Section 2.5. Windows and Menus

2.5. Windows and Menus

Any open window contains a frame with a series of standard decorations, as shown in Figure 2-4. To move a window from one place to another, click on the titlebar and drag.

Figure 2-4. The decorations of a standard window: titlebar, title buttons , menu, and a scrollable client area

Most types of windows are resizable, meaning that you can stretch them horizontally and vertically to make them smaller or larger. Just grab an edge or a corner and start dragging. There are two shortcuts that come in quite handy: maximize and minimize. If you click the maximize button (the middle button in the cluster in the upper right of most windows), the window will be resized to fill the screen. Maximized windows can't be moved or resized. If you minimize a window (the left-most button in the cluster), it is shrunk out of sight and appears only as a button on the Taskbar. Minimizing is handy to get windows out of the way without closing them.

Under certain circumstances, one or two scrollbars might appear along the bottom and far-right of a window. These allow you to move the window's view so that you can see all its contents. This behavior can be counterintuitive for new users because moving the scrollbar in one direction will cause the window's contents to move in the opposite direction. Look at it this way: the scrollbar doesn't move the contents; it moves the viewport. Imagine a very long document with very small type. Moving the scrollbars is like moving a magnifying glassif you move the glass down the document and look through the magnifier, it looks like the document is moving up.

If multiple windows are open, only one window has the focus . The window with the focus is usually (but not always) the one on top of all the other windows, and it is usually distinguished by a border and title that are different in some way from the rest, usually appearing in a darker color . The window with the focus is the one that responds to keystrokes, although any window will respond to mouse clicks. To give any window the focus, just click on any visible portion of it, and it will pop to the front. Be careful where you click on the intended window, however, as the click may go further than simply activating it (if you click on a button on a window that doesn't have the focus, for example, it will not only activate the window, but press the button as well).

There are two other ways to activate (assign the focus to) a window. You can click on the Taskbar button that corresponds to the window you wish to activate, and it will be brought to the front. If it is minimized (shrunk out of sight), it will be brought back (restored) to its original size . The other way is to hold the Alt key and press Tab repeatedly, and then release Alt when the desired program icon is highlighted.

Just as only one window can have the focus at any given time, only one control (text field, button, checkbox, etc.) can have the focus at any given time. Different controls show focus in different ways: pushbuttons and checkboxes have a dotted rectangle, for instance. A text field (edit box) that has the focus will not be visually distinguished from the rest, but it will be the only one with a blinking text cursor (insertion point). To assign the focus to a different control, just click on it or use the Tab key (hold Shift to go backwards ).

Often, new and veteran users are confused and frustrated when they try to type into a window and nothing happensthis is caused by nothing more than the wrong window having the focus. (I've seen skilled touch typists complete an entire sentence without looking, only to realize that they forgot to click first.) Even if the desired window is in front, the wrong control (or even the menu) may have the focus.

If you frequently find yourself mistaking which window has the focus, you can change the colors Windows uses to distinguish the active window by going to Control Panel Display Appearance Inactive Title Bar.

Some windows can be configured to be Always on Top . This means that they will appear above other windows, even if they don't have the focus. Floating toolbars , the Taskbar, and some help screens are common examples. If you have two windows that are Always on Top, they behave the same as normal windows, since one can cover another if it is activated, but both will always appear in their own "layer" above all the normal windows.

The Desktop is also a special case. Although it can have the focus, it will never appear above any other window. To access something on the Desktop, you have two choices: minimize all open windows by holding the Windows logo key (not on all keyboards) and pressing the D key, or press the Show Desktop button on the Quick Launch toolbar (discussed in Chapter 3) to temporarily hide all running applications.

Most windows have a menu bar, commonly containing standard menu items like File, Edit, View, and Help, as well as application-specific menus. Click on the menu title to drop it down, and then click on an item in the menu to execute it. Any menu item with a small black arrow that points to the right leads to a secondary, cascading menu with more options. Generally, menus drop down and cascading menus open to the right; if there isn't room, Windows pops them in the opposite direction. If you wish to cancel a menu, simply click anywhere outside of the menu bar. See the next section, "Keyboard Accelerators," for details on navigating menus with keys.

One thing that is often perplexing to new Windows users is the dynamic nature of its menus. For instance, menu items that appear grayed are temporarily disabled. (For example, some applications won't let you save if you haven't made any changes.) Also common are context-sensitive menus, which actually change based on what you're doing or what is selected.

Each window also has a system menu hidden behind the little icon on the left corner of the titlebar (see Item 12 in Figure 2-4). You can open the menu by clicking on the little icon, by pressing Alt-space, or by right-clicking on a button on the Taskbar. The System menu duplicates the function of the maximize, minimize, and close buttons at the right end of the titlebar, as well as the resizing and moving you can do with the mouse. Using this menu lets you move or resize the window without the mouse (see Section 2.6, the next section, for details.) The system menu for folder windows also behaves like the icons for folder windows and can be a convenient way to delete an open folder. Finally, the system menu for command-line applications (such as the command prompt and Telnet) provides access to the clipboard for cut, copy, and paste actions, as well as settings for the font size and toolbar (if applicable ).