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Today's Featured Website: learningkingdom.com
learningkingdom.com offers a free email newsletter delivered daily to your inbox called Today in History, focusing on historical events that occurred on this day. Very interesting and well written.
To subscribe to the newsletter, go to learningkingdom.com, click on Subscribe Free, scroll down and check the box next to Today in History, then scroll down and check the Continue button. Enter your email address and click the join button.
http://www.learningkingdom.com
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Today's Featured Computer Term: Insert and Overwrite Mode
Every application that provides text editing (inputting text), has two text entry modes available: insert and overwrite. Insert mode specifies that all new characters will be inserted at the current cursor position and that following characters will be pushed to the right. This is the default mode.
Overwrite mode specifies that all new characters will be inserted at the current cursor position and that following characters will overwritten, that is erased, as new characters fill their space.
To switch between insert and overwrite mode, press the Insert button on the keyboard.
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Today's Topic: Files, Folders, Paths and Shortcuts
File management helps you find files when you need them, and helps keep your computer working well. Here are some terms that will help you understand it:
Folder
As in a real file cabinet, a folder is a container for files. Your hard drive should be divided into many folders to keep files in order, and to keep files that belong together in one place. Folders can be inside other folders, and files can be inside folders.
Some folders are special. While they are really folders on your hard drive they appear to be something else. For example, your desktop is a folder. The Control Panel is a folder. That funny little menu on the taskbar next to the clock (the one with the tiny icons) is a folder. Special folders like these appear differently, but they can also be accessed like any other folder in Windows Explorer.
Path
The path is the full address of the location of your file. It works like any address in that it tells you exactly where to find the item you are looking for. A path always begins with the drive name and is followed by the names of the folders the file is in. For example, C:\My Documents\MyFile.txt tells us that the file called MyFile.txt is in the My Documents folder on drive C:
File
A file is a collection of bytes that is used for something. It can be a program, your resume, a recipe, a picture of your kids, or a spreadsheet.
Shortcut
A shortcut is a pointer to a file, but it is not the file it points to. A shortcut is a file, but it's not the same kind of file as the file it's pointing to. This may be a little confusing at first, but it actually is very convenient. Let's say you are a Solitaire addict. The program sol.exe is in your Windows Folder. But you do not want to open Windows Explorer and have to find sol.exe every time you want to play.
You can click on "Solitaire" on your menu. That's actually a shortcut, which is pointing to the sol.exe file. The shortcut on the menu is a file (not the solitaire file, it's a shortcut file with instructions to go to C:\Windows\sol.exe and open the solitaire file)
But let's say you are even more addicted to Solitaire than you thought. You can put a shortcut on your desktop so you don't have to bother with the Start Menu to satisfy your yearning to play. (We'll discuss creating Desktop Shortcuts in an upcoming newsletter)
Now you will have three files on your system. Sol.exe is the actual program, and you have two shortcuts - one in your "Start Menu" folder and one in your "Desktop" folder. You can click on any of these files and the sol.exe program will run. The shortcuts just tell Windows where the real program is, and to start it when you need a Solitaire fix.
Start Menu
The Start menu is accessed by clicking the Start button and then choosing the shortcut to the file you want to open. Most of these files are programs, but not all - some are folders (those are the ones with the little black arrows pointing out to the right). They'll display another menu (folder) with files pointing to programs (or, perhaps another folder) |
