Welcome to the July issue of MicroMetric's TipSheet, which marks our twelfth issue. This monthly newsletter is targeted at addressing the needs of our customers.
This month we'll continue with the series of tips for the Windows 95 Microsoft Power Toys.
Three of the PowerToys are unique to the right mouse menus of folders and drives--shortcuts or not. (We'll describe the commands for folders, but it's assumed they apply to drives as well.) Right-click the Start button or any folder on the desktop to display these commands, one of which is the Contents menu. Contents displays a pop-up menu of a folder's contents. Selecting an item in this list is just like opening the folder and double-clicking the item there. When dealing with certain folders, however, there's one little trick to this command: When you--or at least, when we--select the Contents menu for the Control Panel or Recycle Bin, the pop-up menu reads 'Shift for more.' But pressing the Shift key does nothing. To remedy the situation, you have to first select the icon, then hold down Shift as you right-click it and chose Contents. Only then will you see the Contents list. This nuance doesn't seem to exist for other folders that have more than one column of contents. Go figure.
Three of the PowerToys are unique to the right mouse menus of folders and drives--shortcuts or not. (We'll describe the commands for folders, but it's assumed they apply to drives as well.) Right-click the Start button or any folder on the desktop to display these commands, one of which is Command Prompt Here. Right-click a folder, choose Command Prompt Here, and an MS-DOS window opens with the command prompt pointing to that folder. If you frequently use DOS commands, open the DOS window from the folder where you plan to do your file management, and you won't have to waste time changing the directory.
AutoPlay Extender appears when you insert a non-audio CD into your CD-ROM drive. It literally extends your system's autoplay capabilities (assuming your system has them) to non-audio CDs. Click Open to display the CD's contents in a folder window, or click Explore to see the contents Explorer-style. Run Setup starts the setup program on the CD. The Add/Remove button opens the Add AutoPlay Shortcut dialog box. Select any shortcut on your system and click Add to place it in the Shortcuts list. Select any one and click Run to activate it. Click Close when you're done, and you'll see these shortcuts in the AutoPlay dialog box whenever that same CD is inserted.
Want to switch the focus of Windows 95 from one open window to another? Normally, you have to move your mouse pointer to the window on which you'd like to focus and click. But Xmouse takes the click out of selecting. Turn Xmouse on, and the focus follows your mouse. Just move your pointer over a window, and watch as it's selected automatically. (You'll be able to tell by the title bar.) Turning Xmouse on and off can be a little tricky. To turn it on, double-click the Xmouse icon-the one in the Power folder, or wherever you've placed it. To turn it off, open the Control Panel, double-click the Xmouse icon (it appears once Xmouse has been turned on), and in the resulting dialog box, click Remove. (Tip: After turning it off, the Control Panel's Xmouse icon is rendered useless until you turn Xmouse back on with the original icon.)
Files with a CAB extension, or cabinet files, contain pieces of one or more files. You'll find lots of them on the Windows 95 installation CD or floppies, and there may even be some on your system. (Open Find, type *.CAB on the Named line, and click Find Now to locate them.) Normally, you'd need to use the MS-DOS utility, extract.exe, to view the contents of these files and/or extract their contents. But with the CabView (CABFILE Viewer) PowerToy installed, you can do all of this without going anywhere near MS-DOS. Just double-click a CAB file to display its contents, folder-style. To extract one of the files inside, right-mouse click it and choose Extract.