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XP POWERTOYS
Microsoft programmers provided some Windows 95 PowerToys
that added to the functionality of the operating system
in various ways or allowed you to "tweak" the
user interface. Microsoft has always said it doesn't
support these programs, yet they have continued to update
some of them and make them available for later versions
of Windows. Now there are some XP PowerToys, which you
can see briefly described and can download from this web
page:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp
Microsoft PowerToys for Windows XP
One powertoy allows you to Open Command Window Here.
Thus, if you are looking at a My Computer or Windows
Explorer window, if this powertoy has been installed,
when you right click a folder, it will open up a Command
Window (which is the XP version of a DOS window) where
you are placed in that folder.
Another powertoy is dubbed an Alt-Tab Replacement. In
Windows XP, if you have several windows open, you can use
the keys Alt and Tab held down together to get to a
"task switching" mode where you will see icons
for the open windows, one of them with a square
surrounding it, that being the icon associated with the
window you will bring to the front when you release the
keys. You also see a text box containing part of the
title of the window. You can hold down the Alt key and
keep hitting the Tab key to cycle through the various
open windows. The powertoy provides you with a thumbnail
preview of the window instead of an icon with a square
around it.
TweakUI for XP allows you to make various types of system
settings regarding your mouse, Windows Explorer, the
Taskbar, Internet Explorer, Control Panel, Logon, and
many other aspects of Windows XP, which are not available
through the normal user interface for XP. You can
configure the location of various shell folders, such as
My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and the CD Burning
cache.
Power Calculator is like the normal Windows Calculator on
steroids. You can perform many types of unit conversions,
and you can graph and evaluate functions.
When the Image Resizer powertoy has been installed, you
can resize an image file, or multiple images at once,
with a right click. The resized images are copies of the
orginals with a new name. There are 4 choices of size to
use: Small (640 x 480), Medium (800 x 600), Large (1024 x
768), and Handheld Pc (240 x 320). If you click on the
Advanced button, you get a couple of other options,
including make the images smaller and replace the
original rather than make a copy.
The CD Slide Show Generator lets you view images burned
to a CD as a slide show. It works on Windows 9x machines
also.
There is a Virtual Desktop Manager which allows you to
manage up to four different "virtual" desktops
from the Windows taskbar. Each desktop has its own copy
of the Start Menu and Taskbar and each can be running
different programs. You launch the Virtual Desktop
Manager by right clicking the Taskbar, choosing Toolbars,
then Desktop Manager. Now a new toolbar is added to your
Taskbar, labelled MSVDM.
The Taskbar Magnifier allows you to magnify part of your
screen by using an icon on the Taskbar. You activate the
powertoy by right clicking the Taskbar, then selecting
Taskbar and then clicking on Taskbar Magnifier. Now, when
you right click the icon, you will have options for
following the mouse cursor and for setting the zoom level
from 1 to 8x.
If you have your own web site on which you'd like to
upload some digital pictures, the HTML Slide Show Wizard
will help you create an HTML slide show of the pictures
on that site. You can provide an author name, specify the
picture sizes, tell the slide show to play in a normal
browser window or full screen.
Finally, the Webcam Timershot powertoy lets you schedule
your webcam to take pictures at specified time intervals
and save them to whatever location you like.