As you now know, Windows 95 is document-centered, meaning that Windows 95 manages files as if those files were documents stored inside folders. No matter what kind of information those documents contain, you can view the documents on your screen.
Windows 95 gives you several ways to manage documents. In previous versions of Windows, you would often have to open documents to view their contents because the filename limitations simply didn't let you assign descriptive titles. The long filenames in Windows 95 help eliminate some of this viewing, but there are still many times when you need to look up information in a document.
If you double-click over a document name virtually anywhere within Windows 95, it tries its best to determine the nature of the document and opens a program that displays that document. At times, however, you may not have such a program available. For example, you may work on a desktop or laptop with limited disk space. If you don't have many programs on the computer, how can you view all the spreadsheets, word processor documents, and graphic documents on the computer's disk? The answer is explained this hour.
The highlights of this hour include:
Due to the design of documents, the way that Windows 95 displays documents is critical to your viewing of them. The documents must be easy to read. If Windows 95 doesn't automatically display a document in a form that provides for easy viewing, you'll have to change the way the document appears. Perhaps the simplest way to make a document easier to read, no matter what tool you use to view those documents, is by changing the document's font. A font is the typeface Windows 95 uses to display a character. If you see two letter A's on the screen and one is larger, more slanted, bolder, fancier, or more scripted, you are looking at two different fonts.
Fonts from the same font family contain the same typeface (they look alike)
but they come in standard formatting versions such as italicized, boldfaced, and
underlined text. Therefore, an italicized font named Courier and a boldfaced
font named Courier both belong to the same font family, even though they look
different due to the italicized version of the one and the boldface of the other.
A font named Algerian and a font named Symbol, however, would belong
to two different font families; not only do they look different, but they also come
in various styles.
Windows Minute
Fonts and Typefaces
Before computers were invented, printer experts stored collections of typefaces in
their shops. Each typeface contained every letter, number, and special character
the printer would need for printed documents. Therefore, the printer might have 50
typefaces in his or her inventory with each of those typefaces containing the same
letters, numbers, and special characters but each having a different appearance or
size.
Windows 95 also contains a collection of typefaces, and those typefaces are stored as fonts on the hard disk. If you want to use a special typeface for a title, you must make sure that Windows 95 contains that typeface in its font collection. If not, you will have to purchase the font and add that font to your system. Software dealers sell numerous font collections. Several fonts come with Windows 95 and with the programs that you use, so you may not even need additional fonts.
The Control Panel contains an icon labeled Fonts from which you can manage, add,
and delete fonts from Windows 95's collection of fonts. When you double-click the
Control Panel's Fonts icon, Windows 95 opens the Fonts window shown in Figure 16.1.
Task 16.1 explains how to manage fonts from the Fonts window.
Figure 16.1.
The Fonts window displays your fonts.
Task 16.1: The Fonts Window
Step 1: Description
This task explains how to access your system's fonts by using the Fonts window. The
Fonts window is the control center for the fonts on your system. You can add or remove
fonts from this window, as well as learn more about the font details you already
have.
Step 2: Action
JUST A MINUTE: Font sizes are measured in points. A font that is 12 points high is 1/6 inch high, and a font that is 72 points is one inch high.
TIME SAVER: Change the view (using the View menu command) if you want to display the font information using a different format, such as the detailed or small icon view formats.
Figure 16.2.
Get a preview before selecting a font.
CAUTION: Many fancy fonts are available to you. Don't go overboard, though. Your message is always more important than the font that you use. Make your font's style fit the message, and don't mix more than two or three fonts on a single page. Too many different fonts on a single page make the page look cluttered.
Figure 16.3.
You can view the properties of your fonts.
JUST A MINUTE: Not all font property dialog boxes contain two tabbed screens.
TIME SAVER: Some users prefer to work only with TrueType fonts, due to the rich look associated with them and their scaleability. If you want to view only TrueType fonts in the Fonts window, select View | Options and click the TrueType tab. Click the screen's option to display only TrueType fonts.
Figure 16.4.
Find fonts that are similar to other fonts.
Figure 16.5.
Add new fonts to Windows 95 using the Add Fonts dialog box.
JUST A MINUTE: Once you install fonts, they will immediately be available to all your Windows 95 applications.
Step 3: Review
Windows 95 provides a single location, the Fonts window, where you can view and manage
all the fonts on your system. Due to the graphical and document-centered design of
Windows 95, your collection and selectionÍ|P fonts is vital to making your
documents as easy to read as possible.
Task 16.2: Removing Fonts from Windows 95
Step 1: Description
Fonts take up a lot of disk space. If disk space is at a premium and if you have
lots of fonts that you rarely or never use, you can follow the steps in this task
to remove some of the fonts. Often, today's word processing and desktop publishing
programs add lots of fonts to your system, and you may not need as many as you have
at hand.
Step 2: Action
Figure 16.6.
Select multiple fonts if you want to delete several at once.
Step 3: Review
Remove unwanted fonts if you want to save disk space and make your fonts more manageable.
The Control Panel's Fonts entry lets you easily select and remove fonts.
If you double-click any filename that appears in Explorer or in any file dialog box, you now know that Windows 95 attempts to load and run the program that created the document so that you can view and edit it. Although this feature is a wonderful part of the Windows 95 environment, you may still face a major problem: You may not always have a program that can open that file.
For example, suppose that a friend of yours, a budding artist, gives you a new
digital drawing that she wants you to study and critique. You copy the file to your
hard disk using Explorer, double-click the file, and, instead of a graphics program
that displays the image for your review, you see the dialog box shown in Figure 16.7.
Windows 95 needs help! Windows 95 does not recognize the file's type so it displays
a scrolling list of programs, hoping that you can find and select a program from
the list that will be able to open the file.
Figure 16.7.
Windows 95 does not recognize a file's format.
What do you do when you do not have the application needed to view the file? You
can either buy a copy of the program you need to look at the file; you can not
look at the file and tell your friend that you did look at it (you wouldn't tell
a fib to a friend); or you can install the Windows 95 Quick Viewers.
The standard Windows 95 installation does not include the Windows 95 Quick Viewers, but you can easily install the Control Panel Add/Remove Programs Windows Setup option. The Quick Viewer application is actually a collection of applets that display documents formatted in a variety of formats.
JUST A MINUTE: Microsoft is asking software developers to add viewers to their Windows 95 programs so the collection of Windows 95 viewers is as current as possible. These programs will link their applications' Quick Viewers to Windows 95's own set.
Table 16.1 contains a list of most of the Windows 95 viewers available in the typical Windows 95 installation. Table 16.1 also contains a list of filename extensions that each Quick Viewer recognizes. (Even if Explorer does not display filename extensions, the Quick Viewer application recognizes the filename extensions and loads the proper viewer dialog box.)
CAUTION: The Quick Viewer application lets you look at files, but you cannot edit those files.
Table 16.1. The available Quick Viewer formats.
| Extension | File Type |
| .ASC | ASCII |
| .BMP | Windows 95 bitmap |
| .CDR | CorelDRAW! |
| .DOC | Word for Windows and WordPerfect |
| .DRW | Micrographix Draw |
| .EPS | Encapsulated PostScript |
| .GIF | CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format |
| .INF | Setup |
| .INI | Windows 95 Configuration |
| .MOD | Multiplan 3, 4.0, and 4.1 |
| .PPT | PowerPoint 4 |
| .PRE | Freelance for Windows |
| .RLE | Run-Length Encoding bitmap |
| .RTF | Rich Text Format |
| .SAM | AMI and AMI Pro |
| .TIF | TIFF graphics |
| .TXT | Text |
| .WB1 | Quattro Pro for Windows |
| .WK1 | Lotus 1-2-3 releases 1 and 2 |
| .WK3 | Lotus 1-2-3 release 3 |
| .WK4 | Lotus 1-2-3 release 4 spreadsheets and charts |
| .WKS | Lotus 1-2-3 and Microsoft Works release 3 |
| .WMF | Windows metafiles |
| .WPD | WordPerfect demonstrations |
| .WPS | Works word processor |
| .WQ1 | Quattro Pro for MS-DOS |
| .WQ2 | Quattro Pro for MS-DOS release 5 |
| .WRI | Windows 3.x Write |
| .XLC | Excel 4 charts |
| .XLS | Excel 4 spreadsheets and 5 spreadsheets and charts |
JUST A MINUTE: Depending on the date of your Windows 95 release, the text inside the Quick Viewer window may differ slightly from the text in Figure 16.7.
Figure 16.8.
Windows 95 finds the proper way to view a text file.
Figure 16.9.
Quick Viewer is displaying an Excel worksheet.
CAUTION: If you don't have the editing application installed on your computer's disk, you obviously will not be able to edit the document using that secondary application. You will only be able to display the file using the Quick Viewer.
TIME SAVER: Click the arrow in the upper-right corner of the page preview to see a preview of the next page. You can scroll back and forth within the previewed document by clicking the arrows in the corner.
Figure 16.10.
Quick Viewer can display a page view.
JUST A MINUTE: The portrait or landscape mode is called the page's orientation.
TIME SAVER: If you want to change the font used in the viewer's display, select View | Font from the menu.
Step 3: Review
The Quick Viewers are extremely helpful, especially if you work on a laptop or other
computer that has limited disk space. The Quick Viewers allow only displaying, not
editing, of documents, but the set of Quick Viewers consumes much less disk space
than the separate applications themselves.
This hour discussed the viewing of documents, especially documents that display formatted text. The ease with which you can read text on-screen and in the printed document is often determined by the font used for displaying that text. The Fonts window contains a centralized location from which you can manage all the fonts used by Windows 95. When you purchase new fonts, you'll add those fonts using the Fonts window.
When displaying a list of document filenames, a simple right-click on a file produces a menu that lets you quickly view that document using the Windows 95 Quick Viewer. The Quick Viewer application is actually a collection of several individual viewer applications combined into one application. More viewers are being added to Quick Viewer all the time so that future software programs will offer viewers to the Windows 95 collection.
document-centered The concept that Windows 95 promotes by maintaining that you work with computer's files as if they were documents inside folders in a file cabinet.
font The typeface used for a document's character display.
font family Characters that take on the same typeface appearance, but that come in italics, boldfaced, and underlined versions, are all part of the same font family.
landscape view Shows how the document would look if displayed across the wide edge of the page. Landscape view is helpful for wide documents.
orientation The way the document appears on the page. The orientation is either the portrait view (vertical) or landscape view (horizontal).
portrait view Shows how the document would look if displayed down the page, as a novel's text is typically printed.
scaleable A font is scaleable if Windows 95 can generate characters from the font in more than one size.
TrueType A scaleable font that Windows 95 prints using 32-bit technology to make text look as close to typeset characters as possible.
viewer A Windows 95 accessory program with which you can look at documents.
