Manage and organize windows

- [Instructor] So what exactly does the term windows refer to in regards to working with computers? Essentially, any program or application that we open or view in the operating system is a window. It's what allows us to see what's going on in that application and interact with it. For example, if I come down to the task bar and open up the File Explorer, that opens a window that I can use to browse the contents of my computer, which is the purpose of File Explorer. Or if I open up this text editor application, this is that application's window. And when I open up the calculator app, that opens up in its own window as well. So again, we refer to the area in which we view and interact with apps and the operating system as windows. And that term applies whether you're working with Microsoft Windows 10, macOS, or some other operating system. Most windows share common properties. For one, you can move them around on your screen by clicking and holding down at the area at the top and just dragging them around. When working with multiple windows, clicking any one of them brings that one to the front so you can work with it. And the other windows stay open behind it. Let's close the text editor with the X button, and I'll close the calculator as well. So notice these three buttons in the upper right hand corner of the windows. We just saw to close or quit a window, we click the X button. Now, sometimes when working in certain applications, you may need or want the window to take up the entire screen so you have more room to work in the window. To do this in Windows 10, just click this middle button called the maximize button. And now this window fills the entire screen. If that turns out to be larger than you want it to be, you can return it to its previous size by clicking what is now called the restore button. You can adjust the size of windows by placing the mouse cursor over the top, bottom, left, or right edge. So you see this double-headed arrow, and then click and drag to adjust the height or width of the window. Or you can place your cursor over a corner to get this diagonal double-headed arrow and drag to adjust the height and width at the same time. Now, there may be times when you're working with multiple windows and you want to declutter a bit, but you also don't want to completely close a certain window because you want to maintain quick access to its contents. In those cases, click the third button, which is the minimize button. That minimizes the window to the task bar. To restore a minimized window, just click its icon in the task bar. If you have more than one window in a certain app minimized, for example, if I open up the Recycle Bin window and I minimize that along with the File Explorer window, notice when I roll my mouse over the File Explorer icon, I get a preview of the two minimized windows, and I can click the one that I want to restore. I'll just go ahead and close that along with the Recycle Bin. Now, you'll often work with multiple applications and therefore multiple windows simultaneously. Let's say I need to be working with both the Microsoft Edge web browser and Microsoft Word at the same time. There's a very easy way to make sure you can see both windows at the same time without them overlapping each other. First, let's open up Word. I'll do this by clicking in the search bar and typing Word. I can see it's highlighted, so I just need to press Enter to open up the app. And I'll double-click to create a new blank document. I'm going to click the restore button here in Word to make it its own floating window. But now I'm going to click and hold its title bar and drag it to one side of my screen until I see this highlight appear, and I can release my mouse. That snaps the Word window to the left side of the screen. Now let's open up Microsoft Edge. And again, I'll just search for Edge, and I'll press Enter to open it up. And there it is. Again, I'll click the restore button. That allows me to drag the window around. And this time I'll drag to the right until I see a highlight. And when I release my mouse button, it snaps to the right, and I can see both the Word and Edge application windows at the same time, and it's easy to click back and forth between the two of them to work with the one I need to work with without hiding the other one. So for example, I could be doing research in Edge for a report that I'm typing in Word. And this continues to work if I need to access more windows. For example, I'll open up File Explorer again, and I'll drag it to the right. That makes it fill half the screen so I can work with Word and File Explorer together. But if I need to work with Edge again, I just click its icon in the task bar, and it comes to the front of File Explorer, maintaining its size. So I could continue to switch back and forth between Edge and File Explorer as need be. Knowing how to work with windows is essential to make it easier for you to get things done on your computer.