Windows has really grown up over the years, offering more built-in applets for work and play. But no single tool or set of options is perfect for everybody. Fortunately for us, dozens of programmers the world over have devised solutions and enhancements to make Windows more elegant, complete, and customizable. You can find these files at www.pcworld.com/downloads/.
Tweak UI: Microsoft’s programmers knew that intermediate and advanced users would want more control over the Windows interface than the basic operating system provided. So they created Tweak UI, one of the best all-around Windows fixer-uppers.
One thing Tweak UI lets you do is stop Windows from adding the words “Shortcut to” to the name of every shortcut you create and from pasting that clunky arrow onto every shortcut icon. If you find the animation of zooming windows and sliding menus an annoying drag on your machine’s performance, Tweak UI can remove the problem instantly.
But don’t stop there: Use Tweak UI to hide special desktop icons such as Internet Explorer, Network Neighborhood, and the Recycle Bin; to remove disk drives from My Computer’s list; and to keep individual Control Panel icons from displaying.
Feeling paranoid? Tweak UI will cover your tracks, letting you selectively delete items from the Document menu, the list of recent searches in the Find dialog box’s Named drop-down menu, Internet Explorer’s history, and the list of programs launched recently from the Run dialog box — either immediately or each time you log on. And the utility has plenty of other options to please power users and determined customizers. For more Tweak UI tips, see the March article “Windows Your Way”.
Webshots Desktop: You spend many hours peering into your computer screen every day, so why settle for a static or boring view? You can spruce things up with Webshots Desktop, a combination wallpaper manager and slide-show screen saver. Webshots Desktop can automatically change your wallpaper at preset intervals and resize any image to fill the screen on the fly. The screen saver provides an array of transition effects between the pictures in your collection, and it features password protection.
Too frivolous for you? Perhaps you’d prefer to superimpose a no-nonsense calendar grid (with past and future months if desired) on your desktop wallpaper. Free registration at the Webshots Web site entitles you to download stunning images to your computer and purchase poster versions of some photographs. You can share your photos with friends and family by adding your picture collection, using a simple drag and drop. The built-in photo manager allows you to create logical groupings for your images and preview them in thumbnail form (see Figure 1).
EditPad: For skimming ReadMe files, editing simple HTML code, or jotting down notes, a simple text processor can be a handy tool. Unfortunately, Notepad — the text editor that comes with Windows — lacks a search-and-replace feature, can’t cope with files larger than 45K, and has other flaws. (The Windows NT and 2000 versions of Notepad address some of these drawbacks, but the improvements never reached Windows 9x or Me.)
You can find many freeware replacements, but few are as elegant and functional as EditPad by Jan Goyvaerts. EditPad lets you customize your font style, font colors, and background colors, and it supports multiple open documents (in one or multiple windows). It also has a helpful toolbar; a full-featured find-and-replace command that works on one or multiple documents simultaneously; and tools for converting between spaces and tabs, changing case, and jumping to a specified line number.
EditPad is a variant on freeware that its developer calls postcardware: The only payment he requires is that you send him a postcard if you decide to use the product. How about “Greetings From Redmond”?
PowerDesk: Good software isn’t just about piling on features. It’s also about design. Spend a few minutes working with Ontrack’s PowerDesk file manager, and you’ll find an elegance of workmanship that Windows Explorer cannot match. You’ll discover, for example, how much easier it is to access drives from a simple bar at the top of the window than by scrolling through ranks of folders in the tree pane. It’s also nice to be able to access common files and folders in your Favorites menu without having to wade through the undergrowth of all your Internet shortcuts. (What was Microsoft thinking?)
Imagine the time you’ll save by having two folders that open in a single window tiled any way you want and that stay the way you laid them out (Windows forces you to drag and resize multiple windows every time you need to manage files in multiple folders). If you use the QuickView viewer that comes with Windows, you can integrate that pane into the window as well (see Figure 2). The list goes on and on. Ontrack offers a more robust version (PowerDesk Pro) for only $20, but the freeware version will suit many people just fine.
Notify CD Player: Don’t be fooled by the boring name — this handy software should be called Nifty CD Player. The simple, elegant utility plays audio (or mixed data/audio) CDs from an unobtrusive tray icon. You can extract the relevant information for your CD from the online CDDB database or submit the information yourself. Play tracks in order or randomly, and see information about the current CD, including track name, time remaining, and track number. In the title bar of the active application, Notify CD Player will display the information you like in the font of your choice. You’ll find customization options that you would expect to see in a shareware application costing $20 or more. But this one’s free. Notify CD Player is the brainchild of Mats Ljungqvist.
Clean up your registry
If you’ve read this column for a while, you already know that most Windows settings are stored in two files: user.dat and system.dat. Together, they constitute the Windows Registry. Scanreg, the Windows utility for backing up and restoring these two files, can also keep your Registry from becoming too large. Reboot your PC to a command prompt, and in Windows 98, choose Start•Shut Down•Restart in MS DOS mode•OK, if that’s an option on your system; otherwise, restart your PC, and after it beeps, hold down F8 until you see Windows’ start-up screen. In Windows Me, boot your PC using the start-up floppy you were prompted to make during installation.
When you see the boot menu, press Shift-F5 to get to a command prompt. At the C> prompt, type scanreg /opt (be sure to include the space before the slash), and press Enter. The undocumented /opt switch reduces the Registry’s size by removing unused space. If the Registry is defective, the command scanreg /fix will remove unused space and repair damaged portions. Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to reboot to Windows.
Timesaving printer setups
If you have a color printer, you probably print photos in color but use black-and-white mode to save ink when printing text-only documents. Making that switch involves traipsing through a series of windows by mouse. You click the Properties button next to the Name drop-down list in your app’s Printer dialog box, then select the necessary tabs and settings, then click OK to return to the Print dialog, and finally issue the command to print. Even more cumbersome is going to the Printers folder (Start•Settings•Printers), right-clicking a printer there, and choosing Properties before you can get to and open a print dialog box.
Here’s a tip to help you avoid spending a lot of time clicking and digging through dialog-box options: Create a separate printer icon for each type of print job.
Choose Start•Settings•Printers to open the Printers folder. Double-click the Add Printer icon to start the Add Printer Wizard. (In Windows 2000, confirm that the proper port is selected.) Click Next, and navigate through the wizard panels as if you were reinstalling your existing printer, repeating the choices you made when you first installed it. Once the wizard recognizes that you’re installing a printer already set up on your system, it will ask whether to keep the existing printer driver or install a new one. Click Keep existing driver (recommended) and then Next. On the subsequent screen, type a name for the new printer icon — for example, My Color Settings. This screen lets you make the named printer the default one. Click Next, and follow the remaining prompts to finish the wizard.
Now you have two icons for the same printer. Right-click the one you called My Color Settings, and choose Properties (or press Alt and double-click the icon). Change the settings to suit your preferences for color printing. When you’re done, close that Properties dialog box and open the Properties dialog box for the original printer icon. Adjust its settings to handle another printing chore, such as black-and-white printing. When you’re done, press F2 and rename the icon something descriptive, like My Black-and-White Settings. Then press Enter. When you’ve named both icons properly, right-click the one whose settings you use more often and choose Set as default, if that option isn’t already selected. Now close the Printers window.
The next time you need to print, open the Print dialog box in your app. In most cases, the dialog box will have a drop-down list of the printers that are set up on your system. Select the more appropriate printer for the task at hand — for example, My Color Settings (see Figure 4) — set any other desired print settings, and click OK.
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