Start Menu and taskbar The Windows 95 Start menu has become
something of a modern day icon. It baffled novices with
the inclusion of Shut Down - "You mean I go to the
Start menu to stop the computer?" - but more
importantly it gave users easy access to applications and
files as one of the core improvements offered by Windows
95. There are two sets of improvements made to this part
of the system, the first are ones that came with IE4 and
the second are new
tweaks added by Windows 98.
IE4 added new
bars to main task bar at the bottom of the screen and
allowed users to move and customise the new Address, Quick Launch
and Desktop
toolbars. These provide single-click access to programs,
documents, folders and other objects on your local system
and the Internet. IE4 added one special new toolbar, the Links bar, which is similar to the Quick Launch bar
but can also appear as an integral part of the IE4
browser/explorer window. You are not limited to the
supplied toolbars and can create
your own too.
IE4 added Favorites
item, which opens cascading
menus into your IE 4 Favorites folders, and updated the Find menu with more enhanced options for quicker
local drive searching. An additional tweak is the ability
to re-order
Start menu items by
dragging and dropping.
It changed the name of the Taskbar menu item
in the Settings menu to Taskbar & Start menu but did
not and still does not actually give you access to all
the options for the Taskbar. This menu item simply opens
the properties for the taskbar and the Start menu, the
same as right clicking on the taskbar and selecting
Properties in Windows 95. In order to enable/disable the toolbars in the taskbar you have to right click in
the toolbar and choose the cascading menu still. Here you
can tick/untick the toolbars, but they are not included
in the taskbar properties opened from the Settings menu.
 (August 1998).iso/full/W98Comp/IFace/folder1.gif) |
Folder
Options However,
it does also add in the Folder Options item that
opens a diolog in which you can choose between
the Classic style of UI, which means that Windows
98 looks very much like Windows 95. The
alternative is the Web style that IE4 wanted
people to favour which was created by Microsoft
after tests with the members of the public who
found the idea of single clicking easier than
double clicking. Essentially this makes much of
the UI behave like a web page (not surprising as
the file windows are actually HTML pages now) so
that the pointer turns to a hand if it hovers
over a folder or file for you to click on -
reminding you, in case you didn't know, that you
can open it. As with hyperlinks in HTML pages the
web view means that you only single click on the
folder/link to open it. It represents a shift in
the Windows metaphor towards the HTML view, but
has not proved popular with many users in the
real world and was therefore removed from being
the default option in both IE4 and Windows 98.
You can choose a hybrid of these by
selecting the third option, Custom. This has a
Settings button that opens a second dialog.
Within this you can choose whether to see folders
that have HTML content (which is all of them as
Windows 98 uses a default one for windows that
don't have a custom one). You can enable the
Active Desktop, change between single and double
clicking and choose between opening folders in
the same window or opening a new window.
See also Customising
you folder view backdrop
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 (August 1998).iso/full/W98Comp/IFace/folder2.gif) |
The View tab
allows you to change the details of general
folder views, like whether to see hidden files or
not - IE4 does this very well by showing hidden
files greyed out so they are visible and
accessible, but you know instantly that they are
"hidden". This folder option dialog is
also available from the browser/explorer menu
item View\Folder Options. Opening it from there
allows you to change the view options for that
single folder. Wherever you open it from, you can
make changes to the view options and then apply
them to all folders so they are the default
options by clicking on the Like Current Folder
button. You can reset the choices to the system
defaults by clicking on the Reset All Folders
button. |
 (August 1998).iso/full/W98Comp/IFace/folder3.gif) |
The last tab
on the Folder Options dialog allows you to change
the File Types, which are the associations made
between data files and applications. For example
a Word file appears with a Word icon because the
.Doc file format is associated with Word. It is
in this dialog that you can change those
associations so that different applications open
a given file type. This is the same concept as is
used under Windows 95, but IE4 added a new look
to the interface and added in a few options. Only
use this option if you are familiar with the way
Windows associations work. |
The last addition to the Settings
menu is the Active Desktop item. This allows you to
quickly change your Active Desktop settings so that it
displays the HTML content and also opens the Web tab on
the Display settings from Control Panel.
Re-ordering
Start menu items
The Start menu
now has drag and drop capability, so you can pick up an
icon from the Desktop and move it over the Start button
to open the Start menu, then drag it to wherever you want
and drop it. Whether the file you are dragging is
Shortcut or a real file, a shortcut to it will be created
automtically. You can place the item wherever you want in
the Start menu and it will remain exactly there. By
extension you can also pick up Shortcuts that already
exist in the Start menu and drag them around it to
different places or even back off the Start menu to
create a Shortcut off the Start menu from a Shortcut that
is on it. The Programs menu item and sub menus ar no
longer restricted to a folder/item order. They can be
dragged into the order you want, so if you want a
particular folder or file at the top of the Programs
menu, move it there by dragging and releasing. The items
are also now available as right clicks so you can delete
them easily too without having to open the Settings for the
Start menu and going to the
Advanced tab as you do under Windows 95. This is made
even more useful if you use the Target menu addition
available from the PowerToys
enhancements as you can
quickly get to the real file or even operate on the real
file directly from the Start menu.
Windows Update
 (August 1998).iso/full/W98Comp/W98Icon.gif) The Windows Update item in the Start menu is
similar to the Find
on the Internet addition to the Find menu, except it has the potential to be one of
the most useful new features. Like Find... it is simply a
link to an HTML page hosted on Microsoft's site. However, like
the addition of Internet Explorer 4 optional extras by
the Outlook
98 program that is on this
SuperCD, it asks if you are happy to let your PC send
information about the hardware and software on your PC.
As long as you are, Windows Update can check the list
against its own database of drivers and atches to ensure
that you are running all the latest versions. The system
is not fully working yet and more software is going to
have to be added before it can be considered anywhere
near useful or complete, but when that happens you will
no longer have to go searching for updates to your
display drivers or for that 0.01 upgrade to your image
editor that fixes that annoying bug, because you'll be
able to just tell your PC to update itself. The Windows
Update is really a completed system of the IE4 Software
updater that enabled it to patch itself, although
Microsoft has yet to release an update that way. One
other things is sure and that's that Microsoft asking
people to send details of their hard drive willingly is
going to have the conspiracy theorists up in arms about
possible privacy breaches.
Help
 (August 1998).iso/full/W98Comp/IFace/help.gif) The Windows help file has
been re-created in HTML and a customised browser is now
used to give you access to all the topics. This change is
in line with Microsoft's overall strategy to move the OS
and programs towards a WWW type integration where users
only have to get used to one type of interface to access
any information, be they files, text, local or web based.
In funtionality the system remains similar with Contents,
Index and Search (type a topic and press return and a
list of relevant topics are displayed in the topic pane),
though it no longer needs to create the initial database
as in Windows 95. You choose the topic you are interested
in from the left pane by double clicking on one and it is
displayed in the right pane. Related Topics are still
available as links at the bottom of the HTML page.
A new feature in this new interface
is the Web Help button (see right) which will take you
on-line to search for your topic in the Microsoft
Knowledge base. This is one reason why HTML has been
chosen so that users can get access to up to date
information or topics that aren't included in the Help
file in a seamless manner (as long as they have WWW
access, of course). In fact the link simply opens a
browser with parameters from a Javascript HTML page.
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