DEMO: Working with Windows

Most of our programs open in what's called a window, and knowing how to work with those windows efficiently can really improve your ability to work with computers and do things quickly.

Opening New Windows and Tabs

I'm on a Windows machine, and I'm going to first of all bring up a window. I can hit Ctrl+N to bring up a window. In this case right here, since I was on the Windows Explorer, it's opening up File Explorer here, and it's viewing the desktop. But I can use Ctrl+N in other programs as well. Let's say I open up a Chrome window here. I can hit Ctrl+N to bring up another window, and another window, so now I've got three Chrome windows that are open. So Ctrl+N will do that within any of these programs.

For instance, like Notepad. I've got Notepad, it behaves a little differently. If I hit Ctrl+N it doesn't bring up a new window but brings up a new tab. So Ctrl+N will allow you to open up new tabs and new windows.

To close a tab I can hit Ctrl+W and that tab gets closed. Or, let's pull up Chrome and let's go to a couple sites. Let's go to technos surge.com, and maybe I just do a search for something and we've got something brought up. Maybe I pull up something else and I do test, and so now I have several things that are pulled up. Now let's say I want to close something. I can hit Ctrl+W to close it. And maybe I say uh-oh, I didn't want to close that. I can hit Ctrl+Shift+T to bring it back up. So Ctrl+Shift+T helps bring that up quickly.

If I wanted to open up a page, for instance let's say I wanted to open up this testing.com, if I just click on it it's going to bring me to that site. But maybe I want to open it up in a new tab. Well, this little scroller wheel right here is actually a button, and so I can hover above that and I can click that scroller wheel and it'll open it up in a new tab. So that's a quick way to open up new links, and I love this feature, when I can click something and open it up, and there it is, it just opens up in a new tab.

Changing the Size of Windows

Next up, we're going to change the size of these windows. What I'm going to do is bring up a window here, and the first thing that we'll do is, with this bar right here I can just drag this around, so I can move it around. That's the simple way of changing this.

I can also minimize this by clicking the minimize button. I can bring it back by coming down to the taskbar and either clicking on this folder down here, or I can hover and click on which tab I want open if I've got multiple tabs open or multiple windows open.

If I want to maximize this, there's a maximize button and I'll hit that and it'll maximize it. Or I can hit the restore button — the maximize turns into a restore — and I can bring that back to where it was before. And notice that I can size this. This is how you size it: go to the corner and you can size it and have different sizes with this. Notice, let's say I size it to pick up this amount of the screen. It sizes at this amount of the screen. When I hit the maximize it fills up the screen, and when I hit the restore it comes back to this size right here.

Now there are some apps, if I click on in the top left hand, they see this little icon right here, and I click on it and I can move, size, minimize, maximize, and it's the same type of features there. But I'm not going to get too much into that, I really don't use that too much.

Snapping

Let's talk about snapping. I've got my window here. What I can do is I can drag it to different parts of the screen. So if I drag it to the right corner here, it'll fill up the right side. Or I could do it on the left side and it'll fill up the left side. I can drag it to the top and it'll fill up the whole screen. I can bring it to one of the corners and it will fill up a quarter of the screen.

This is great if, let's say, I have several windows up. I'm going to open up a couple more windows here, and let's say I want to be able to see all the windows at the same time. I'm able to place them in different parts of this window here, and now I have three windows up.

But maybe I want this layout to look a little differently. There are several ways that I could do this. One way is I could click and drag this now to the top part, and this gives me selections on where do I want to put this. Here's where I can snap to the left, or snap to the right, or take up the bigger portion of the screen, or I can take up a quarter of the screen, or maybe a third of the screen. So maybe I just want to do a third of the screen, so I'm going to click right there and it's going to fill up there. And then it gives me an option: what do I want to do with the remaining 2/3 of the screen? Maybe I want this window here, and maybe I want this window over here. So now I've got these three lined up and I can drag back and forth between these windows. So it's a quick way to organize my windows and start working with them.

It doesn't have to be just dragging to the top as well. If I hover across here I can choose different options here as well, so maybe I want to fill up more like 2/3 of the screen, so I can do that and fill up 2/3 of the screen. Also notice that there creates this way to size the two windows, the two sides of this, back and forth. So maybe I just want to see more of this window and this less, or more of this window and less of this window, or maybe just the opposite, maybe I drag it over here. So I can toggle back and forth between these two.

I can do the same thing using the Windows key and the arrow buttons on my keyboard. What I'm going to do is minimize some of these and we'll just work with one at this point. I'm going to hit the Windows key and the left arrow, and it goes to the left. Or I can move that to the right side of the screen, or bring it back to the center, or fill up the screen by pressing the up arrow, or I can minimize the screen by pressing the down arrow. This is really handy for when you have multiple monitors and something gets stuck on a monitor that's no longer there. Then you can use these arrow keys to bring it back to a monitor that you are able to see.

Switching Between Windows

For this next one I'm going to open up multiple windows. Let's get a Chrome up here, let's get Firefox up here, let's get Notepad up here. So I've got multiple programs that are up, multiple windows that are up, and we're going to toggle between these windows.

The real simple way of doing this is just hit Alt+Tab, and you can scroll between the different options here, the different windows. So let's say I want to go to Chrome. I can then let go of the buttons there and now I'm on Chrome. Or Alt+Shift+Tab will go the opposite way. So Alt+Tab goes one way, Alt+Shift+Tab goes the other way.

If I want to quickly get back to the desktop, Windows+D will hide everything and now I'm seeing the desktop. If I want to bring back all those programs, Windows+D to bring them back. I can also hit Windows+M and that will minimize everything, but notice now if I hit Windows+D they're not coming back and forth, and also if I hit Windows+M they're not either. It's minimized now, so I have to bring those different windows back up. That's one reason why the Windows+D is much better in most cases.

Tabs and Full Screen

If I'm working with a program that has lots of tabs on it, what I can do is I can alternate between those tabs by hitting the different numbers. So control and then the number key, so Ctrl+1 will bring up the first tab, Ctrl+2 second tab, Ctrl+3 third tab, fourth tab, fifth tab, and so on and so forth. Guess what Ctrl+9 is going to do. Let's go ahead and give it a try. Ctrl+9 brings up the last tab, not the tab number nine, but the last tab in the series. So that is the control and then different numbers.

Let's say I'm looking at something. Let's bring up a Chrome window here. If I'm in a program and I want to go into full screen, I can go F11 and it will go into full screen, and then notice it says to exit hold the Escape key. So I can hold the Escape key down and then it brings out of it. Or I can just toggle back and forth with that F11.