By Dan Pinnington

Does your cursor dance in a circle every time you try to close a window or move down a page with a scroll bar? With a few simple tweaks, you can make it much easier to click on key navigation elements.

 

Larger monitors with higher resolutions are a good thing. They let you see more stuff on your screen. But when viewed at a higher resolution, basic Windows navigation elements such as caption buttons and scroll bars can become quite small or skinny. This can make them harder to click on, which will slow you down in your work.

If you find these navigation elements are too small for you, there is great news. Windows lets you make them as big (or as small) as you want. Of all the tweaks that make Windows more usable, these are among the best.

Middle-aged persons with eyes that are not as strong as they used to be (that would be me) will find these tweaks to be especially helpful. So will novices who are just learning how to point and click with a mouse or touchpad, as well as anyone trying to work on a laptop on a bumpy airplane ride.

 

Display Properties

In all versions of Windows, you change the size of Windows navigation elements in the Display properties dialog box. To open the dialog box, click on Start, point to Settings, click on Control Panel, and then double-click on Display. Or (the faster way), you can right-click on the image behind the icons on your desktop and select Properties.

Once you are in the Display properties dialog box, you need to click on the Appearance tab. Windows XP users have one extra step: Click on the Advanced button.

Next, look for the Item drop-down box. It lists the different navigation elements in the Windows interface that you can change the size and color of, and also—in appropriate cases for elements that include text—the font and font size and color.

 

Caption Buttons

When it comes to increasing the usability of Windows, few things will be more life changing than enlarging the size of your caption buttons. Okay now, I know that at least a few of you are asking, "What the heck are caption buttons?" They are the little square buttons in the top-right corner of every window on your screen. They let you close, restore and minimize or maximize a window.

To resize those little squares, select Caption Buttons in the Item drop-down list. Click on the up or down arrows next to Size, and watch the Preview pane to see the effect of the change. When you have the size you want, click on Okay to apply your change to your desktop. You will find that just going from the default 18 up to 21 makes a big difference. Call me old and blind, but I prefer a really big target and have set them to 23 on my computer.

These numerical values tell Windows how many pixels wide each navigation element should be. Pixels are the tiny individual colored dots that make up everything that is

displayed on your screen.

Note that increasing the size of your caption buttons will also make the buttons on your taskbar slightly larger.

 

Scroll Bars

We all use scroll bars for moving around documents and Web pages, and making the bars just a bit wider will make them much easier to click on. Under the Item drop-down list, select Scrollbar. Next, use the up or down arrows next to Size to find the width you want. The default is 16. I have mine set to 21. Again, watch your changes in the Preview pane, and when you like what you see, click on Okay to keep the change.

Note that making your scroll bars wider will also make the up and down arrows on your scroll bars larger, which will make them easier to click on as well.

Changing the size of the caption buttons and scroll bars will give you the most bang for your buck. But look through the other things listed in the Item drop-down list. Alternatively, you can click on the various elements in the Preview box, and then make configurations changes to them.

 

Icon Spacing

Here's another element change that some people might find helpful for squeezing a bit more info onto their desktops: the vertical and horizontal spacing of icons. In both cases, the default is 43. Decreasing that number will squeeze the icons together, which is useful if you'd like to see more icons in any given window. Increasing it will spread them out, which is useful if you want to see more of longer file names.

 

Font Size and Color

Within the Item drop-down list, you can also individually change the font, size and color of text that appears in title bars, dialog boxes, menus and the like. While making individual changes may make sense in some circumstances, the better option will be to make a global change by increasing the Windows font display size. In Windows XP, you can do this by selecting Large or Extra Large in the Font Size drop-down on the Appearance tab. In Windows 2000, go to the Settings tab, click on Advanced and then on the General tab, and then select from Small, Large or Other.

 

The Fine Print

While all of the foregoing adjustments can make your computing easier, be very careful when you make changes in the Display properties dialog box. You can easily render your computer unusable. For example, you can't see blue text on a blue background, now can you? After you make any change (and I suggest you only make one at a time), carefully look at what is in the Preview box. If you don't like what you see, hit Cancel to exit without saving the changes you have made.

Any changes you make will be saved until you make further changes, or until you choose a different theme. Going back to the Windows Classic or XP themes will reset all your changes to the default settings.

Lastly, note that some programs (especially older ones) may not recognize and implement certain of your changes, in particular when it comes to larger font sizes.

Now go ahead, try tweaking the size of the Windows navigation elements on your computer, and say good-bye to the circular cursor dance.