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| Shortcuts |
link
to a program, file, folder, drive, system object, printer, or URL.
Shortcuts are actually small files that come in two flavors:
Windows Shortcuts
(.lnk) and Internet Shortcuts
(.url). (See Figure 3-24.)
Figure 3-26. A standard shortcut icon is distinguishable from other icons by the little curved arrow
its icon on the Desktop or selecting its icon in the Start menu, odds
are that
application is stored elsewhere and
you're using a shortcut only to access the
application executable. If you find that there's a
program, document, folder, or web site you use often,
it's easy to create a shortcut to the object.There are several ways to create a
shortcut:
- Use the Explorer to navigate to the directory
where the program's executable
(.exe) is stored; if the program is a Windows
component (listed in Chapter 4),
it's executable is probably in the
\Windows\System32 folder. Otherwise, the
executable is probably located in a subfolder of \Program
Files. Once you've located the
.exe file, use the right mouse button to drag it
to the location of your choice (typically the Desktop or the Start
menu) and select "Create shortcut
here" from the context menu that appears. The same
procedure works for folders, drives, and documents, as well. In some
earlier versions of Windows, dragging an .exe
file with the left mouse button (in most situations) automatically
created a shortcut, regardless of the destination. This feature,
which nobody liked, has been removed in Windows XP. More information
on right-dragging can be found in Chapter 2. - Right-click on an empty area of the
Desktop (or any folder), and select
New
Shortcut. This
four-page wizard prompts you for only two pieces of information: the
full path of the object and the name of the resulting shortcut. This
procedure is more laborious than the others listed here, but it does
have the advantage of allowing you to create a shortcut to a program
with command-line parameters. - A quick way to create a shortcut to a
folder (or drive) is to
open the folder and then drag the control icon (the small icon in the
upper-left of the window) onto the Desktop or other destination. - Right-click any file, system object (such as an item in Control Panel
or the Printers and Faxes folder), and select
Create Shortcut. A shortcut to the
selected object will be created in the same folder; if the folder is
a "virtual folder" (like Control
Panel) and does not allow new items, you'll be
prompted to create the shortcut on the Desktop. Once the shortcut has
been created, it can be moved anywhere you like. - Open any web page in Internet Explorer,
Netscape, or
Mozilla and drag the little icon in the
Address Bar (immediately to the left of the http://) onto the Desktop or other
destination, as shown in Figure 3-25.
Figure 3-27. Quickly create an Internet Shortcut by dragging the icon from the Address Bar to your Desktop or Favorites menu
Desktop and Start menu for quick access to programs and documents,
but can really be placed anywhere. One of the purposes of having a
central My Documents folder is to enforce the
notion that documents and personal files should be arranged by
project, not by application. This means that
Internet
Shortcuts and Windows Shortcuts might be placed in the same folder as
WordPerfect and Excel documents, making it easy to group all the
resources for a particular project together and decreasing the time
spent repeatedly trying to locate files and data.You can also create a shortcut to a local or network
printer. Dragging a file onto the shortcut
sends that file to the printer without requiring you to open the
associated program, which is handy if you do a lot of printing.
Putting printer shortcuts in your Send To menu lets you conveniently
send files to printers other than your default printer.
Shortcut properties
You'll
notice that the names of shortcuts, by
default, begin with the phrase "Shortcut
to...," and their icons have a small curved arrow
superimposed on the lower left. This arrow helps distinguish
shortcuts from the files to which they're linked,
but it is not set in stone. To change the default visual
characteristics of
shortcuts, use
TweakUI (see Appendix D). There's also a feature
in Windows that is supposed to automatically stop adding
"Shortcut to" to the your shortcut
names if it sees you removing it manually several times in a row, but
I've never been able to get this feature to work
reliably. TweakUI is much more direct and much less hassle.To get more information about a shortcut, go to its Properties sheet
(right-click it and select Properties). Figure 3-26
shows an example of the second page of a shortcut's
properties.
Figure 3-28. View the Properties of a Windows Shortcut to view or change its target, choose a new icon, or assign a hotkey to it
This field appears in the Properties sheet of Windows Shortcuts (see
the URL below for its counterpart in Internet Shortcuts).
If the shortcut is to an executable
with a command-line equivalent (including, but not limited to,
command prompt programs), or even to a folder, the full command line
required to activate the target is specified here.If it's a shortcut to Notepad,
you'll just see Notepad.exe
here. If it's a shortcut to Adobe Photoshop,
it'll look like c:\Program
Files\Adobe\Photoshop\Photoshop.exe. Note that the full
path is required for Photoshop, but not for Notepad because Notepad
is already in a folder in the system path (described in Chapter 6).This field is also convenient for adding command-line parameters that
are typically used to pass options to the target program, so you
don't have to do it manually every time
it's started. For example, instead of creating an
ordinary shortcut to Explorer.exe, create a
shortcut to Explorer.exe /n,/e,/select,c:\ to
launch Explorer rooted at My Computer with drive
C:\ selected. See "Windows Explorer" in Chapter 4 for details on this syntax.
Start in
If the shortcut is to a program, this
option specifies the working folder in which the program will first
look for files to open or save.
Shortcut key
You can map a keyboard sequence to
open or execute the shortcut (sometimes called a keyboard
accelerator), allowing you to activate the shortcut without having to
hunt for the shortcut icon. For instance, you might want to map the
keys Ctrl+Alt+E to a shortcut to Explorer.Press any key on the keyboard here and you will see Ctrl+Alt+key
appear as the shortcut key sequence. Type that sequence to launch the
shortcut without clicking on it. You should check Appendix C to make sure you aren't
creating conflicts with any existing keyboard accelerator.
Run
A drop-down list allows you to
specify whether the target application should run in its normal
window, be maximized, or be minimized. The Minimized option can be
useful for applications you'd like to have started
automatically when Windows starts (see Notes, below). The Maximized
option can be useful for applications you'd like to
run in full-screen mode, but don't automatically
remember their window state from session to session.
Find Target
Click this button to open the folder
containing the original file to which this shortcut is a link. The
original file will be selected in the folder window.
Change Icon
By default, the icon used for the shortcut is the same as its target;
in the case of Internet Shortcuts, the
icon
is simply an Internet Explorer logo. "Icons", earlier in this chapter,
for more information on customizing icons.
URL
The URL
field is the Internet Shortcut counterpart to the Target field,
described above. It simply contains the full address (URL) of the
page to which it's linked.
Make this page available
offline
This option, available only with Internet Shortcuts, instructs
Windows to download web pages to your hard disk so they can be viewed
when you're not online. I find this feature most
useful for saving web sites I'm concerned
won't be available the next time I check. See Chapter 4 for more information.
Compatibility tab
The Compatibility tab appears only in Windows Shortcuts and is not
available for Windows components or applications Windows knows to be
fully compatible with Windows XP. Generally, you'll
never need to mess with these settings, unless
you're using an older Windows or DOS program that
behaves strangely in Windows XP. You'll probably
need to experiment with these settings, or possibly contact the
manufacturer of the application for suggestions, to get the program
to work most reliably.
Options, Font, Layout, and Colors
Shortcuts to Command Prompt applications have four
additional tabsOptions, Font, Layout, and Colorsall
used to control the options of the Command Prompt environment in
which the program will run. This applies to older DOS programs as
well as the newer Windows XP command prompt programs, such as Telnet
(see Chapter 4). The settings in these extra
tabs are described in Chapter 6 and are also
available from the control menu of the command prompt window.
Notes
- Since shortcuts are merely links to applications and not the
applications themselves, shortcuts can be
deleted
without fear of any permanent damage. If you wish to actually delete
an
application,
use Add or Remove Programs, and the associated shortcuts will
probably be removed as part of the uninstall process. - To have one or more
shortcuts launched automatically
when Windows starts, place them in your Start Programs Startup menu. See "Start Menu", later in this
chapter for details.
