Learn to Use your Computer

Last week's eTip told you about some of Windows XP Service Pack 2's new ability to stop Web sites from sneaking software onto your computer. But unfortunately, Internet Explorer can't tell the good downloads from the bad, leaving the burden of proof to you. But if you see a message that Internet Explorer has blocked a program and you haven't requested a download, chances are the site's trying to harm you: Don't try to thwart the warning and download the add-on or ActiveX program.

If a bad add-on creeps in somehow, you're not completely out of luck. Internet Explorer's Add-on Manager lets you disable it. To see all the add-on programs installed in Internet Explorer (and remove any that you know are bad), follow these steps:

Choose Manage Add-ons from Internet Explorer's Tools menu. The Manage Add-ons window appears, showing all add-ons used by the currently viewed page.

Click the Add-on that gives you trouble and choose Disable.

Repeat the process for each add-on you don't want and then click the OK button. You probably need to restart Internet Explorer for the change to take effect.

Not all add-ons are bad. Many good ones let you play movies, hear sounds, or view special content on a Web site. Don't delete an add-on simply because it's listed in the Add-on Manager.

On the rare instance that disabling an add-on prevents a page from loading, click that add-on's name in Step 2 of the preceding steps and click the Enable button to return it to working order.
Although Internet Explorer's Add-on Manager disables add-ons fairly easily, it's quite difficult to remove them entirely. Look for the add-on's name in your Control Panel's Add or Remove Programs area. If it's listed, you can remove it just like any other program.
How the heck do you tell the good add-ons from the bad? Unfortunately, there's no sure way of telling, although the name listed under Publisher provides one clue. The best way is to avoid being hijacked in the first place, mainly by not installing things Internet Explorer has tried to block.

You can save a lot of time by creating Web pages from Word templates. Instead of doing the layout work yourself, you can let Word do it for you. After you have created a new folder to hold your Web page, follow these steps to create a Web page from a template:

Choose File, New to open the New dialog box.

Click the Web Pages tab. You see several template icons. Click a couple of icons and look in the Preview box to get a glimpse of the Web pages you can create.

Click the template you want and click OK.

You get a generic Web page with sample text and perhaps a placeholder graphic. Your job now, if you choose to accept it, is to replace the generic text with your own words. You can call on all the formatting commands in Word, import clip art, and do what you will to make this Web page a lively one.

Saving your Outlook Calendar as a Web page means that you can share that Calendar with anyone who has a Web browser. You can, for example, use the Outlook Calendar to create a monthly event calendar for an organization and then display the calendar on the group's Web site. Members can easily view the upcoming schedule just by visiting the Web site.

To save your Outlook Calendar as a Web page, open the Outlook Calendar folder, and follow these steps

Select File, Save as Web Page.

The Save as Web Page dialog box appears.

Select the starting and ending dates.

Checkmark the "Include appointment details" checkbox if you want your Web page to include information about the listed events.

Checkmark the Use background graphic checkbox if you want to include an image behind the calendar.

You can use the Browse button to locate the image file you want to use.

Enter a title for the calendar.

Specify a name for the calendar file.

Click Save.

Note that if you haven't used this "Save as Web Page" feature before, you may to install it from your Outlook 2000 CD-ROM.

You can rely on your digital camera's autofocus capabilities for most pictures. However, some things can confound autofocus mechanisms.

If you're taking pictures at the zoo and try to photograph a caged or fenced animal, the camera may instead focus on the bars of the cage or the links in the fence. Autofocusing sometimes also goes awry when you shoot highly reflective objects.

In these situations, the following techniques may solve the problem:

Use the focus-lock to set the proper focus distance.
Switch to manual focus, if your camera offers that option.
If you're working in multi-spot focus mode, switch to center-spot or adjustable center-spot mode. (Again, not all cameras offer these options.)
If the lighting is dim, add more light. Most cameras have trouble focusing in low lighting because they can't "see" well enough to measure the subject-to-camera distance.
When a picture is seriously blurry, you may have forgotten to set the correct focus mode.
For minor blurriness, the problem may not be related to focusing at all. Instead, you may be moving the camera slightly when you take the picture, or your subject may have moved.

Album artwork, commonly seen in many desktop MP3 players and now in iPods that display photos, is a nice option for podcasters who want to brand a podcast with a logo. This kind of branding is becoming more and more common in podcasting, especially with the iTunes Music Store becoming podcast friendly. What is the best way to make sure iTubnes (and for that matter, the iTunes Music Store's Podcast Catalog) will recognize your artwork? Just make sure that your logo fits the following parameters:

300 x 300 pixels, both in wdith and height
8-bit channel, RGB mode
JPEG (.jpg) format
Keep in mind that when you compress your work, overcompression can distort and deteriorate its visual quality. Some JPEG setting work in number 1-10 or 0-100. As a rule, if you compress your logos no more than 5/50, your artwork should retain visual quality.

If you have a Web site that uses Flash, you can choose to publish an HTML file that detects whether the Flash Player is installed on the viewer's computer. If not, it displays an image file. (You need to publish to one of the image formats at the same time for this technique to work.)

The default HTML text doesn't check for the Flash player, but it includes the location to download the player. In some situations, the Flash Player downloads automatically if it's not already installed where your Web browser can find it, or a window pops up, offering the viewer the chance to download it. Many sites include a button that says: Can't see the animation? Download the Flash Player here or something to that effect. Many Web surfers have no idea how Web sites are created and have never heard of Flash. Therefore, giving viewers a choice of Flash and non-Flash sites may not be meaningful. (Of course, if you're a Web site designer and you think that potential clients viewing your site may be savvier than most viewers, you may have no problem in this regard.) In most situations, using the words animated and non-animated may work better. Of course, feel free to use the word Flash along with some explanation. (You want the world to know what Flash is, don't you?)

In Microsoft Money
, if you want to skip a scheduled transaction this month, perhaps because you already recorded in the register, follow these steps.

Click the Bills tab to go to the Bills Summary window.

Find the transaction that you want to skip, and click it.

Click the Skip This Occurrence button.

The Skip Scheduled Transaction dialog box asks whether you want to skip it this time around, skip all overdue occurrences, or drop the transaction from the list of scheduled transactions.

Choose an option, and click the OK button.

What can there possibly be to know about wallpaper? Read on, you might be surprised.
Wallpaper can be tiled across the screen or centered. Small pictures should be tiled, or painted repeatedly across the screen. Larger pictures look best when they're centered. Windows 98 adds a stretch option, which expands a single picture to fill your screen. Select your preference by selecting it from the Display box.
Anything you create in Windows 98 Paint can be used as wallpaper. In fact, you can even use Paint to alter the wallpaper Microsoft provided with Windows.
When using wallpaper, turn off your Active Desktop feature, or Windows might be confused the next time you turn on your computer. To turn it off, right click on your desktop, click the Active Desktop, and click View As Web Page to remove the check mark.
Wallpaper looks like a lot of fun, but it may be too much fun if your computer doesn't have more than 8MB of RAM. Fancy, colorful wallpaper files can use up a great deal of the computer's memory, consistently slowing Windows down. If you find yourself running out of memory, change the wallpaper to the (None) option. The screen won't look as pretty, but at least Windows works.
Small files that are tiled across the screen take up much less memory than large files that are centered on-screen. If Windows 98 seems slow or it sends you furtive messages saying that it's running out of memory, try tiling some smaller bits of wallpaper.
Patterns, accessed through the Pattern button, are a poor-man's wallpaper. They're only one color, and they don't vary much. If Windows keeps complaining about needing more memory, however, dump your wallpaper and switch to patterns. They don't eat up nearly as much memory.
And of course, if you spot an eye-catching picture while Web surfing, you can click that Web site's picture with your right mouse button and select the Set as Wallpaper option. Sneaky Microsoft copies that picture to your desktop and leaves it on the screen as your new wallpaper. (Just keep the image on your own desktop; don't try to sell it or give it away, or you might run afoul of copyright laws.)

If you're into making elaborate greeting cards in Word, consider this formatting tip. Use section breaks to divide the greeting card and not just the hard page breaks you get by pressing Ctrl+Enter. You'll get more flexibility when formatting. (A section is basically an area in your document whose page formatting is independent of the rest of your document.)
Also, watch out for fancy, thick paper. It tends to jam most laser printers. (If your laser printer has a single-sheet feed and a pass-through slot out the back, printing on thick paper may work.) Greeting-card stock is difficult as all heck to get through an inkjet printer, too! To figure out the types of paper that your printer can handle, read the printer's instruction manual or check the manufacturer's Web site for information

The pointing method of entering a formula in Excel still involves some manual typing. The advantage is that you don't need to type the cell or range references. Instead, you point to them in the worksheet, which is usually more accurate and less tedious.
The best way to explain this procedure is with an example. Follow these steps to enter the formula =A1/A2 into cell A3 by using the pointing method:
Move the cell pointer to cell A3.
Type an equal sign (=) to begin the formula.
Press the up-arrow key twice.
As you press the key, notice that Excel displays a moving border around the reference cell (A1) and that the cell reference appears in cell A3 and in the formula bar.
Type a division sign (/).
Press the up-arrow key once.
Press Enter to end the formula entry.

If you think the default cursor is boring (or difficult to see), Windows gives you the option of changing it. Just be careful not to change it to another standard cursor (for example, changing the Normal Select cursor to the Busy hourglass cursor). This could prove slightly confusing for you and completely baffling to anybody else who works on your computer. If you make a choice and decide it was a mistake, click the Use Default button on the Pointers tab in the Mouse Properties dialog box to return a selected cursor to its default choice.
To change the cursor:
Choose Start, Control Panel and double-click the Mouse link.
Click the Pointers tab in the Mouse Properties dialog box. Whatever theme you have displayed in Windows is the one that will be selected here with its cursors displayed. To change to cursors used in other themes, select a theme from the Scheme drop-down list.
Click the Normal Select (or any other) cursor in the Customize list, and then click the Browse button.
In the resulting Browse dialog box, click the Views button and choose Thumbnails.
Click a cursor file icon and then click Open.
Click Apply to see whether you're happy with your cursor choice, and when you are, click OK to exit.