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Welcome to today's edition of the Computer Kindergarten Newsletter.
Today if Friday, April 20, 2001
In this Issue:
Today's Featured Computer Term: Command-Driven and Menu-Driven
Today's Topic: Deleting Emails
Progressive Learning Series: Previewing and Printing Fonts
Today's Featured Website: NASA's Visible Earth
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Today's Featured Computer Term: Command-Driven and Menu-Driven
Command Driven refers to programs and operating systems that accept commands in the form of special words or letters; something you usually have to type in. For example, on the old DOS based system, cryptic words and letters had to be typed in to tell the computer what to do.
Menu driven programs, on the other hand, allow you to choose from a list of options in a menu. This can usually be done with a pointing device such as a mouse or with a series of keystrokes.
Command-driven software is often more flexible than menu-driven software, but it is more difficult to learn.
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Today's Topic: Deleting Emails
Some ISP's automatically delete old emails after a certain amount of days. Others don't. America Online, for instance, will automatically delete read emails after three days (you can change this to seven days). A good thing to keep in mind if you're expecting to save an email. If you're using Microsoft Outlook, emails will stay there indefinitely and eventually could fill up your inbox where no new emails can come in.
There are some emails you'll receive that you'll want to delete immediately, without even opening them, just from reading the subject line. Today I had 76 new emails. Most of them were personal mail and subscriptions (like this newsletter) but about 25 were Spam (junk mail - I don't need to lose weight, can't quit smoking because I don't smoke, don't want to buy golf balls, insurance or anything to aid digestion, and I won't even mention the other emails).
That's a lot of clicking - deleting 25 emails. Here's a pretty nice shortcut:
When selecting items from a list that you don't want to pick everything from, hold down the Control Key (ctrl) and click only those items that you want. You'll then see that only the emails you want to delete are highlighted. Click the delete button and they're gone!
Another advantage to this method is that it doesn't actually open any of those messages - so, on the off chance that one contains a virus, you're protecting your computer as well as saving a lot of time.
Note: some email programs provide check boxes to the left of each email that can be checked on to mark the email for deletion.
Important Reminder: Never download from anyone you don't know.
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Progressive Learning Series: Previewing and Printing Fonts
Fonts are typefaces used in your Windows programs. Many applications install a variety of fonts on your computer and once installed, they are available in any Windows application. You can preview your fonts without having to format text to see how they look.
Here's how:
1 - Click the Start button
2 - Select Settings, then Control Panel
3 - Double-click on the Fonts icon
4 - In the window listing all fonts, double-click on any font icon
5 - You will see the selected font and how it looks in various sizes
6 - Click the Print button to print a sample page of that font
HINT: To print samples of several fonts at the same time, hold down the CTRL key while single clicking the font icons you want to print. When you have selected all the fonts you want to print, click the Print button.
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Today's Featured Website: NASA's Visible Earth
"NASA redefines the phrase global perspective with hundreds of high-resolution snapshots taken from orbiting satellites. This searchable directory of images, visualizations, and animations is filled with beautiful and sobering images: oil spills in the Galapagos, smoggy haze over Eastern China, dust over the Red Sea, sea ice in Antarctica. Don't miss the Earth's city lights at night, which has been making the screen background rounds. We suggest you start at the browse page."
visibleearth.nasa.gov |
