Want to know how to work with three programs at once? How to change your "wallpaper"? How to add shortcut icons to your screen? How to make yourself supremely comfortable in the virtual environment of your computer?

The links below are to sites that introduce you to the two most common operating systems used in the English Department: Windows 98 and Macintosh OS 9.x. After you visit one or all of these sites, study the information there, and practice with your laptop or desktop computer, you'll be able to shove things on your screen around with despotic abandon.

When you've finished reading these materials, please visit the page on Finding Your Way Around.

• Windows 95/98: Getting Started
  http://help.unc.edu/cgi-bin/getdocs?docnumber=dws07
  
  A comprehensive general document, with pictures of what you actually see when you look at your laptop--about 12 pp. long. Covers just about everything the shorter documents below do, plus some extra. An extremely useful addition is the section on Keyboard Shortcuts. If you dislike using the mouse (as I do), that section is for you.
   
• Windows 98 - Introduction
  http://arachnid.pepperdine.edu/planitpepperdine/Training/Win98/Win98Intro.html
  
  This site took a slightly longer time to load than I consider proper, but once it did load it gave up the goods. Pay especial attention to the sections on Working with Windows and File Management (about which more later). About 8 pp. long, again with helpful pictures of what you actually see when you look at Windows 98.
   
• Taking Windows to Task
  http://www.geekgirls.com/windows_taskbar.htm
  
  A more text-based article (decorated with some pretty but petite purple fonts) that concentrates in depth on how to move between one open program and another open program, as we did in the HTML class when we moved between NoteTab and Internet Explorer (our text editor and our browser). About 6 pp. long. There are other general articles on Windows accessible from this page, too, and a clickable glossary of terms.
   
• Macintosh Basics
  http://www.olemiss.edu/online/mac_basics.html
  
  A very good 11-page document with screen shots and definitions of basic Macintosh desktop items such as the Finder. Takes menu items one-by-one and explains them, then adds useful sections on Fundamental Skills (such as renaming a file), Tips for Organizing, and Keyboard Shortcuts.
   
• Using the Macintosh
  http://nellie.pacificu.edu/uis/webdocs/macguide/macguide.html.
  
  A little flippant in tone, and I could wish it were organized better (I can't estimate a page length, for instance), but there seems to be a surprising dearth of Macintosh support guides on the web. This site does at least have a comprehensive glossary and some good explanations of things like the Chooser and the Finder.