Navigating Windows, menus and screens

Navigating around your computer:

It is very helpful to know how to move around the screen, open and close windows and move from one open window to the other. Mastering these skills will serve as confident builders in your computer experience.

Moving around the screen

The first thing you can use for navigation is the arrow keys. By this time, you should have learned where these keys are and familiarized yourself with them. It is important to make sure that you know when to move up or down a list or page as opposed to left and right. If your computers view was set up correctly, you will mainly arrow up and down when you are in a list and naturally you can move all four directions when you are on a page of text. The desktop is one menu where you will need to move in all directions. If you want to try this out, press "Windows key plus M" to go to the desktop. Practice arrowing around and then press "alt tab" to come back to this lesson.

Second keys to know about

The second types of keys that you can use to navigate is the tab key.

You can press the tab key by itself to move forward through different options in a window screen. Usually, you will have to respond to what you tab too. You can press the "Shift Tab" command to move backwards through the same list. Keep in mind that if you are in a text document, you will be putting tabs in your document. This means you are pushing the curser over five spaces or so. IF you arrow back left, you will hear JAWS say tab for every time you pressed it.

Third Set of keys

A third set of keys to learn is the "alt tab" command.

This command will move you forward from each open window that you have open to another. If you want to back up or move backwards through the same list of open windows, press the "alt, shift Tab" command. For example:

If you have three windows or programs open, such as: Word, e-mail and Internet, you will be able to move through all three programs with the "alt Tab" command. The "alt, shift Tab" command will move you backwards through those three programs. Now, note: something important to remember. If you pressed the "Alt Tab" once and let up on the keys, you will only move to the previous program or Window. Then, if you press it again, you will return to the first window or program. If you hold down the alt key and press the tab key several times, you will cycle through all the programs or windows that you have open. When you let up on the alt key, you will bring that program or Window into focus. Practice with this by opening at least three programs off the desktop. If you do not have the internet set up yet, you cannot open the internet nor e-mail. A couple folders you can open are the " Documents" folder and the "This PC" folder. You then could open the "recycle bin" for your third program or window. Remember to close them each with "alt F4" when you are finished practicing.

The Last set of Keys

The last type of keys that we are going to show you how to use are the ones you will use mostly in menus or dialog boxes. A dialog box is when the computer is asking you a question or wanting to know more about the task in which you are working.

Menus and dialog boxes use three groups of keys.

arrow keys
The tab and shift tab commands and
The spacebar.

Dialog boxes work pretty good with the tab key as you move to each choice the computer gives you, such as: Yes, No, or cancel. Then you will need to press enter or spacebar on that option to activate it. For example, after you run the spell checker and all the incorrect words have been fixed, the computer tells you that the spell checker is finished and you have to press the spacebar to close the checker program. That was a dialog box. You didn't have to press the tab key; but you did have to activate a button. If you closed a document without saving it, the computer will ask you if you wanted to save the document and give you three choices. Yes, No or Cancel. You will need to tab through the options and press the spacebar on the one you want. You will see several of these dialog boxes throughout your computer experience.

In menus, you could use all three groups of keys. The idea of a menu is set up like a pamphlet. It has a few pages and several choices to read about on each page. JAWS sometimes calls these Tabs. The first page to menus that have more than one page is usually called a "general Tab". To move through the different pages or tabs, press the "control Tab" command to each page and then you can use the tab key, or "shift tab" command- to move to a section on a tab then up and down arrows- to adjust that selection- or the spacebar to check a box or activate a button.

We know this is a lot to learn at this point; but it actually gets easier as you go on because you already know the foundational steps that we will use to build on throughout these lessons.

Congratulations! you have completed the lessons in Part one. To move on to Part two, which is working with Microsoft Word, enter on the next link.

Part Two, Using Microsoft Word,

End of page