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I've talked to many people who have no idea what I'm talking about when I refer to things such as "the File menu" or opening an item that's part of a tree. So, I've decided to explain them all here with pictures to make it easier to understand.
A window is simply a rectangular unit that acts independently from other windows. Windows come in two basic types: the application window, and the dialog box.
 This is an
application window. Application windows are the main part of almost all programs. Common elements of application
windows include the control menu, menu bar, and
border. |
 This is a dialog box. It
is also, technically, a window. Dialogs are usually tied to an application and help perform a specific task or
give details for the application. Most dialog boxes lack several of the control buttons and a border, and will
have other buttons inside the window to complete a request such as "OK"
and "CANCEL". |
A border is "a part that forms the outer edge of something." (If you don't understand the dictionary definition of
these words, you may as well give up.) As you can see in the above examples, the application window has a thin border
around the edges (it's the part that looks like this: 
.)
The border not only defines where the window is on the desktop, but it can also be
used to change the size of most windows. If you point to the border with the mouse, the pointer will change to a
double-headed arrow, like so: 
. If you hold down
the mouse button at this time, you can drag the border around and thus alter the size of
the window.
A title is "a general or descriptive heading." A heading is "the title, subtitle, or topic that stands at the top or
beginning." So, the title bar of the above application window would be: 
; or more specifically, 
, since the
control buttons are separate items. Besides identifying the window, a title bar lets you move
the window around on the desktop by holding the mouse button down on the title and
moving it.
Control buttons are all the little buttons that are on the title bar but are not actually part of the title. These include:
.
In Windows 95, the button is a miniature version of the program icon, such as:
. In every case, the button is located at
the left hand side of the title bar. Pressing it will give you a menu with several standard
window manipulation commands, such as: 
. Note that
all of these commands can be done with the mouse using other windows elements; their primary usefulness is in when you
have to do any of these functions with the keyboard.
. Pressing it will remove the window and
replace it with a program icon somewhere on the desktop.
Clicking on that icon will bring up the
control menu, so that you can open the window up again. In Windows 95, the button looks
like: 
. Pressing it will remove the window, but
leave the program's button on the Taskbar. If you
click that button with the right mouse button, it will bring up the
control menu just like Windows 3. But if you click the
program's button with the left mouse button, the program window will immediately be brought back.
. Pressing it will make the
window as large as it cam possibly go - usually as large as the screen. The button will then change to the Restore
Button: 
, which you can press to change the
window back to its previous size. In Windows 95, the Maximize Button looks like: 
. It does the same thing as its Windows 3 counterpart, except that the window
will (usually) only go down as far as the Taskbar. This lets you see all the other
programs that have buttons on the Taskbar so that
you can easily switch between them using the mouse. The Restore Button in Windows 95 looks like:
.
. Pressing this button is just
one way of closing the window, and it's the easiest. But take caution on dialog boxes: when
this button is active, it usually has the same effect as pressing the "CANCEL" button,
so be sure you don't need to save any changes you made in the dialog box. Other ways of
closing the window include double-clicking the control
menu or clicking on the File menu and then Exit if it's an
application window, and clicking on the "OK"
button if it's a dialog box.
. If you press it, a question mark
will be attached to the mouse pointer. Then when you click on something else in that
window, you will see a little box describing the purpose of what you clicked on and/or how to use it:
.A new addition to some Windows 95 windows, the resize handle: 
is actually an extension to the border, found in the lower right corner of the
window. It is especially useful when you want to change the size of the window but for some reason the
border is too thin.
A menu bar is present in nearly every application window directly below the
title bar. Each word on the bar is a separate menu. If you click
on the word, the corresponding menu will appear, like so: 
. Some
programs have cascading menus, which means that an item inside the menu will bring you to another related menu.
A very common example in Windows 95 is the Start menu (which, by the way, is not part of a menu
bar but rather a button on the Taskbar):
Note that you can identify a cascading menu by the right-pointing
arrow at the side.
Another type of menu is the Popup menu. Unlike other menus, the Popup does not have a menu heading and is not
attached to a particular spot on a window. Popup menus are usually activated by
clicking the right mouse button on something, and the menu you get will depend on where exactly you clicked. For
example, a typical Popup menu for text box would look like this: 
.
Some windows have a status bar to indicate the current state of various parts of the application. This bar is usually
located at the bottom of the window, and is a more-or-less solid gray line. For example, the status bar on the bottom of
Wordpad looks like this: 
. On the left is a one-liner
to give you hints about what you are doing. To the right are a couple of boxes that indicate whether the Caps Lock and
Num Lock keys are on. (Part of the border and the Resize Handle are also
shown.) The contents of the status bar will vary depending on what application you are in, and sometimes may change in
the same program depending on what you are doing.
