

To remove an existing button, click the Remove button to the right of the name at the top of this page. To advance a button by placing it higher up in the list in the My Stuff area, click the button that has the triangle pointing up. To demote a button by placing it lower in the list in the My Stuff area, click the button that has the triangle pointing down.

When you're finished browsing with MSN Explorer, you have a choice between closing the browser but not signing off (so that you're still connected to the MSN.com Web site and can receive updates and instant messages) or closing the browser and signing off.

To close the browser but stay signed on, click the Close button in the far right of the MSN Explorer title bar and then click the OK button in the alert dialog box that appears. This dialog box tells you that, after closing all MSN Explorer windows, you will still be signed in and MSN Explorer will continue to run in the background in the Notifications area of the taskbar so that you can continue to receive notifications and instant messages. To sign off when you close all MSN Explorer windows, click the Sign Out and Close MSN Explorer button (only the Sign Out part of the name appears on the MSN Explorer title bar). MSN Explorer will say "Goodbye" to you as it closes all open MSN Explorer windows.

# posted by John @ 1:08 AM 0 comments

Windows Key


The Windows key has this picture on it:

It's located between your CTL & ALT keys.

Here are some common windows keyboard shortcuts (you'll need a "windows" keyboard to try these)

Hold down the "windows" key and press:

M - Minimizes all windows

SHIFT - M - Undo minimize all windows

E - Opens Windows Explorer

D - Switches between minimizing all open programs and showing them all.

F - Opens the Find Window

R - Opens the Run Window

BREAK / PAUSE- Opens System Properties

TAB - Cycles through items on the task bar

Or just press the Windows key to open the Start menu.

General Shortcuts


ALT- F4 - Quit a program / Shut down

ALT-TAB - Hold down the ALT key and hit tab to cycle through open windows.

CTL-ESCAPE - Display the Start menu

SHIFT - TAB - tab backwards through a form

CTRL - X - Cut

CTRL - C - Copy

CTRL - V - Paste

F1 - Help menu

CTRL - Z - Undo

SHIFT & Restart - To restart just windows and not your whole computer, hold down the shift key when you click the OK button on the shutdown screen. Saves lots of time.

CRTL-TAB - Navigate tabs on a tabbed screen

File & Desktop Shortcuts


Hold SHIFT while inserting a CD - Prevents the CD from "autorunning"

If an item is selected:

CTRL while dragging a file - Copies the file

CTRL - SHIFT while dragging a file - Creates a shortcut to the file

SHIFT - DELETE - Deletes an item without sending it to the recycle bin.

ALT-ENTER - Display a file's properties.

F2 - To rename the file

In Windows Explorer:

LEFT ARROW - Collapse the current selection if it is expanded

NUM LOCK-MINUS SIGN (-) - Collapse the selected folder

RIGHT ARROW - Expand the current selection if it is collapsed -Or- Select the first subfolder

NUM LOCK- * Expand all folders below the current selection

NUM LOCK- PLUS SIGN (+) - Expand the selected folder

F6 - Switch between left and right panes

In My Computer:

BACKSPACE - View the folder one level up

ALT- RIGHT ARROW - Move forward to a previous view

# posted by John @ 4:56 PM 0 comments