PATH  NAMES  EXPLAINED

You may of noticed that sometimes a window's Address Bar is filled with Text seperated by right-arrows The, combined, text is known as the Path Name and the Edit Box surrounding it is part of the Address Bar. It is called the Address Bar because its edit box allows you to type the name of an Internet Address (i.e. www.google.com) inside it and also because it can display a Path Name. A Path Name is the path (road or address) used to find a folder or file.


Fig 1.0  The path name for the Important Web Links.txt file is Computer Local Disk (C:) Important

With the above example, if you wanted to find/use the text file called Important Web Links.txt you would begin by going into the COMPUTER (root) folder, by either double clicking on its desktop icon or by clicking on its Start Menu menu-item (icon).

 
Fig 1.1  Double Click on the COMPUTER desktop icon
 
Fig 1.2  Click on the COMPUTER Start Menu menu-item (icon)

The COMPUTER folder is the root folder that displays Removable Devices such as a Floppy Disk Drive, a Flash Disk, a Digital Camera as well as the Hard Drive. When you click, or double-click, on the COMPUTER icon it opens the Computer folder which then displays the kind of Removable Devices as mentioned above in its display area (Fig 1.3 below).


Fig 1.3  Inside the COMPUTER folder

If you look at the Computer folder's Address Bar you will notice its edit box is displaying the current Path Name, which is Computer . Clicking on the first means you can then select a different main folder (i.e the Recycle Bin or Network) from the main folder Computer (Fig 1.4) and clicking on the second means you can select a, removable, device (Fig 1.5). For this example though you need to either click on the LOCAL DISK (C:) menu-item from the Address Bar (Fig 1.5) or double click on the LOCAL DISK (C:) icon inside the Computer folder (Fig 1.3 above). Both methods will take you inside the LOCAL DISK (C:) folder, which is the Hard Drive folder.

 
Fig 1.4  Click on the and then select a main folder
 
Fig 1.5  Click on the and then select a, removable, device

Once you are inside the LOCAL DISK (C:) folder the Path Name (Address Bar's edit box) will change to acknowledge that you are inside the LOCAL DISK (C:) folder.


Fig 1.6  Inside the LOCAL DISK (C:) folder

The last thing to do is locate the IMPORTANT sub-folder. When you have found it either double click on its yellow-folder icon inside the LOCAL DISK (C:) folder (Fig 1.7) or click on its IMPORTANT menu-item from the Address Bar (Fig 1.8) to go inside the IMPORTANT sub-folder. From there you can see the text file Important Web Links.txt, as shown in Fig 1.0 above.

 
Fig 1.7  Double click on the IMPORTANT yellow-folder icon
 
Fig 1.8  Click on the and then select the IMPORTANT menu-item

It is good to know about Path Names because, with the address bar having an edit box, it means you can type in your own path names or use the address bar's drop-down menu to select a different path name.


Fig 1.9  Choose a different Path Name by clicking on the address bar's drop-down menu

In Fig 1.9 above I clicked on the menu-item named A:\ which then opened the Floppy Disk Drive folder (Fig 1.10 below) and changed the path name to Computer Floppy Disk Drive (A:). A is the letter assigned to the Floppy Disk Drive - Drives always have a : attached to their letter. The \ in the menu-item is the written form, as opposed to the clickable form, of using a path name. It means a sub-folder name can be typed after the \ (see Fig 1.13 below).


Fig 1.10  From here, there are three ways in which to open the MY WEDDING sub-folder.

With the Floppy Disk Drive (A:) folder open I now have three ways in which to open the sub-folder MY WEDDING. The first way is to double click on the MY WEDDING sub-folder (Fig 1.11). The second way is to select the MY WEDDING menu-item that appears from clicking on the drop-down menu of Floppy Disk Drive (A:) (Fig 1.12). And the third way is to click inside the Address Bar's edit box (after the path name), Type the words My Wedding (Fig 1.13) and then press the ENTER keyboard key (or click on the blue right-arrow button at the end of the address bar).

 
Fig 1.11  Double click on the MY WEDDING icon
 
Fig 1.12  Click on the MY WEDDING menu-item



Fig 1.13  Type MY WEDDING after A:\

After opening the MY WEDDING sub-folder I then double clicked on the Wedding Plans.docx file to open/view it (Fig 1.14).

In Fig 1.13 the written form of a path name is used - A:\My Wedding. With written form you seperate each folder, main or sub, with a \. So if you see this clickable form of a path name COMPUTER LOCAL DISK (C:) Users Public for example and want to write it down you should write it down as C:\Users\Public. You do not normally write COMPUTER in the written form but you can if you want to, as Computer\C:\Users\Public. Both forms means the same thing - You are using the Public sub-folder which is inside the Users sub-folder. In turn, the Users sub-folder is inside the C (Hard Drive) folder. You know C is a Drive because it is followed by a :  The first \ means the folder after C: is a sub-folder. In this example the Users sub-folder. Likewise, the second \ means you are inside a second generation of sub-folder. So in this example Public is a sub-sub-folder. Remember. Each sub-folder is a folder in its own right but it also has its level in the folder hierarchy.


Fig 1.14  Double click on a Microsoft Word 2007 file to open/view it

To get out of a sub-folder you can either click on the backwards button or from the Address Bar click on a previous folder's name.

Apart from Path Names, you may sometimes hear people tell you File, Open. File, Save. And so on. In Books, Magazines and Internet Webpages you may see written File>>Open. File>>Save. And so on. These are all telling you the same thing - Click on the File menu and then select the Open (or Save and so on) menu-item. It is a kind of short-hand. As you use the computer more and read more computer books, magazines and webpages you will (if you like it or not!) pick up the short-hand jargon. Just the same as mobile phones - You might start texting your friends with "Hello. How are you?", but sooner or later you will be texting "Hi. How R U?".



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