Tip Toe through the Tool Tips with Me

Sometimes our computers can seem overwhelming when trying to figure out what button on the screen does what. Time and experience make selection of the correct button fast and easy. When working on a PC a client will comment that I click buttons and open and close windows faster than they can figure out what each one was. That is experience. But for the novice there is a very simple tool built into the Windows operating system to help us navigate around. That same tool is an industry standard and is used by nearly every software company when they write new programs such as a word processor or even a game. This tool is called a ToolTip.
The ToolTip is a common GUI (graphical user interface) element. It activates by hovering the mouse pointer over a button on a tool bar or over a link or picture on a web page. When activated, a small box appears displaying supplementary information regarding the item being hovered over. Let’s try it out. Hold the mouse pointer over the time in the system tray. See the box that pops up with the day, date and year? That is a tooltip. Open Internet Explorer move the mouse over one of the in the toolbar. After a moment or so, a little box appears telling us what that button does. For example: Move the cursor over the reverse arrow icon and a box pops up that telling us that if we click on this button we will reply to an e-mail. Now open your favorite word processor program and move the mouse pointer over one of the many icons on the toolbars. After a moment a box pops up and tells you what it does. That is a ToolTip. Check Spelling, Copy or Paste are just a few of the ToolTips that we can find in MS Word.
Another valuable tool that many people don’t utilize is the ability to open multiple windows and programs at the same time. Right now Word is open as I write this column; Internet Explorer open to research different topics. Windows Live Mail is open so I can read and send mail and Notepad is open for a place to hold partial thoughts and sentences that need polish. But how can I see the windows that are open behind the one I am working in?
If using Windows versions prior to Windows 8 or using the desktop mode in Windows 8.1 we can hold down the ALT key and then tap the TAB key. Every tap of the TAB key will switch screens and allow us to rotate quickly from open program to open program. The window for the program that disappears from our screen, is represented by an icon visible on our taskbar. Now hold the mouse pointer over the icon on the taskbar and a ToolTip appears telling us what program the button represents. To open the window again, click on the taskbar icon. Remember that minimizing the window doesn’t close the program. The program is still running, using system resources and available for immediate use if we need it.
With apologies to Tiny Tim, let’s Tip Toe through the ToolTips.

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer eBook: Courtland Nederveld, Valerie Heisey: Kindle Store ASIN: B00EHI14GU

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks!: Court Nederveld: 9781456561734: Books ISBN: 1456561731 ISBN-13: 9781456561734

I know what you did last summer!

Creatures of habit. We go to the same restaurants, the same doctor, ditto our auto mechanic. We sleep on the same side of the bed every night, even visit the same websites over and over. Because we do our Internet browser, that’s Internet Explorer for most of us, Firefox, Chrome or Safari for some, remembers where we have gone before. Notice when we start to type an address in the URL address bar a list of sites previously visited is displayed below where we type. This is referred to as our Address and Toolbar History. Most of the time it is a convenient and fast way to get the site we want to go to without having to type the entire address.

But sometimes we want to eliminate some of the addresses in that list. There are several ways to manage the list either individually or remove the list entirely. If using Internet Explorer, open the browser, click on the small down arrow at the end of the address bar. A list of previous addresses will appear. If we hover our mouse over the item we want to delete a small X appears on the line of the address. Click the X and that entry disappears. Want to delete our entire browsing history? Click on the Gear icon and then click on Internet Options. In the dialogue box that opens make sure the General tab is selected and look for an area labeled Browsing History. Now click on Delete. A new box opens. Make sure the check box for History is selected and click on the delete button at the bottom of the window.

If using a public computer or a work computer it might be prudent to click on the Gear icon, Internet Options and in the Browsing History area put a check mark in the box labeled Delete Browsing History on Exit. Now when we finish a session on the Internet and close our browser the history of where we have been is deleted automatically. (Martha, shopping at work?) Or we can choose to open a browser in InPrivate, (Internet Explorer) Incognito, (Chrome) or new private window. (Firefox) These windows retain browsing history only so long as the browser is open.

Firefox, Chrome and Safari have similar processes and if they are not readily apparent, click on help or search for “how do I delete browser history in” which ever browser currently in use

Some readers have asked, “Is a way to print the browser history?” This is of particular use to System Administrators that are tasked with policing Internet use by employees. There is a very simple and useful program called BrowsingHistoryView or BrowsingHistoryView 64-bit for machines using virtually any browser. They can be downloaded for free from http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/browsing_history_view.html. Extract the files to a flash drive or the computer itself and run the program. Set the criteria such as how many days back to look. This will generate a list of all the sites the browser has been to and held in Browser History. To print it out, select all entries and save to a .txt file. Open the .txt file and print all or part of the displayed document.

Where have you been surfing?

For some additional reading material check out:

Grumbles From The Keyboard: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love My Computer

 

Epicuria: An Adventure That Really Cooks!

URL vs Search in the ring tonight!

A recent column offered a website to download a malicious software removal tool from Microsoft. A few folks commented that they were unable to download the tool for a variety of reasons. The primary reason was inaccurate typing of the

URL. (Universal Resource Locator or the www.abcde.com.) Still another problem was that folks mistook search fields for address bars. This poses all types of problems especially if our binary buddy is compromised.

What is the difference between the URL bar and a search field? Open our favorite browser, doesn’t matter if it is Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox or any other of the myriad of browsers available. For those that swear they don’t have any of these, please open the program used to surf the web. Look carefully at the top of the window, or if using the modern version of Internet Explorer in Windows 8.1 the bottom of the window and find the line that starts with http://. That is the URL and it resides in the Address Bar. This line by default on most browsers performs two functions. If we type in a correct and valid address such as courtnederveld.blogspot.com the Universal Resource Locater will take us directly to that webpage. Miss type the address and the browser will use our default search engine to display possible websites that might be what we are looking for. If our browser has been hijacked by malware, we might even raise an eyebrow over what appears on the screen.

Many of us by choice or subterfuge have a toolbar that has a search field just under the URL address bar or use a home page with a search field built into it. Search means exactly that. We can type a correct website address into a search field and it will not go to the site requested but will bring up a list of sites that might be what we are looking for. In the column referenced folks were typing the website address into a search field and not the URL address bar resulting in a list of possible sites instead of going to the site directly. To compound the problem, not all search engines return the same results.

Example, the Xfinity homepage has a search field “Enhanced by Google,” perform a search with that, then open a second tab go to google.com and repeat the same search in the Google Search field to find that the Xfinity search result differs from the Google results.

To ensure less biased search results, look at the default search engine in our browsers. Internet Explorer-Options- Manage Add-ons then click on search providers. Stick with the major ones such as Bing, Google, Yahoo for example and eliminate any others. Chrome: go to Settings, Search – Manage Search Engines and again stay with the major players. Other browsers will have similar settings available.

Remember: URL it’s where I want to go, search means show me all the possibilities.

Grumbles from the Keyboard

Epicuria Adventures that Really Cook!