ITD 110-01L — Web Page Design I

Explorer Settings

As we discussed in our first class session, I want you to make some adjustments to the settings for the Windows Explorer. The Windows Explorer is the program which allows you to navigate through the file system hierarchy of folders and files. These changes will help you avoid some common confusion and mistakes. The instructions given here are for Windows XP; if you're running a different version of Windows, there may be slight differences, but you should still be able to figure it out (and if you have trouble, contact me for assistance). Make these changes on your classroom system (you might need to do this at the beginning of each class) and to any other system you use for your classwork. If you're using a non-Windows system (such as Macintosh or Linux), these instructions are not applicable.

  1. Begin by launching the Windows Explorer. The easiest way is to double-click on the "My Documents" icon on your desktop or click on Start | My Documents.
  2. By default, Explorer is showing the "icons" view; you should change this to the "details" view: click on View | Details. (See figure 1 below.)
  3. Next, make this change apply to all your future sessions. Click on Tools | Folder Options, then click the View tab, then click the button labeled "Apply to All Folders". (See figure 2 below.)
  4. Finally, uncheck the box labeled "Hide extensions for known file types" and click OK. (See figure 2 below.)

Figure 1
Explorer 'view' menu

Figure 2
Explorer options 'view' tab


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