Additional Settings: Using Tweak UI
There are still some additional settings we want to change. While most of these settings can be changed by altering their values in the Windows registry, I wouldn't recommend that approach. Luckily, some of these settings can be altered by using the Tweak UI Powertoy from Microsoft. It's quite small, easy and best of all, free.There are three areas we're going to change with Tweak UI: Explorer and Taskbar. Left click on the 'Taskbar' list and go to the 'Grouping' sub item. By default, Windows XP will group the windows of the same application but with different documents. For those familiar with older versions of Windows, this feature acts much like the 'Window' menu in the menubar. I'd recommend setting the 'Group my application with at least..." to 2 items. This way, you won't run out of taskbar space for switching applications, but you could still switch documents quickly (one left click on the grouped application on the taskbar, another to select the document).
Open the 'Explorer' item, you'll notice there's quite a few settings here. What we want to change is the file search options, you'll find it in the bottom of the list. Check 'Use Classic Search' for both Explorer and Internet Explorer. Sure, this means we won't be using the search assistant, but believe me, this will make your file searching easier. Just enter (part of) the filename, where to look and left click on the 'Search Now' button. With the search assistant, you'll have to go through several menus, since Microsoft decided to integrate file searching with Internet and address book search. You can still do this using the 'Classic Search' mode, just click on the bottom left to bring up the related search options. For those of you who wants their shortcut names to be shorter, you can check off the 'Prefix Shortcut to..." here. This will minimize icon clutter due to long filenames. You could still see which icons are shortcut or files by looking at the small arrow on the bottom left of the icon.
As you can see, Tweak UI also allows you to change numerous other settings. It's really a matter of personal preference, so choose the settings that works best for you. Try it one at a time and see how it feels like, that way you could easily pick the ones that's good and leave off the ones that's not.
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