| |
Like any new tool, you will have to experiment with DOS Navigator to discover your way around
it. However, it won't take weeks - like Windows' programs do - just a few minutes. Below are a few handy tips to get you
started.
1. Using DOS Navigator's interface
In the first instance, open the tool from Windows (i.e. in a DOS box) rather than booting into true DOS. This way, you should find mouse control is automatically available.
If so, use the mouse to navigate the tool. If mouse control is not available, you can
still navigate the tool easily the traditional DOS way via the keyboard. If you are rusty
or unknowledgeable on using standardised keyboard shortcuts for DOS tools, the nine main ones to know
are (i) Alt+Enter will toggle between DOS-box size and maximum DOS-box size, (ii) the Tab key will toggle between the
left and right panes, (iii) the up and down arrow keys will select folders in the left pane
and folders or files in the right pane, (iv) Spacebar will expand a plus [+] symbol next to a selected
folder, (v) Alt+F will pull down the File menu (Alt+O for the Options menu, and so on), (vi) the
up and down arrow keys will highlight items in toolbar pull-down menus, (vii) the Enter key will
action selected items, (viii) the Tab key will move through the different fields in a dialog box
and, (ix) the up, down and sideways arrow keys will select items in a dialog box.
Later, when you reach item 12 in the RH column about using the program in true DOS, you may find that mouse control
of the tool may no longer be present. In that event, you would be obliged to use the aforementioned keyboard
shortcuts. If you then decide, as you probably will, that you would like to have mouse control
when in true DOS mode, you will find how to do that when you reach item 15 in the RH column.
2. To permanently display a Menu bar across the top of DOS Navigator's window
When you first open the tool, the top menu bar is missing by default. To cure this anomaly,
press the F10 key > press Alt+O (to pull down the Options menu) > Configuration > Interface...
> select the item 'Hide menu bar' (to put an X against it) > OK. This corrected setting will
be remembered in all future sessions.
3. To change the left pane from its default folder list view to a folder tree view
When you first open the tool, the left pane is not showing a folder tree by default but a duplication
of the same file list as in the right pane. To cure this further anomaly, press Alt+O (to pull down
the Options menu) > File Manager > New Manager defaults... > press the Tab key three
times to move down to the bottom field called 'Left panel in new Manager will be...' > press r (for Tree) > press k (for OK). This corrected setting will be remembered in all future sessions.
4. To change the left pane from showing the C: drive to showing another drive.
Use the Tab key or a mouse-click to toggle the left pane into being the active pane > in the left
pane, select the top line (so that C:\ is highlighted) > Alt+M (to pull down the Manager
menu) > New > from the list of available drives/partitions appearing, select the one
to which you want to switch. If you get an error message it could be because the target
drive or partition is too large for DOS to read or is formatted for NTFS as opposed to FAT32.
5. To exit a dialog
Press the Esc key or, if there is a tiny green square in the top left-hand corner of the dialog, you can mouse-click that.
6. To exit a 'DOS Desktop'
If you click on the little turquoise button in the top left hand corner of DOS Navigator's window
(see Fig 1), you may find the panes will disappear and be replaced by a blank black screen (the DOS
Desktop!) from which there is no obvious means of escape. To do so, you have to remember either to press
the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F3 or, if you can still see the top Menu Bar, to do Manager >
New > Enter. This is worth writing down somewhere because, if you don't remember either of those tips, you will find the only way to escape
the blank screen is, unfortunately, to restart the computer and start over again.
7. To close DOS Navigator
Press Alt+F (to pull down the File menu) > Exit.
8. To type DOS commands directly in the tool's Command Line panel
The whole point of DOS Navigator is to save you having to type out DOS commands. But,
if you wanted to, you still can - e.g. to add DOS switches to command lines or, perhaps, to brush up your memory on using DOS syntax. In order to be able to type things in the black command
line panel, which is located in the bottom left corner of the tool's window (see Fig 1), you
must first make the right hand pane the active pane (by tabbing to it or clicking in it). Then, anything you type thereafter
(like cd \), will automatically peel in along the black command line. Two very helpful
features of the tool (which you would not normally have in DOS) are that you can use the Shift+arrow keys for moving the cursor within
a typed command line, and you can use Ctrl+V to toggle between Insert or Overstrike as you type over
any accidental errors within the command line. To execute a typed command line, press
Enter and the display in the panes will change accordingly.
9. Understanding DOS's naming of files or folders with long names
DOS Navigator displays folder names and file names in the heritage style of 8.3 characters,
as in 'filename.txt'. If a long folder name is encountered, like My Documents or Program
Files, the spaces are stripped out and the first six characters are then shown, followed by
a tilde (~) and a number. Hence MYDOCU~1 for My Documents, and PROGRA~1 for Program Files.
If you see a long name suffixed with ~2, ~3 etc., that means there are two (or more) folders
in that directory which share the same first six letters. For example, WINDOW~1 might
be short for the folder Windows Media Player and WINDOW~2 might be short for the folder Windows
Messaging. In these situations, to determine which folder is which is just a case of
examining the names of the files in each folder for clues.
10. To select multiple files for a group operation
To select several files, put the cursor on the first file and press Insert and it will be highlighted in yellow.
Put the cursor on cont. in RH col. |
|
(Tips cont. from LH col.)
the second file and press Insert to highlight that one as well, and so on. If you have mouse control, right-clicking on a file should produce the same effect. To
deselect a file, put the cursor on it again and press Insert or right-click on it. Use
the menu bar along the bottom of DOS Navigator's window to carry out operations like Copy or Delete on
selected files.
11. Warnings re Format and Delete commands
DOS is one of the most bombproof bits of software that was ever written (well done Mr. Gates, when
still only a lad!). However, some DOS commands actually behave like bombs and misuse of these options
(like formatting or editing the hard disk) could wreck your PC. In DOS Navigator, these
potentially harmful functions are all grouped under the 'Drive' drop-down menu - so use that particular menu only if you definitely know what you are trying to achieve. Otherwise stay out of there and you will not be at risk. Also, take care not to inadvertently delete any
system files, or important data files, because items deleted from DOS do not go in the Windows' Recycle
Bin, so items cannot be restored from there if deleted in error.
12. To run the tool in true DOS mode
There are at least three ways to open a true DOS session. We're only covering one here, which
applies only to computers which have a floppy disk drive, and which are set in the BIOS
to use the floppy drive as the first option for booting the computer. That will include
virtually all Windows 95, 98 & Me machines, and early XP machines (usually still FAT32), but not
modern XP or Vista machines (usually NTFS) in which the floppy drive has invariably been displaced by the likes of USB ports or card reader
bays and can be booted only from the hard disk or a recovery CD or USB key.
Assuming you have a FAT32 floppy-supporting PC, the first thing to do is to create a basic DOS startup
floppy disk. To do this, insert a blank disk in the floppy disk drive > open My Computer > right-click the floppy
drive icon > Format > XP users then choose 'Create an MS-DOS startup disk' or Win 98 users choose 'Copy system files only' > Start.
After the diskette has been prepared, close all open windows/programs. Leave the floppy disk
in place, then click Start > Shut Down > Win 98 users choose 'Restart in MS-DOS mode' > OK, whilst XP users choose Shut Down > OK.
After Windows XP has shut down, wait the customary 10 seconds (some say 30 secs with XP) to allow volatile memory to be
cleared before switching back on. After switching on, in all cases, the reboot will halt
at a typical black and white DOS screen showing a DOS prompt which will look something like the following...
A:\>
To change the prompt from the A drive to the C drive, type...
c:\ (that's the letter 'c', a colon and a backslash), then press the Enter key...
Now change directories to the one holding DOS Navigator by typing...
cd dosnavig (that's the letters 'cd', a space and dosnavig), then press the Enter key...
To run DOS Navigator, now type...
dn.com (that's the program's file name), press Enter, and the tool will open.
That is the only bit of syntax typing you will need to do - once DOS Navigator is open, it will do all the donkey work
for you after that.
Keep the basic startup disk somewhere safe as you never know, your computer may not boot one day -
in which case the disk will, at least, get you to a DOS prompt so you can take things from there.
13. To exit a true DOS session
At any black and white screen showing a DOS prompt, such as C:\DOSNAVIG> or C:\> or A:\>,
simply switch the computer off, remove any floppy disk, wait the customary 10 seconds, then switch back on.
The computer will boot up normally back into Windows. Note that if you accidentally do
something wrong when using DOS Navigator which causes the tool to freeze, you may have to switch
the computer off to escape. Don't worry about that, no harm will be done as you are still only at the
DOS level. Leave the boot floppy in if you want to return to DOS Navigator or remove the floppy if you want to boot to Windows. Wait 10 seconds
as usual before switching back on (and make that a habit for the rest of your life whenever you want
to switch a computer back on straight after shutting down).
14. To run the tool from a floppy disc
Although the DOS Navigator download is only 786KB, you will find, after unzipping, that it expands
to be just too big to fit on a single floppy disk. But that can be fixed with a little intervention. The tool's
files include a lot of obsolete widgets that nobody will ever use (like DOS desktop screensavers for goodness sake!).
So, if you would find a portable version of DOS Navigator useful, use Windows Explorer to put
a copy of the yellow folder called Dosnavig on your desktop > open the folder and delete all the yellow
subfolders you can see plus three files associated with a Russian translation. After that,
select all the files still remaining and move them onto an empty floppy disk. Double-clicking
the copy of dn.com on the floppy will cause the tool to open - in either a DOS box or true
DOS, as the case may be.
15. To add mouse control
If you have been running the tool in a Windows' floating DOS box (Windows 98 through XP), mouse
control should have been available automatically. However, if you run the tool in true
DOS (Windows 98 or Me), mouse control may not be available. Fortunately, there is a
cute workaround. By experimenting, we found that adding a DOS mouse driver to the folder
Dosnavig would cause mouse control to become available. In our case, we added a tiny (37KB) basic
Microsoft driver (see the file 'mouse.com' in Fig.1). Now, anytime we open the tool in
true DOS, all we have to do is press the Tab key to make the right-hand pane the active pane
> press the down arrow key to highlight the file mouse.com > and press Enter. The driver
loads invisibly and full mouse control becomes available. This works even if DOS Navigator
and the mouse driver are being run from copies on a floppy disk. A stroke of genius!
For your own use, you can download an even smaller DOS mouse driver from here. This one is
only 7KB. After downloading and unzipping, put the file in the Dosnavig folder. Clicking
the file will then grant you full mouse control of DOS Navigator. The driver is a freeware program that will drive a basic 2-button serial mouse in
true DOS... mouse.zip. |
|
Fig 1 (of 2) right
Fig 2
(of 2) right