Chapter 1: The Basics of Windows XP

What Appears on the Screen?

Like previous versions of Windows, Windows XP uses windows to display information on your screen, icons to provide pictorial buttons for you to click, and a taskbar, a "mission control" center for your computer. All of these objects appear on your Windows desktop--your screen. Microsoft made a major effort to clean up the screen in Windows XP: you'll see many fewer icons and menu commands. Of course, you can always create icons and add commands for the programs and files you use frequently--in fact, Windows does this for you.

Welcome to Windows XP! To see a tour of Windows XP, choose Start | All Programs | Accessories | Tour Windows XP (that is, click the Start button in the lower-left corner of the screen, click Help And Support, and click Tour Windows XP).

What Is the Desktop?

Windows uses your screen as a desktop, a work area on which you see your programs. The desktop, shown in Figure 1-1, can contain windows, icons, and the taskbar. You can think of the icons, windows, and Web pages that appear on your screen as "sitting" on your metaphorical desktop, like the papers and folders on your real desktop. (Your PC's desktop may display a picture or background color: we show a white desktop, because it is clearer when printed on paper.)

Figure 1-1: The Windows XP desktop

The Windows XP desktop starts uncluttered, with few icons. As you install and use programs, you (and the programs) will create icons on the desktop for programs and files you use frequently. You can add or delete icons from the desktop.

Chapter 2 explains what windows are and how to use them.

What Is an Icon?

An icon is a little picture on your screen. When you click or double-click the icon, or select the icon with the keyboard and press ENTER, something happens. Windows uses icons to represent programs, files, and commands.

Throughout this book, the instructions tell you what icons you can expect to see, what happens when you click them, and when to use them.

Many programs provide labels for their icons. Icon labels may appear just below the icon, or they may appear in a little box when you rest the mouse pointer on the icon for a moment.

You can choose how the icons on your Windows desktop and those in Explorer windows work when you click them--they run when you double-click them (like Windows 95 and 3.1) or click them once (like a Web page). See the section "Choosing Between Single-Click and Double-Click" later in this chapter for how to control how Windows icons behave.

Icons on your desktop that include a curved arrow in a little white box in the lower-left corner of the icon are shortcuts and represent files or programs on your computer. You can create your own shortcut icons.

What Is the Taskbar?

The taskbar is a row of buttons and icons that usually appears along the bottom of the screen, as in Figure 1-2. You can configure Windows to display the taskbar along the top or side of your screen. You can also tell Windows to hide the taskbar when you aren't using it.

Figure 1-2: The Windows XP taskbar

The taskbar has several parts:

• The Start button is usually at the left end of the taskbar.
• The task buttons represent each window that is open on the desktop.
• The taskbar can contain one or more toolbars (sets of buttons). (None appear in Figure 1-2.)
• The notification area contains icons for Windows programs that require your attention, along with a clock. This area used to be called the system tray.

What Is the Start Menu?

When you click the Start button on the taskbar, the Start menu appears. You can also display the Start menu by pressing the WINDOWS key (if your keyboard has one) or by pressing CTRL-ESC.

The Start menu lists commands and additional menus that list most of the programs that you can run on your computer. It looks something like this:

The Start menu has fewer commands than appeared in previous versions of Windows. The Settings and Favorites commands that appeared in Windows 98 and Me are gone. As you use your computer, Windows adds commands for your frequently used programs to the Start menu. Installing some programs adds commands to the Start menu, too. You can customize which programs appear on the Start menu and how they are arranged. Chapter 2 has more information about how to run programs from the Start menu.

In this book, we indicate commands on the Start menu and its submenus like this: "Choose Start | Help And Support" means you should click the Start button and then choose the Help And Support command from the menu that appears.

Most of the programs available on your computer appear on the Start | All Programs menu (click All Programs on the Start menu to see it). This menu was called Programs in previous versions of Windows.

What Are Task Buttons?

Task buttons are the buttons on the taskbar that represent each program that is running (see Figure 1-2). If a program displays more than one window, more than one task button may appear. Each task button displays the icon for the program and as much of the program name as can fit. Some programs display other information on the task button; for example, Notepad displays the name of the text file that is open. The task buttons used to be called the Task Manager in previous versions of Windows, but Microsoft has reassigned that name to a system management program.

Click a window's task button to select that window, that is, make that window active. You can also right-click a button to see the system menu., a menu of commands you can give regarding that window, including opening and closing the window.

If the taskbar gets too full to fit task buttons for all the open windows, Windows groups the buttons together, with one button for each application. For example, if you have two Internet Explorer browser windows open, you see one button for the program, with a 2 in the label, like this:

Click the task button to see a menu of the windows displayed by that program.

What Is the Notification Area?

The notification area appears at the right end of the taskbar and contains the system clock along with a group of tiny icons:

When you move the mouse pointer to the clock, after a moment the current date also appears. The icons in the notification area represent programs that need your attention. Windows XP displays fewer icons here than previous versions of Windows did, displaying them only when you need to do something.

Some programs add icons to the notification area. To find out the name of an icon, move the mouse pointer to the icon, without clicking. After a moment, the icon's label appears. Some icons display information rather than a label (for example, the Power Management icon that appears on the system tray of most laptops displays how much charge is left in the laptop's battery). To change the settings for the program that displays the icon, or to exit the program, double-click or right-click the icon and choose a command from the menu that appears.

If there are too many icons to fit in the notification area, you see a left-pointing (&la;) button that you can click to see the rest of the icons. This button allows Windows to hide the icons that don't fit, so they don't clutter up your taskbar.

What Is the Mouse Pointer?

The mouse pointer indicates which part of the screen will be affected when you click your mouse's buttons. As you move the mouse, trackball, or other pointing device, the mouse pointer moves, too. A separate indicator, the cursor, which usually appears as a blinking vertical line, shows where text you type will appear.