... Basic Computer Skills ...

Exploring Folder Options

You work with Windows every day. Here's how to make Windows work with you.
This might be for the more advanced student.
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One size never does fit all. That's true for operating systems, and especially true when it comes to the interface-the part of Windows you actually interact with. Luckily, Windows offers a variety of customization options that let you make Windows work according to your particular needs and preferences.

The Windows interface is all about folders and files, and the Folders Options dialog is the place where you can tailor the interface to your needs. You'll find Folder Options in My Computer's View menu, or in Explorer's View and Tools menus. In Windows 2000, you can access Folder Options from the Control Panel as well. Here we'll focus on Windows 98 SE, noting differences in other versions as we go. The Folder Options dialog consists of three customization areas: General, View, and File Types (click the tabs at the top to access them). We'll concentrate on the General and View tabs.

General Settings

The General tab offers three points of customizability: Web style, Classic style, and Custom. Classic style lets you work with the desktop and folders as they appeared in the original Windows 95 interface, with each item selected by a single mouse click and opened by a double-click. Web Style lets you change this interface so that the mouse pointer hovering over an icon, filename, or folder name selects the item, and a single click opens the item.

If you choose Custom instead, click the Settings button and you'll see the Custom Settings dialog. This consists of four additional option areas. The first, Active Desktop, lets you choose the Windows classic desktop (the desktop that first appeared in Windows 95) or enable Web content on the desktop. This lets you place Web pages and objects on the desktop itself. In fact, you can combine this option with the Single-click to open an item option in the Click items as follows area of the dialog to make working on your desktop very similar to working in a browser. You can also choose (in the Click items ... area) to have icons on the desktop underlined according to the underline settings in your default browser's Preferences (Netscape) or Options (IE) settings, or to show an underscore only when you move the pointer over them.

In the Browse folders as follows area, you choose whether to have your folders open in the same window and replace one another on the desktop, or to have each folder remain on the desktop even when you open new ones. The latter option is most useful if you're copying or moving files or folders from one folder to another. The final area of the Custom Settings dialog, View Web content in folders, lets you have each folder work like a Web page, with dynamic HTML effects on the left side of the folder window. You can also set this option to work only when the View | as Web Page option is chosen for the current folder. In Windows 2000, the View as Web Page option is removed from the folder window and you can no longer have some folders appearing in HTML format and others in Windows classic format at the same time.

Also in Windows 2000, the General tab consists only of what was earlier called the Custom Settings dialog. The Web style and Classic style are built into the Active Desktop and Web View settings (which, in effect, they were anyway). In addition, there is no longer a Visual Settings section under the View tab; those choices are available through the Display Properties dialog. Windows 2000 also offers a new Folder Options tab, Offline Files, which we'll cover in a later column.

View Settings

The View tab offers a variety of options for working with files and folders. By default, Windows hides certain files from you when you examine the contents of a folder in My Computer or Windows Explorer. Many of these are system files-files that, if deleted, will render Windows partially or totally nonfunctional. Others are those that have been given the hidden attribute (through the Properties dialog for the folder or file in question). If you regularly manage your files and folders, you'll want to see these files, and the area of the Folder Options, View tab lets you do that.

You can decide to hide both system and hidden files, or the hidden files only. You can also tell Windows to show all files, no matter their attribute. Be careful, however, if you choose this option: If you can see a file, you can also delete it. In doing so, you could render Windows inoperable.

Windows 2000 differs in that it doesn't allow you to delete, move, or rename files that are crucial to the system. If you try to do so, the operating system simply replaces the files. This feature, called Windows File Protection, runs in the background and monitors files on Windows 2000's protected file list. When Windows detects a change (an attempted replacement or deletion) made to one of the files, it either silently replaces the file from its Dill cache directory or asks you to put the Windows 2000 installation CD into the drive so it can reconstruct the file from there. You can disable this feature, but only by editing the Registry, which is never a trivial undertaking.

Another option under the View tab lets you see a file's attributes without viewing its Properties dialog. When you check the setting called Show file attributes in Detail View, you can see the attributes of all files within a folder. To enable this option, enter the folder, click the View icon, and select Details.

Saving the view settings

As you work with folder after folder, you'll change the settings of individual folders to suit what you do in those folders. For example, you might view some folders in Web style and others in classic Windows desktop style. You might, through the Views button in the button bar of any folder, set some folders to view as small icons and others to show all details of the files. The option called "Remember each folder's view settings" lets you save the settings of each folder as it is closed, so that it bears the same settings next time you access it. In addition, if you want all folders to adopt the settings of the one you're currently working with, you can click the Like Current Folder button at the top of the View dialog. Or you can click Reset All Folders to undo any changes you've made and return all folders to the default Windows setting.

Other Settings

All versions of Windows let you display the full path of a selected file in the title bar of the folder window, a feature that lets you see precisely where on the hard disk the file is located. Windows 2000 enhances this feature to include displaying the full path in the address bar of any folder; if you turn this option off, the address bar contains only the name of the current folder. You're also given an option to hide the My Documents folder so that it doesn't appear on the desktop. This affords you a bit more privacy and security, though it doesn't actually stop anyone for searching for the folder.

Windows 98 and 98 SE contain two options that have been eliminated from the Folder Options dialogs of Windows 2000. You can have filenames and folder names appear all in uppercase, and you can choose to have the Map Network Drive button appear on the button bar of all folders. In addition, the View tab of the Win 98 and 98 SE Folder Options dialog contains choices for hiding desktop icons when you choose to view the desktop as a Web document, smoothing the edges of fonts on the screen (anti-aliasing), and showing the contents of the windows while dragging them to another folder location. These configuration features are contained elsewhere in Windows 2000.

Taken individually, modifications to the various folder options may seem no more than modest tweaks. But if you take the time to explore the options and change them to suit your preferences, you'll end up with a more productive work environment.

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