Why do you think it's called the Toolbar?

Why do you think it's called the toolbar?

By: Scott Hendison � Published: November 2000

The Windows toolbar is the gray bar that sits on the bottom of the screen. By default, from left to right, it has the Start button, three icons, a long gray area, and the system tray. The system tray is on the far right, and has the volume icon and the clock. This month I�ll talk a little bit about the toolbar, and how you can better use it as a tool.

The far left icon, �show desktop�, allows you to instantly see your desktop no matter how many windows you have open. The next two are one click buttons to Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. You can add any icon you want to this toolbar and make it a one-click button. Just left click the icon once and hold the button down, then drag it to the toolbar. This is called click and drag.

There is no limit to how many buttons you can have there. If it starts to fill up, you can click and drag the little gray vertical bar to the right and it will show more of the buttons. If it still fills up, you can place your mouse at the top of the toolbar, and click and drag it vertically to make it thicker. It can take up your whole screen if you want it to. You�ll know you�re in the right place to do this because the mouse pointer will change to a vertical arrow pointing up and down. To delete one of the icons, just place the mouse over it, right click, and select �delete�.

A very useful feature to add to your toolbar is the address bar. With this, you can type in any website address (URL) and press enter. The address bar will automatically open Internet Explorer and take you right to the website you�ve typed if you�re connected at the time.

To add the address bar to your toolbar, place the mouse in a blank part of your toolbar. Immediately to the right of your last toolbar icon is a good place. Then right click, roll to �toolbars� � left click (select) �address�. Now you have a place to type your URL�s!

The other very helpful addition I make to my toolbar is to add a button for the calculator, which is otherwise buried inconveniently inside the program menu. To do this, click once (and let go) on start � programs � accessories � calculator. Then just click and drag the calculator icon to your toolbar, and voila! You�ve moved the calculator to a place you can get to in a heartbeat.

You can also play with the properties of your entire toolbar from this menu. Go to the same place, but instead of rolling to �toolbars�, roll to properties and left click that.

This will bring up a menu full of options. If you click Auto-hide, your toolbar will disappear except when your mouse is placed over it. If you click the box for �always on top�, then open windows won�t hide your toolbar from your view. You can hide or show your clock from here too, as well as get to your start menu programs with the second tab.

You can even move your entire toolbar somewhere else on your screen. To do this, go to that same blank area, and just click and drag the whole thing to either the top, to the left, or to the right of your monitor, and let go. Now it�s moved!

There are plenty of other options too, but I don�t have the space to get into them all here. Have fun and change it to the way you like it most. After all, it is YOUR computer.