In fact, Windows Explorer is one of the default icons in the new taskbar, as you can see in Figure 6. As you can see in Figure 6. The easiest ways to navigate with Windows Explorer are to use the Favorites and Computer sections in the navigation pane. The Favorites section lets you go directly to your favorite folders by default, these include Recently Changed, Public, Desktop, Downloads, Network, and Recent Places, although you can customize this favorites list , while the Computer section lets you drill down through all the drives and folders and subfolders on your computer system.
Click an arrow next to a selec- tion to expand that selection in the navigation pane; click any item to display the contents of that device or folder in the details pane of the Explorer window.
Above the navigation and details panes is a context-sensitive toolbar. The contents of the toolbar change depending on what you have selected in the navigation pane. The one constant in the toolbar is the Organize button. Click this button to display the Organize menu, shown in Figure 6. This menu features all manner of file-related operations, such as Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete, and so on.
At the very top of the Explorer window are back and forward buttons and two boxes. The bigger box is the address box, although Microsoft likes to call it the breadcrumbs bar. This box displays the folder path, but you can go backward through the path like following a trail of breadcrumbs by clicking any folder in the path; click a right arrow next to a folder and you see all the subfolders branching out from that folder.
The second box at the top of the Explorer window is the search box. As you might suspect, you use this box to search for files and folders on your system; just enter the file or folder name or part thereof and press Enter; Explorer then returns a list of items that match your search, as shown in Figure 6.
It works pretty well. By default, Explorer displays the navigation and details panes, as well as a small library pane, above the details pane, that displays information about the current folder or library. You can also opt to display a preview pane, to the right of the details pane, that displays a preview of any file you select in the details pane, as shown in Figure 6. To select which panes are displayed in the Explorer window, follow these steps: 1.
From within Windows Explorer, select Organize, Layout. Check those panes you want to display. Click the button again to hide the preview pane.
You see, even though Microsoft does a good job placing context-sensitive operations on the Explorer toolbar, I still prefer the old-school pull-down menu bar that used to be part and parcel of just about every window in Windows. Well, Microsoft is doing away with menu bars, but still offers that option if you want to work at it. I simply find it easier to find things on the traditional menu bar, shown in Figure 6. For example, I know that file operations can always be found on the File menu, and that view options can be found on the View menu.
Very little guessing involved. To that end, you can opt to permanently display the Windows Explorer menu bar. Check the Menu Bar option.
Press Alt again to hide the menu bar. Changing Views How do you like to see your files and folders displayed? Well, Windows Explorer offers a lot of different view options, including the following:. The nice thing about Details view is that you can sort folder contents by any column; just click the column header to do the sort. You can also rearrange the columns, by clicking and dragging any column head to a new posi- tion. You can even customize the columns displayed by right-clicking the column header row and checking or unchecking file attributes in the resulting pop-up menu.
A very versatile view. This is probably the most economical view. To switch views, simply click the Views button on the toolbar and select the view you want, as shown in Figure 6. If you find your system getting sluggish, change to a non-thumbnail view. Fortunately, you have several options. Arranging Folder Contents You can change how folder contents are arranged. By default, all contents are arranged by folder; in this arrangement, every file and folder appears as a separate item in the Explorer window.
Since most files are not tagged by default, this is a less than useful view for most users. This is identical to Details view, but with files and folders mixed together. To change how folder contents are arranged, make sure the library pane is displayed; then click the Arrange By button and make a selection, as shown in Figure 6. Sorting Folder Contents Arranging folder contents is different from sorting those contents.
Right-click in an open area of the details pane and select Sort By from the pop-up menu. Select whether you want the contents sorted in Ascending or Descending order. Check those details you want to display, and then click OK. You can then sort by one of the new details by repeating the steps just listed; the new details should show up in the Sort By list.
By default, the details displayed are name, date modified, type, and size. But Windows lets you display a lot more different details, which can help you better manage your files. To display more details in additional columns, right-click the column header row and select one of the details listed in the pop-up menu, or click More.
This displays the Choose Details dialog box, shown in Figure 6. This dialog box gives you a huge array of details you can dis- play about items in this folder, everything from 35mm focal length for digital photos to language to word count. Want to display f- stop and exposure information about your digital photos? How about manufacturer and model information about product files? Bitrate and contributing artists for music files? Parental ratings? Vertical resolution? Closed captioning?
There are two things you can customize about this pane—which folders are displayed and which items are shown in the Favorites section. There are other folders that could be displayed, however, including Desktop, your main user folder, and the Recycle Bin.
To display these items, follow these steps: 1. Alternately, open the Control Panel and select Folder Options. When the Folder Options dialog box appears, select the General tab, shown in Figure 6. What if you want to always show more folders here? From within Windows Explorer, navigate to and open the folder you want to display in the Favorites list. I like having a few particular folders present in the navigation pane whenever I open Windows Explorer. Adding those folders to the Favorites list makes this happen.
You only see it when you right-click an empty space in the Explorer window;. Many applications add items to the New menu when the applications are installed. This lets you easily create new documents of the types you work with most often. To add more options to the New menu, follow these steps: 1. Open the Start menu, enter regedit into the search box, and then press Enter. Right-click the key for the file extension you want to add to the New menu and select New, Key. Name the new key ShellNew.
Name the new value NullFile. How you use it, however, depends on how you have things configured. But Windows does not, by default, display file extensions; when you view a file in Windows Explorer, all you see is the main file name, with the exten- sion hidden. Fortunately, you can reconfigure Windows to display file extensions. Open the Control Panel and select Folder Options. When the Folder Options dialog box appears, select the View tab, shown in Figure 7.
Thus configured, Windows Explorer will now show extensions for all files. These are files that are essential to the operation of Windows. As such, these files should never be edited or deleted; by hiding them, Microsoft tries to ensure that they remain thus untouched. While most files are visible by default, any file or folder can be configured to be hidden.
To configure a file as hidden, right- click the file in Windows Explorer, select Properties from the pop-up menu, and when the Properties dialog box appears, check the Hidden attribute. There may be times, however, where you want to view these hidden files. To do so, you have to reconfigure Windows as follows: 1. When the Folder Options dialog box appears, select the View tab.
When prompted, answer Yes to continue. You could cause Windows not to run. Displaying thumbnails takes some degree of graphics horsepower; you can speed up your system by dis- playing stock icons instead of the thumbnails. Starting with Windows Vista, the pull-down menu bar was no longer displayed in Windows Explorer and other applications. The menus are still there, however, and you can show them by checking this option.
If this little icon bothers you, uncheck this option. By default, the size of the item is included as part of the tip. However, it takes some amount of pro- cessing power to calculate the size of all the files in a folder; speed up your system slightly by unchecking this option. This is a holdover from Windows XP, where the path for a file or folder was displayed in the Explorer title bar.
You can pretty much ignore this option. PC that are empty. By default, when you open a folder in Windows Explorer, that folder opens in the same Explorer window. By default, drives connected to your computer are listed both by name and by letter in the Computer window.
Uncheck this option to hide the drive letters. By default, any item you hover over in Explorer or on the desktop dis- plays an informative description, like the one shown in Figure 7. To turn off these pop-up tips and file listings, uncheck this option. This is kind of a neat one. Not enabled by default, checking this option displays an empty check box next to any item you hover over in Windows Explorer.
Select an item and the check box gets checked, as shown in Figure 7. By default, Windows makes it relatively easy to share a file with other users, by displaying a Share With button on the Explorer toolbar. Configuring File Search Windows 7 incorporates a fairly effective file search feature, dubbed Instant Search.
Instant Search indexes all the files stored on your hard disk including email messages by type, title, and contents. So you can search for a file by extension, filename, or keywords within the document. You can then search for files that contain specific information by entering one or more keywords into the search box at the top of the Windows Explorer window. You can, however, tell Windows both what and how to search. When the Folder Options dialog box appears, select the Search tab, shown in Figure 7.
Check those options you want to apply. And what of these search options? This last option is much slower. Choose to include subfolders in search results, find partial matches, use natural language search, or search for system files without using the index. You can get a slightly more complete search but at a speed cost by searching filenames and contents in all locations, but beyond that you probably want to stick with the default settings for these options.
A file physically resides within a given folder; open the folder to view its actual contents. That might not be the best way to manage large volumes of data, how- ever; you end up with similar files strewn across multiple folders. Microsoft recognizes this issue, and in Windows 7 introduced the concept of libraries. That is, the files contained within a given library are listed in the library but physically remain in their original folders.
The library con- tains pointers to these files, rather than the files themselves. Think of it as a collection of shortcuts to files stored elsewhere. This library contains documents of various types—Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, you name it.
This library contains all the digital music files on your sys- tem. This library contains all the digital photos on your system. This library contains all the digital video files on your system.
Creating a New Library In addition to these four default libraries, you can create your own libraries to virtually organize files from any folder on your hard disk. For example, you could create a library for a business project that has Word documents stored in one folder, Excel spreadsheets in another, and photos in still another; the library is then used to organize shortcuts to all these related files in one place.
To create a new library, follow these steps: 1. From within Windows Explorer, select the Libraries item in the navi- gation pane. Click the New Library button on the Windows Explorer toolbar. When the new library icon appears, type a name for the new library and press Enter. Double-click the icon for the new library. When the next screen appears, as shown in Figure 7. When the Include Folder dialog box appears, navigate to and click the folder you want to include in the library; then click the Include Folder button.
This adds the first folder to your library and displays that folder in the Explorer window, as shown in Figure 7. To add additional folders to this library, click the 1 Location link near the top of the details pane. When the New Library Locations window appears, as shown in Figure 7. Repeat steps 7 to 9 to add even more folders to this library.
I like creating libraries to monitor projects that store files in multiple fold- ers. With a double-click of my mouse I can open the library and find all the files I need—an operation that would have required a lot of double- clicking in various folders before. In practice, this meant switching from the traditional double-clicking to.
The sin- gle-click option is still there, however, if you prefer to work that way. When the Folder Options dialog box appears, select the General tab. Check the Single-Click to Open an Item option. Naturally, you can return to double-click operation by repeating these steps and selecting Double-Click to Open an Item instead.
Stop Delete Confirmations One of things you do most often in Windows is delete things. Delete enough items, and this little warning becomes quite annoying. If you want to do away with the annoying delete warning, follow these steps: 1.
Right-click the Recycle Bin icon on the desktop and select Properties. When the Properties dialog box appears, as shown in Figure 7.
The Bottom Line Managing your files and folders can be a chore, but it helps if you can configure the way Windows handles things to be a little more to your lik- ing.
Fortunately, you can do this—including creating virtual libraries of files from various folders. Of course, when it comes to digital media, not everybody has the same needs.
You want to customize Windows to manage media your way—to handle your particular mix of photos, music, and videos. These libraries consolidate media files stored in various files across your hard disk. Table 8. Open Windows Explorer and open the library to which you want to add the folder.
When the library window opens, click the Locations link at the top of the window, as shown in Figure 8. When the Library Locations window opens, as shown in Figure 8. When the Include Folder dialog box appears, navigate to and select the folder to add; then click the Include Folder button.
Click OK to close the Library Locations window. Open Windows Explorer and select the library you want to change. When the library window opens, click the Locations link at the top of the window.
When the Library Locations window opens, right-click the folder you want as your new default, and then select Set as Default Save Location from the pop-up menu. Managing the Pictures Library The Pictures library is where Windows 7 consolidates all your digital photo files. These files may be physically stored in the My Pictures or Public Pictures folders, or in any subfolders within these folders. As you can see in Figure 8. The big difference is that individual photo files are displayed as thumbnails of the photos themselves.
For this. You can also view information about a file at the bottom of the Explorer window by clicking the file icon. Previewing Pictures One thing that a lot of users like to do is display a preview of each selected picture.
To do this, you have to activate the preview pane, by clicking the Show the Preview Pane button on the Explorer taskbar. This displays a much larger version of the selected picture, as shown in Figure 8. Managing Photo Properties Windows 7 lets you sort your pictures by various file details, such as date taken, camera model, exposure time, f-stop, and the like.
Some digital cameras add these attributes—called metadata—directly to the photo files, which Windows can then read.
You can also manually enter metadata about a given photo, by following these steps:. From within Windows Explorer, navigate to and right-click the file you want to edit. Select Properties from the pop-up menu. When the Properties dialog box appears, select the Details tab, shown in Figure 8. Select a given property and enter a value.
There are a lot of photo properties available, if you want to take the time to enter them. Second, you can now sort and find pictures that meet specific criteria, such as all pictures taken with a specific lens, or all pictures of a given size or resolu- tion.
Understanding Other Picture Options You can do more than just browse through files in the Pictures library, however. For example, you can run a photo slideshow directly from this library—or from any folder or subfolder within the library.
Just click the Slide Show button on the toolbar and you get a nice full-screen slideshow. This opens the Print Pictures window, shown in Figure 8. Select the size of the picture you want to send in general, resizing smaller makes it easier to both send and receive , and then Windows will open your default email program with a new message with attachment open. Organizing and Editing Your Pictures Windows 7 does a good job of organizing small collections of photos, but if you have a larger collection, a third-party program might do a better job.
But Paint is a rudimentary editor at best, not a program I can recom- mend for even occasional photo editing. In Windows Vista, Microsoft included the Windows Photo Gallery applica- tion for both organizing and editing digital photos. These are relatively low-cost programs, good for casual and hobbyist pho- tographers. Refer back to Chapter 2 for full instructions. Managing the Videos Library We now move from still pictures to moving pictures, in the form of digital videos.
In Windows 7, digital video files are consolidated in the Videos library, and physically stored in the My Videos and Public Videos folders. Click a file to view information about that file at the bottom of the Explorer window. You can play any individual video by double-clicking the file icon, of course. You can also play all the videos in the library or in any folder or subfolder by clicking the Play All button in the Explorer toolbar. Managing Video Properties Windows 7 lets you sort your videos by various file details, such as name, date taken, tags, size, rating, and length.
You can also sort by additional details, including frame rate, genre, director, and the like. Some cam- corders add this metadata directly to the video files, or you can manually enter attributes by following these steps: 1. As with photo properties, there are a lot of video properties available. Managing the Music Library The Music library is where Windows 7 consolidates all your digital music files.
These files may be stored in the My Music or Public Music folders, or in any subfolders within these folders. Individual music tracks are typically stored in folders for the correspon- ding album.
Album folders are stored in folders for the performing artist. Changing Album Artwork Within each album folder are the individual tracks for that album, of course, but also several hidden system files that provide the artwork for those tracks.
Make sure you rename the image file Folder. When you find the artwork for the album you want, right-click the image on the Amazon page, select Save Image As, and save the image to the album folder on your hard drive. You can also embed artwork in individual music tracks. Managing Music Properties Windows 7 lets you sort your music files by various file details, such as name, contributing artists, album, track number , and title.
You can also sort by a slew of additional properties, including year, genre, length, composer, and even beats-per-minute great if you want to string together a bunch of same-tempo songs for a dance mix. Most of this information is added automatically by your music player program when you rip a CD, or included with the files you download from online music stores.
You can, however, edit this information or enter additional information manually, using either a tag editor program dis- cussed previously or from within Windows. If you want to edit tracks within Windows, you have to do each file indi- vidually. From within Windows Explorer, navigate to and right-click the track you want to edit. There are a lot of different music properties available, most of them quite useful, as detailed in Table 8.
These attributes are used by your music player program and portable music player devices to organize music, create playlists, and the like. For example, you can easily sort your music in Windows Media Player by artist, album, genre, and year.
So if you want to play only tracks by Bruce Springsteen, or music released in the year , or blues tracks, you can do so—as long as those attributes are included in your music files. All digital recordings are made by creating digital samples of the original sound. The length of that snapshot meas- ured in bits and the number of snapshots per second called the sampling rate determine the quality of the reproduction.
For example, compact discs sample music at a Each sam- ple is 16 bits long. When you multiply the sampling rate by the sample size and the number of channels two for stereo , you end up with a bit rate.
All these bits are converted into data that is then copied onto some sort of storage medium. In the case of CDs, the storage medium is the compact disc itself; you can also store this digital audio data on hard disk drives, or in computer memory.
The space taken up by these bits can add up quickly. If you take a typical three-minute song recorded at This is where audio compression comes in. By taking selected bits out of the original audio file, the file size is compressed. Lossy Compressed Formats When you rip or copy a digital audio file, you can either copy the file exactly in non-compressed format or you can use some sort of compression. If you choose a compressed format, you can opt for formats that use either lossy or lossless compression.
A lossless encoder uses complex algorithms to determine what sounds a human is able to hear, based on accepted psychoacoustic models, and chops off those sounds outside this range. You can control the sound quality and the size of the resulting file by selecting different sampling rates for the data. The less sampling going on, the smaller the file size—and the lower the sound quality. To many users, the sound of the compressed file will be acceptable, much like listening to an FM radio station.
To other users, however, the compression presents an unacceptable alternative to high-fidelity reproduction. The most popular lossy compressed format today is the MP3 format, although there are many other formats that work in the same fashion. Short for MPEG-1 Level 3, the MP3 format is the most widely used digital audio format today, with a decent compromise between small file size and sound quality.
The primary advantage of MP3 is its universality; unlike most other file formats, just about every digital music player and player program including Windows Media Player can handle MP3-format music. It uses variable bit rate compression, which encodes dif- ferent parts of a song with higher or lower compression, to produce better quality when needed. Proprietary format used by Real Networks, designed particularly for real-time streaming audio feeds.
That may be stretching it a bit, but WMA does typically offer a slightly better compromise between compression and quality than you find with MP3 files. Use this incredible application to tweak the toolbars and taskbars of your device as per your taste and requirements. In addition to this, it also allows you to change the icons. It comes with easy to use functionalities and is known for its effortless working style. Choose this Windows 10 tweaking tool to customize third party files, retake and restore system backups and much more.
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