12 Windows Taskbar Properties This learning module is entitled “Windows Taskbar Properties.” In this lesson, you will learn techniques of creating shortcuts in your Start menu, and setting up hot keys that will enable you to quickly launch applications. In this section we'll discuss the Taskbar Properties dialog. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to place a shortcut for JAWS in your Start menu so that JAWS appears in the Start menu as soon as you press the Windows logo key. I’ll also be showing you how to set up a hot key combination that you can use whenever you want to quickly launch JAWS. We’re going to accomplish both of these tasks from the Taskbar Properties dialog, and within this dialog, on the Start Menu Programs page of this multi-level tab dialog box. Let's first activate the Taskbar Properties dialog by pressing the WINDOWS LOGO KEY. I’ll go ahead and do this now. jaws says: windows. Start menu… I’ll move to the Settings option from within the Start menu by pressing the letter S a couple of times and then enter. The submenu for Settings will open and you should hear JAWS land on the submenu item for Settings called “Control Panel”. jaws says: s s. Control Panel C. Now I want to move to the menu item called “Taskbar and Start Menu”, which is a few lines down. You could either DOWN ARROW to that choice and press ENTER, or just press the letter T. I'll press the letter T now. jaws says: T. Leaving menus. Taskbar Properties dialog. Taskbar page… Here we are, in the Taskbar Properties dialog, and we’ve landed on the first of two pages, Taskbar options. As I mentioned earlier, what we want to accomplish can be done from the Start Menu Programs Tab page, so I’m going to press CONTROL+TAB, the standard Windows keystroke to move between tab pages in a multi-level tab dialog box. I’ll press CONTROL+TAB now. jaws says: start menu programs page... This dialog allows you to customize your Start Menu in two ways. When you first enter the dialog, you are on a radio button that allows you to choose the style of your Start Menu. The default Start Menu in Windows XP contains different items from the Start Menu in earlier versions of Windows. If you made the changes to Windows XP as we did at the beginning of this tutorial, you should land on the second of two radio buttons, “classic start menu.” There is a customize button that allows you to choose whether or not to add, remove, and sort programs in the Classic Start Menu. I'm going to press TAB to get to the Customize... button, and then I’ll press the spacebar. jaws says: tab. Customize dot dot dot button. ALT+C. spacebar. Start menu. You can customize…add button. You land on the Add dot dot dot button. This dialog box allows you to perform five major operations on your Start menu. First, the button you’re on allows you to “Add” program shortcuts to the Start menu. Next, the “Remove” button allows you to delete program shortcuts that you don't want in your Start menu. It’s important to note here that deleting a program's shortcut from the Start menu does not mean you have deleted that program. The third option here, the “Advanced” button, gives you more advanced options, such as adding hotkeys, shortcuts and more. Next, there’s a “Sort” button that allows you to rearrange the items in the Programs menu so they are displayed in default order. And finally, there's a “Clear” button, which if activated, clears the documents folder in your Start menu. This folder, which we have not mentioned before, lists documents that you have most recently opened and edited. For our first operation, let’s add a JAWS shortcut to the Start menu. I’m going to activate the add button by pressing SPACEBAR on it. jaws says: SPACEBAR. Create shortcut dialog… We’re placed in an edit field within the create shortcut wizard in which we can type the name of the program that we would like to launch, that is, if we know the path and the file name. We’re going to do that, but if we didn’t know the name of the program that we’d like to place in our Start menu and we needed to search for it, we can press TAB to move to the Browse button and press ENTER. This button allows us to search for the program or the folder, using a Windows “File Open” type of dialog. OK, what do we type in this edit field? First, you have to know the name of the program you want to run. Be careful, because program names are not always what you might expect them to be. For example, Microsoft Word's program name is WINWORD, and JAWS uses the program name of JFW. How can you discover what program name is being used? First, you must have the program running and in focus in front of you. Next, press the JAWS command INSERT+Q. JAWS will tell you what settings are loaded, and more importantly, will announce and spell the current application’s executable name. Also, remember that program names are almost always terminated with the three-letter extension of EXE. So, in the case of JAWS, the full program name is JFW.EXE. So, that's the first thing you need to know. The second thing that you'll need to know is the location or path to the program you're trying to run. Just typing in the name of the program you're trying to add is a little bit like asking a taxi driver to take you to John Smith's house in New York without having an address. Remember the Windows Find dialog that we examined earlier? You can use this useful feature to track down exactly where that program you want to add to the Start menu is located. For right now, we already know that JAWS is inside the JAWS451 folder on drive C, so we have all the information we require. Of course, if you’re using an earlier or later version of JAWS, the number after the word JAWS in the main folder will be different. I'm going to type C:\JAWS451\JFW.exe. This specifies both the path and the filename of the JAWS for Windows program. jaws says: C colon backslash J-A-W-S-4-5-1 backslash J-F-W period e-x-e. Now that I’ve specified my path and file name, I’m going to press the ENTER key to activate the default button in this dialog, which is the “Next” button. jaws says: ENTER. Select program folder dialog… Here we’ve been placed in a tree view, and we’re being asked to select the folder where we’d like to place our shortcut. Basically, we're telling the computer where in the Start menu we want our shortcut to appear. In this case, Programs is currently open. I don’t want to place the shortcut in my Programs folder. In this example, we want to place our shortcut on the Start menu. I’m going to press the UP ARROW key to move to the Start menu in this tree view. jaws says: Level zero. Start menu open, one item. Good, we hear that we have landed on the Start menu item in this tree view. All you need to do now is press the ENTER key to add your shortcut. jaws says: ENTER. Select a title for the program dialog… Ah, now we’re being asked to give our program a name that will appear on the Start menu. As you heard, Windows defaults to the actual program name of JFW.EXE, but we can use a more descriptive name. We'll just type in JAWS 4 point 5 1 here, and press ENTER. jaws says: J-A-W-S-4-point-5-1. ENTER. Customize Start menu add dot dot dot button. To activate, press SPACEBAR. ALT+A. Now we’re finished creating our shortcut and we’re placed back in our customize classic start menu dialog on the Add button. Press tab until you come to the OK button and press spacebar to close this dialog. Now let's see if JAWS was successfully added to our Start menu. I'll press the Windows logo key now. If your Start menu has already been customized, you may not hear JAWS as the first item. If not, we’ll press DOWN ARROW to move down the list to find out if it has been successfully placed there. jaws says: Windows. Start menu… Note to Grant. Just press down arrow until you hear JAWS. JAWS now appears in the Start menu. So, if I didn’t have “Automatically Start JAWS” checked in the JAWS application window under the Options Menu / Basics dialog box, or if I didn’t have a shortcut key set up to run JAWS, I could easily run the JAWS program by simply pressing one of the Windows logo keys followed by the letter J. As long as there is only one item beginning with J in your Start menu, JAWS would start talking. Now let’s take a look at how to set up a hot key combination. I’m going to press the letter S to go back to “settings” and press enter to open the settings submenu. Next, press the letter T to open the taskbar and start menu dialog again. jaws says: … We’re back in the taskbar and start menu properties dialog box. Press control tab to move to the start menu page again. Then press alt c to activate the customize button again. jaws says: alt c, … etc. We’re back in our Customize Classic Start Menu dialog on the add button. I’m going to press TAB twice to move to the advanced button. jaws says: TAB…etc. I’ll activate this button by pressing SPACEBAR. jaws says: SPACEBAR. Start menu. tree view opened. Start menu… You are placed into a Windows Explorer type of control and the first selected item in the tree view that we’ve landed on is “Start Menu”. I’m going to press TAB now to move over to the list view of this control. jaws says: TAB. List view. Not selected Programs file folder…one of… Note: you may not have the same number of items here, depending on how your computer is set up. But JAWS should be in this list view, since we just moments ago added it to our Start Menu. So now, press J until you hear JAWS spoken. If you already have an earlier version of JAWS on your system, you may have to press J more than once to land there. I’ll press the letter J now. jaws says: J. JAWS 4.51 There it is. It’s the shortcut that we created in our Start menu. I’m going to press the key combination to activate the Properties dialog for the currently selected item, which is ALT+ENTER. jaws says: ALT ENTER. JAWS Properties dialog… This particular dialog box should sound very familiar. Remember when we created a shortcut key for JAWS at the beginning of this tutorial? Well, we got here a little differently this time, but we have, nevertheless, arrived back at the JAWS properties dialog. This is the properties dialog for the shortcut in our start menu. Press tab twice to land in the shortcut key edit field. Of course, we could add another keystroke to launch JAWS from this shortcut, but there's really no point in doing so, since we've already defined CONTROL+ALT+J to the shortcut on the desktop. I'm going to press ESCAPE at this point. jaws says: ESCAPE. Exploring… I’m going to exit this window now by pressingALT+F4. jaws says: ALT F4. Customize Classic Start Menu Dialog… We’re back on our Customize Classic Start Menu Properties dialog. One of the nice things about the Windows operating system is that there are usually at least two ways of doing things, and, more often, there are three or four ways. In the example shown above, it would have been easier to define a shortcut key for JAWS from the Desktop, as we did at the beginning of this tutorial. However, not all programs will provide you with a Desktop icon, or, for whatever reason, you may prefer to use only the Start menu when launching programs. In the end, the fastest way for one person may not be the fastest way for another, so your options for setting up your computer will depend on your own preferences. I’m going to exit this dialog now by pressing ALT+F4. jaws says: ALT+F4. Taskbar and Start Menu Properties .. We’re back at the Start Menu and Taskbar Properties Dialog. I’m going to close this dialogue by pressing ALT+F4. jaws says: ALT F4… That’s the end of this lesson on “Windows Taskbar Properties”. Please join me in the next lesson. 12 Windows Taskbar Properties Retakes: ** Or, for whatever reason, you may prefer ** to use only the start menu when launching programs. One of the nice things about the Windows operating system ** is that ** there are usually at least two ways of doing things, and, more often 3 12 Windows Taskbar Properties