Learning Computer Software with Tutorials and Manuals

In my previous posts, it could be easy to get the impression that I am against using manuals or tutorials for learning how to use a program. That is far from the truth. But, initially, I think the five steps I outlined is the best way to get to know a program.

Programs are so similar, that it is easy to at least begin to understand them simply through the 5 steps that I outlined. However, some programs are so complex that they might require further study to learn. Graphics programs, for example, can be easy to learn, but some of the coolest things you can do with these programs may take some further training on how to do them.

In my opinion, tutorials are far better for learning techniques than manuals are. Manuals can teach you the features of a program, but they don't always teach more advanced ways of combining things in different ways. Tutorials, on the other hand, can teach you the features of a program at the same time they are teaching how to combine tools.

Where can you find tutorials? The first place to look is the website for the program. The people who made the program may have made some tutorials. Even if they don't have tutorials on their site, they may have links on their page to tutorials that can be useful.

Another great place to find a tutorial is to use search engines. Just type in the name of the program you want to learn along with the word "tutorial" and you will probably find a lot of them online.

YouTube, and similar places, are another place to find tutorials. Search for them the same way you would in a search engine. The difference is that the links will be to video tutorials, as opposed to text web pages. These video tutorials can provide you with a visual example of what you are trying to learn.

Some places that you find will offer free tutorials while others may charge a fee. It is up to you to decide how much you are willing to spend to learn a particular program. Remember that what you learn in one program can be useful in another program with just a little thought.

Once you have gone through a program, using a tutorial can be a great way to move from being a beginner to a pro.

Microsoft 2.0 and Windows 7

Last night, as I browsed the internet, I came across information that Bill Gates has stepped down from being CEO of Microsoft beginning today. I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, Microsoft has become such a giant that it seems impossible for anyone to take it on and win. On the other hand, where would computing today be without the efforts of the multibillionaire?

Whatever you think of Bill Gates, computing today would be very different without him. Just how different it would be is difficult to determine. He has influenced so much in the world of computers in the last 20 years or so. An argument could be made that he is the single most influential person in computers today.

However, his tactics at times leave a lot to be desired. While they are genius for what they achieved, at the same time, they made it more difficult for others to try to compete.

But despite all their clout, Microsoft has shown some signs of weakness in the last few years. One has to wonder what will happen to the software giant without Bill Gates at the helm. In the last eight years, Microsoft has suffered one dismal failure with the Windows ME and has had only slightly better luck with Windows Vista. While the vision that is behind some of the recent developments for the company may seem achievable, in practice, they have missed on delivering on promises consistently over the last decade.

What does that mean moving forward?

We shall see. Microsoft has a great opportunity with the product it is currently developing, currently "named" Windows 7. But to make this a successful product, if Microsoft wants to be bold in the promises it makes for this product, they had better make sure they deliver.

Already, Apple and the Linux community are starting to make inroads on the Microsoft domination. Each time that Microsoft fails to deliver what it promises, someone will be there waiting to pounce. Apple has already begun a move to start supporting Intel architecture, an arena previously dominated by Microsoft. And Linux, though it still has a long way to go, is becoming easier to use and may soon move from being the operating system of hobbyist to being user friendly. All that it would take for that to happen to Linux is hardware support for the community from the manufacturers, and Linux could launch a revolution.

Still, with the strength of the other Microsoft products available, it would seem reasonable to assume that the software giant is not going to collapse anytime soon. Time will tell what will happen there. Who knows. Maybe someone will step up and guide them to greater success.

The clock is ticking. The world is waiting to see what will happen now.

Great Open Source Programs

First of all, let me apologize for the length of the posts over the last week in particular. It was never my plan to make them so long, and I realize that for a blog, they were way too long, so I promise to watch my length in the future.


Now for today's post!

Are you tired of paying big bucks for software? Looking for alternatives, but unimpressed with the cheaper alternatives you've found? Then perhaps it might be time to check out these open source programs!

First, what is Open Source? It is a method for developing software in a way that allows users to use, review, and modify the code of a program. Okay... This may not be a perfect definition, but if you are interested, you can find out more information at the Open Source Initiative's website.

So, what are some great programs?

Linux is an operating system that has been around for a while. It is gaining ground on the "big" companies. In a few years, hardware vendors may even get to the point where they may have to provide drivers that will work with this operating system. But, for now, it does remain one that is the domain of more experienced users. Outside of hardware support, though, Linux is quickly becoming widely used in the internet industry. It provides great stability and versatility. Gnome and KDE, along with the underlying X.org, have made great improvements in recent years. In fact, it is becoming easier for even the average computer user to run a Linux system with a minimal amount of help. I think this could explode once the hardware support I mentioned eventually happens.

Linux is available in several "flavors", some based on others. My distribution of choice is Debian, but other common ones include Red Hat, Suse, Slackware, and the Debian-based Ubuntu.

For an Office Suite, check out OpenOffice.org. This great collection of programs includes a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database, a graphics, and a presentation program. It even has a program to help you build complicated mathematical equations in a format that you can import into your documents. The biggest drawback with this program in my opinion is that each document requires a new program instance, but this suite is otherwise full of features similar to those of Microsoft Office (minus Outlook). The other drawback is the one I mentioned, the lack of a program comparable to Outlook, but this may come in the future. I have used Open Office over the last few years and have been fairly impressed.

Want to do computer graphics? The GIMP is your program! The Gnu Image Manipulation Program is an image editing program full of features comparable to the way more expensive Adobe Photoshop or even the less pricey Paint Shop Pro. It can do alpha channels for transparency and layer, has a variety of brushes to use with a pencil, paintbrush, or airbrush stroke, and has several pattern images easily applied with the bucket tool. This program has so many features, it is impossible to list them all in the space I have here, but it is definitely worth trying out. The interface, with its 3 window work environment, does take a little getting used to, but it is hands down way better than Microsoft's Paint program that comes with the MS operating systems.

For 3d programs, Blender, combined on occasion with Yafray, can produce stunning, realistic results comparable to Maya. Though it has a steep learning curve, this program has a lot of flexibility and power on its own. When you add some plug-ins or enhance it with some other programs, you can create works of art. Patience is the key to learning this program, but it can be worth the effort. The program does have a compositor and sequencer that is at least serviceable, though there may be better ones out there.

Audacity is a sound editing program. I have not spent a lot of time with this one, but from what little I have done with it, it can be a useful program.

The last program I want to talk about is actually a pair of programs, Firefox and Thunderbird, both available from Mozilla. Spun off from Netscape, Mozilla created Firefox as an open source browser and Thunderbird as an email client. Firefox is every bit as fully featured as Internet Explorer. In fact, I like it even better, because it comes closer to compliance with recommendations from W3C, an organization setting standards for web page development. Thunderbird is comparable to Microsoft's Outlook Express email client, and can do many of the same things, including reading email, newsgroups, and RSS feeds.

The best thing about all of these programs? Every single one of them can be gotten for FREE!! As in NO COST. Most of them operate as FREE software, not because of price (which most of them are) but FREE as in FREEdom to do various things with them. Generally, they are free to distribute, as long as you pass the source code along as well, though check the license to make sure before doing so. But even the ones that may cost you (ie versions of Linux), you can usually get CHEAPER than COMPARABLE products from Microsoft.

Check them out and happy computing!

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 5

We have spent the last couple of weeks examining programs. But so far, we haven't tried to use the program. We've learned how to use the box to make sure that the program will do what you want it to and be able to run on your machine. We looked at the quickstart tutorial book to see how to install the program and while it was installing, seeing what the key features of the program are. We scoured the menus to find the common menu items and toolbars, see the features that were specific to the program, and see what some of the keystroke shortcuts are. Finally, we went into the help files to see what clues they would have about the program. Now that we have done all of this research, it is time to take action.

Experiment With the Program

This may seem like the shortest of all the sections since we started. Don't let that fool you. Of all the steps, this is the most important, the longest to perform, and the most fun.

So what is it?

Experiment! Play! Have fun!

It's that easy and simple. Put the knowledge you have been gaining to use. Open up the program and create a new file. Play with the different options to see what they do. It doesn't matter if the final result looks pretty. That's not important. What is important is figuring out what the different tools do.

Remember that option in the menu that you wondered what it did? Try it out! Take it for a spin.

Try to use the program for why you got it in the first place. See if you have figured it out enough that you can do what you wanted. Even if you don't do it to the level of skill you would like to, I'd be willing to bet that you can at least make a beginners attempt.

Now, I have a little confession. These 5 steps won't make you an expert on any program. Some programs (or even kinds of programs) can take years of study and you might still never find all the features available. But these 5 steps will get you to a level of familiarity of the program that will allow any tutorial, any how-to book, or even the dry boring manual make more sense. When it tells you that the Widget Creator in the Widget menu will create a basic widget that you can customize, you will remember that you played with that feature and thus have a greater understanding faster of how to manipulate that widget because your not sitting there trying to figure out what the heck is a widget.

Let me give you an example from my own life. A few years ago, I found a 3D image creation program called Blender. When I first started using the program, I did a lot of what I'm recommending you do. Blender is an open source program availiable online for free. It's not an easy program to learn because the interface is a non-standard one. In other words, though it does have many features similar to most programs (menus, for example), some of them are in different places than in most other programs and they don't always follow the pattern that I showed you. This is an exception, rather than the rule. But I had been using programs for years prior to first using the program, so that was not a hard thing for me to adjust to.

Because this is a program available online, I didn't have a box to look at, but I did find a specification page on their web site that told me what my computer needed to have for the program to work and a features page that showed me what some of the features of the program were. They even had a gallery of images that had been created using the program. So I downloaded and installed the program.

I didn't really have a quickstart guide, but since I have used programs for years, I didn't really read the readme file. I could have, but I jumped right in.

The first thing I did was to notice that the interface was quite a bit different than I was used to. But there were menus up at the top of the page, so I looked through them. I saw menus in other places, so I briefly looked through those as well. A lot of what I saw I didn't understand at the time (and still don't), but I kept on.

The help menu in Blender just points to a bunch of tutorials and manuals, so I didn't really spend a lot of time going through them.

Next, I tried to create something. I went to the Add menu option I found at the top of the screen and tried to add a mesh object. There was already a square cube in the main view window, so I just added some object. I don't even remember now what I added. Even then, I still didn't know what I was doing.

Eventually, I did go back to the help menu and start trying to do some of the tutorials and manuals. For a program such as Blender, these tutorials can be a great help. But my time that I spent with the program before consulting the manuals did help me.

I would still consider myself a blender newbie. I've learned how to do some pretty interesting, almost realistic looking things, but I have not really had the time to fully study the program in the manner that I would like to. But some of the things I use regularly on that program are things I found in my initial exploration and playing with the features. Even now, when I do learn a new feature, I spend a little playing with it before I "learn" how to manipulate it. Sometimes I can figure out what something does, but other times, it does take a while.

I give you this example, which is an extreme example, and not one I'd recommend for a complete computer beginner, but if you are interested in computer graphics, it can be worth taking the time to learn this useful program. I chose to use the Open Office program in my example because, if you wanted to try the program yourself, it is one that is very easy to learn how to use, at least at a basic level, if you have ever used any kind of word processor or spreadsheet. And that is only the tip of the iceberg with that program, because it has many other cool features as well, including a database program, a drawing program that, though not competitive with commercial image editing program, is easy to use (and probably a lot better than MS Paint), and a Math program that lets you construct a complex mathematical formula in a way no other program I 've seen will let you do.

So there you have it. The five steps to learning any computer software program

1. The box
2. Quickstart guide
3. Menu Navigation
4. Help
5. Experiment

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 4

Over the last couple of weeks, we learned how to make sure we have the right program for our needs and how to use the quickstart guide to get us started. Last week, we spent a lot of time looking at the common menu and toolbar items found in most programs. And yesterday, we saw what to do with the menu items and toolbar buttons that we were not familiar with as well as noting the shortcut keystrokes for different tasks. Now, only one more area remains before we start trying to use the program.

Browsing the Help Files

Now that we have familiarized ourselves with the menu, let's check out the Help menu in more detail.

A couple of days ago, we looked at the help menu and saw that it had a Contents section and an Index section. Click on the Contents section to bring up the help screen. In most programs, you can quickly access this screen by pressing the F1 key in the upper left hand corner of the keyboard.

The window that comes up should look similar to the on the right. It may look different, depending on the program and operating system you are using, but that is not important. What is important is the information that it contains. Notice in this example, the Contents screen has two panels. The one on the left will have a list of topics. The window on the right will contain the "page" you are currently looking at. You may notice some buttons up at the top of the page. These buttons should be similar to the ones you would see when browsing a web page and are for navigating the help files.

The Table of Contents

The list of topics on the right hand side can be thought of like the the table of contents in a book. When you click on a topic, you "flip" to that page of the book on the right hand screen.

Some topics will contain other sections. These will be noted by either a book, as in our example, or with a + sign. Once these topics are clicked on and opened, the icon will change to an open book or a - sign. Other topics will be revealed. Some may contain still further sub-topics, again noted by the book or symbol. Others will have a page icon or no sign at all. These are actual content pages. clicking on these content pages will bring up the content for that page in the right hand panel.

As you look through these topics, look for things that interest you. You may have a question about a particular feature you saw when you were browsing the menu. See if you can find a help topic for it here. Click on a few topics just to get a feel for how this particular program deals with the help content.

One quick note about the information panel before we move on to the index. Scroll down to the bottom of the bottom of one of the topics. At the bottom, you will likely see some links. These are links to other help pages and are usually preceded by the header that says Related Topics. For example, in Open Office, the topic of Master Documents links to other pages about Indexes Covering Several Documents. This can be a big help in quickly finding information related to what you are trying to find.

Help Index

Another way to find information that you are looking for is to look at the Index. From within the program, you can access this directly from the Help menu. If you are already looking at the help screen, just click on the tab that says Index.

What you will see right away is that the index of the help files looks just like the index in the back of the book. And, like the contents section, clicking on a topic in the left panel will open up a page in the right panel.

Several topics in the index will be broken down into different categories. The sub categories will be indented slightly to show that they are related to the most immediate term above it that is flush to the left. This is exactly like the index of a book. And, just like in a book, topics are arranged alphabetically.

Some programs will pop up a dialog box when you click on a topic. In these programs, the topic you clicked on may have relevance to several different items, and the help section is trying to let you decide which one is the most relevant to what you are trying to find.

You will also find a search box at the top of the screen. This search box will allow you to quickly find topics. Just type in what you are looking for in the search box. Often, you will notice that the terms "jump" to the first spot that most closely matches what you have already typed in. This makes finding topics very easy.

Take a good look through the index to see if there are any topics you wish to see further information on. Perhaps you were interested in the Word Count feature in the tools tab, but didn't find a topic for it in the contents. Just typing in word count in the search box quickly brings this topic up for view in our example.

In most programs, these two screens are all you will really need to find the topic you are looking for. However, note that some help files include a search that will check the individual pages for a term. If the other two methods don't get you what you need, try this option.

By now, we have learned a lot about the program, really in a matter of minutes. Though it took several pages to get to this point, the truth is that the topics covered up to this point (outside of waiting for the install) can usually be completed in five to ten minutes. Tomorrow, we'll look at the last topic -- the most fun one of the five!

Tip of the day

Want to make your desktop look cleaner and still have access to the links?

In yesterday's tip, I showed how to set up the desktop toolbar on the taskbar of a windows program. Remember, if you have done this, you have access to any file, folder, or shortcut listed there by clicking on the Desktop toolbar.

So how to you clean the clutter on what you "see"?

That's easy! In most any version of Windows, you can right click on the desktop. Then on the View sub menu, click on the option for Desktop Icons. This will toggle the displayed icons on and off. With them off, you can see whatever image you have on your desktop without any clutter over the top!

Enjoy!

Tip of the day

In yesterday's tip, we looked at how to add the computer icon to the desktop on Windows XP and Vista. With that set up, you can set up a Desktop Toolbar on your taskbar and have access to all the files on your computer. To do this, right click on the taskbar. Look for the "Toolbars" tab. Then select Desktop. Now, over next to the system tray, you should have a toolbar that says Desktop. When you click on that, you can browse to any file or folder on your desktop. And since we have added the computer icon, all the files on your computer will be accessible through this icon.

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 3 pt 5

So, now we have spent a considerable amount of time looking at the key common menu and toolbar items found in most programs, it is time to take a look at how we use that information to learn our new program.

Navigating the Toolbar -- Pulling it all together

When we are looking at a new program, what are we looking for as we navigate the menu?

First, we want to see what common features are in the menus. Sometimes these things are not in the place where we thought they would be, so this is the time to try to find that out. Also look for the common toolbar buttons to make sure you have an idea of what this program works with.

Next, we want to look through the menus and toolbars for things that we may not be familiar with. If you are not sure what a feature does, go ahead and click on the link. Menu options with an ellipsis (...) will open a dialog box. Menu items with a triangle pointing to the right are sub menus that lead to other options. Be sure and look through all of these as well.

Then, we want to click on a few of the ones that open a dialog box to see what options that dialog box has to offer. At this point, we are not trying to use the dialog boxes, but merely seeing what things can be set as well as try to guess what a feature does. Usually by looking at the name of the feature and the options it controls, we can get a good idea of what that feature is supposed to do.

Finally, as we look through the menu, we are looking for the shortcut keys. These are the things on the right of a command in the menu that says something like CTRL-P or ALT-O. These shortcut keys are keystrokes that we can use from within the document window without having to open a menu. The shortcut keys can save a lot of time navigating the menu when you are working on a project. Note that the common menu items discussed earlier will usually have the same shortcut key combinations as other programs, but as we are looking through the menu, we want to see if any of these common items have a different key combination than we might be used to. Some of the other shortcut keys may be for a feature that you have used in other programs, such as the spell check, but it might have a different shortcut key combination than in the other program you are familiar with.

Now that we know what to look for on the box, how to use the quickstart guide, and have familiarized ourselves with the menu and toolbars, the next step in learning any computer program is to browse the help files. We'll look at doing this next time.

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 3 pt 4

Over the last week, we have been looking at how to learn any computer program. We learned what to look for when reading the box and how to use the quickstart guide to get a quick grasp of the program. We also went through the menu to look at the common menu items.

Toolbars

Many programs today have toolbars. In fact, toolbars are so useful and quick to access that some programs may even be hiding the regular menu in favor of the toolbars, so it is important to know what some of the most common options are.

What options you will see in the toolbar depend greatly on the program that you are using. Some toolbars will only appear when you are doing certain functions in a program, but most programs have a toolbar that is always visible of some kind.

For example, in your browser, you probably have at least 5 buttons on your toolbar. A Back arrow, a Forward arrow, an arrow that circles around for Refreshing the page, a Stop Sign button, and a Home button. Each of these are tasks that are commonly performed when viewing web pages.

One of the great things about the toolbars today is that many of them will give you a "tool tip", or a little window that pops up when you move the mouse cursor over the icon that tells you what that button does. When you don't know for sure what a button does, this is a great way to find out.

Some of the common buttons you will see on nearly all programs are the file function buttons. These include buttons to create New files, to Open existing files, to Save or Print the current document, and maybe even a Print Preview button. You may also find a set of editing buttons that allow you to Undo or Redo tasks, options to Cut, Copy, and Paste. There could be a button to access the Find and Replace feature, a Zoom button, and a Help button.

On a program where you edit text, you will find a drop box to select your Font, and another to set the Font Size. You will also find buttons for Bold, Italics, and Underline. You will find 4 justification buttons for Left, Right, Both, and Center. There could also be buttons to toggle Numbering and Bullets, buttons to Increase and Decrease indents, and to set Font and Background Colors. Most programs have buttons that will be specific to that program, so be aware that there are likely to be more.

Some common buttons in graphics programs may be Paintbrush, Pencil, Airbrush, Gradient, Select, Bucket Fill, Resize, and Move. Graphic programs will probably have a lot more than this, but these seem to be fairly common across all graphics programs.

Remember, this is not an exhaustive list, but merely a sampling of some of the most common toolbars that can be found, usually upon first opening a program, or at least a document within a program.

Next time, we'll take one last look at navigating the menu, and see how we can use what we have learned about the basic common elements to most programs to figure out what to pay attention to when looking at a new program.

Tip of the day

For quick access to your computer files, add the computer icon to your desktop.

In Windows Vista, you can do this by right clicking on the desktop and clicking on Personalize. Then, click on the link in the upper left hand corner that says Change Desktop Icon.

In Windows XP, you can right click on the desktop and click on preferences. Select the Desktop tab, and click on the button that says Customize Desktop.

In both cases, mark the icons that you wish to have on the desktop, such as the one that says Computer. Click on OK, and close the other dialog boxes you open, and you should see the computer icon on the desktop.

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 3 pt 3

Wow. I've covered a lot in the last few days. I'm sorry for the length of the posts, but only one or two more of them will come close to the size of the one I posted yesterday. I hope that the information should be familiar if you've used even a few programs. And that is the beauty of what I am trying to convey. Once you know how they are set up, most programs really are the same with only varying functionality.

By now, you should have a good grasp of the core of the menu. We've seen the main options for the FILE, EDIT, and VIEW menu options. These are the common options at the start of every menu. Now, let's look at the last three menus common to most programs.

Navigating the Menu -- Part 3

Today, we will look at the last three menu options common to most programs. They are the Tools, the Windows, and the Help menu options.

Tools Menu Options

The TOOLS menu option is a common menu option. Most of the choices in this screen are often tools that perform certain tasks. There are only a few choices here that will be common to most programs. Most programs that deal with editing text of some kind might have a SPELLCHECK option and possibly a WORD COUNT option. The only other one that you will find consistently in this area is the OPTIONS or PREFERENCES option.

SPELLCHECK does just what it sounds like. It activates a function that will check your document for spelling errors. Once that task is performed, it may give you some document statistics. This button will force the program to check the entire document for spelling errors.

Most of the time, I see the word count for the document as a part of the document statistics that are displayed with the spell check. Other times, such is the case with our test case, OpenOffice.org, the word count can be found as an option here in the tools menu.

Of all the choices in this menu, the one I see here almost every time is the one that says either OPTIONS or PREFERENCES. As I mentioned yesterday, sometimes the PREFERENCES menu option can be found in the EDIT menu, but it is most often found here in the TOOLS menu.

Anytime I am looking through a new program, I always make sure to check out this option. The reason why is that the dialog box that pops up, more than any other, can change the way the program behaves. If you haven't done so before, check out the PREFERENCES or OPTION menu choice of the program you are running right now. If you are looking at the one for a web browser, you will find all sorts of things that will affect how the browser operates.

If I plan to use a tutorial to get more information on a particular program, I usually leave the settings alone to start out with, but as I get more familiar with a program, I find making changes to this menu option can make it easier for me to use the program. What choices you will find here depend greatly on the purpose of the program. So much so that I cannot tell you of any one thing specific to all programs but one. In nearly every case, you have the ability to set "default" font, font size, and foreground/background colors. Other than that, the choices here are as varied as the programs themselves.

Although you will find many helpful options in the TOOLS menu, remember, only a few are common to most programs, and even these can lead to widely different choices.

Windows Menu Option

Of all the common menu choices, this is the one seen least, though you will see it on almost all menus of Microsoft programs. That doesn't mean you won't find it on other programs, just that it is not seen as much. The purpose of this particular menu choice is to control the way the current Window appears. In program terms, a WINDOW is the box that contains the visual elements of a program. Some programs allow you to have multiple document windows, where each window within the program window contains a different document. These are the programs you will most often find this windows menu.

What you will find in the WINDOWS menu are tools to ARRANGE the windows. Sometimes these arrangements are shown as menu options. TILE will display document windows either across the window VERTICALLY or down the page HORIZONTALLY. You may see an option to CASCADE the windows, or put one on top of another, slightly offset so you can see the one behind it. You can MINIMIZE or COLLAPSE the window so that one is not visible. You can RESTORE a window, so you can see it. Or you can MAXIMIZE a document window so that it takes up the whole program window. Notice that most of these options are the same things you can do with program windows.

One other thing you will likely see here is a list of open documents. This list allows the user to switch back and forth between documents that may otherwise be "hidden" or not seen.

Help Menu Option

The last menu on every program is the HELP menu option. This is the menu where you can access the resources to learning how to use the program. The program's Help Contents is usually the first option, sometimes followed by INDEX. Some programs have a SEARCH HELP option. Many will have a WHAT'S THIS? option. A few may even have a SUPPORT option. Other than the CONTENTS, the other one that you will always see is the ABOUT option.

CONTENTS is nearly always the first option of the HELP menu. If you don't see something that says CONTENTS, you probably see something that says HELP with the name of the program. In either case, this will take you to the contents of the help file.

If you see this option, the INDEX will take you to a way to find a topic based on the subject you wish to find.

The SEARCH HELP will search all of the help files for the term you are trying to find.

When you see a WHAT'S THIS menu option, this option will let you find out what a particular button or function is and how to use it.

SUPPORT will take you to a page of how to contact the makers of the program if you cannot find the answer to your situation in the help files.

The ABOUT screen will always pop up a box or splash screen that tells you the current version of the program you are running. It will usually include some sort of a build number. A copywrite notice will be found here as well. Sometimes, you might even find some information of the key programmers who wrote the program. If you ever need to know what version of a program you are running, this is the place to look.

I was very brief about much of the help items because looking through the help files can be such an important part of getting a quick start with a program that STEP 4 is dedicated to going through the help files, so we will look closely at each of the different help choices in that step.

Now we have seen all of the menu choices, there is one more area to look at before we move on, and that is the toolbars. I am including them in our discussion of the menus because most of the functions in the toolbars have a counterpart in the menus and some toolbars are so common, it can be helpful to know what to look for. So tomorrow, we'll look at the toolbars and see what we can learn from them.

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 3 pt 2

So far, we have looked at reading the box to see if a program is a good fit for our needs and how using the quickstart guide can help us see what the basic features of a program are. Yesterday, we started talking about the menu and seeing what options are common to most programs. We also went through the File menu option to see what the most common options there are and what they do.

Navigating the Menu (part 2)

Today, we will continue looking at the menu to see what features are common to many programs. Specifically, we will look at the Edit and View tabs.

Edit Menu Options

The EDIT menu option contains several features used in changing documents. Options to undo and redo changes can be found here, as well as copy and paste. Another great tool in programs that use text, such as a word processor, is the Find and Replace tools. Another great tool to look for here is the selection tools.

Some programs might have a preferences option that allows you to control the program settings. This particular option is more often found in the TOOLS tab, so we will discuss it there.

The UNDO option will change the document to the state before the "last" task that was performed. The REDO button will bring back a state that was undone. I put the word "last" in quotes because most programs will maintain a list of steps to undo, anywhere from a few items to as much as memory can hold. Beware, though, that some programs DO NOT have the REDO button, and therefore the UNDO button effectively acts like a REDO button in that it will take the system back to what ever was the last state before the button was pushed. This effectively means that in these few programs, the UNDO button will switch between two states. The most notable program that does this is the Toolpad program that can be found in the accessories folder of the start menu on all Windows programs.

Sometimes, though rare, you can find a REPEAT option that will run the last task performed again.

Some of the most used options in the editing panel are the CUT, COPY, and PASTE options. CUT will delete any item that is selected. COPY will duplicate the selected item to the system's clipboard, a special area of the operating system designed to facilitate the COPY/PASTE functions. PASTE will take the contents of the system's clipboard onto the workspace of the program at the place where the cursor is pointing to. These options allow a user to move selections around and modify them into new configurations.

Near the CUT, COPY, PASTE trio of options should be at least one (if not several) options to SELECT something in the program. Variations on this will select groups or individual items. Nearly always there will be a SELECT ALL button that will select everything that can be selected and in most of these cases, there will be a companion option to SELECT NONE, which will deselect any object that has previously been selected. Another common option is to INVERSE (or INVERT) SELECTION. This choice will take whatever you have selected and unselect it and select anything that was previously unselected.

The last two choices we'll discuss in this section are the FIND and the FIND & REPLACE options, usually found in word processors and text editors. The two are nearly identical. Both will search through the text of a document to find a specified term. The difference between the two is that the FIND & REPLACE option will replace the specified text that is searched for in the document with new text. This can be a great tool when you have a word or phrase that needs to be changed in a large document or if you are trying to find where in the document a term occurs. A related item that sometimes can be found is FIND NEXT which just finds the next occurrence of the term, though usually this option is combined with the FIND option in the same dialog box.

So that is the options in the EDIT menu. Remember, these options will help you change an existing document.

View Menu Options

The View menu options allow you to change how a document is displayed with the window that it occupies. It does not change the document or the way the program interacts with the user. Some of the common options here include a place to set which TOOLBARS you wish to use, whether to use all the available screen to view the file or just the window, and the ability to zoom in and out of the document. You could also see some options to "temporarily" change the "default" text size.

The option for TOOLBARS nearly always is a "folder" option, meaning that it has a little triangle that points to the right, indicating that the option has a sub-menu. In the case of the TOOLBARS, the sub-menu contains the different toolbars that can be displayed. The TOOLBARS are the bars with the buttons just below the menu. Toolbars are very useful because they allow the user quick access to key, often used features of a program.

Take the browser you are using now. On the bar just below the menu (if your program displays the menu -- more recent versions of Internet Explorer hide the menu, but it can still be "revealed") you will see a series of buttons. One points the left, and when the mouse cursor comes over it, a hint window pops up that says BACK. The one next to it is an arrow that point s to the right and says NEXT. Then comes an arrow that circles around on itself and is labeled REFRESH. Then you might see a stop sign shaped symbol marked STOP. Finally would be a symbol that looks like a house and is marked HOME. Each of these represent tasks that a user might use frequently and therefor would desire quick access to.

We'll look at the toolbar and the common options on it a little later, but for now, when you look in the VIEW menu option, note what toolbars are available to you. Some toolbars may "automatically" appear when you are doing certain functions, while other may be visible all the time. The visible toolbars are usually marked somehow, quite often with a check.

If you see an option for the STATUS BAR, that toggles the line of display at the bottom of the window that will tell the "status" of the document. For example, in a web browser, it may display the address of a URL that you are about to click or that is waiting to load or say "Done" after loading a page.

The FULL SCREEN option is a toggle option that allows the user to make the document take up the entire screen of the computer when this option is turned on. When the option is turned off, the document can only take up as much room on the screen as the program itself takes up, minus what is needed for the Title bar, the menu bar, the status bar, and the toolbars.

The ZOOM options allow the user to ZOOM IN, or get closer to a document and to ZOOM OUT, or get further away. Some other options that might be available, either as an option in the menu list or as a part of a dialog box, are FIT WIDTH, which makes the document take up the width of the available window, FIT PAGE, which will fit the page top to bottom in the available window, and usually some predefined percentage options that will display a set amount of a document.

One last option I mentioned you might see is the TEXT SIZE options. While this option does not "change" the default options of the program or even of the document, it can make it appear to change. Choices here usually allow you to INCREASE or make the text size larger, DECREASE or make the text size smaller, and NORMAL which sets the text back to the "defined" setting.

Another option that could be here in some text editors and word processors,, but can often be found in the preferences dialog box to be discussed later, is an option to set WORD WRAP. This is useful feater that will "wrap" text to the next line when it reaches the end of the available screen space. This keeps a user from having to scroll side to side to read text and allow them to concentrate on scrolling on the more natural up and down.

So these are the common options of the EDIT and VIEW menus. Next time, we'll look at the remaining three menu options, the TOOLS, the WINDOWS, and the HELP menu options.

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 3 pt 1

So far, we have discussed what to look at on the box to make sure that the program is right for us, and we have seen how we can use the quickstart guide to get a quick look at the features of the program and to get it installed. Now, we are going to see what to look for when Navigating the Menu.

Navigating the Menu - Part 1

Today, we are going to start looking at navigating the menu. I will split this area up into several sections, not because doing this step takes longer than the others, but rather there is a lot of information to cover here. We will look at what menus are common to most programs. Then, we will go through each of the menus and point out what items are commonly used and function nearly the same from program to program. Finally, we will discuss looking at the menu items that are specific to that program and how to check them out to get an idea of what the program can do.

For this section, I'm going to illustrate with some pictures to show what I am discussing. The images are captured from an open source program, OpenOffice.Org, an office suite similar to Microsoft Office. I'm using it because it may be one you are not familiar with, so it makes it good to illustrate what I am saying. But you can follow alonag using whatever program you have on your computer -- even your web browser you are using at the moment.

Common Menu Options

So, what are the common menu items? Look at the image to the right. The image has the most common options found in many programs.

The first option is File. As you can guess, this options that control the files. The Edit option contains choices to change the file. The View option controls how things are displayed on the screen. The Tools option control different program options. The Window option is not in every program, but it is common enough I mention it here. It has some options for the windows. The last option in every menu is Help.

In addition to these menu options will most likely be several other options. Each of these will be specific to the program. For example, in this window are Insert, Format, and Table.

File Menu Option

Now, let's take a look at the File menu option. This section will always have a way to create new files, open documents, save documents, close documents, set the document properties, printing options, and to close the program. Other common items include recent items, export options, and page previews.

The NEW option is the one to select for creating new files. Sometimes this will give you a sub menu or an option box to set the way the new file is started.

The OPEN option always opens a dialog box that gives you a way to open files that are stored on your computer.


RECENT DOCUMENTS will give a list of files that have recently been opened. Usually there are 5 items, but sometimes there are more.


CLOSE will usually close the current document, but leave the program running. If the program has not been saved since it was last changed, it will usually bring up a box asking if you want to save the document.


SAVE and SAVE AS both work almost the same. They both save documents. The only difference is that SAVE AS always gives you a chance to change the name of the file you are working on. If the document is a new document, the SAVE option will open the SAVE AS dialog box, otherwise, it will replace the version on the computer with the current document being worked on. The EXPORT option, if it exists, is very similar, except that instead of saving in the native program format, it will have options to save in a format for another program.

PROPERTIES has the options for the document. In the PROPERTIES dialog, you can set the name of the author, and put in other comments. There will probably be other options, some of which you can set, and others that contain information about the document.

PAGE PREVIEW will let you see how the page will look when it is printed on the page. Often, the screen that pops up will give you a way to set the page layout.

PRINT will let you print the page. PRINT SETUP will give several options that will affect the printer itself.

The last option on this screen is always EXIT. This option will close any open documents, and will close the program.

Next time, we will look at the EDIT and VIEW options that are common to most programs.

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 2

Yesterday, we discussed what to look for when looking at the box before purchasing/downloading a program. Today, we'll look at the next step.

Step 2: The Quickstart Guide

The great thing about programs today is that many of the ones that come in a box now contain a quickstart guide. These guides are designed to be easy to read and will usually highlight the key features of the program. The quickstart guide will also give you instructions on how to install the program. For games, the quickstart guide may also have the commonly used controls on keyboard, mouse, and joysticks, though this may sometimes be on a separate card.

Follow the instructions in the quickstart guide to start the install. While the install is running, you can browse through the rest of the quickstart guide to see what the key features of the program are and how to access them. One of the best things about the quickstart guide is that the features common to most programs (which we will discuss tomorrow) are glossed over or mentioned briefly and more time is spent on features that actually perform tasks specific to the program you are installing. Remember to check your computer occasionally to see if it is prompting you for input.

Another reason I really like the quickstart guides is that most of them are full of screenshots that show the program in action. This can be helpful not only for the features noted in the guide, but can also give you clues of more advanced features that may be of use down the road. Some quickstart guides may even have a quick tutorial designed to show the most commonly used, basic features.

If you have downloaded the program, you may, or may not, get a quickstart file. Either way, another helpful file to read, whether you are installing from a box or from a download, is the README file, usually called README.TXT (or something close to this). This file may have notes that did not make it into the manual or quickstart guide, and will often contain information about how this version of a program may differ from earlier versions. It will usually have some tips on what to try if the program does not work properly, or can warn you of issues that might be encountered when trying to use certain computer configurations.

Both the quickstart guide and the readme file will give you a foundation of what to look at as we go into the next step. Tomorrow, we'll discuss what to look for as you navigate the menu to explore the new program.

Tip of the day

See an image you want as your desktop? In most cases with Windows, you can right click and select "Set background image". (Before you do this, it is probably best to make sure you have permission to do so!)

Learn Any Computer Program in 5 Easy Steps -- Step 1

Yesterday, I told you that any program can be learned in 5 easy steps. Now, these 5 steps won't make you an expert, but they can help you get started. Once you get your feet wet with these steps, then you can focus on what you want to learn how to do instead of wading through stuff that is the same from program to program.

So let's get to that first step!

Step 1: The box

The first step to learning any program is to read the box. Now, I know this sounds basic, and it really is. But it can be the most critical step. Why? Because the box can tell you a lot of information long before you even run the program for the first time. So what are you looking for when reading the box?

The first, and most important, is to answer the question "Will this program do what I need it to do?" Nothing can be more frustrating than to buy a program only to get home and find that it won't do what you bought the program to do. Look through the list of the features to make sure that the program will do what you want it to do. While there may not be a "list" of features, you can usually tell what the capabilities are by what it says it can do. If there are a list of features, it might be on the sides. Some programs compare themselves to other, similar programs. This can be helpful in deciding. Some boxes have a book-like flap. This can be a great place to look for features.

Once you are certain that the program will do what you want it to do, the next thing to make sure that it will run on your computer. If the program will not run on your computer, it is just as useless as if it could not do what you needed it to do. The system requirements will usually be stated on the sides or bottom of the box. The key things to look at are the minimum and the recommended requirements. Pay special attention to CPU and memory requirements, as these can affect performance more than any other. Also, make sure that you have the right version of the operating system needed to run the program. While a program could run on a system outside of theses requirements, the makers of the software won't guarantee it. In fact, in many cases, the install program may even fail if certain requirements are not met. So this is an important piece to pay attention to.

So what if you are downloading the program from the internet and are not holding a physical box? The great news is that any decent program worth trying on your computer will have all of this information where you can find it. And in many cases, this information can be more detailed than information that you find on a box.

Now that you know what to look for, and you have the software ready to install, tomorrow we'll look at the next step -- The Quickstart guide.

Tip of the day

Copy and Pasting

Copy and pasting is a common task in the computer world. The great thing is that there are several ways to do this. All of them start off with highlighting the word.

One of the easiest can be found by right clicking the mouse on the selection. A menu will pop up where you can click copy. Then click on the place where you want to paste, and right click again, this time selecting paste.

Another way that is easy is to use keystroke commands. These keystrokes are left over from the time before windows existed and these keystrokes were the easiest way to access many features. They are still around because many people find them useful, even today's age.

The most common keystroke defined by programs is Control-C for copy and Control-V for paste. These are available in almost every program and can be used almost any time. But the one drawback is that these do not always work in forms.

A little known option that is usually defined by the operating system is Control-Insert for copy and Shift-Insert for paste. The advantage to this key combination is that because this one is defined by the operating system, it works in almost all forms. Occasionally this keystroke combination doesn't work, but I find that it works more often than it doesn't.

Have fun copy and pasting!

Learn Any Computer Program

I have been using computers for years. During that time, I have tried many different programs. But I often find the user manuals that come with the programs to be difficult and boring.

Many programs available have several books written about them. But when money is tight, or I just want to get a quick start, sometimes these books are out of reach.

So how can I learn to use any program?

It's easy when I follow just 5 steps that usually take me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour.

The 5 steps are:

1. The box
2. Quickstart guide
3. Menu Navigation
4. Help
5. Experiment

Next time, we'll look at the first of these, The box.

Welcome to my blog!

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I am here to share my years of computing experience with you. I hope you will find the information helpful.

A little about me... My first computer was a TRS80 CoCo (aka Color Computer). This computer was mainly a keyboard with a place to insert game cartridges on the side. But it also allowed the user to write his own programs in a version of BASIC. My method of saving at the time was on a tape drive. Sequential access and slow as heck!

My first "real" computer after that was an Apple II. This bulky computer started on a floppy drive (5 1/4 in) and was a monitor built in (if i remember right). I had access to only a few programs on it, but I also could write my own in Applesoft BASIC. I also had some experience with the IIe. I don't know off hand what the difference was between the two. The one thing I do remember, though, was that the computer didn't have a hard drive, but the floppy drive was random access. If you've ever experienced sequential access, you know what a difference this can make. The other thing I remember about this one was the monochromatic green on black.

After that, my next computer was, what we called at the time, an IBM clone -- so named because, although the computer was not an IBM model, it did use similar architecture. This was my first computer with a hard drive and also my first with a color screen (other than the TRS80 CoCo that connected to the TV). This was way back before Windows, when you had MS-DOS prompts.

Since that time, I've used just about every "home user" version of MS operating systems, going through several versions of DOS, and using Windows since Windows 3.x. Although I never actually used Windows for Workgroups, and the successors, NT and 2000, I have had training on how to maneuver through them.

I have never really used a Mac on a consistent basis, but, as with the "professional" variations of Windows, I have had at least a cursory training on how to use and find my way around them.

More recently, I have begun to study Linux, particularly the Debian based variations. For certain tasks, I find this operating system to be very compatible with the other OS, but it is not necessarily an easy one to use.

In addition to learning several forms of BASIC (including MS-BASIC and Visual Basic), I have studied other programming languages, such as Pascal, C++, and COBOL. Although I never got a degree, this is what I spent most of my college days studying.

I have been using the web since before it was "public", having gained access to it through school. As such, I have kept an eye on the web standards of HTML, CSS, and am working on learning some XML.

I may not have a degree, but I have been using computers for a very long time, so I know a lot about them, and hope that my experiences can help you be a better user.

Grady Pruitt.