Computer Basics Written by Brian O'Rooney. Copyright 2000 Nanaimo Literacy Association All rights reserved

Transcription

1 Written by Brian O'Rooney Copyright 2000 Nanaimo Literacy Association All rights reserved Windows is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation. This product/publication includes images from WordPerfect Office 2000 which are protected by the copyright laws of the U.S., Canada and elsewhere. Used under license. This publication was made possible by grants from the National Literacy Secretariat and the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education, Training and Technology.

2 Contents Computer Components... 1 Basic Computer System... 1 Monitor... 1 Computer Case... 2 Hard Drives... 2 CD ROM Drives... 2 Floppy Drives... 3 Keyboard... 3 Mouse... 4 Printer... 4 Starting... 5 Power Up... 5 Booting... 5 The Mouse... 6 Mouse Buttons... 6 The Mouse Pointer... 6 Moving the Mouse... 6 Icons... 7 Pointing... 7 Clicking... 7 Right Click... 8 Double Click... 8 Dragging and Dropping... 9 Shutting Down The Taskbar Start Button Start Menu Shut Down Working with Desktop Windows Opening the My Computer Window Resizing a Window Scroll Bars Moving a Window... 13

3 Maximizing a Window Minimizing a Window Closing a Window Word Processing Wordpad Starting Wordpad Creating a Document in Wordpad Copying Fonts Changing Fonts Align The Undo Button Saving a document Save As Naming Files File Name Structure Editing the File Name in the Dialog Box Cancel and Save Buttons Printing a Document Print Preview Printing From the File Menu Closing Wordpad Windows Explorer Starting Windows Explorer Files File Names Folders Subfolders Managing Files and Folders Creating a new Folder Find a File Move a File Copy a File Renaming Deleting Files Recovering Deleted Files Delete a File for Good A dialog box appears. Click on Yes. Other Folders in Outlook Express There are three other folders: The Internet The Outbox folder contains messages that are waiting to be sent. The Sent Items folder contains messages that have been sent. The Drafts folder contains messages that are not yet ready to send. Exit This booklet is meant as an introduction to the basics of using a computer. We hope we have given you enough information to get you started. Good luck and happy surfing! 51

4 Delete After you have read a message, you may want to remove it. Click on the delete button to remove the message. The message has been transferred to the Deleted Items folder. Click on the Deleted Items folder. The deleted message appears in frame on the right side of the window. The Internet The World Wide Web (WWW) Connecting to the Internet Dial-up Cable and ADSL The Web Starting Internet Explorer The Address Field Searching Links Back Button Forward Button The Stop button Favorites History Starting Outlook Express Writing To: CC: Subject: The Message Body Sending Receiving Password The Inbox Delete Other Folders in Outlook Express Exit To delete the message for good, delete it again from the deleted items folder. 50

5 The Inbox The Inbox folder is where received messages are found. The Internet To see the messages that have just been received, click on Inbox in the Folders frame. A frame in the right hand side of the window shows the contents of the inbox. Click on the message you want to read. The contents of the message appear below the inbox contents frame. You can read another message by clicking on it in the inbox frame. 49

6 Subject: In the subject field, write a few words about the contents of this . Computer Components Computer Components Computer components are the parts that make up a computer system. Basic Computer System The Message Body Below the subject field is where the message is written. Sending Before you can send the message, be sure your computer is connected to the Internet. To send the message, click on Send. Receiving To pick up the we just sent, click on Send/Recv. A basic computer system includes: monitor computer case keyboard mouse printer Monitor Password If necessary, enter your password here. You can have the computer remember your password so you won t have to enter it each time you check your mail but if other people have access to the computer, they will be able to access your account. To prevent this, do not check the remember password box. The monitor displays the visual output from the computer. There is a power switch to turn it on and off. 48 1

7 Computer Case The New Message window opens: The Internet The computer case contains: Floppy Drive CD ROM Drive Hard Drive (inside the case) On/Off Switch Hard Drives At the top of the new message window are three fields: Drives are used to store information in the computer. Hard drives are attached inside the computer case and have the largest storage capacity. CD ROM Drives CD ROM drives read information from a CD and have a large storage capacity. 2 To: Enter the address of the person this message is being sent to. As an exercise, send a message to yourself. Enter your address (not PenelopeDoe@Yahoo.com) in the To: field: The Tab key enables you to move to the next field. Press on the Tab key to move to the CC: field CC: CC is short for Carbon Copy. If you want to send a duplicate message to another person, enter their address here. In this case leave it blank. 47

8 Computer Components is the most popular Internet service. Mail can be exchanged almost instantly between people connected on the Internet. is sent and received using an program Starting Outlook Express Double click on the Outlook Express icon on the desktop The Outlook Express window opens on the desktop Floppy Drives Floppy drives read and write information to a 3½-inch disk and have a very small storage capacity Keyboard Writing To write a new message, click on New Mail. The keyboard is used to enter information and commands into the computer. On the keyboard are: Typewriter keys Escape (Esc) key Control (Ctrl) key Enter key Functions keys Cursor control keys Numeric keypad Shift key indicator lights that show if the Num Lock, Caps Lock and Scroll Lock shift keys are set on or off. 46 3

9 Mouse The National Adult Literacy Database (NALD) site is now on the Favorites list. The Internet The mouse is used to control the movement of the mouse pointer on the monitor screen. Commands are sent to the computer by pointing with the mouse pointer on the screen and then clicking with the mouse buttons. Printer To return to the NALD site in the future, click on the NALD link in the favorites list. To close the Favorites frame, click on X in the corner. The printer is used to print text and images on paper. There are three types of printers: Dot Matrix poorest quality printing and slow. Ink Jet high quality colour printing. Laser best quality black and white printing. History The browser keeps a list of sites that have been visited. To see the list, click on History. The History frame appears. The history frame shows a list of visited sites. Like Favorites, it can be used to find the addresses of interesting sites you have visited. 4 45

10 Favorites Favorites (called bookmarks in the Netscape browser) are a list of site addresses that are kept by the browser. If you find an interesting site you can save the address in the Favorites list. This allows you to easily find the site the next time you use the browser. Click on the Favorites button Starting Power Up To start the computer, turn on the power to the computer and monitor. The computer and the monitor have separate power switches that may be located on the front, side or back of the monitor and computer Starting The Favorites frame opens on the left side of the browser. Booting The computer starts a process called booting. During this process the computer: Checks its memory and other parts to insure they are working properly. Starts the operating system. To add the NALD site to the list of favorites, click on Favorites > Add to Favorites... Wait a few minutes until Microsoft Windows Desktop appears on the screen. A dialog box appears. Click on OK After the desktop appears, the computer is ready to use. 44 5

11 The Mouse Mouse Buttons The English language version of the home page appears. The Internet The left button is used for clicking and selecting. The right button is used to get a context menu. The Mouse Pointer On the screen there is a special icon called a mouse pointer. The arrow mouse pointer is the one you ll see most often but it can appear as other icons depending on the area of the screen the pointer is in and the task being done. Back Button The Browser remembers the pages that have been visited. To return to a previous page, click on the Back button. Moving the Mouse Forward Button The forward button moves you ahead in the list of visited pages. The Stop button While a page is loading, an icon in the upper left hand corner of the browser is in motion. Moving the mouse moves the mouse pointer on the screen A web page may take a long time to load in the browser. The stop button can be used to stop the browser from loading a page. 6 43

12 The Mouse Links Links are text or pictures on the web page that take you to a new web page when clicked with the mouse. The mouse cursor changes to a hand whenever it points to a link. Links usually are underlined and appear in a different color. Single clicking with the left mouse button on the link takes you to the NALD web site. Icons Use the mouse to point and click on icons to: Start programs. Open folders. Control or operate the computer. The NALD home page is loaded. Pointing Point to the My Computer icon by moving the mouse pointer so that the tip of the arrow is over the icon. Clicking With the arrow pointing to an icon, press and quickly release the left button. You will hear or feel a click when you do this. Be careful not to move the mouse while you click. Click on the ENGLISH link. After you have clicked the mouse, the icon will change colour. 42 7

13 Right Click The right click is the same as a left click, except the right mouse button is used instead. Type in the address field and press the Enter key or click on Go. The Internet The google search engine appears Right clicking on the My Computer icon will display its context menu. Double Click Double clicking refers to two rapid clicks of the mouse button. The mouse button is pressed and released (or clicked) then quickly pressed and released again Double clicking can be used to start programs or open folders. When a folder is opened, a window appears on the desktop showing the contents of the folder Double clicking on the My Computer icon opens a window on the desktop. Enter the search keyword nald and click on Google Search. A list of sites appears The first item is a link to the National Adult Literacy Database home page, the site you are looking for. 8 41

14 The Web A Web Browser is used to access the World Wide Web. Starting Internet Explorer Double click on the Internet Explorer icon on the desktop The Browser window opens on the desktop To close the My Computer window: Point to the X in the upper right hand corner of the window Single left click with the mouse. Dragging and Dropping The Mouse Dragging and dropping is used to move objects around on the screen. The steps required are: Point to the object (in this case the My Computer icon) Press and hold the left mouse button down The Address Field Every Web page has its own address. To view a web page, enter its address into the address field of the browser. Move the mouse pointer to a new location while keeping the mouse button pressed down. A faded icon moves with the mouse pointer. Releasing the mouse button moves (or drops) the icon to its new location. Searching There are millions of pages on the World Wide Web. A search engine helps you find what you re looking for. Some of the more popular search engines are Yahoo, Google, MSN, and AltaVista. There are many others. You shall use Google to find the National Adult Literacy Database (NALD) web site. 40 If the My Computer icon does not stay in the selected position, don t worry you may have the auto arrange feature set. This feature will automatically arrange the icons on the screen into rows and columns. 9

15 Shutting Down Do not switch off the computer without first shutting down. To shut down, first go to the taskbar. The Taskbar At the bottom of the screen is the taskbar: Start Button On the left side of the taskbar is the Start button. Start Menu Move the mouse pointer over the start button and left click. The start menu appears. The Internet The World Wide Web (WWW) The World Wide Web (WWW) allows computers to share, through the Internet, not just text, but pictures, videos and sound (multimedia content). Web browsers are used to find and display web pages. Web pages are files containing multimedia content. Web sites are made up of one or more web pages. Internet computers that host web sites are called web servers. Web pages are connected by hypertext or hypermedia links. Links make it easy to jump from one web page to another. Clicking on a link can connect you to another part of the web page you re viewing or to another web page on the web site you re visiting or to any other web page on the Internet. Links are the most important feature of the WWW. allows you to exchange letters that are delivered electronically through the Internet. With , letters can sent instantly to anywhere in the world. Connecting to the Internet Shut Down Click Shut Down. The screen will darken and the Shut Down Windows dialog box appears: Three popular types of Internet connection are Dial-up, Cable and ADSL. Dial-up A computer can be connected to the Internet using a regular phone line. With this type of connection, the computer dials the phone number of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to get connected. This is the slowest type of connection. Cable and ADSL Cable and ADSL provide an internet connection that is many time faster than Dial-up and unlike Dial-up, the computer is always connected so there is no need to connect and disconnect when you use the Internet

16 Delete a File for Good To delete a file for good, delete the file from the recycle bin. Click on the recycle bin folder Click on the Yes button. The computer will now begin its shut down routine. Working with Desktop Windows Wait for the following message to appear on the screen: Right click on the hello2.doc file in the right frame and click on Delete. You can now turn off the computer. Working with Desktop Windows Opening the My Computer Window Double click on the My Computer icon. The hello2.doc file has been removed from the hard drive for good The Internet A computer network is a collection of computers connected together so that they can exchange files and share resources (such as printers). Small computer networks can in turn be connected to form larger networks. The Internet is a worldwide network of smaller networks that connects millions of computers around the world. The two most popular uses of the Internet are the World Wide Web (WWW) and . The My Computer window appears on the screen. Resizing a Window In the lower right hand corner of the window is a small triangle. Pointing to the triangle will change the mouse pointer to a diagonal double arrow

17 The corner can now be dragged to resize the window. To drag the corner, press and hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse. An outline of the new window size will appear as the mouse is moved. Windows Explorer Click on the recycle bin folder in the left frame. The two hello files that were just deleted appear in the right frame Releasing the mouse button will resize the window. Notice that the bottom of the window is now hidden and two scroll bars have appeared. Scroll Bars On the side of the My Computer window is a scroll bar. Use the scroll bar to see the hidden part of the window. To recover the first file, first right click on hello.doc to get the context menu. To see the hidden part of the window: Click on Restore in the context menu to recover the file. 1. Point to the button in the scroll bar. 2. Drag the button down to the bottom of the scroll bar. The hello.doc file has been restored to the myfiles folder

18 Right click on the selected files. The context menu appears The bottom of the window can be seen and the top is hidden. Working with Desktop Windows Click on Delete in the context menu. You can also scroll up by clicking the button on the top of the scroll bar: Or scroll down by clicking the button on the bottom of the scroll bar A dialog box opens. Moving a Window At the top of a window is the Title Bar. Click on Yes. The two files no longer appear in the right frame. They are deleted. Recovering Deleted Files The two files have been moved into a special folder called the Recycle Bin. The purpose of the recycle bin is to allow the recovery of files that have been deleted by mistake. To move a window around the screen: Move the mouse pointer onto the title bar Press down on the left mouse button and, while holding the right mouse button down, move the mouse. An outline of the window will move around the screen as the mouse is moved. Release the mouse button. The window will appear in its new location

19 Maximizing a Window On the right of the title bar are three buttons: To change the name of the file: Click on the highlighted name The file name now has a box around it and contains a flashing cursor. Windows Explorer When a window is maximized it fills the whole screen. To maximize a window, click on the maximize button The window now fills the whole screen The maximize icon changes to: Click again on the maximize button to restore window to its original size. Minimizing a Window To minimize a window, click on the minimize button. Minimizing a window removes the window from the screen and reduces it to a button on the taskbar. Now type hello2.doc into the box Click outside the box in the white space area or press Enter to complete the name change. The program running in the window is still running, it just doesn t appear on the screen. To restore the window, click on the My Computer button in the taskbar. Closing a Window To close the My Computer window, click on the close button. 14 Deleting Files The two hello files are to be deleted. First select both files. To select both files, click on Edit > Select All. 35

20 Move the faded image of the file to the white space area of the right frame and release the mouse button to get the context menu. Word Processing Wordpad Word Processing Wordpad is a word processing program included with MS Windows and can be used to write essays, letters and other documents Starting Wordpad Click on the Start button. In the Start menu, click Programs. In the Programs menu click Accessories. In the Accessories menu click Wordpad. Click on Copy Here The Wordpad window opens: A copy of the file is added to the folder. Renaming Two files cannot have the same name in the same folder, so MS Windows has named the file Copy of hello.doc. You may want to change this name

21 Creating a Document in Wordpad In the Wordpad window, type Hello World followed by the Enter key. Windows Explorer The hello.doc file now appears in the right frame. It has been removed (cut) from its original location on the desktop. Copying We will create a second Hello World line in our document by copying the first line and pasting it into the second line using the copy and paste toolbar buttons. The steps are: Select the text to be copied by highlighting the Hello World line. Do this by moving the mouse pointer just to the left of Hello. The mouse pointer will change to an arrow pointing to the right instead of the left. Left click the mouse to select the line. The selected text appears as white text on a black background. Copy a File Now make a copy of the hello.doc file Point to hello.doc and press and hold the right mouse button while moving the mouse. A faded copy of the file name will move with the mouse arrow. The plus sign by the mouse arrow indicates that releasing the mouse button will copy the file. Copy the selected text into the clipboard by clicking on the copy button 16 The clipboard is a special place in the computer s memory where the selected text is stored before being copied. 33

22 Click on the myfiles folder in the left frame. Move the cursor to where the text is to be pasted. Be sure the vertical bar (cursor) is at the beginning of the new line below the first line (see figure) Word Processing Paste the contents of the clipboard by clicking on the paste button: The right frame is blank because there are no files in the myfiles folder. Click the right mouse button in the blank area in the right frame to get the context menu. Hello World is now copied to the second line. Fonts Fonts change the appearance and size of the letters in a document. Fonts have names and their size is in points. Now click on Paste in the context menu. Times New Roman 10 points Courier New 12 points Ariel 14 points Fonts can be changed using the font and font size list boxes

23 Changing Fonts To change the font of the first line to Arial 14: Select the first line. Click on the button on the right of the list box to display the list of fonts Windows Explorer Now that the hello.doc file is found, you shall move it to the new myfiles folder. Move a File Point to the hello.doc file and right click the mouse to open the context menu. In the font list, select Arial: Click on the button on the right of the font size list box to display the list of font sizes and select 14. Click on Cut in the context menu. The font and font size of the first line is now changed to Arial 14 points Now switch to the Exploring - C:\ window by clicking on the button in the task bar

24 The Find: All Files Window opens on the screen: Align In the toolbar are three buttons: To line up a sentence along the left side of the page click on left align To centre a sentence to the middle of the page click on centre align. Word Processing Enter hello into the Named field. Only a part of the file name needs to be entered. Here we are looking for a file call hello.doc, but we only need to enter hello. The computer will find all files with hello as part of their file name. To centre the first line in the middle of the page: Select the first line To line up a sentence along the right side of the page, click on right align. Click on Find Now to begin the search. A list of the found files appears on the bottom of the Find window. Click on the Centre button The first line is now centred on the page 30 19

25 The Undo Button The Undo button is used to reverse the last action. This button is very handy and one you ll use a lot. If you delete a word or line by mistake or you want to undo a cut or copy, just click on this button. Type the name of the new folder. Here, the new folder is named myfiles. Windows Explorer Click on the undo button to return the first line to left justification. To complete the name, press the Enter key or click with the mouse in the white area outside the box. Saving a document Your work on a computer is stored in short-term memory called RAM. If the computer is turned off or loses power, your work stored in RAM will be lost. To protect your work you must transfer (save) it to the hard drive. Save As To save our document, click on File > Save As Find a File In a previous section on word processing, a document called hello.doc was created. Here we will use Windows Explorer to find the hello.doc file on the hard drive. Open the Find window. 1. In the menu bar, click on Tools. 2. In the Tools menu, click on Find. 3. In the Find menu click on Files or Folders. The Save As Dialog Box opens: 20 29

26 Create the new folder. Click on New in the context menu. In the New menu, click on Folder. A new folder appears in both the right and left frames. The folder in the right frame is highlighted and is surrounded by a box. Word Processing Naming Files Your document is stored in a file on the hard drive. Before your document is stored, it must be given a file name. The name is used to find and open the file at a later time. The File name field in the dialog box is at first set to Document.doc. File Name Structure File names usually have two parts separated by a dot. The second part is called the extension. The extension is used to identify the file type. The file name Document.doc has a doc extension, which means it can be opened and edited by Word, Microsoft s word processor program. Editing the File Name in the Dialog Box The dialog box opened with the file name selected (highlighted in blue). If the name is not selected, use the mouse to highlight the name. First click just to the left of the D and hold the mouse button down as you move the mouse to the right. As the mouse moves, the text will be highlighted. When all the letters in the name are selected release the mouse button. Now type in the new file name hello. The blue highlighted part will disappear when you start typing and will be replaced by what you type. Rename the new folder. The file name, New Folder, appears highlighted and surrounded by a box and is ready for editing. Cancel and Save Buttons On the right of the dialog box are two buttons: Clicking on Cancel will close the dialog window without saving the document. Clicking on Save will save the document to the hard drive and close the dialog window

27 Click on Save. To hide the subfolders, click again on the box. Notice that the box now has a minus sign (-) and not a plus sign (+). Windows Explorer The document has now been saved on the hard drive in a file named hello.doc in the Desktop folder Printing a Document Your document is only a few words, but a real document could be many pages long. Before printing, it s a good idea to preview the document to check the overall layout of the text on the page. This will save paper, ink (and money). Print Preview Click on File > Print Preview Managing Files and Folders With Windows Explorer you can: Create files and folders Move files and folders Find files and folders Delete files and folders Copy files and folders Creating a new Folder To create a new folder in C:\ Select the location for the new folder. Make sure that right frame is displaying Contents of C:\ by clicking on (C:) in the left frame. The print preview window opens: Open the context menu by pointing in the white area in the right frame and clicking the right mouse button. The print preview window shows how the page will appear when printed 22 27

28 For the drive or folder selected in the left frame, the right frame lists: Folders At this point we could print the document by pressing the print button, but instead we will close this window and use the file menu instead. Word Processing Files Printing From the File Menu Click on File > Print Files Information in a computer is stored in files. Each file has its own name. File Names File names usually have two parts separated by a dot. The second part is a three-letter extension that shows the file type. The print dialog box opens: The icon to the left of the file name also indicates the file type. In this example the doc file type is associated with the Wordpad program. Folders Folders contain files and other folders (called subfolders) and are used to organize files stored on the hard drive. Subfolders Folders with a box having a plus sign (+) contain other folders. Click on the box beside the Windows folder The subfolders are seen below the Windows folder. The printer dialog box allows you to choose a different printer or change printer settings (Printer), specify pages (Print range) to be printed or number of copies (Copies) to be printed. Clicking on OK will print one copy of all pages using the current printer and printer settings. Click on the OK button: 26 23

29 A message window appears briefly as the document is prepared for printing: Starting Windows Explorer Click on the Start button. In the Start menu, click on Programs. In the Programs menu click on Windows Explorer. Windows Explorer The Windows Explorer window opens. In the taskbar, a printing icon appears in the system tray as the document is printed. This icon will disappear when printing is done. Closing Wordpad After you have finished saving your document you can close Wordpad by pressing the X in the upper right hand corner of the window. Windows Explorer Windows Explorer is a file manager and is used to find, move, delete, copy, rename files and start programs. In Windows Explorer are two frames The left frame lists: Floppy drives Hard drives CD Rom drives Folders 24 25