Section 5.5. Mouse Makeover


5.5. Mouse Makeover

If your fondness for the standard Windows arrow cursor begins to wane, you can assert your individuality by choosing a different pointer shape. For starters, you might want to choose a bigger arrow cursora great solution on today's tinier-pixel, shrunken-cursor monitors .

Begin by right-clicking the desktop and, from the shortcut menu, choosing Personalize. In the dialog box, click Mouse Pointers. You arrive at the dialog box shown in Figure 5-6.

Figure 5-6. Ever lose your mouse pointer while working on a laptop with a dim screen? Maybe pointer trails could help. Or have you ever worked on a desktop computer with a mouse pointer that seems to take forever to move across the desktop? Try increasing the pointer speed.


At this point, you can proceed in any of three ways:

  • Scheme . Windows has many more cursors than the arrow pointer. At various times, you may also see the spinning circular cursor (which means, "Wait; I'm thinking," or "Wait; I've crashed"), the I-beam cursor (which appears when you're editing text), the little pointing-finger hand made famous by Microsoft's advertising (which appears when you point to a Web page link), and so on.

    All of these cursors come prepackaged into design-coordinated sets called schemes . To look over the cursor shapes in a different scheme, use the Scheme drop-down list; the corresponding pointer collection appears in the Customize list box. Some are cute: Dinosaur, for example, displays an animated marching cartoon dinosaur instead of the hourglass cursor. Some are functional: the ones whose names include "large" offer jumbo, magnified cursors ideal for very large screens or failing eyesight. When you find one that seems like an improvement over the Windows Aero (system scheme) set, click OK.

    FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
    The Solution to Tiny Type

    OK, fineI can adjust things like the standard Windows type size, but only if I choose the old Windows Classic design scheme. Look, I'm over 40, my new laptop has tiny, tiny pixels, and I want to bump up the point size ! Isn't there anything I can do without having to give up the new Vista look?

    The people have spoken, and they've said, "We want our screens to show more!" The manufacturers have responded, and they've said, "OK, finewe'll just make the pixels smaller." These days, text on PC screens ( especially laptops) is practically unreadable for over-40 eyes.

    Yes, there is a way to bump up the standard Windows point size. Right-click the desktop; from the shortcut menu, choose Personalize. Then click the "Adjust font size dpi" link at the left side of the dialog box.

    After you authenticate yourself (Section 6.3), you arrive at the DPI Scaling dialog box, where you can scale up the size of the text, at least in programs (like Windows itself) that are modern enough to respond to this control. (The dialog box offers only two choices: default size, or one size bigger. To choose something larger, click the Custom DPI button.)


  • Select individual pointers . You don't have to change to a completely different scheme; you can also replace just one cursor. To do so, click the pointer you want to change, and then click the Browse button. You're shown the vast array of cursor-replacement icons (which are in the Local Disk (C:) Windows Cursors folder). Click one to see what it looks like; double-click to select it.

    NOSTALGIA CORNER
    Restoring the Desktop Icons

    The Vista desktop, like the XP desktop before it, is a victim of Microsoft's clean-freak tendencies. It's awfully prettybut awfully barren. Windows veterans may miss the handy desktop icons that once provided quick access to important locations on your PC, like My Computer, My Documents, My Network Places, and Internet Explorer.

    You can still get to these locationsthey're listed in your Start menubut opening them requires two mouse clicks (including one to open the Start menu)an egregious expenditure of caloric effort.

    However, if you miss the older arrangement, it's easy enough to put these icons back on the desktop. To do so, right-click a blank spot on the desktop; from the shortcut menu, choose Personalize.

    Now the Personalization dialog box appears. In the Tasks pane on the left side, click "Change desktop icons."

    As shown here, checkboxes for the common desktop icons await your summons: Computer, Network, Internet Explorer, Control Panel, and User's Files (that is, your Personal foldersee Section 2.13).

    Turn on the ones you'd like to install onto the desktop and then click OK. Your old favorite icons are now back where they once belonged.


  • Create your own pointer scheme . Once you've replaced a cursor shape, you've also changed the scheme to which it belongs. At this point, either click OK to activate your change and get back to work, or save the new, improved scheme under its own name, so you can switch back to the original when nostalgia calls. To do so, click the Save As button, name the scheme, and then click OK.




Windows Vista for Starters
Windows Vista for Starters: The Missing Manual
ISBN: 0596528264
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2007
Pages: 175
Authors: David Pogue

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