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In MS Windows the paper documentation is completely replaced by a comprehensive online Help System. Help is a basic hypertext with hierarchical options and with links to jump off to display other information, what should it make very easy and quick to find the relevant information.
Useful Wizards guide you step by step through standard tasks, like installing a printer.
Different applications often have their own specific Help System, activated by pressing F1 when you are in the application, or from the Help option on the menu bar (Alt+H in most applications).
The general Windows Help System can be activated in 3 ways:
The Help dialog box offers you three types of Help, which appear as section Tabs:
Use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to move the highlight up and down, and the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys to open or close sections and sub-sections. Pressing ENTER or ALT+D for Display when on the highlighted item will display a help topic window on the chosen item.
Windows Help is a collection of dialog boxes containing some familiar dialog box elements, and requires a few new navigational commands to move between and select some options.
Small boxes display very specific help. They behave like
mini applications, have sometimes buttons and a Control menu which you can access with Alt+SPACEBAR.
In the Contents Window are some small windows: the Help
topics, that you are able to leave running.
Just like in standard dialog boxes, TAB is used to move the
focus between the current Tab Sections, and between the
elements in the dialog box.
Once the focus is on the Tab section
divider, you can use LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys to change from a Tab
section to another. In some places, the normal CONTROL+TAB command
may not work for moving between the Tab sections.
When working with lists of options in Help dialog boxes, use UP and DOWN ARROW keys to move up and down through the list, and use the RIGHT ARROW key to expand an item to its sub-folders. LEFT ARROW is used to contract the sub-folders.
As its name says, the topic window displays the help for the selected topic.
In the traditional Help System Topic windows, the system cursor is bound on
top of the window and you cannot move it with the ARROW keys.
Use the mouse mode of ***sr to read the contents of the topic.
Use the ***bd navigation keys to read the contents of a topic.
When you reach the end of the window, press PAGE DOWN to proceed reading.
In this Window you have Push buttons (with shortcuts, for example ALT+O for Options), where you can choose to annotate the help topic. The annotation marker is shown as a paperclip to the left of the title and can be found using the TAB key and viewed in a new window by pressing ENTER when the paperclip icon has the focus.
The topic windows can be left open so you can refer to them while you continue working for example. Use the TAB Key to move around areas in this new Window.
If there is an option called 'Related Topics' press ENTER when the focus is on it to get more information about similar topics.
To close the Help dialog boxes, select the Cancel Button, or use ESCAPE to return to your previous application.
With the Control Panel
application you can customize many of the Windows Features.
The contents of the Control Panel is dependent on the hardware and software components of your
system.
To get to the Control Panel,
Depending on how Windows was installed the options in the Control Panel application might include among others:
The Control Panel application window has a title and a menu bar. The highlight is moved around options using the ARROW keys or by pressing the option's initial letter.
To open the Properties Sheet dialog box with options for the selected item, press ENTER. The status bar at the bottom of the window outlines what the highlighted option does.
Apart from the Accessibility Options which are designed to help users with special needs, some of the other options in the Control Panel might also aid blind and visually impaired users.
The Mouse Options Properties Sheet offers (as the name suggests) various options for your mouse. In the motion section of the dialog box you can, among other actions, change the speed of the mouse movement or add a trail to the mouse cursor. This is very helpful for users with low vision.
The Large cursors can be added from the installation CD, but are not installed by default.
The Multimedia Properties Sheet offers you controls for audio, video, MIDI, CD Music and Advanced features. To change the volume of the audio output using the Sound Card Options for example,
It is also possible to choose your preferred audio device here.
This Properties Sheet offers you choices for the properties of the screen display. You change and customize here Screen savers, the appearance of Windows objects (like default screen fonts), or general Desktop settings.
There are sections for Background, Screen savers, appearance, and settings.
In the Appearance section you can change the default screen font used for objects such as menus, title bars, and dialog boxes.
The Recycle Bin is a very useful Windows facility, if you delete something from your hard disk and some time later realize, that you want to retrieve it.
The deleted items are saved in the Recycle Bin by pressing DELETE when the focus is on the item(s) you want to remove. By pressing SHIFT+DELETE the item(s) will not be saved in the Recycle Bin and will therefore be permanently deleted.
You find the Recycle Bin on your Desktop. Deleted items remain in the Bin available for restoring and occupy with the time ever more and more Disk space, until you decide to empty the Bin.
To retrieve files from the Bin,
When the list of files and folders contained in the Recycle Bin is displayed, you can select items ready to be restored to their original locations.
Restore the files with the shortcut ALT+F, E - File menu \ Restore.
CAUTION: Files or Folders deleted from Floppy Disks or Zip-Drives are deleted immediately - they are not saved in the Recycle Bin and therefore cannot be restored.
The clipboard function is a very versatile and helpful application Windows provides for
temporary storage of data.
You can use it to share information within one application or between different
applications.
You can use the
Clipboard in programs like My Computer and Explorer to
copy and move files and folders.
The shortcuts for Cut, Copy and Paste are all found on the Menu bar \ Edit
option of most applications.
The Cut command (CONTROL+X) removes the selected data from its original location to the Clipboard.
The Copy command (CONTROL+C) works almost the same. Both commands store data in memory on the Clipboard until either another Cut or Copy command is executed - which overwrites whatever is stored on the Clipboard) or until you exit Windows.
The difference between Cut and Copy is that with Copy the data remain unaltered on the original location, while with Cut the data are removed from the original place.
The Paste command inserts this data into the selected location (CONTROL + V). You can paste the data into a new location in the same window or into another window, even into another application.