Customising your working environment

You can change the appearance of your desktop quite easily in Windows.  This is often useful if you find the colours hard on your eyes or if you would like to use larger print.  You can also change the colour and background of your desktop.  Unfortunately,  Windows 2000 won’t remember these settings on public workstations; you will need to reset them each time you log in.

To try making some changes, first open My Computer by double-clicking on the icon (on the desktop) with the left mouse button.

Open Control Panel by double clicking with the left mouse button on the Control Panel icon within My Computer.

If Control Panel is still open from the previous exercise, you can make it the active window by clicking once on an exposed portion of it.

Changing the display properties of your Desktop

To choose a different set of windows colours and, if you wish, a larger font size, select and open the Display icon by double clicking on it with the left mouse button.

 

The following dialogue box will appear. 

Click on the down arrows to see the choices that are available to you. 

When you select one of the options by clicking on it, a sample of the display you have chosen will appear.  Try out some of the options.

Click on Apply to apply the colour scheme to your Desktop.

Click OK to close the dialogue box.

 

 

To enlarge the font of the windows Title Bars, click the left mouse button on Active Window.

Then click on the Down arrow beside Size, select a larger size and click on Apply

 

Under Windows, there is often more than one way to carry out a task.  This time we will use the right mouse button menu to reach Display Properties.

Click the right mouse button anywhere on the desktop to display a menu.

Click Properties and use the dialogue box to select your options. 

 

Changing he mouse buttons from Right to Left Handed.

Click on Start, then choose Settings, select and open the Control Panel.                                     

Now double click the left- mouse button on the mouse icon.

This displays the Mouse Properties dialogue box.

Physically move the mouse cable to the left-hand side of the computer.

Click the left mouse button to select Left-handed and then click on Apply.

 

This reverses the mouse buttons’ operation.