NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, June 2008
Hasta la Vista
by Lee Reynolds, a member of the Boca Raton Computer Society, Florida
and regular contributor to Boca Bits, the BRCS monthly news magazine

http://www.brcs.org
leetutor(at)earthlink.net (click to email author)


Obtained from APCUG with the author's permission for publication by APCUG member groups.

I'm told the literal meaning of "hasta la vista" in Spanish is "until the seeing." Or maybe a more adequate translation is "see you later."

But in this column, I'm using that phrase to invite you to take a look at Microsoft's latest version of Windows: Vista.

Configuring the Taskbar
The Taskbar works very much like previous versions of Windows, particularly XP. You can configure some options on how it operates by right clicking an empty area on it and selecting from a popup context menu.

For example, you can decide:
? To have various toolbars such as the Quick Launch toolbar and a Desktop or Documents toolbar displayed
? Show all open windows "cascaded" like a row of dominoes one behind the other, or show them side by side, or one on top of another to cover the desktop
? Minimize all the windows to show the Desktop
? Start the Task Manager application; or lock the Taskbar so that its settings cannot be modified without unlocking it first.
? If you select Properties from the context menu, you are given further ways of customizing the Taskbar.

As in Windows XP, there are options:
? to auto-hide the Taskbar (it reduces to a very thin line which only becomes visible as a normal Taskbar when you put your mouse over that thin line)
? keep the Taskbar visible over other open windows,
? group similar Taskbar buttons for the same application in a stacked list.

NEW OPTION
A new option available in the Taskbar properties page, is to determine whether or not hovering your mouse over a Taskbar button shows a live preview of the corresponding window (thumbnail.)

CUSTOMIZE THE NOTIFICATION AREA
Unlike XP, you now have a separate tab to customize the Notification Area, which is the part of the Taskbar on the right hand side, normally showing the system clock, a volume control for your speakers, a Network icon, a Safely Remove Hardware icon, a Power icon (if you are using a laptop on battery power), and others. You can put a check mark next to Hide Inactive Icons and then click the Customize button, in order to access a list of all icons that have shown up in the Notification Area.

This is broken down into two lists, those icons that are currently showing in the Notification Area, and those that have shown up in the past but are not currently there now. For each icon, you click to access a drop down list to choose Hide when inactive, Hide, or Show.

SYSTEM TIME
One of the things that you can show on the Taskbar is the system time (and that was in previous versions of Windows also), but this now has some modifications.

Hover your mouse over the system time in the Notification Area, you get a balloon tip telling the system date and day of week, but if you click on the system time instead, up pops a nice looking circular clock and a calendar of the current month, with a link to the Control Panel area where you can change the date and time settings.

In that area of Control Panel, you can now click on a tab for Additional Clocks and configure up to 2 more different system clocks to be active, each with a different time zone and time of day perhaps. If you do that, then hovering your mouse over the system time in the Notification Area will modify the balloon tip to show all active clocks, whereas clicking on system time will now show all these different clocks side by side, together with the calendar of the current month.

This article has been provided to APCUG by the author solely for publication by APCUG member groups. All other uses require the permission of the author (see e-mail address above).

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