by John S. Krill
Just The Facts And Nothing But The
Facts
You’ve just bought a new computer,
with a 15" monitor, connected to the Internet, and
there seems to be very little space for viewing Web
pages. You think you should have purchased a 17"
monitor.
I’m here to tell you that you can
get a whole bunch of added space on that 15" monitor
without spending a dime. We will first fix Windows and
then make some changes to Internet Explorer. And finally
if you have the desire we will look at some advanced
methods to get more space on that 15" monitor.
Fix Windows
At the bottom of your monitor screen
Microsoft but a thing called the Taskbar.
That’s the thing that has the Start button.
Currently it is probably always there and always
viewable. We are going to make it disappear until you
need it.
Go to the Start button
menu and select Settings. Then select Taskbar
and Start Menu. A new pane will appear on the
screen titled: Taskbar Properties. There
are four check boxes. The first two: Always On Top
and Auto Hide should be checked. If they
are not then put your mouse pointer in each check box and
click your mouse. Now move your mouse pointer to the Apply
button and click your mouse button. You should see the Taskbar
disappear. Now click the OK button.
To get the Taskbar back
just move your mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen
and the Taskbar will appear. Even if you
have Internet Explorer or another application at Full
Screen when you move the mouse pointer to the
bottom of the screen you will have the Taskbar
appear. Now the Taskbar
appears only when you need it.
You can also get to the Taskbar
Properties pane by putting your mouse pointer
somewhere on an empty area of the Taskbar. Now
press that button on the mouse that you have never used
before. It will be the right button
if you are right handed, the default, and the left
button if you are left handed. There should be a pop-up
menu on the screen. The bottom of the menu is the command
Properties. Put your mouse pointer over the
Properties command and click once.
Note: You can move the Taskbar
to any side (top, bottom, left, right) of the screen by
putting your mouse pointer on the Taskbar
and holding the mouse clicker down and
dragging the Taskbar to the desired side. I
always have my Taskbar at the top of the monitor screen
though in this position it can get in the way of an
application’s menu bar when the application is full
screen.
Fix Internet Explorer
Improving the viewable space with
Internet Explorer involves modifying all the Toolbars.
First we will eliminate the text from the Toolbar
buttons. We will also reduce the size of the Toolbar
buttons. And finally we will rearrange and add/remove Toolbars.
Eliminate text from Toolbars:
From the Menubar select View. From
the View menu select Toolbars. From
the Toolbars menu select Customize. From
the customize Toolbar pane change the item Text
Options to No Text Labels. Click
the Close button.
To change to size of the Toolbar buttons
go to the same Customize Toolbars pane as
above and change the item Icon Options to Small
Icons. Click the close button.
Eliminating the text and reducing the
size of icons will greatly increase the amount of
viewable space in Internet Explorer. The last change to
be made is arranging the Toolbars to
further increase viewable space. By dragging a Toolbar
with your mouse you can put Toolbars
side by side. You can even put Toolbars up
on the Menubar. I have been able to put the
Links Toolbar up on the Menubar
and put the Address ToolBar and the
Standard Buttons Toolbar next to each other.
One last suggestion is the removable of
some or all the Internet Explorer Toolbars.
They are not required and from the View >>
Toolbars menu you can remove or add Toolbars.
20 Percent Increase In Floor Space
You probably can get 20% to 25%
increase in Screen space by trying some or all of the
above techniques. Take your time and try one at a time.
You may find that reducing the size of Icons or removing
the text from Internet Explorer Toolbars
makes them difficult to use.
Advanced Techniques
Sellers of computers generally set the default screen resolution to
800X600 pixels. You can increase this to 1024x768 pixels or
greater depending on the monitor and the graphics card installed
in your computer. You can’t damage anything. Windows
will not allow you to go beyond the capabilities of the monitor
and the graphics card.
There are recommended resolutions for
different size monitors. Forget those numbers. You should
set your monitor to a resolution that is good for you.
You may find that the higher resolutions are to hard on
your eyes. Experiment.
Note: There is an another number
that works side-by-side with resolution - that is the
color depth. This is because the higher the color depth
the more graphics memory is used. And the higher the
screen resolution the more graphics memory is used. This
means in some cases you can’t use the highest color
depth with the highest screen resolution because you do
not have enough graphics memory. Again Windows will not
let you make errors when setting your resolution. If your
primary use for the computer is the Internet and some
productivity tools then set the color depth to 16 bit
color. If you play a lot of games then you may need to
use 24 bit color. Again, experiment.
Change Your Screen Resolution
To change your monitors resolution go
to the Taskbar >> Start Button
>> Settings >> Control
Panel. Double-click on Display.
From the Display Properties pane click on
the Setting tab at the top-left. At the
bottom of this pane is a sliding bar for adjusting the
screen resolution and a pull-down menu for changing the
color depth. The current color depth and screen
resolution will be displayed when you open the Settings
pane. Use your mouse pointer to change your screen
resolution. Go up one step in resolution and try it for a
while. Keep increasing your screen resolution until it is
to difficult to view the screen and then reduce your
screen resolution one step.
Note: Another method to get to
the Display Properties pane is to right-click on the
Windows desktop and select Properties. You can also
double-click on the My Computer icon on
your desktop >> Control Panel >>
Display icon
That’s It
Go slow and make one change at a time.
Test it. Go on to the next modification.
PS: the Big Kahuna
This trick is the big kahuna of getting
more from IE 4.0 and IE 5.0. In either of those browsers
you can enlarge the browser to almost the entire screen.
Press F11 to view Full Screen and then
you can also Auto-Hide the menu by
clicking the alternate mouse button with the pointer
somewhere on the IE menu bar. One of the options is Auto-Hide.
Click it. Now the IE menu bar will disappear until you
bring the mouse pointer over the area wher the menu bar
normally resides. To take IE out of Full Screen
just click F11.
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