you choose appear on the desktop. However, you might not see them if that part of the desktop is covered by something that's open. Don't worry about that. You learn about how to open, close, move, and size things on the desktop a little later in this chapter.
If nothing is covering the desktop, but you still don't see any desktop icons, they might just be switched off. We cover this topic in the next section.
Arranging desktop icons
As you discover in Chapter 9, you have many ways to customize the Windows 10 desktop. But if you only want to make some quick, minor changes to your desktop icons, right-click the desktop to view its shortcut menu. Items on the menu that have a little arrow to the right show submenus. For example, if you right-click the desktop and point to View on the menu, you see the View menu, as shown in Figure 3.6.
FIGURE 3.6 Right-click the desktop.
The last item on the View menu, Show Desktop Icons, needs to be selected (checked) for the icons to show at all. If no check mark appears next to that item, click the item. The menu closes, and the icons appear on the desktop. When you need to see the menu again, just right-click the desktop again.
The top three items on the menu – Large Icons, Medium Icons, and Small Icons – control the size of the icons. Click any option to see its effect. If you don't like the result, right-click the desktop again, choose View, and choose a different size.
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If your mouse has a wheel, another way to size icons is to hold down the Ctrl key as you spin the mouse wheel. This technique gives you an almost endless range of icon sizes. Use one of the three items in the View menu to get them back to one of the three default sizes.
The Sort By option on the desktop shortcut menu enables you to arrange desktop icons alphabetically by Name, Size, Item Type, or Date Modified. However, no matter how you choose to sort icons, the built-in icons are sorted separately from those you create.
Using Jump Lists
Jump lists were a new feature of Windows 7 that enhance the usefulness of the icons and pin items on the taskbar. Windows 10 continues to use Jump Lists. Jump Lists add the most recently used objects from the application to a pop-up menu. Right-click the icon to view the Jump List (see Figure 3.7).
FIGURE 3.7 A Jump list for File Explorer.
You don't need to do anything to set up Jump Lists – they happen automatically. Whenever you want to use a Jump List, right-click a taskbar icon and choose the item you want to open.
Running Programs and Apps
You can start any program or app that's installed on your computer by finding the program's icon on the Start menu or by searching for it using Cortana, and then clicking that icon. There are other ways to start programs as well. For example, if an icon for the program is pinned to the taskbar, you can click that icon. If a shortcut icon to the program exists on the desktop, you can click (or double-click) that icon to start the program.
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“Pinning” an app to the taskbar adds a shortcut icon for that object on the taskbar. You can open the associated app or object using that shortcut icon. You can also pin items to the Start menu and use those shortcuts in the same way as shortcuts on the taskbar.
Every time you start a program or app, that program opens in a program window. No rule exists that says you can have only one program open at a time. Some programs even enable you to open multiple copies of the same program. (Modern Windows apps, however, limit you to running only one copy of that app at a time.) You can have as many programs open simultaneously as you can cram into your available memory (RAM). Most programs allow you to run multiple copies. The more memory your system has, the more stuff you can have open without much slowdown in performance. Windows can also create a special page file on disk to mimic RAM, enabling you to actually use more memory than is physically present in the device.
NOTE
When it comes to using programs, or apps, the terms start, run, launch, and open all mean the same thing – to load a copy of the program into memory (RAM) so that it's visible on your screen. You can't use a program or app until it's running.
Most programs you open show their own names somewhere near the top of the program window. You see its name in the title bar at the top of the window, appearing either by itself or as part of a string of items. Figure 3.8 shows the Map app open on the desktop.
FIGURE 3.8 Sample title bar and taskbar button.
Most items that you open also appear on the taskbar. By default, Windows 10 shows only an icon on the taskbar for open items, with no label. However, you can configure the taskbar to show labels. The name in the taskbar button matches the name of the item.
When you have multiple program windows open, they stack up on the desktop the way multiple sheets of paper on your real desktop stack up. When you have multiple sheets of paper in a pile, you can't see what's on every page. You can see only what's on the top page because the other pages are covered by that page.
Program windows work the same way. When you have multiple program windows open, you can see only the one that's on the top of the stack. The program that's on the top of the stack is the active window.
NOTE
Some programs have an option called “Always on Top” that makes them display on top of the stack even when they aren't active. So, a program could be active but not necessarily on top of the stack. For the purposes of this chapter, however, assume that the active window is always the one on top of the stack.
The active window
When two or more program windows are open on the desktop, only one of them can be the active window. The active window has some unique characteristics:
• The active window is usually on the top of the stack. Any other open windows will be under the active window so that they don't cover any of its content. The exception is a window configured for Always on Top, as described in the preceding Note.
• The taskbar button for the active window is highlighted with a brighter foreground color.
• The title bar for the active window is a different color from the inactive ones.
• Anything you do at the keyboard applies to the active window only. You can't type in an inactive window.
Switching among open programs
When
