Page 86 - Windows 10 May 2019 Update The Missing Manual: The Book That Should Have Been in the Box

Note

Dialog boxes aren’t affected by this shaking thing—only full-blown windows.

Background Windows

When you have multiple windows open on your screen, only one window is
active, which affects how it works:

It’s in the foreground, in front of all other windows.

It’s the window that “hears” your keystrokes and mouse clicks.

Its Close button is black. (Background windows’ Close buttons
are light gray, at least until you point to them.)

As you would assume, clicking a background window brings it to the front.

Tip

And pressing Alt+Esc sends an active window to the back. Bet you didn’t know that one!

And what if it’s so far back that you can’t even see it? That’s where

Windows’ window-management tools come in; read on.

Tip

For quick access to the desktop, you can press +D. Pressing that keystroke again brings all the
windows back to the screen exactly as they were.

There’s a secret button that does the same thing, too. It’s the Show Desktop button—a 3-pixel
sliver that occupies the farthest-right portion of the taskbar (Figure 2-2, inset). Click that spot to
make all windows and dialog boxes disappear completely, so you can do something on your
desktop. They’re not minimized—they don’t shrink down into the taskbar; they’re just gone. Click
the Show Desktop button a second time to bring them back from invisible-land.

Windows Snap—Now with Four Panes!