Tips & Tricks-May 2002

Here's an assembly of random tips and tricks for Windows 98 and Windows XP, Word and Internet Explorer.

Using Windows Explorer

If you use Windows Explorer and want to move a file from one location to another, and the location is several levels down, here's one way to do it. In the right pane, find the file you want to move and select it. Holding the mouse button down, drag it to the left pane and hold it over the "+" sign next to the folder. The sub-folders will appear. As long as you hold the mouse button down, you can continue "drilling down" until you get to the folder you want. Release the mouse button and the file will be moved.

Selecting Text

Windows has many ways to select text:

Click the mouse and drag the cursor over the text.
Held the Ctrl key and move the cursor with the arrow keys.
Hold Ctrl and A to select everything.

In Word, you can use similar combinations to select text.

If you move the cursor to the left margin, it will change to an arrow, pointing to the right. To select the line next to the cursor, click once. To select the paragraph, click twice. To select the entire document, click three times. To select a single word, position the cursor next to the word, and click twice. If you click three times, you will select the entire paragraph.

Mouse Settings

With all this double-clicking, you may find that you are having to repeatedly double-click. If so, you may have the timing set too high for the double-click. Open the control panel and double-click on the Mouse icon. Select the Buttons tab and move the slide toward a slower speed. There is an image that you can text the speed on. If you have special mouse drivers, go to the program that controls the mouse settings. There will be a similar function that allows you to set the speed. This works in both Windows 98 and XP, except that in XP, you have to go to the Activities tab.

Internet Explorer

With Internet Explorer, you enter an address in the address bar and Explorer performs a search to find that address. Try entering a non-existent URL and you can see what happens. It tells you it can't find it and gives you some alternative choices. You can modify that search to use another search engine, such as Google, to find the address you enter.

Open Internet Explorer and click on the search button. The left pane will open to the search engine that is used specifically to find a site. Click on the "Customize" button. Click on the "Autosearch" settings button near the bottom of the screen. On the next screen, you can choose the search provider for address bar search. Click "OK" twice to exit.

You also have the option of turning off the Autosearch feature altogether.

While you're in the Customize window, note that you can also set which Search engine is used when you click on the Search button. Unfortunately, there is no way shown to select an engine not on the list.

New Search Site

Speaking of search sites, Arlene Fong gave us the address of an interesting site-www.vivisimo.com. Vivisimo uses "clustering" techniques to organize the search results. The engine actually uses any number of other search engines to do its search, but the results are categorized into a hierarchy of folders that show in the left frame of the browser window. You can view and abstract of the sites in the right frame, including all, or any one of the sub-groups. This allows you to more easily find results related to a specific area. This avoids the problem of having to scan through 100 pages of results to find something that may relate to your needs.

Another plus of the site is no ads-at least not yet.