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=Joe’s Tutorials for
December=
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Tutorial.... "How to Copy Images Off A Web
Page"
==============================================
Let me first make one thing
very clear ...
You can NOT just help
yourself to an image from a website without
heaping a whole lot of
trouble on yourself.
Business websites are subject
to copyright laws and before you
copy an image you must make
sure that it is not copyright. But
there are many occasions when
you can do so - for instance if you
have purchased some reprint
rights and you want to use the sales
page image for your own use,
or maybe you want to use an image
from a public access site or
from a friend's site etc.
Now although you can't just
copy anyone's picture and think you
own it, there are many sites
you can go to that offer Copyright
Free images.
Just try your favorite search
engine and type in
'Free Images'.
Downloading - or copying - a
picture from a Web page, is easy.
Yeah right. Everything's easy
once you know how!
So, when you spot a picture
or graphic you fancy ...
Right-click on it.
From the menu box that pops
up ...
Left click
on
'Save Image As'
or 'Save Picture As'
A window pops up ...
In the
'Save In' box, drop down
the menu and locate the folder on
your hard drive where you
want to save it to ...
Give it a name in the
'File Name' box - or
leave the name already
in there.
Click 'Save'.
Done!
I told you it was easy. All
you have to do now is find it
afterwards:-) Hmmmm.
Of course, I should have
advised that you make a note of where
you saved it to. Some
people have a folder called 'My Pictures'.
But you can save it
wherever you wish.
=====================================
Tutorial ... "I Give Up - What's An Active
Window?"
======================================
Your computer was created
by super geeks who didn't really
give a lot of thought to
the understanding of their jargon.But
where does that leave you?
Reading these tutorials for
a start!
Most non-geek people aren't
impressed with Windows' ability
to multi-task. That is, its
ability to do more than one thing at
a time.
In fact, doing one thing at
a time is enough. At least for me
anyway!
That said, I think you
should know about one feature of
Windows that might make
life easier for you. And that just
happens to be what's known
as "multi-tasking." And of course,
this includes the concept
of the "active window."
Boring, (yawnnnn) who
cares, why do I have to read this
anyway?
Well, you don't. But in
case you decide to, here's the rest of
the story...
When you open a program,
such as AOL or a word processor,
that program is "active."
Anything you do with your mouse
or keyboard will be aimed
at that program. Now, let's say
you open another program
WITHOUT closing the previous one.
You now have TWO programs
running. TWO windows to deal
with. Any more than that,
and it gets a bit draughty around
the nether regions of your
keyboard:-)
So how do you know which
one is active?
The window that looks
bright, colorful, non-gray or non-dull
is the one that's active.
And it's usually the one that's on top,
too. (The active window
always wants to be on top.)
The inactive window may be
on the taskbar, too. If you
minimize a window, it heads
straight for the task bar, and
turns itself into a button.
You can then sew that button on
your shirt, and say you've
been "computerized."
All humor aside, the
taskbar is the place to look for windows
that have been minimized.
And that leaves only the active
window on your screen. So,
next time you think you're lost,
just look at the taskbar.
Are there any buttons
showing? If so, click one. (They open
with a single click.) And
if you haven't minimized a window (do
this by clicking on the
"minus" button in the upper right hand
corner of any open window)
it'll be right there "in your face."
One at a time, two at a
time, three at a time or more. You can
have open as many windows
as your computer has memory
for. They just keep
opening. So no matter how many windows
are open, you'll know which
one is the one that you're really
working with.
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Joe’s Pause For Thought
...
===================================
"If you don't like
something change it. If you can't change it,
change your attitude.
Don't complain."
- Maya Angelou, Author
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Tutorial .... "How To Automate Tasks"
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There's no reason to stare
at your computer while it cleans
house. Unless you like
watching it work! Once the novelty has
worn off, you can set up a
scheduled task to be performed while
you are busy with other
things, like sleeping. That's the genius
of automation-- make the
machine take care of itself on its own
Schedule!
Let's take defragmenting
for example. This is a task that can
take up to an hour or more
on one of today's big hard drives.
Here's how to create an
automatic defragmentation program.
Like most tasks in Windows,
there's more than one approach.
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Tutorial ... "What Is File Compression?"
==============================
This will not help you to
use your computer any better, but it
will help in your general
understanding of computer jargon and
all things techie:-)
Assuming you download
anything new to your computer, you'll no
doubt come across a "zip
file".
That's simply techie-talk
for taking a file and squeezing the
space out of it, making it
smaller. And smaller files mean less
time moving them from
computer to computer.
When you see "pictures.zip"
you know a couple of things.
1) The file is compressed,
and
2) it contains pictures.
Let's say you have taken
some digital photos and want to send
them to someone... doing so
one by one would take a long time.
But if you were to zip them
up into a "zip file"... they'd be
compressed and all in the
same package together. You could then
send that single package
off by email to whomever.
In order to unzip, or
un-compress a zip file, you must have some
software installed on your
computer that knows how to unzip.
There's a little note below
that talks about "unzipping with
confidence". Follow the
link, and learn more about the Unzip
Wizard. And you'll know
more about file compression, too.
File compression is like a
kind of computer shorthand. When
you attempt to compress a
file, the compression software that is
being used looks for a
series of repeating characters or bits in
the file. The software then
replaces these blocks of repeated
characters with symbols or
shorter words or phrases, which are
called 'tokens'.
For example, it takes less
space for a computer file to be
structured:
"10101000110101[insert 73
zeroes here]11011010010"
Than this...
"1010100011010100000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000011011010010"
When you apply a
decompression program to a compressed file,
the software reads the file
and replaces the tokens with the
original data, inflating
the file back to its original size.
*****
Ah, that's how it works. As
long as you have software that will
Handle the unzipping chore,
you've got it made.
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