Change explorers font
Want to change the font displayed in a Windows 95 Explorer window?
Unfortunately, it doesn't work as it did in Windows 3.x's File
Manager, where you could change the font without affecting anything
else on your system. Explorer's font is determined by the icon font
Windows 95 currently uses. So if you want to change Explorer's font,
you have to be willing to put up with the change in every other
window and on the desktop.
Are you willing? Then click the desktop with the right mouse button,
choose Properties, and click the Appearance tab. Select Icon under
Item, choose a Font and Size, and click Apply. Keep changing it until
you like what you see, and then click OK.
Wordpad templates, part 1
Did you know you can set up templates in WordPad? It doesn't come
with the built-in tools to do so, like other word processors have,
but you can improvise a little. Just set up a file type for WordPad
templates and associate this type with WordPad. From then on,
double-clicking a file with this extension (i.e., a template you've
designed) will open the file in WordPad where it will work just like
one of those fancy word processor templates.
To create the new file type, in any Windows 95 window, choose Options
under View, and select the File Types tab. Click the New Type button,
and in the resulting dialog box, type a description and the extension
you'd like to use to represent the WordPad template file type. (We
chose. TEM, but you can use anything you want. Just don't use an
extension that's already associated with another file type.) Don't
click OK yet.
Now to add an action to the file type. Click New, and in the New
Action dialog box, type the word Open on the Action line, then enter,
in quotes, the path for WordPad's.EXE file on the Application used to
perform action line. Click OK, then click Close twice to get out of
those dialog boxes.
Your file type's all set.
Wordpad templates, part 2
In our last tip, we showed you how to set up a new file type for
WordPad templates. (On the File Types tab, click New Type, and type a
description and an extension. Click New, type "Open" on the Action
line, enter the path for WordPad's .EXE file, and click OK.)
Ready to use the new file type? Open WordPad, and design a template.
(You know, the basic framework for a document type you produce
frequently.) When you're done, choose File|Save, give your template a
name with the new extension, and click Save. Your template is
complete. (You may want to set up a folder in which to store all your
WordPad templates. Just make sure the folder name doesn't include
spaces or WordPad won't see it.)
Whenever you want to use the template, double-click it (assuming
WordPad isn't already open), and it'll open in a WordPad window. As
with any template, complete the document, and save it under any name
you'd like, with a .DOC, .TXT, or .RTF extension.
Tip: To ensure that you don't save changes to a template (overwriting
the original), mark it read-only. Click the template icon with the
right mouse button, choose Properties, select Read-only in the
Attributes section, and click OK. Now if you try to save a file under
the same name as the template, you'll get an error message.
Adjust mouse double-click speed
If you're having trouble double-clicking (in other words, if you feel
you have to click too fast to get the double-click result), Windows
95 lets you adjust this setting. From the Start menu, open the
Control Panel, double-click the Mouse icon, and, on the Buttons tab,
move the lever under "Double-click speed" closer to Slow. To test the
new speed, double-click the jack-in-the-box in the Test area using
the speed at which you're comfortable. If Jack appears, click OK to
save your changes. If not, adjust the lever until he does.
Get rid of log-in dialog box
If you've set up user profiles in the past but have since gone back
to the "All users of this machine use the same preferences and
desktop settings" option, you probably find it annoying that the
log-in dialog box still appears every time you start Windows 95.
Fortunately, you can get rid of it. All you have to do is change the
current password to no password.
Select Start|Settings|Control Panel, double-click the Passwords
icons, and on the Change Passwords tab click the Change Windows
Password button. On the Old Password line, enter the current
password, then press Tab to move down to the New Password line, and
press Enter. That's it. You'll see a dialog box telling you your
password has been successfully changed. That Welcome to Windows 95
log-in dialog box won't bother you again.
Cancel print
Did you just send a whole bunch of documents to your non-network
printer, and now you'd like to cancel one of them? You can cancel a
print job from your printer queue, which is the list of everything
printing or waiting to be printed. (Note: Sometimes, you can control
the activity of a network printer from the queue, but it depends on
the individual setup.)
Choose Start|Settings|Printers, and double-click your printer's icon
to open the queue. Right-click the document whose printing you'd like
to cancel and choose Cancel Printing. Poof! The document disappears
from the list. If it was in the process of printing, choosing this
command stops it in its tracks. If hadn't started printing yet, well,
it never will.
Change your printer default
If you can print to multiple printers from your Windows 95 system,
you can set any one of them as your default printer. Choose
Start|Settings|Printers to open the Printers dialog box. Right-click
the printer you have in mind for the job and choose "Set As Default."
Notepad header and footers
You can insert the file name, date, time, page numbering, or all of
the above, in the header or footer of a printed Notepad page. Choose
File|Page Setup, and take a look at the Header and Footer options. By
default, the setting "&f" next to Header tells Notepad to print the
filename at the top of the page. Next to Footer, "Page &p" tells
Notepad to print the word "Page", then the current page number in the footer.
You can change these settings to anything you want (or delete them
altogether) by typing any combination of commands on the Header and
Footer lines. For a list of commands, click Header or Footer with the
right mouse button and select the What's This button that appears.
When you're done typing or deleting, click OK. The changes will
affect every Notepad file, until you change them to something else.
F5 in notepad
Want to time- and date-stamp your Notepad file? In a previous tip, we
told you that you could type ".LOG" at the top of a Notepad file to
make it time- and date-stamp the file after every entry (after you
close and then reopen the file). But if you're just looking for one
stamp, hit F5 in any Notepad file. Insta-date.
Notepad margins
If you're printing a Notepad file, don't expect it to print exactly
as it appears on screen (unless you have the word wrap option set;
then the margins will adjust according to what's visible in the
Notepad window). Notepad's print margins are determined by the
numbers in the Page Setup dialog box.
To adjust Notepad's margins for printing, choose File|Page Setup, and
change the measurements under Margins. (At least you get to see their
effect on the page layout, even if the text in the preview isn't your
own.) Click OK when you're done and print it.