By: Peter Wealick

Many of us have a shotgun scattering of seemingly unrelated icons, or shortcuts, all over our Windows 95, 98, and Me Desktops. Similarly, we may have a hodgepodge of icons on the Taskbars lining the bottoms of our screens and have no idea what some of those icons actually do. Get a handle on your Desktop by organizing your icons and Taskbar. If you group things in a consistent, logical way, you won’t waste time looking for them when you’re in a hurry.

Icons. You can move an icon around the Desktop by left-clicking it, holding down the button as you move the mouse, and releasing the button to "drop" the icon. If it snaps back to another place, right-click a blank area on the Desktop and choose Arrange Icons. If there’s a check mark next to Auto Arrange, click it to uncheck it.

Now your icons can be organized the way you want them. Try grouping the icons of programs you use most in one area of the screen; shortcuts to important folders, such as My Documents, in another area; and other icons according to their types of applications.

If you don’t mind having your icons lumped onto the left side of the screen, you can tell Windows to group them by some criterion. Right-click the Desktop, click Arrange Icons, and choose among By Name, By Size, By Type, and By Date.

Note that the Arrange Icons menu items will move certain icons, such as My Computer, Network Neighbourhood, and Internet Explorer, to the left side of the screen in a particular order. That order varies by Windows version, but My Computer will always get the upper left corner.

You can delete a Desktop icon, but make sure you can still access its target through the Start menu or Windows Explorer before doing so. If you can, right-click the icon and choose Delete. To rename an icon, choose Rename from the same context menu. Type in the icon’s new name and press ENTER. When you’re done arranging, right-click the Desktop and choose Line Up Icons to quickly straighten things up.

If you want Windows to continually organize your icons for you, use Auto Arrange. Right-click the Desktop and select Arrange Icons. If there’s no check mark next to Auto Arrange, click it. If you check By Date with Auto Arrange enabled, you’ll always be able to find the programs you used last toward the upper left corner of the Desktop.

Taskbar: The Taskbar in Win95/98/Me usually holds the Start menu button, buttons for opening applications, and a clock. Other icons in the system tray near the clock represent TSRs, or terminate-and-stay-resident programs, that run in memory without you being aware of them. Double-click any you’re not sure about to see to what programs they’re attached. If you don’t want certain TSRs to run, check their settings to find out how to disable them.

Right-click an empty part of the Taskbar and choose Properties. One useful setting here is Always On Top, which keeps the Taskbar visible even when you drag application windows down to its level. Another is Auto Hide, which keeps the Taskbar hidden at the bottom of the screen until you move the mouse pointer down to it. Click either option to check or uncheck its box.

If you want to make the Taskbar bigger or smaller, hover the pointer on the Taskbar’s top edge until the pointer becomes a double-ended arrow. Click and drag the Taskbar to the size you want. You can also click elsewhere on the Taskbar and drag the entire thing to either side or the top of the screen if you prefer.

Win98 and WinMe offer more Taskbar customization choices. Right-click an empty part of the Taskbar and select Toolbars. You can then add functions to your Taskbar. One of the most useful Toolbars is Quick Launch. This has small icons for Internet Explorer, Show Desktop (which minimizes all open windows), and other applications. Quick Launch eliminates big Desktop icons without losing the shortcuts.

Try right-clicking each Toolbar you use for more options. For example, you might click View and Large for bigger icons or Show Text to add titles to each shortcut.

I hope that this information is helpful in your day-to-day operation of your computer. If you have any question Aboriginal Computer Solutions technical support can be reached either by email or telephone.

Peter Wealick is a citizen of the Sto:lo Nation, TZEACHTEN reserve located in Sardis B.C. and is the president of Aboriginal computer Solutions Ltd. He has a diploma of Technology in computer systems and has been in the technology industry for over twenty years.