Monday, October 4, 2021

Don't Be Afraid to Push Buttons or Click Icons

Saturday evening I returned from visiting my son and his family in Ohio. He recently purchased his home and it was built about 100 years ago. The original seller did an excellent job fixing it up and ensuring my son did not get stuck with problems. The house has a lot of character and a number of interesting features. One that stuck out on this last trip is the sturdy front door. The front doorknob has a nice feature that when you pull it shut behind you, it locks automatically like many hotel rooms. My son made sure to warn me not to close the front door or I would have to walk around to the back door to get back in the house.

Towards the end of our trip, my son was examining his front-door latch and noticed 2 buttons. One was depressed and the other flush with the side of the door. Out of curiosity, he pushed the flush one in and the other popped out so it was now flush with the door. It also caused the outside doorknob to open the door even when it was pulled shut. Simply by playing with the buttons my son figured out how to switch between auto-lock and an unlocked front door.

I had a similar experience with some computer software recently. I saw some icons and buttons but didn't know what they did. Instead of remaining ignorant, I played with them and discovered some functionality I needed. I now use those buttons all the time and they make my work significantly easier.

The moral of the story is to not be afraid to try new things on your computer and in your software. If you don't know what something does, try it out, after you have saved your work. Rarely will it do something that is irreversible. Yes you may have to play around if you find yourself in an unfamiliar place but you will almost always be able to undo any negative effects.

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