There’s a long history of people building cool add-ons and tools for Windows. From “Tiny Elvis” which amazed Win3.1 users, to a whole suite of tech-nerd extensions called Winternals, offering stuff that could peer under the hood of the then-new Windows NT system. Some were officially produced – the Microsoft Plus! pack for Win95, or […]
The idea of running applications in overlapping, resizable windows has been around since the early 1970s. Pioneered at Xerox PARC, along with pretty much everything else, the idea of having windows arranged side-by-side or in a variety of other ways was revolutionary. Everybody copied it. Smartphones have mostly avoided trying to put stuff into windows, […]
As WFH became normalised during the pandemic, a lot of people went from having access to a reasonable working environment in an office, to sitting on the sofa or camping on a kitchen table. A trend of working from a laptop in coffee shops had already been underway and got additional legitimacy when things opened […]
Now and again, it’s useful to be able to use Windows without mouse or touch, especially should the unexpected happen. Accessibility needs aside, it’s been possible to move around and control Windows since the very early days, just by using combinations of keystrokes. ALT+F4 is maybe the most memorable (for closing a window), apart from […]
The familiar computer keyboard has evolved over decades, even though some languages have obstinately different layouts; Germans have QWERTZ and French users have AZERTY, while Brits used to their usual keyboard might struggle to find the backslash on an American machine, and accidentally hit Enter when looking for the hash key. Most keyboards feature control […]
Some computer users might put time into customizing their environment, perhaps using themes that specify colours, backgrounds, sound schemes and the like. Themes first arrived on the PC with Windows 95 (even being a billed feature as part of the Plus! Pack) and still persist in Windows 11, though it’s a fair bet that most […]
The “mouse” was invented 60 years ago, as a means of moving a cursor around on-screen. Through many generations of hardware, it evolved from using wheels to rubbery balls, before eventually going sensor-based and even losing the tail that may have helped coin its original name Since many people now use laptops with touchpads, they […]
After Windows 95 appeared on 25 August 1995, one of the later updates was to release a bunch of tweaks and addons which had been built to enhance the OS, but not considered mainstream enough to include them in the box – the Windows 95 PowerToys. They included such amazing advances as a round clock, […]
The Windows Insiders program which, for a good many years, has provided a way for the product team to develop aspects and features of Windows with the help of millions of early testers, announced some changes in its focus recently. The distinction between Dev and Beta channels will blur to some degree, with A/B testing […]
When Windows 95 launched nearly a quarter of a century ago, it brought a whole new way of interacting with the windowing environment on users’ PCs. The Start menu was introduced (and the grand launch event had the execs “dancing” to ‘Start Me Up’ by the Rolling Stones – chosen because of its “Start” association, […]