Interface with the taskbar and windows

- [Instructor] It's important to get familiar with the controls that you use to work with the Windows interface. And I want to start with this row down at the bottom of the screen. This is called the taskbar. And if we go over to the far left of the taskbar we find the start button. Click on that and it opens up the start menu. This is one place where you can launch applications Next I want to point out this cluster of buttons on the taskbar. Later in this course we will customize this so you have the application icons that you want here. Then on the far right side of the taskbar is this area called the system tray, and there's some standard system controls that you can access from here. There's a menu where you can control the volume level of sound on your computer. If you connect to the internet through wifi you'll see a menu for that. And you can also see the date and time is here, but I will remove that for the rest of this course because it can be a bit distracting. Next I want to open up a few application windows. We are going to be talking about launching applications in more detail in another movie, but for now So I'll click on the Edge button to launch Edge. And I'll also open up a file explorer window. Now when you open an application is it usually represented by a window like this. One big box where you can work with that application. Just place your mouse cursor near the top edge of that window, click your mouse button down and then you can move that window around. You can also resize windows. If you place your mouse cursor near the top or bottom edge, or the left or right edge, you'll see your mouse cursor changes to this double arrow. You can also resize a window from a corner just like this. Next I want to talk about these three buttons which will appear at the top right corner of most application windows. If we click on this button here, that will minimize the window. That will just make the window disappear temporarily from your screen. I've not close the window. I still have everything in that window that I had before, it's just temporarily hidden. If I want the window back, I can click on that application icon in the taskbar, and it comes back. The next button up here in the top right is the maximize button. Click on that and the window will change to fill most of the screen. If I want to go back, I can click that button again and it will be restored back to the standard window. And then there's this x button in the top right. If you click on that it will close that window. And in most cases, that also means that the application has quit. All right, so those are the basics of working with Windows. Let me open up that file explorer window again. And finally, I want to look at menus and ribbons. Most applications have either menus or ribbons. And these give you options and controls that you can activate in that application. Now file explorer is a little unusual because it has both. So here in file explorer if I click on this file button up at the top, it opens up a menu. This is a list of commands that I can move my mouse through and I can activate whichever command I want. But, if I go over to this home button and click on that, we get something different. Some people call this a toolbar, but the proper name is a ribbon. And it's a way of laying out several commands on the screen at once, represented by all of these little buttons. Now usually when you see a ribbon it's grouped together with several other ribbons. So right now I'm in the home ribbon, but if I click on share, I get the share ribbon. If I click on view, I get the view ribbon. All right, so if I go to file, that's a menu, but if I go to home, that's a ribbon. They're really similar, but they work a little bit differently. Now most applications have either menus or ribbons. It's a little unusual for them to have both. menus or ribbons at all, but some applications like this one have single button for one big menu. And it's usually a button with three dots on it. So if I click on that it opens up this menu which again, is a list of commands that I could activate in this application. So for each application that you use, you might have to hunt around a little bit, and you'll get used to it and you'll find the buttons that activate the menus or ribbons in your favorite applications. Interacting with windows menus and ribbons are sort of like using the steering wheel and pedals in a car. These are your central controls no matter what application you're using.