Virginia Western Community College
Information & Educational Technologies (IET)
As of 5/19/2011
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Getting around the desktop
Personalizing your PC
Finding your files
Internet Explorer 8
Changing Windows settings
New Windows 7 tools
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Windows Taskbar
Jumplists
Snap, Peek and Shake
Shortcut keys
Getting Around the Desktop Video
Getting Around the Desktop Companion
Guide
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Taskbar changed from Windows XP
No more Quick Launch Bar
“Pin” favorite programs to the task bar
Drag taskbar icons to appear where you want
on the taskbar
Point to the taskbar icon to see an image of
open files or programs
Create a “jump list” for faster access to
commonly used programs
Close windows from the thumbnail preview
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Pin programs to the taskbar
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Pin programs to Jump Lists
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Jump List Video
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Point to a taskbar icon
to see an actual image
of your open files or
programs
Move your mouse over
the image to preview
full screen
Click on the full screen
image to begin
working with it
• Snap is a quick way to arrange a desktop with two
apps or maximize an app
• Click on the app’s title bar and drag it to the left
side or the right side. When you’ve moved it far
enough, it will attach itself to that side of the screen
and take up that side of the screen.
• You can then do the same thing with another app
on the other side.
• Dragging a window to the top of the screen will
maximize it.
• Snap Video
• Peek allows you to hover over a Taskbar
icon to see a thumbnail of the process
• The thumbnail actually has a “close” button.
• If you hover over a thumbnail, the restored
instance of the process shows on the screen
• Peek Video
• Quick way to minimize all apps, but the
current one.
• Click on the current app’s title bar and shake
it.
• The current app remains, all others minimize.
• Shake it again and all apps are restored to
their position
• Shake Video
• W=
(The Windows key)
• W: Shows the Start menu
• W+D: Show desktop
• W+E: Opens Windows Explorer
• W+F: Opens the Windows Search
• W+T : Cycles through icons on the taskbar
• W+# : Brings up the icon associated with that number
(1=leftmost icon, 2 the icon to the right of that, etc.)
• W+home: Minimizes all apps except the current one
• W+up arrow: Maximizes the current window
• W+down arrow: Minimizes the current window
• W+left arrow: Snaps the current window to the left
• W+right arrow: Snaps the current window to the right
• W+pause: System properties (including Computer Name)
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User Picture
Desktop Background
◦ Slide Show
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Window Color
Sound Schemes
Themes
Screen Resolution
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Text Size
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◦ Native Resolution
Personalizing Your PC Video
Personalizing Your PC Companion Guide
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Don’t make changes just because the option
is available.
Fancy backgrounds, sounds, screensavers,
themes and gadgets look cool, but they take
up processing time
Keep monitors at their native resolution and
select the option to “Make text and other
items larger or smaller” if the text needs
adjusting.
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Windows Search
Libraries
Finding Your Files Video
Finding Your Files Companion Guide
• In Windows 7, Windows Search
begins to instantly show relevant
information after typing just a
couple of characters
• Results are grouped by
category
• The search is much faster than
in previous Windows operating
systems
• Searches can be narrowed by
date, file type, and other useful
categories
• Libraries allow you to organize
and access files regardless of
where they are stored
• The default libraries are
Documents, Music, Pictures, and
Videos, but you can create your
own libraries by clicking on the
Start button, then your user name,
then right-click on Libraries and
select New, Library
• Items in a library can be
arranged by folder, date, and
other properties
After clicking on the
locations of the folders in a
library, you’ll see the screen
to the right.
If you right-click on a
location, you’ll see a menu
where you can make this
location the default save
location, remove the
location from the library, or
change the order of the
locations within the library.
Right-click on a folder and
one of the menu items is
to include it in a library. If
you then click on the
arrow to the right, you can
choose the library that you
want to add this folder to.
Note: You do not have
this option with network
folders.
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Smarter Address Bar
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Enhanced Tab Browsing
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Web Slices
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Accelerators
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◦ Relevant suggestions when you start typing
◦ Uses your browsing history for suggestions
◦ Results are more visual
◦ Let’s you know when selected information changes on a site
Internet Explorer 8 Video (Skip over e-mail portion)
Internet Explorer 8 Companion Guide (Skip over e-mail portion)
Type a few characters in the new Address Bar and IE8 will
automatically recall sites you’ve already visited. It searches
across your History, Favorites, and RSS feeds displaying any
matches it finds from the characters that have been typed.
You can delete any address in the dropdown box by clicking on
the red X when you place your cursor on an entry.
When one tab is opened from another tab, the new tab is placed
next to the originating tab and color-coded, so that you can
easily see which tabs have related content.
By right-clicking on any tab, you can close the tab, close the tab
group, or remove a tab from a group. From that menu you can
also open a new tab, reopen the last closed tab or see a list of all
recently closed tabs and reopen any or all of them.
The New Tab page has links
to allow you to reopen
closed tabs, reopen all tabs
in your last browsing session
(if you accidentally closed
IE), browse with InPrivate, or
to use an accelerator.
Web Slices allow you to
easily keep up with changes
to frequently updated sites.
If a Web Slice is available on
a page, a green Web Slices
icon will appear in the
Command Bar. Click on this
icon to subscribe to that
item and add the Web Slice
to your Favorites bar.
When new information becomes
available, the Web slice will
become highlighted. You can
then click on the Web Slice in the
Favorites bar to see the
information.
Web slices have to first be
available on the web page before
you can add them.
A list of pages incorporating Web
Slices can be found at
http://www.ieaddons.com/en/web
slices/
Hover your mouse over an item on
the webpage. If that item
incorporates Web Slice
functionality, the Web slice icon
will appear. Click on the icon to
add it to your Favorites bar.
To delete a web slice, just rightclick on it and click Delete.
Accelerators allow you to
quickly find additional
information about a topic.
1. Highlight the keyword(s)
2. Click on the blue arrow
3. Select the accelerator that
performs the function you
need.
If you don’t find the accelerator
that you need, you can click on
All Accelerators and choose one
of the additional accelerators. If
that’s not enough, one of the
options near the bottom (not
shown) is to find more
accelerators.
It will take you to
http://ieaddons.com/en/, which
shows all of the accelerators
that are available.
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Control Panel has changed
Printers and Faxes is now Devices and Printers
Location Aware Printing
Accessibility is now Ease of Access
Calculator
Snipping Tool
Sticky Notes
Windows Media Center
WordPad and Paint have the ribbon
New Windows 7 Tools Video
New Windows 7 Tools Companion Guide
Old name (or names)
New name (or names)
Add or Remove Programs
Programs and Features
Appearance and Themes
Appearance and Personalization
Display
Personalize
Display
Sounds, Speech and Audio
Printers and Other Hardware
Sound
Device Manager
System and Maintenance
Action Center
System
Security Center
Action Center
Accessibility Options
Ease of Access
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Click the Start button, and then click Devices
and Printers
• Ability to set default printers
based on the network
connection
• Set 1 default printer when
connected to office network
• Set another default printer
when connected to a home
network
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Speech Recognition
◦ Give the computer commands
◦ Surf the web without a keyboard
◦ Dictate your documents
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Narration
◦ Read on-screen text aloud
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Magnifier
◦ Enlarge hard-to-see text
and pictures
• Programmer and Statistics
modes in addition to Standard
and Scientific
• Unit Converters
• Date Calculations
• Calculation templates (such as
mortgage, vehicle lease and
fuel economy)
• Calculation history
• Capture screen shots
• Draw a free-form shape
around an object
• Rectangular snip
• Windows snip
• Full-screen snip
• Snip dropdown menus
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To snip a dropdown menu:
◦ Click to open the Snipping Tool.
◦ Press Esc, and then open the menu that you want to
capture.
◦ Press Ctrl+PrtScn.
◦ Click the arrow next to the New button, select Freeform Snip, Rectangular Snip, Window Snip, or Fullscreen Snip from the list, and then select the area
of your screen that you want to capture.
• Format sticky note text
• Change color
• Resize, collapse and flip
through notes
• Click Start, type Sticky Notes in
the search box, click on Sticky
Notes
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Changing a notes color can be done by rightclicking on the note, but formatting the text
is hidden in the Help file. The codes to
format text are:
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Watch DVDs
Watch Internet TV
Play your music
Watch your videos
Create slideshows
Plays more popular audio and video formats –
including 3GP, AAC, AVCHD, DivX, MOV and
Xvid
WordPad and Paint now have a ribbon included similar to the
ribbon that is in the Microsoft Office 2007 applications
Questions?
Windows 7 Training slides, companion guides, and
videos can be found at
http://virginiawestern.edu/iet/helpdesk/training/windows7/window7.php