djnoz
April 15th 2003, 07:36 PM
If you are nostalgic about the old Dos operating system, or like the bash prompt you get with linux, this is for you.
It also helps you open up apps really fast without having to close windows and click around. Most of my desktop icons are in the recycle bin now.
I'm gonna assume you have basic DOS knowledge for this.
Press <start>,<r>, you get a nice little 'run' box. Type cmd in here, you get the XP prompt. Close the prompt window. Now press <start>,<r>,<enter>again: viola, Instant prompt!, cos cmd.exe is now the default run.
Type 'iexplore www.theologyweb.com'. Nice quick way of getting to a site.
-------------------
There's more!
Remember those ol' batch files? We're gonna use those to create some nice quick aliases.
Create a directory called c:\aliases. Now go into control panel>System>advanced tab>'environment variables' button at the bottom of the screen.
In the system variables box at the bottom of the dialog there should be a Path variable ... double click this and type in ';c:\aliases' (you notice ; is the seperator between each path). Press OK a lot...you now have set the 'aliases' directory as a default path. It'll work every startup too.
Now type notepad into the prompt. Notepad appears.... (see you like this new style already :smile: )
I'm using photoshop as an alias example here. The alias is a batch file in the aliases directory. You enter the path for the exe file you want to alias to. When defining the path for an EXE you need to use the old skool DOS prefixes like progra~1 etc.
Use dir /x to poke around in your program files directory and find your prefix paths.
My example alias file is called photoshop.bat and contains this line:
c:\progra~1\adobe\photos~1.0\Photos~1.exe
So now I can open up cmd and type photoshop, and photoshop pops up on the screen.
In short
<start>,<r>,<enter>, type "photoshop" - do it to your favourite apps.
So much quicker and more elegant than minimising 9 or so windows on the screen every time you wanna start an app. If you get a handle on this it will change the way you use XP.
Neat eh?
It also helps you open up apps really fast without having to close windows and click around. Most of my desktop icons are in the recycle bin now.
I'm gonna assume you have basic DOS knowledge for this.
Press <start>,<r>, you get a nice little 'run' box. Type cmd in here, you get the XP prompt. Close the prompt window. Now press <start>,<r>,<enter>again: viola, Instant prompt!, cos cmd.exe is now the default run.
Type 'iexplore www.theologyweb.com'. Nice quick way of getting to a site.
-------------------
There's more!
Remember those ol' batch files? We're gonna use those to create some nice quick aliases.
Create a directory called c:\aliases. Now go into control panel>System>advanced tab>'environment variables' button at the bottom of the screen.
In the system variables box at the bottom of the dialog there should be a Path variable ... double click this and type in ';c:\aliases' (you notice ; is the seperator between each path). Press OK a lot...you now have set the 'aliases' directory as a default path. It'll work every startup too.
Now type notepad into the prompt. Notepad appears.... (see you like this new style already :smile: )
I'm using photoshop as an alias example here. The alias is a batch file in the aliases directory. You enter the path for the exe file you want to alias to. When defining the path for an EXE you need to use the old skool DOS prefixes like progra~1 etc.
Use dir /x to poke around in your program files directory and find your prefix paths.
My example alias file is called photoshop.bat and contains this line:
c:\progra~1\adobe\photos~1.0\Photos~1.exe
So now I can open up cmd and type photoshop, and photoshop pops up on the screen.
In short
<start>,<r>,<enter>, type "photoshop" - do it to your favourite apps.
So much quicker and more elegant than minimising 9 or so windows on the screen every time you wanna start an app. If you get a handle on this it will change the way you use XP.
Neat eh?