A Simpler User Interface

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Windows 2000 incorporates major design changes that make the operating system easier to work with. Personalized menus reduce distraction on the Start menu. Customizable desktop toolbars and a standard folder for document storage allow users quicker access to the programs and documents they need most often. Other changes make it easier to set up network and Internet connections, install and configure printers, and use Windows on mobile computers.

Personalized Menus

If you decide to use the optional personalized menus in Windows 2000, your Start menu displays only those items you use most frequently. The system continually monitors your menu choices, displaying the items you use and hiding those you don't. To get to a menu item that you haven't used in a while, you can either wait a moment or click an arrow at the bottom of the menu; in either case, the entire menu then unfolds. Personalized menus are discussed in Chapter 3, "Customizing the Start Menu."

Another handy improvement on the Start menu allows you to create expandable menu items for four system folders: Control Panel, My Documents, Network And Dial-Up Connections, and Printers. If you choose to make Control Panel expandable, for example, you can get to a particular section of Control Panel directly from the Start menu, without having to open the entire Control Panel folder first. These and other Start menu improvements are also discussed in Chapter 3.

Customizable Desktop Toolbars

The Windows 2000 customizable desktop toolbars, like the system's improvements to the Start menu, are designed to provide easier access to the programs, folders, and documents that you need every day. You can add shortcuts to a toolbar by dragging them from the Start menu or another folder, and the toolbars themselves can either float anywhere on your desktop or be docked on the taskbar or any edge of your screen. Desktop toolbars are described in Chapter 4, "Customizing the Desktop."

Easier Ways to Work with Documents

Windows 2000 provides a number of innovations that make it easier for you to open and save documents, to find documents whose storage location you have forgotten, and to locate documents on the basis of their contents.

My Documents and My Pictures

Like Windows 98, Windows 2000 includes a system folder called My Documents, which resides on your desktop. Most of your applications will use My Documents as a default storage location for newly created files. Each user account on a computer gets its own My Documents folder, and if you're a roaming user who logs on to your account from a variety of different computers, you'll find that Windows 2000 always remembers where your own documents live. (If you don't like their current residence, you can easily change the physical location to which the My Documents folder is linked.)

Windows 2000 also includes a separate system folder called My Pictures, designed to be a default storage location for all types of image documents. If you enable Web content in your folders (an option provided by Windows Explorer), Windows 2000 supplies the My Pictures folder with a handy HTML template that includes an image previewer. The image previewer lets you see the images in the My Pictures folder without opening them in an application.

My Documents and My Pictures are described in Chapter 8, "Using Windows Explorer."

My Network Places

Earlier versions of Windows included a system folder called Network Neighborhood that allowed you to browse the contents of network servers. Windows 2000 replaces this folder with one called My Network Places. The change has two principal benefits: It reduces distraction by removing from view (by default) servers that you seldom use. And it allows you to create shortcuts to frequently used destinations, which might be servers, shared folders, Web folders on the Internet or your company's intranet, or FTP sites. You can still browse your entire network in My Network Places, just as you could in Network Neighborhood, but My Network Places provides more direct access to the network sites you need the most. My Network Places is described in Chapter 9, "Using and Sharing Files on the Network."

An Integrated Search Tool and Indexing Service

Searching for files on local and network storage media is easier in Windows 2000, thanks to a search facility that is completely integrated with Windows 2000. Clicking a Search button on Windows Explorer's Standard Buttons toolbar opens a pane to the left of the current folder display. Here you can type the specifications of the file or folder you're looking for. From this search pane, you can also search for computers on your network, people on the Internet or within your organization, and Web pages. You access the new search facility exactly like the corresponding feature in Microsoft Internet Explorer, but if you're accustomed to using the Find command that is included on the Start menu in earlier versions of Windows, you don't need to change your habits. Search is available on the Start menu as well.

To help you find files on the basis of their content, Windows 2000 includes a powerful indexing service that operates in the background while your computer is not otherwise occupied. Once you've created an index, finding content on even a multigigabyte hard disk is a tolerably quick and painless task.

Chapter 11, "Searching for Files and Folders," describes the new search facility and indexing service.

Improved Dialog Boxes

The standard Open and Save As dialog boxes in Windows 2000 have been enhanced by the addition of the places bar (a column of large icons at the left side of the dialog box), which provides quick access to your most recently used documents, the My Documents folder, the Favorites folder, and My Network Places. Opening a document that's not associated with an application (or opening it with an application other than the one it's associated with) is easier now, thanks to a more versatile Open With command. Once you've applied the Open With command to a document type, the application you used to open that document becomes available on the document's shortcut menu, in effect allowing you to associate the document type with multiple applications.