Unit 3.  The Desktop (II)

The Icons and Shortcuts

The icons and shortcuts are small images situated on the desktop of Windows XP.

Just like buttons, icons have the objective of immediately executing a given program.

To start the related application simply double-click with the left mouse button. 

How to organize the desktop icons

1) Click on the desktop with the right button of the mouse.

2) Select on the menu Arrange Icons By.

3) As the menu is displayed you can chose to organize them by Name, Type , Size, or Modified (date).

4) You can also activate the option Auto Arrange, which is in charge of arranging the icons one below the other.

If you wish to customize the way the icons are organized you can simply drag them with the mouse to where you want them. To do this, the option Auto arrange must be deactivated.

How to create a Shortcut

1) Click on the desktop with the right button of the mouse.

2) Select the option Shortcut on the New menu. A dialog box will appear so that we can indicate the program for which we want the shortcut created.

3) Click on Browse button, to find the program.

4) Select the desired unit and look for the file or folder you want.

5) After selecting the file or folder click on Ok.

6) Click Next.

7) Type a name for the Shortcut.

8) Click Finish.

Once we have the shortcut on the desktop we can leave it there or drag it to the quick access bar on the task bar.

We can also rapidly create a shortcut to the type of document that the window shows us, for example Bitmap image, Wordpad Document, text document, etc... In order to do this, simply click on the corresponding option, and in this way a shortcut will be created with the appropriate icon, for example Wordpad document.

To practice these tasks we suggest you do the Shortcut exercise