OPINIONS

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MY OPIONIONS LIST
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THE SCROLL BAR
Sign onto the internet and go to a website that fills your screen. Move your cursor to the scroll bar on the right. If you had trouble getting it there just right then it's probably too narrow. You can make it a little wider for ease of use. Just don't make it too wide or you'll have to scroll sideways to view most pages.

Change your display properties. Right click an empty area of your desktop then click properties. Click on the Appearance tab then select Scrollbar and click it. Set a numerical larger size. Mine is set at 20 and works well for my 17 inch monitor as I have my screen stretched to fill the entire viewing area.

TOOLBAR While signed onto the internet look at the top of your screen. This is called the toolbar. At this point I'm going to assume your using the Internet Explorer browser as most people are. Customizing this to your use is one of the single most imortant things you can do to optimize your web surfing enjoyment as well as maximizing your viewing screen to fit your needs.

Everyone will have their own preferences here including me. The point is you should set it up as you want it. Don't just leave it the way you found it. The first thing I'm going to show and tell you about is MY PREFERENCE. Then I'll give you some tips on how you can do it. I'm using Windows ME so your system will be slightly different. Experiment. Below is a picture of my toolbars.

TOOLBAR PICTURE

You'll notice I have the standard Windows toolbar with my options selected. Everything on the bottom to the right of the red Y! is the Yahoo companion toolbar I installed with my options selected. I have also chosen to use the large icon display because I hate tiny anything.

If I had used the standard default settings for both sets of toolbars with the large icon display then there would be many more buttons displayed. That coupled with my Taskbar settings would have left me with a viewing area of about 45% of my screen size left. What a waste of a 17 inch monitor. So I set up my windows toolbar to only display what I use most. And here is why.

Every single thing that the Windows toolbar displays can be found by clicking on File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools and Help. Follow the arrows there to view the rest. And this includes printing so you don't need that button in your toolbar or your system tray. But always display the address bar so you can see if your really at the website you think you went to. The Go button afterwards is optional. Instead of clicking the Go icon after the address bar you could just hit the Enter key on your keyboard.

I display the "Back" and "Home" buttons because I use them a lot. You'll see the "Favorites" button listed next. That's because this button displays favorites (or bookmarks) differently than the one above it. Next to that you will see a "Mail" icon. Since I use an e-mail client (Outlook Express is what I use) I use this a lot.

Everything to the right of that is a seperate Yahoo toolbar I installed seperately. Notice the >> marks on both toolbars. I can click these for a few more button options I chose but don't use quite as often. Next learn how to choose your tool bar options and move them where you want them.

The first thing you need to do if your using Windows ME or newer is unlock the toolbar. Click "View". Go to Toolbars. Uncheck "Lock the Toolbars". Do the same thing again only this time click "Customize".

Another way to get to the Toolbar options is to right click an area of the toolbar between the buttons. Sometimes using this method can be tricky. It can be hard to find the in-between space and you may have to try several areas to see the "Customize" option.

Now that your given the toolbar options you can add or remove them. You can also add or remove the vertical seperator bar. Next you can move them up or down, which is left or right on your toolbar. You can also choose icon size and whether or not to display text with the icons. You already know what I reccommend.

Now for the fun part. Moving different aspects of your toolbars around. This takes a little playing around to get it just the way you want it. But it only has two basics methods so it's not difficult. Just make sure your Toolbars are not locked first.

1. Slowly move your cursor to the line just below your Toolbar. When it turns into a double vertical arrow left click and hold to drag the toolbar down. Pay close attention to the changes you see take place. Do the same thing only this time drag the Toolbar up. Pay close attention to the changes again. Notice that the changes are not exactly reversed. Try dragging up and down. Try dragging down and up. Play with it.

2. Remember when you clicked View and went to Toolbars? The Address bar was listed as a Toolbar. You can move different Toolbars around. Try it. Left click "Address" and hold down. Now drag it to a different area of your Toolbars and let go of your mouse button. Pretty cool. See if you can drag anything else to a new location. You can.

So the two basics methods are up-down-up and drag around. But wait. Remember that vertical seperator bar found in your Customize options? Find one or insert one or move one. Now left click and hold and move it right or left on your toolbar. See how it displays or hides Toolbar buttons? Move it untill you see those >> arrows I was talking about earlier. Now click on those arrows. You should see more buttons displayed in a drop down menu. A good way to add to your Toolbar but hide at the same time if you don't use them often.

There is no logical order of progression to these steps. You need to experiment to achieve the desired results. Your choice is yours. But you should customize to fit your needs instead of being a slave to the Windows default settings. And when your done don't forget to lock the Toolbars if you're using Windows ME or newer or the settings may not stay.

If you're using MSN explorer instead of Internet Explorer stop it. What a waste of available customizable options. If you want a browser that's different then I suggest Mozilla or Opera. The free version of Opera no longer displays an ad. Both browsers are better now then they ever were. Anything is better then the MSN Explorer browser. And if you use any other ISP that connects you with their own browser I would suggest closing or minimizing it in order to use a browser like IE that gives you more options.

I'll say it again. Take control of your computer. Don't settle for the default settings for your toolbars, scrollbars, or even your choice of browsers.

That's all for this page. Go to the next page for my opinions on updating and running tasks/how, when and why.
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