Windows Basics:
Icon: Windows VistaIcon: Windows 7 Help

 Title: Jan's Illustrated Computer Literacy 101

Windows Vista has a new arrangement for Help that uses web pages, with icons for some categories. Help for Windows 7 is much plainer.

Help for an individual program may use a style more like previous versions of Windows, but some use an entirely different interface of their own design.

Help: Vista's initial Help and Support window  Help - initial screen (Win7)

The initial Help and Support page for Windows Vista and Windows 7

Icon: WinXPTo work with Help in WinXP, skip to WinXP Help


Where you are:
JegsWorks > Lessons > Windows

Before you start...

Project 1: Windows Basics
    Desktop & Taskbar
    Window
    MouseTo subtopics
    Dialog BoxTo subtopics
    Windows Help Subtopics display    
      WinXPTo subtopics
      Windows Vista/Win7 Subtopics display
      icon-footprintVista/Win7 Contents
      icon-footprintVista/Win7 Search Help
      icon-footprintVista/Win7 Demos
    icon-footprint Application Help
    icon-footprint Search Application Help
    Summary
    Quiz
    ExercisesTo subtopics

Project 2: Files & FoldersTo subtopics

    Search
    Glossary

Help Interface

Help windows show links and articles that are actually web pages. These pages are more colorful in Windows Vista than in Windows 7, but the content and navigation are very similar.

Buttons: Back and Forward in Help (Vista) Back and Forward: The arrows take you backwards and forwards through Help pages that you have visited recently. If the button is gray, there are no choices in that direction. Windows clears this list if you clear Internet Explorer's History list. There is no button or link in the Help interface to view this history and the pages do not show in Internet Explorer's History list either. Sad Smiley face

Help - initial screen (Win7)Help and Support (Vista)Button: Help Home (Vista) Home: Opens the Home page for Help and Support where there are links to various categories and to more support options.

Button: Print Help (Vista) Print: Opens the Print dialog to print the currently displayed Help page.
 

Help - table of contents (Win7)Help - Table of Contents (Vista)Button: Browse Help (Vista) Browse Help: Opens the table of contents for Help. Each category is a link and opens a page of topics and articles.
 

Help - More support options (Win7)Help - Ask (Vista)Button: Ask (Vista) Ask: Opens a page with links to various resources for Help. All require an Internet connection.
 

Button: Options in Help - list opened (Vista)Button: Options (Vista) Options: Opens a list of options for Windows Help. For no obvious reason, the list includes Print and Browse Help, even though those are on the toolbar already. Settings opens a dialog where you can choose whether to include online articles in your searches. Leaving out online articles speeds up searching. But, the online articles may be more up-to-date than what came with the Windows installation disk. You use the Find feature on the Options button to search the text of the open article.

Search Help only
Search Help: Type in keywords and click the magnifying glass or press Enter to search. The results will only include Help articles, not any other documents on your computer. Windows' own Search feature on the Start menu and at the top of windows that display files and folders does not search Help articles.

In the next pages you will learn to use Help features while learning some things about your computer.