Shortcuts | Windows XP in a Nutshell, Second Edition

Shortcuts

A Shortcut is a link to a program, file, folder, drive, system object, printer, or URL. Shortcuts are actually small files that come in two flavors: Windows Shortcuts ( .lnk ) and Internet Shortcuts ( .url ). (See Figure 3-24.)

Figure 3-26. A standard shortcut icon is distinguishable from other icons by the little curved arrow

While you can start a program or open a folder by double-clicking on its icon on the Desktop or selecting its icon in the Start menu, odds are that application is stored elsewhere and you're using a shortcut only to access the application executable. If you find that there's a program, document, folder, or web site you use often, it's easy to create a shortcut to the object.

There are several ways to create a shortcut:

Use the Explorer to navigate to the directory where the program's executable ( .exe ) is stored; if the program is a Windows component (listed in Chapter 4), it's executable is probably in the \Windows\System32 folder. Otherwise, the executable is probably located in a subfolder of \Program Files . Once you've located the .exe file, use the right mouse button to drag it to the location of your choice (typically the Desktop or the Start menu) and select "Create shortcut here" from the context menu that appears. The same procedure works for folders, drives , and documents, as well. In some earlier versions of Windows, dragging an .exe file with the left mouse button (in most situations) automatically created a shortcut, regardless of the destination. This feature, which nobody liked , has been removed in Windows XP. More information on right-dragging can be found in Chapter 2.
Right-click on an empty area of the Desktop (or any folder), and select New Shortcut. This four-page wizard prompts you for only two pieces of information: the full path of the object and the name of the resulting shortcut. This procedure is more laborious than the others listed here, but it does have the advantage of allowing you to create a shortcut to a program with command-line parameters.
A quick way to create a shortcut to a folder (or drive) is to open the folder and then drag the control icon (the small icon in the upper-left of the window) onto the Desktop or other destination.
Right-click any file, system object (such as an item in Control Panel or the Printers and Faxes folder), and select Create Shortcut. A shortcut to the selected object will be created in the same folder; if the folder is a "virtual folder" (like Control Panel) and does not allow new items, you'll be prompted to create the shortcut on the Desktop. Once the shortcut has been created, it can be moved anywhere you like.
Open any web page in Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Mozilla and drag the little icon in the Address Bar (immediately to the left of the http:// ) onto the Desktop or other destination, as shown in Figure 3-25.

Figure 3-27. Quickly create an Internet Shortcut by dragging the icon from the Address Bar to your Desktop or Favorites menu

Shortcuts are commonly placed on the Desktop and Start menu for quick access to programs and documents, but can really be placed anywhere. One of the purposes of having a central My Documents folder is to enforce the notion that documents and personal files should be arranged by project, not by application. This means that Internet Shortcuts and Windows Shortcuts might be placed in the same folder as WordPerfect and Excel documents, making it easy to group all the resources for a particular project together and decreasing the time spent repeatedly trying to locate files and data.

You can also create a shortcut to a local or network printer. Dragging a file onto the shortcut sends that file to the printer without requiring you to open the associated program, which is handy if you do a lot of printing. Putting printer shortcuts in your Send To menu lets you conveniently send files to printers other than your default printer.

Shortcut properties

You'll notice that the names of shortcuts, by default, begin with the phrase "Shortcut to...," and their icons have a small curved arrow superimposed on the lower left. This arrow helps distinguish shortcuts from the files to which they're linked, but it is not set in stone. To change the default visual characteristics of shortcuts, use TweakUI (see Appendix D). There's also a feature in Windows that is supposed to automatically stop adding "Shortcut to" to the your shortcut names if it sees you removing it manually several times in a row, but I've never been able to get this feature to work reliably. TweakUI is much more direct and much less hassle.

To get more information about a shortcut, go to its Properties sheet (right-click it and select Properties). Figure 3-26 shows an example of the second page of a shortcut's properties.

Figure 3-28. View the Properties of a Windows Shortcut to view or change its target, choose a new icon, or assign a hotkey to it

Target

This field appears in the Properties sheet of Windows Shortcuts (see the URL below for its counterpart in Internet Shortcuts). If the shortcut is to an executable with a command-line equivalent (including, but not limited to, command prompt programs), or even to a folder, the full command line required to activate the target is specified here.

If it's a shortcut to Notepad, you'll just see Notepad.exe here. If it's a shortcut to Adobe Photoshop, it'll look like c:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop\Photoshop.exe . Note that the full path is required for Photoshop, but not for Notepad because Notepad is already in a folder in the system path (described in Chapter 6).

This field is also convenient for adding command-line parameters that are typically used to pass options to the target program, so you don't have to do it manually every time it's started. For example, instead of creating an ordinary shortcut to Explorer.exe , create a shortcut to Explorer.exe /n,/e,/select,c:\ to launch Explorer rooted at My Computer with drive C:\ selected. See "Windows Explorer" in Chapter 4 for details on this syntax.

Start in

If the shortcut is to a program, this option specifies the working folder in which the program will first look for files to open or save.

Shortcut key

You can map a keyboard sequence to open or execute the shortcut (sometimes called a keyboard accelerator), allowing you to activate the shortcut without having to hunt for the shortcut icon. For instance, you might want to map the keys Ctrl+Alt+E to a shortcut to Explorer.

Press any key on the keyboard here and you will see Ctrl+Alt+key appear as the shortcut key sequence. Type that sequence to launch the shortcut without clicking on it. You should check Appendix C to make sure you aren't creating conflicts with any existing keyboard accelerator.

Bug alert: If you delete a shortcut with a keyboard accelerator configured, Windows may not release the accelerator, which means it might warn you if you then try to use that accelerator in another shortcut. To avoid this problem, clear a shortcut's keyboard accelerator before deleting the shortcut.

Run

A drop-down list allows you to specify whether the target application should run in its normal window, be maximized, or be minimized. The Minimized option can be useful for applications you'd like to have started automatically when Windows starts (see Notes, below). The Maximized option can be useful for applications you'd like to run in full-screen mode, but don't automatically remember their window state from session to session.

Find Target

Click this button to open the folder containing the original file to which this shortcut is a link. The original file will be selected in the folder window.

Change Icon

By default, the icon used for the shortcut is the same as its target; in the case of Internet Shortcuts, the icon is simply an Internet Explorer logo. See "Icons", earlier in this chapter, for more information on customizing icons.

URL

The URL field is the Internet Shortcut counterpart to the Target field, described above. It simply contains the full address (URL) of the page to which it's linked.

Make this page available offline

This option, available only with Internet Shortcuts, instructs Windows to download web pages to your hard disk so they can be viewed when you're not online. I find this feature most useful for saving web sites I'm concerned won't be available the next time I check. See Chapter 4 for more information.

Compatibility tab

The Compatibility tab appears only in Windows Shortcuts and is not available for Windows components or applications Windows knows to be fully compatible with Windows XP. Generally, you'll never need to mess with these settings, unless you're using an older Windows or DOS program that behaves strangely in Windows XP. You'll probably need to experiment with these settings, or possibly contact the manufacturer of the application for suggestions, to get the program to work most reliably.

Options, Font, Layout, and Colors

Shortcuts to Command Prompt applications have four additional tabsOptions, Font, Layout, and Colorsall used to control the options of the Command Prompt environment in which the program will run. This applies to older DOS programs as well as the newer Windows XP command prompt programs, such as Telnet (see Chapter 4). The settings in these extra tabs are described in Chapter 6 and are also available from the control menu of the command prompt window.

Notes

Since shortcuts are merely links to applications and not the applications themselves , shortcuts can be deleted without fear of any permanent damage. If you wish to actually delete an application, use Add or Remove Programs, and the associated shortcuts will probably be removed as part of the uninstall process.
To have one or more shortcuts launched automatically when Windows starts, place them in your Start Programs Startup menu. See "Start Menu, later in this chapter for details.