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Well of course my desktop is cluttered! Coffee cup here, papers there, here a scanner, there a lamp...oh, you mean my Window's desktop?
What's a desktop?
All that area above your Start button is called the desktop. Oh, now, come on. The Start button is that little button in the lower left-hand corner of your screen that says  .
The Start button is part of an area called the taskbar; not to be confused with Salad Bar, Juice Bar or Candy Bar.
When you run a program, the program window is displayed in the desktop area of your screen. Unless, of course, the program started in the minimized state and then the program shows up as a button on your taskbar.
The program is minimized, how do I view it?
You started a program, but, there is no program window on your desktop. Whuzzup with that? Click on the program's button in the taskbar. Now that's cool. Okay, I have the program window open, how do I get it out of the way to see the desktop? Take a look at the program window title bar. The title bar is at the very top of the program and may have an icon (small graphic) in the left-hand corner and then a description of the program you are viewing. Notice on the right side of the title bar there are three little caption buttons,  . Left to right, they are Minimize, Maximize and Close. Click on the Minimize button and viola, the program window disappears and there is the desktop.
Clearing the desktop
A quick way to clear your desktop of program windows is to click on the icon  in the Quick Launch toolbar which is just to the right of the Start button. Guess what? This icon is called the Show desktop icon. Now, if you have more than one program window open at a time, you can press and minimize all program windows at once. Slick!
Another way to minimize all open windows is to right click on an empty area of the taskbar and select, that's right, Minimize All Windows. To restore all windows to their original state, right click in an empty area of the taskbar and select Undo Minimize All.
So, now you have ten programs running at once and you are dragging windows around trying to find one particular program window. Don't need to! Look down there in the taskbar and find the program you want and click on its button. Have trouble clicking on the right button? Try this. Hold the Alt key down and press the Tab key until you highlight the program you want; then release the Alt key.
The desktop ate my folder or window
What a minute! Where did my folder go? It was right there on the desktop yesterday. Sometimes folders and program windows mysteriously move off the screen. This can happen for several reasons and usually it is because you have recently changed the video resolution. That's right! The kid's game required a different resolution! Don't worry, right-click on the taskbar, select either the Cascade Windows or Tile Windows (Horizontally or Vertically) option, and the window or folder will re-appear. You may need to resize your windows.
For more information on desktop, title bar, taskbar and the Quick Launch toolbar, click the Windows Start button and choose Help. Select the Index tab and type one of the above in as a keyword. It's that simple!
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last modified
Monday December 20 2004
© 2000 - David Seibold
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