Computer Fundamental Service

What is Hardware?

Your PC (Personal Computer) is a system, consisting of many components. Some of those components, like Windows XP, and all your other programs, are software. The stuff you can actually see and touch, and would likely break if you threw it out a fifth-story window, is hardware.

Not everybody has exactly the same hardware. But those of you who have a desktop system, like the example shown in Figure 1, probably have most of the components shown in that same figure. Those of you with notebook computers probably have most of the same components. Only in your case the components are all integrated into a single book-sized portable unit.

Figure 1

The system unit is the actual computer; everything else is called a peripheral device. Your computer's system unit probably has at least one floppy disk drive, and one CD or DVD drive, into which you can insert floppy disks and CDs. There's another disk drive, called the hard disk inside the system unit, as shown in Figure 2. You can't remove that disk, or even see it. But it's there. And everything that's currently "in your computer" is actually stored on that hard disk. (We know this because there is no place else inside the computer where you can store information!).

Figure 2

The floppy drive and CD drive are often referred to as drives with removable media orremovable drives for short, because you can remove whatever disk is currently in the drive, and replace it with another. Your computer's hard disk can store as much information as tens of thousands of floppy disks, so don't worry about running out of space on your hard disk any time soon. As a rule, you want to store everything you create or download on your hard disk. Use the floppy disks and CDs to send copies of files through the mail, or to make backup copies of important items.

Random Access Memory (RAM)

There's too much "stuff" on your computer's hard disk to use it all at the same time. During the average session sitting at the computer, you'll probably use only a small amount of all that's available. The stuff you're working with at any given moment is stored in random access memory (often abbreviated RAM, and often called simply "memory"). The advantage using RAM to store whatever you're working on at the moment is that RAM is very fast. Much faster than any disk. For you, "fast" translates to less time waiting and more time being productive.

So if RAM is so fast, why not put everything in it? Why have a hard disk at all? The answer to that lies in the fact that RAM is volatile. As soon as the computer is shut off, whether intentionally or by an accidental power outage, every thing in RAM disappears, just as quickly as a light bulb goes out when the plug is pulled. So you don't want to rely on RAM to hold everything. A disk, on the other hand, holds its information whether the power is on or off.

The Hard Disk

All of the information that's "in your computer", so to speak, is stored on your computer'shard disk. You never see that actual hard disk because it's sealed inside a special housing and needs to stay that way. Unlike RAM, which is volatile, the hard disk can hold information forever -- with or without electricity. Most modern hard disks have tens of billions of bytes of storage space on them. Which, in English, means that you can create, save, and download files for months or years without using up all the storage space it provides.

In the unlikely event that you do manage to fill up your hard disk, Windows will start showing a little message on the screen that reads "You are running low on disk space" well in advance of any problems. In fact, if that message appears, it won't until you're down to about 800 MB of free space. And 800 MB of empty space is equal to about 600 blank floppy disks. That's still plenty of room!

The Mouse

Obviously you know how to use your mouse, since you must have used it to get here. But let's take a look at the facts and buzzwords anyway. Your mouse probably has at least two buttons on it. The button on the left is called the primary mouse button, the button on the right is called the secondary mouse button or just the right mouse button. I'll just refer to them as the left and right mouse buttons. Many mice have a small wheel between the two mouse buttons, as illustrated in Figure 3.

Figure 3

The idea is to rest your hand comfortably on the mouse, with your index finger touching (but not pressing on) the left mouse button. Then, as you move the mouse, the mouse pointer (the little arrow on the screen) moves in the same direction. When moving the mouse, try to keep the buttons aimed toward the monitor -- don't "twist" the mouse as that just makes it all the harder to control the position of the mouse pointer.

If you find yourself reaching too far to get the mouse pointer where you want it to be on the screen, just pick up the mouse, move it to where it's comfortable to hold it, and place it back down on the mousepad or desk. The buzzwords that describe how you use the mouse are as follows:

• Point: To point to an item means to move the mouse pointer so that it's touching the item.
• Click: Point to the item, then tap (press and release) the left mouse button.
• Double-click: Point to the item, and tap the left mouse button twice in rapid succession - click-click as fast as you can.
• Right-click: Point to the item, then tap the mouse button on the right.
• Drag: Point to an item, then hold down the left mouse button as you move the mouse. To drop the item, release the left mouse button.
• Right-drag: Point to an item, then hold down the right mouse button as you move the mouse. To drop the item, release the right mouse button.

The Keyboard

Like the mouse, the keyboard is a means of interacting with your computer. You really only need to use the keyboard when you're typing text. Most of the keys on the keyboard are laid out like the keys on a typewriter. But there are some special keys like Esc (Escape), Ctrl (Control), and Alt (Alternate). There are also some keys across the top of the keyboard labeled F1, F2, F3, and so forth. Those are called the function keys, and the exact role they play depends on which program you happen to be using at the moment.

Most keyboards also have a numeric keypad with the keys laid out like the keys on a typical adding machine. If you're accustomed to using an adding machine, you might want to use the numeric keypad, rather than the numbers across the top of the keyboard, to type numbers. It doesn't really matter which keys you use. The numeric keypad is just there as a convenience to people who are accustomed to adding machines.

Figure 4

Most keyboards also contain a set of navigation keys. You can use the navigation keys to move around around through text on the screen. The navigation keys won't move the mouse pointer. Only the mouse moves the mouse pointer.

On smaller keyboards where space is limited, such as on a notebook computer, the navigation keys and numeric keypad might be one in the same. There will be a Num Lock key on the keypad. When the Num Lock key is "on", the numeric keypad keys type numbers. When the Num Lock key is "off", the navigation keys come into play. The Num Lock key acts as a toggle. Which is to say, when you tap it, it switches to the opposite state. For example, if Num Lock is on, tapping that key turns it off. If Num Lock is off, tapping that key turns Num Lock on.

Combination Keystrokes (Shortcut keys)

Those mysterious Ctrl and Alt keys are often used in combination with other keys to perform some task. We often refer to these combination keystrokes as shortcut keys, because they provide an alternative to using the mouse to select menu options in programs. Shortcut keys are always expressed as:

key1+key2

where the idea is to hold down key1, tap key2, then release key1. For example, to press Ctrl+Esc hold down the Ctrl key (usually with your pinkie), tap the Esc key, then release the Ctrl key. To press Alt+F you hold down the Alt key, tap the letter F, then release the Alt key.

Alan Simpson

PC Ports

There are lots of external devices that you can connect to your computer. All external devices connect to the computer’s system unit via cables and ports (where a "port" is the slot into which you plug a cable). Unless you’re using a portable computer, you probably have several external devices attached to your computer already, including a mouse, keyboard, monitor, microphone, and speakers, as in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Computer (system unit) and attached external devices.

Whatever external devices you have, they're all connected to the system unit (where the actual "computing" takes place) via cables. Each cable plugs into a specific port on the system unit. The ports are usually on the back of the system unit. But they can be on front or side as well.

Everything has a name, even (believe it or not) those little plugs on the back of your computer. Figure 2 shows examples of some ports. But your computer's ports won't necessarily be the same.

Figure 2: Examples of ports

USB and FireWire Ports

Of all the ports on a computer, USB and IEEE 1394 (a.k.a. FireWire) get all the hype. There are several reasons for this: Both are new technologies, both provide "hot-pluggable" connectivity, both provide very high-speed data transfers. The hot-pluggable part means you can just plug in some device, like a digital camera or video camera, and start using it right away. (The older ports would all require you to shut down the computer, plug in the device, restart the computer, then install the device.). In short, both USB and FireWire are a lot more convenient than the older ports that preceded them.

So what are the differences? In a nutshell, USB (Universal Serial Bus) was created as a general-purpose high-speed connection to the computer. It's high speed makes it ideal for connecting digital cameras to the computer. But it's good for lots of other devices too, like a Web cam, broadband modem, whatever.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 1394, also known commercially as FireWire, is a faster connection than USB, but not as widely used. In consumer electronics, it's mostly digital video cameras that connect through a FireWire port. There are also some high-speed external disk drives and networking components that can use that port. Because FireWire devices are relatively rare, FireWire ports are also rare. Just about any computer you buy will have at least two USB ports. But it's unlikely you'd get a FireWire port if you didn't specifically order it with your PC. (Of course, you can always add a FireWire port at any time. No problem there).

As though to confuse matters even more, the plugs for USB and FireWire look very much alike. Each port type, however, has its own little logo, as shown in Figure 3. As you can see just by looking at the plugs, the plug for USB won't go into a FireWire port, or vice-versa.

Figure 3: USB and FireWire ports (computer side of cable)

Note that Figure 3 shows how USB and FireWire ports as they look on a computer. On the device you're connecting (for example), the plug might be an entirely different size and shape. Check the manual that came with your device if you can't find the right plug.

KB, MB, GHz, and All of That Stuff

In case you haven't noticed (fat chance), the computer biz is filled with words that start with "kilo" and "mega", and abbreviations like "K" and "M" and "G". These words and abbreviations don't represent "things". Rather, they represent numbers. Kind of like the old gangster movies where a bad guy would say fifty g's rather than fifty thousand dollars.Computer nerds use a different slang for numbers. But the idea is the same.

K. M, and G are Numbers

Let's start with just the numbers -- the K and M and G part. We'll talk about the "B" and "Hz" and stuff in a moment. Table 1 shows what the abbreviations mean, how they're often spoken, the approximate number each represents, and the way-too-trivial-a-difference-to-worry-about actual number each represents.

Abbreviation	Stands for	Spoken as	Approximate #	Actual #
K	Kilo	kay or killa	1,000 (a thousand)	1,024
M	Mega	meg	1,000,000 (a million)	1,048,576
G	Giga	gig or giga	1,000,000,000 (a billion)	1,073,741,824

Table 1

If you ignore the boring "actual" numbers, you'll see there's a simple pattern to it. Each time you go to from K to M to G, you stick another ,000 onto the end of the preceding number (also known as multiplying the previous number by a thousand), as you can see below:

• 1,000 K (kilo)
• 1,000,000 M (mega)
• 1,000,000,000 G (giga)

So "K" means "thousand" or ",000", and "M" means "million" or ",000,000" and G means "billion" or ",000,000,000". Though maybe I should just shut up now before I make it sound more complicated than it is. Suffice it to say if you're gonna buy a used car, and it has 80K miles on it, then that means the car has 80,000 miles on it. If the car has 20M or 20G miles on it, don't buy it.

Tip: Just in case you're some kinda math brain who's wondering where the actual numbers come from, K=2¹⁰, M=2²⁰, G=2^30. (Yawn)

B is for Byte

Information in your head doesn't have any particular "size" to it. Just because Albert Einstein was a genius doesn't mean his head was the size of hot-air balloon or the Good Year blimp. His head was probably about the same size as anyone else's, give or take a couple inches. That's because the human brain stores information in some really weird abstract way that nobody understands.

Computers have no brains, and really don't store "information" the way a human brain does. In fact, computers don't really store "information" per se. Except in the sense that a book stores information -- as letters, numbers, pictures, and words. The information in a book has no meaning to the book. Likewise, the information in a computer has no "meaning" to the computer. Books and computers are a lot alike in that way -- they both can be used to store text, numbers and pictures. And they're also alike in that the text, pictures, and numbers inside have no "meaning" to either the book or the computer.

Anyway, the point is it takes a certain amount of "space" to store information outside of our brains. That's because the information needs to be stored as words, numbers, pictures, or something that takes up space. In a computer, the basic "unit" of measure is a byte, which is the amount of space it takes to store one character, like the letter "A" or an exclamation point (!). So it takes exactly three bytes to store the word "cat". It takes about 2,000 bytes to store one double-spaced page of typed text.

When you see an uppercase letter "B", that stands for "byte". So instead of saying it takes "three bytes" to to store the word "cat", I could have said it takes about 3B to store the word "cat". Likewise, I could have said it takes about 2,000B to store the a typed page of text. So now, given all you know about K and M and G, I bet you can figure out what KB. MB, and GB mean before you even peek at Table 2.

Abbreviation	Stands for	Approximate #	(or)	Actual #
KB	Kilobyte	1,000 bytes	A thousand bytes	1,024 bytes
MB	Megabyte	1,000,000 bytes	A million bytes	1,048,576 bytes
GB	Gigabyte	1,000,000,000 bytes	A billion bytes	1,073,741,824 bytes

Table 2

So before, when I was talking about a typed, double-spaced page of text taking up about "two thousand bytes" or "2,000B", I could have said it take about 2 KB to store that page of text. Often, the "B" is assumed, so it would be just as accurate for me to say it takes about2 K to store that page.

If you already have files stored on your computer, and know how to get around in folders, you can see that every file has a size. You'll need to use the Details view (choose View > Details from the menu bar above the icons). Figure 1 shows an example where you can see the sizes of some pictures in a folder on my computer.

Figure 1

The first file in in Figure 1 has a size of 735 KB, (or roughly 735,000 bytes). The biggest file in that folder is 1,732 KB. That could actually be expressed as 1.7MB (because a megabyte is about 1,000 kilobytes). But Windows always shows the file sizes in kilobytes (KB) just to keep all the numbers on the same scale.

Of course, not all information in a computer is typed text. A computer can also store pictures, sound, and video. We generally refer to pictures, sound, and video as multimediaor media files. But like typed text, those files have sizes too. Table 3 provides some examples of multimedia files.

Example	Size	Or about...
The picture shown in Figure 1	61 KB	61,000 bytes
This entire Web page you're reading	125 KB	125,000 bytes
A 3-minute CD-quality song	3.5 MB	3,500 KB or 3,500,000 bytes
1 minute of DVD-quality video with sound	11 MB	11,000 KB or 11,000,000 bytes

Table 3

Exactly how much "stuff" you can get on a disk depends on the capacity of the disk. This is no different from the capacity of a container for water (e.g. cup, bucket, bathtub). But of course, we don't use "pint", "quart", "gallon" and such for describing disk capacities. We use (what else?), KB, MB, and GB.

There are lots of different "types" of disks out there. You've probably already heard of most of them -- floppy disks, CDs, DVDs, and of course the hard disk that lives inside every computer. Hard disks come in many different sizes., usually in the range of 20GB to 120GB. Table 4 lists the storage capacities of common types of disks. The column on the right describes the capacity in relation to the capacity of a floppy disk, just to give you some perspective on how greatly these capacities vary.

Disk type	Capacity	Equals this many floppy disks
Floppy disk	1.4 MB	1
CD	700 MB	700
DVD	4.7 GB	4,700
Hard disk	20 GB to 120 GB	20,000 to 120,000

Table 4

Tip: To see the storage capacity of your own computer's hard drive, and how much of that space is still available for storing more files, click here.

bps is for "bits per second"

The letters bps are short for bits per second. A byte (described earlier) is actually 8 bits. But that's not important. What's important is that unlike a byte, which is a measure of size, bps is a measure of speed. Simply stated, the higher the bps, the less time it takes. It's a lot like Miles Per Hour (MPH) in that sense. Think how long it would take to get from New York to California in a car going 55MPH. Now think how long that same trip would take in a jet going 700MPH. Simply stated, the higher the MPH (or bps), the less time it takes.

As a rule, we use bps as a measure of the speed of getting data from one computer to another across a network (including the Internet). And we use "K" for a thousand, "M" for a million, and "G" for a billion, as usual. Table 5 sums it all up. The fourth column shows some alternative abbreviations. The rule-of-thumb is that an uppercase B always stands for "bytes" while a lowercase "b" always stands for "bits per second".

Abbreviation	Spoken	Bits per Second	(English)	Alternative Abbreviations
Kbps	Kilobits	1,000	Thousand	Kb or Kbits
Mbps	Megabits	1,000,000	Million	Mb or Mbits
Gbps	Gigabits	1,000,000,000	Billion	Gb or Gbits

Table 5

The most common use for the bps measurements is in types of Internet accounts. To give you a sense of how the speeds relate to one another in terms of "wait time", Table 6 compares the amount of time it would take to download (copy) a 1MB file from a computer on the Internet to your own computer. (Since a byte is equal to 8 bits, a 1 MB file is roughly 8,000,000 bits.) Also, I'm using "Broadband" as a general term for Cable and DSL accounts, which are actually available in speeds ranging from about 256 Kbps to 1,000 Kbps. Note, too, that 1,000 Kbps is the same as 1 Mbps.

Account type	Speed	Bits per Second	Time to download 1MB
Dial-up	56 Kbps	56,000	143 seconds
ISDN	128 Kbps	128,000	63 seconds
Broadband	1 Mbps	1,000,000	8 seconds
T1	1.5 Mbps	1,500,000	5 seconds

Table 6

Hz is for Hertz

The Hz abbreviation stands for Hertz, but has nothing to do with pain or car rentals. In this context, "Hertz" pays homage to a guy named Heinrich Rudolf Hertz who figured out that radio and electricity have frequencies that you can measure in cycles per seconds. But that's getting more technical (and boring) than we need to be.

The workhorse of your computer is its microprocessor - a little chip about the size of a toenail that can work at a pretty fast speed. Exactly how fast it can work is measured in terms of "instructions per second", which roughly corresponds to Hertz's idea of frequency. Of course, microprocessors can do thousands, millions, or billions of instructions per second. So that brings good old K, M, and G into the picture once again, as summarized in Table 7.

Abbreviation	Stands for	Cycles per Second	That is...
KHz	KiloHertz	1,000	Thousand
MHz	MegaHertz	1,000,000	Million
GHz	GigaHertz	1,000,000,000	Billion

Table 7

As is always the case with speed, "faster" means "less time waiting" for a human. The speed of the processor only affects "local tasks". It has nothing to do with how long it takes to get your e-mail or download stuff from the Internet. The speed of your Internet connection is all that matters there. The speed of your microprocessor has more to do with how long it takes to render changes to huge graphic images, or produce movies, or similar complex tasks that require a lot of internal calculations on the computer's part.

So there you have it. To summarize, K, M, and G are all abbreviations for numbers:

• K = Thousand (1,000)
• M = Million (1,000,000)
• G = Billion (1,000,000,000)

The letters that come after are either a measure of size or capacity, or a measure of speed, as follows:

• B = Bytes or "how much" information.
• bps (or b) = "bits per second" or "how fast across some wire"
• Hz = Hertz of "how many calculations can be done in one second"

You're becoming dangerously close to be a full-fledged computer nerd here...

Alan Simpson

What is Software?

Software is the general term for information that's recorded onto some kind of medium. For example, when you go to the video store and rent or buy a tape or DVD, what you're really getting is the software that's stored on that tape or disk. Your VCR or DVD player arehardware devices that are capable of reading the software from a tape or disk and projecting it onto your TV screen, in the form of a movie.

Your computer is a hardware device that reads software too. Most of the software on your computer comes in the form of programs. A program consists of "instructions" that tell the computer what to do, how to behave. Just as there are thousands of albums you can buy on CD for your stereo, and thousands of movies you can buy to play on your VCR or DVD player, there are thousands of programs that you can buy to run on your computer.

When you buy a computer, you don't automatically get every program produced by every software company in the world. You usually get some programs. For example, when you buy a computer it will probably have an operating system (like Windows XP) already installed on it.

If you do purchase a specific program, it would be to perform some specific task. For example, you might use a graphics program to touch up photos, or you might use a word processing program to write text. You're using your Web browser program right now to read this text (assuming you're not reading a printed copy on paper). Just as there are umpteen different brands of toothpaste, there are umpteen different brands of word processing programs, graphics programs, and Web browsers.

For example, all graphics programs are designed to help you work with pictures. But there are many brands of graphics programs out there, including Adobe Photoshop, Jasc Paint Shop Pro. Adobe Illustrator, Arcsoft PhotoStudio, Corel Draw, ULead PhotoImpact, PrintShop Photo, and Macromedia Freehand, just to name a few. As to Web browsers, popular brands include Microsoft Internet Explorer, MSN Explorer, Netscape Navigator, America Online, and a few others.

When you purchase a program, you get the program stored on a CD as in the example shown at left. You may not have seen any boxes containing software when you bought your computer. That's because the software that came with your computer has been pre-installed onto your computer's hard disk for you. You don't need to use the CD to run a program that's already installed on your computer. You only need to keep the CDs as backups, in case something goes wrong with your hard disk and you need to re-install the programs.

What Programs Do I Have?

Perhaps you're wondering what programs are installed on your computer. Usually when you buy a computer, they tell you what programs you're getting with it. So if you were to go back to the original ad from which you bought your computer, you'd probably find the names of programs you already have listed there. Though there's no need to do that, because every program that's currently installed on your computer is listed in your All Programs menu (assuming you're using Windows XP).

When you first open the Start menu, the left column lists programs you've used the most recently (Figure 1). If your computer is brand new, then the programs listed there will just be some examples.

Figure 1

That little list of program icons and names on the left side of the menu doesn't represent all the programs that are currently installed on your computer. Not by a long shot. The All Programs option on the Start menu provides access to all your installed programs. When you first click on (or just point to) the All Programs option, the All Programs menu that appears (Figure 2) will show icons and name of program groups, as well as some programs.

Figure 2

It's easy to tell the difference between a program and a program group. The program groups all have the same icon, and all have a right-pointing triangle (4) at their right side. When you click on, or point to, a program group, icons and names of programs within that group appear on a submenu. The submenu will contain programs within that group, and perhaps some more program groups. For example, Figure 3 shows the result of clicking on the Accessories program group in the All Programs menu. The submenu that opens contains more program groups, and specific programs you can run.

Figure 3

Your Start menu won't look exactly like the one shown in the figures, because different computers have different programs installed. (Just like different people who own CD players own different CDs).

Running Programs

When you click on the icon for a program, the program opens. Which means the program appears on the screen, so you can use it. Each program will appear in its own program window on the Windows desktop. For example, in Figure 4 the photograph in the background is the Windows desktop. Floating about on top of that desktop are four different program, each in its own separate program window.

Figure 4

Elements of Program Windows

While not two programs are exactly alike, most program windows contain certain similar elements. Stretched across the top of the program window is the title bar, which usually shows the name of the program that's inside the program window. Beneath the title bar is the menu bar, which gives you access to the tools and capabilities of that specific program. Many programs have a toolbar under their menu bar. The toolbar provides quick one-click access to frequently-used commands in the menu bar. The status bar at the bottom of a program provides general information. Figure 5 shows, in animated form, the title bar, menu bar, toolbar, and status bar of several different sample programs.

Figure 5

What's Available?

If you ever want to get an idea of the different types of programs that are available for your Windows XP computer, just go to any large computer store, or even a large office supply store like Staples, and take a look at the computer software. Or, you could even go into a large bookstore and look at the computer books sections. There will probably be a ton of books -- all for different programs like Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, WordPerfect, and of course Windows XP.
If you're comfortable using the World Wide Web, you can check our programs that are available by visiting the Windows Catalog Web site at:

www.WindowsCatalog.com

When you get to the Windows Catalog home page, click on the Software tab near the top of the page. Then click on the various categories of programs at the left side of the page (Figure 6). Each will display a submenu if types of programs within that category. You can click on any subcategory name to view programs within that subcategory. Or you can just click on any category name in that left column.

Figure 6

Keep in mind that there's a huge difference between viewing programs on your own Start menu, and viewing programs at the Windows Product Catalog Web site or a computer store. Programs on your Start menu are already installed on your computer and ready for you to use. Programs in a store or presented on the Windows Catalog Web site are programs you could buy and install on your computer.
Remember, software is to a computer as music is to a CD player, or as a movie is to a VCR. There are thousands of programs available for your PC, and no two people have exactly the same programs on their computers. The programs that are installed on your computer can all be found, and started from, the All Programs menu (or some program group that's accessible from All Programs menu). Windows XP, the topic of this course, is software too.

Alan Simpson

Toolbars

Most programs you use will have a title bar, menu bar, and toolbars along the top, as in the example shown in Figure 1. The exact appearance of these things will vary from one program to the next. But their purpose is generally the same in all programs:

Figure 1: Sample title bar, menu bar, and toolbar

• Title bar: Shows the name of the document and program, lets you move and size the entire program window.
• Menu bar: Provides access to all the tools that the program offers.
• Toolbar(s): Provide one-click access to all the commonly used tools on the menu bar.

Each little picture on the toolbar is a toolbar button. Some toolbar buttons show their names as a label. For example, the Back and Search toolbar buttons in Figure 2 above are both labeled. The rest of the toolbar buttons in that example have no labels. In most programs, you can point to (rest the mouse pointer on) a toolbar button to see the button's name, as in the example shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Point to a toolbar button to see its name

Showing and Hiding Toolbars

In most programs, toolbars are optional, and you can choose which ones you do and don't want to see. In most programs, options for showing and hiding toolbars are accessible from that program's View menu. Figure 3 shows an example where I've clicked on View in the program's menu bar and chosen the Toolbars option. The names on the submenu to the right show the names of toolbars available to me in that sample program (Standard Buttons, Address Bar, Links, and Google).

Figure 3: Sample View > Toolbars menu

Notice in the example shown in Figure 3 that two toolbars have check marks next to their names. The checkmark means that those two toolbars are currently "on", and thereby visible in the program window. The toolbars names with no check mark next to them are currently "off", and therefore aren't visible in the program window.
Each option on the submenu is a toggle, meaning if you click on an option, you switch it to its opposite state. For example, if I were to click on the Standard Buttons option in Figure 3, that would turn the Standard Buttons toolbar off, making it invisible. Choosing View > Toolbars > Standard Buttons from the same menu bar again would turn the Standard Buttons toolbar back on, thereby making it visible again.

Arranging Toolbars

Many programs have toolbars that you can size and position within the program window. You can also lock the toolbars, to avoid accidentally rearranging the them after you get them arranged the way you like. You can tell if the toolbars are currently locked or unlocked just by looking at them. If the toolbars are locked, you'll see a handle (also called adragging handle or sizing handle) to the left of each toolbar. The handle is just a vertical column of dots, as in the top half of Figure 4. When the toolbars are locked, the handles aren't visible, as in the bottom half of that same figure.

Figure 4: Unlocked toolbars show dragging handles

The option for locking and unlocking the toolbars is usually on the same menu as the other toolbar options. For example, referring back to Figure 3 above, you can see the Lock the Toolbars option on the submenu that appeared after I chose View > Toolbars from that program's menu bar. The option works as a toggle, meaning that:

• If the toolbars are currently unlocked, choose View > Toolbars > Lock the Toolbars to lock the toolbars.
• If the toolbars are currently locked, choose View > Toolbars > Lock the Toolbarsto unlock the toolbars.

When the toolbars are unlocked, it's easy to accidentally rearrange them, as in the example shown in Figure 5 where the Address toolbar is now squished off at the right side of the Standard Toolbars button.

Figure 5: Standard buttons and Address bar on same row

To get the Address bar back to its own row, you first need to make sure you can see the sizing handle. Notice that when you point to (rest the tip of the mouse pointer on) the sizing handle, the mouse pointer turns to a two headed arrow, as in the example shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Mouse pointer on handle

Whenever the mouse pointer changes to arrows like that, it means "drag to move or size". If you drag that handle straight down a little, and over to the left, you can put the Address bar on its own row, as in Figure 7.

Figure 7: Standard Buttons and Address bar on separate rows

When you have the toolbars arranged the way you like in a program, you can lock them. That way you won't accidentally move them while you're whipping around the screen with your mouse. Note that you can show or hide toolbars whether the toolbars are locked or unlocked. But if you want to move or size the toolbars, you need to unlock them first.