BASIC COMPUTER SKILLS

NEEDED FOR FS2000

The ability to read is a given, IF, you give yourself the time to read this and to read help files and the readme.txt that come with 99.9% of the Fs2000 add ons.

OPEN AND CLOSE...files and folders, by left clicking with mouse button with pointer over the file or folder icon, to close click on the x in the upper right corner, if a pop up window appears telling you this file has changed and asking if you would like to save the changes, you must then decide what action to take, if you deliberately changed that file and are happy with those changes, then choose ok, if you did not want to make any changes, then select no. You may also close some files by choosing ok, or cancel, ok will accept any changes, cancel will close the file or folder with no changes.

when ever in doubt about what is going to happen after opening a file, whether it be something that allows you to change a preference setting or a text file you can always back out with no harm by closing with the cancel button.

SAVE AND SAVE AS...found on the top menu bar by clicking on file, and choosing one or the other by left clicking, save is used to save work in progress, such as this text, when you select it there will usually be no apparent change, but it will save your progress up to the point you are currently at, save as, when selected will open a pop up window asking for instructions from you as to where you want to save the current file, and what type file you would like to save it as, of the two, where, is the most important,again, usually the type file already in the lower part of the pop up window will be correct...making a habit out of reading the pop up windows completely...even if you don't understand them will go along way towards learning faster and avoiding some self-inflicted wounds.

DRAG AND DROP...by left clicking on a folder or file and holding mouse button down while moving the folder or file to a desired location, whether it be another spot on the desk top or to a differeent folder, then releasing the button, thereby placing that folder or file exactly where you wanted it.

CUT AND PASTE...by first highlighting the text, by holding left mouse button down, moving the cursor over the desired text, then hitting crtl key and the c key, then placing the cursor in another position with in that window or in a different window, and then hitting the crtl key and the v key. This, by the way works for almost any highlighted or selected material...an even easier way is after highlighting, right click, select copy from the pop up box by left clicking on it, then left click where you want to place the the copied material and then right clicking, and choosing paste.

DELETE...right click on any file or folder and choose the delete option from the pop up menu, by left clicking on that choice.

RENAME...right click on any file or folder and choose rename from the pop up menu, by left clicking on that choice, the name of that file or folder will then be highlighted, you can either type in a completely new name ,or, left click with mouse pointer in the name of the file or folder box, thereby placing the cursor at that point, and then adding or deleting letters or numbers, as the case maybe... this works... for moving by dragging and dropping, any.exe files by adding a letter to the exe extension ie: any.Pexe you must rename the file back to any.exe to use it from it's new location...this will also serve to make a back up file for any file or folder you wish to copy to the same folder...but you must do the rename step first.

WINDOWS EXPLORER...you can usually find this application by left clicking on the start button and looking through the list that appears above the first line. When it opens you will see two panes, they maybe either vertical or horizontal depending on how you have your windows set up, that is unimportant , however the top pane will correspond to the left pane in this discussion. On the left you will see a few icons with + signs, left click on any one of them and it will expand, quite possibly with more folders with + signs, these same folders may also appear in the right pane. We are for the moment concerned with the ones on the left, keep expanding folders till you see the Fs2000 folder, use the left scroll bar if necessary, left click on that folder, more folders will appear on the right along with numerous files. Again concerning ourselves with the left pane, look down the list till you see aircraft, left click on the + sign, you will see the airplane folders you have in Fs2000. Left click on any airplane folder + sign, and you will see four folders called, model, panel, sound, and texture.

at this point I refer you to Tip# 1..."installing aircraft"...continuing...as you can see, the advantage of using windows explorer over my computer is that all folders and files are visable and accessable with in one window. You can now use drag and drop to move folders from one to another.

DOWNLOADING...if you have never downloaded a file before, the most important part is being able to find the file once it is on your computer, as the download process begins you will get a pop up window asking what do you want to do, run from current location, or download and save, choose download and save, then another pop up will ask ,where do you want to save it to, save it to some place you can find it...again read tip# 1 "installing aircraft" it will help you choose a location for saving your downloads.

WINZIP...this is a must have program for any downloading of add on's, it comes with a comprehensive tutorial and an abundant help file...read it.

LAST...if you have read this far then you are either saying "I knew all this and this dummy didn't tell me anything new and he left out a bunch of stuff that should have been here!" in which case you should have wrote this...but since you didn't, please read just a little farther, the end is in sight...or you are saying "I still don't get it, this is Chineese!" in which case this part is probably going to be the most important for you...NEVER BE AFRAID TO CLICK on something anywhere on any screen LEFT CLICK...RIGHT CLICK...click on menu bars...click on blank windows...go exploring...you can always back away from something by using CANCEL...but most IMPORTANTLY...CLICK on the help files anytime you don't understand something or even if you think you do...at the very least you will learn that you already knew THAT.....................Best Regards....Sierra Hotel 130