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Step-by-Step: Help Contents - Vista
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| What you will learn: |
to open Windows Help and Support
to navigate the Table of Contents to find a topic
to navigate the topics and related topics |
To work with
Help in Win98, skip to Win98 Help.
To
work with Help in WinXP, skip to WinXP Help
Start with:
with Taskbar showing.
Open Help and Support Center: Start Menu
-
Click on the Start button to open the Start menu.
- Click on Help
and Support. The Help and Support Center window opens to its Home page.
Open the Table of Contents
-
Click on
the icon for Table of Contents or
the Browse Help button in the Help toolbar. (Wonder why these are green and blue
instead of both the same color??)
The window changes to show the table of contents of Help article categories.
The page is a list of links to categories of articles. The links behave just like web links. Blue means an unvisited page. Purple means
a page that you have visited before, but Windows will not remember forever what
you have seen.
Navigate to an Article
An icon
with a
question mark is a link to an actual article.
An icon
shaped like a book is a link to a list of links to articles or other lists.
-
Click
the link Getting started. The window changes to a new page.
At the top of the page, a set of breadcrumbs
shows you where you are in the structure of a set of web pages. This name
comes from the fairy tale about Hansel and Gretel, who tried to leave a trail
through the forest by dropping crumbs of bread. Their trail vanished when the birds ate the
crumbs, so they could not get home! For this page, the
breadcrumbs tell you that within the Help pages (All Help) you are at the
Getting started page, which is in gray in the
breadcrumbs
because it's page you are looking at.
-
Click
the link
If you are new to Windows - the basics.
The window changes and the breadcrumbs get another level .
This page has one link directly to an article. The rest lead to lists. <sigh>
-
Click
the link
Learn about your computer. The window changes again and another level of
breadcrumbs appears.
All of the links on this page are to articles. At last!!
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Click
the link
Introduction to computers. Finally, the window changes to show a page with
information! But the breadcrumbs have vanished!
Just like for Hansel and Gretel!
This article
can be opened from other pages, so there is more than one path to get to it.
Navigating Inside an Article
When an article is too long to fit into your window, how do you get to the
part that is out of sight? There are
several methods which you will find useful.
Scroll
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If
you have a scroll wheel on your mouse:
With the article
Introduction to computers open, turn the scroll wheel
on your mouse toward you.
How many lines does the page move at a time? The
default is 3. You can change this behavior in the Mouse Properties dialog,
which opens from the Control Panel.
-
Drag the vertical scroll box at the right edge of the window.
The height of this box shows the percentage of the article that is showing.
For example, if
half of the article is showing, then the scroll box is half as tall as the scroll bar.
-
Click in the scroll bar itself, but not on the scroll box or on the scroll
arrows.
How far does the page shift?
-
Click on the scroll arrows at the top and bottom of the scroll bar.
How
far does the page shift?
- Scroll back to the top of the article.
Links
At the upper right of the article are some links to
subtopics in article. A link to a place in the same document is called a
bookmark.
-
Click
on the the third link at the top right of the article: What can you do with
computers?
The page jumps to the beginning of that section, which is at the bottom of the page.
Keyboard
Several keys on your keyboard can help you navigate around the page.
Press the Home key on your keyboard. The page jumps to the
top of the document.
Press the End key on your keyboard. The page jumps to the
bottom of the document.
Press the Page Up key. The article shifts by the amount that
will fit in the window to show text that came before what you were
looking at. So for this purpose a "page" is what fits in the window,
not what would fit on a paper page.
Press the Page Down key. The article shifts by the amount
that fits in the window to show what follows the current text in the
document.
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Press the Up arrow key several times and then
the Down
arrow key several times. The arrow keys move the document by one line.
- Use the method of your choice to return to the top of the article.
- Read the article.
Definitions
Words in green in a Help article have a popup definition.
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In the article, move your mouse over the green words, such
as operating system, and let the
mouse hover. A screen tip appears that says "View definition".
-
Click
on the green words. A definition appears as a screen tip floating over the
page.
-
Click
again to hide the definition in the article.
In other
situations a
screen tip pops up as soon as you hover over
the magic spot and vanishes when you move the mouse away.
Try it: Hover over the green phrase "screen tip" in the line above. The
definition of the phrase appears. No clicking necessary!
Related Links
At the bottom, most articles have a list of related articles in a list called
See also.
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Use
the method of your choice to move to the end of the article.
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Click
on the link Parts of a computer. A new article opens
in the window.
- Read the article.
Return to a Previous Page
Articles do not have breadcrumbs and there is no history list that you can
view. You will have to use the Back button on the toolbar to get back to the
previous page. Once you get to a page of links, you can use the breadcrumbs to jump around.
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Click
the Back button
repeatedly
on the toolbar until you have returned to the list If you are new to Windows - the basics.
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Open the article, Parts of a computer. This is the same article you found
in the See also list.
-
Return to the list If you are new to Windows - the basics.
- Read each of the
remaining articles. As you open these articles, the links will change color from
blue to purple.
To change links
back to blue:
The pages you open are remembered by Internet Explorer's History list. If
you want to change all the links back to blue, you must make Windows forget
where you have been by deleting the History list. This will remove ALL of the
pages that Internet Explorer remembers, including pages on the Internet.
In Internet Explorer 6/7 from the menu: Tools > Internet Options > General tab -
Browsing history > Delete
In Internet Explorer 7 from the toolbar: Button: Tools > Delete browsing history...
> Delete
history...
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On the page Learn about your computer,
click
on the link Getting Started in the breadcrumbs. You jump straight to that page.
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Experiment: Practice moving around in the Table of Contents sections and
jumping back to a previous page with the breadcrumb links.
Help-
Contents
