Exposé

Exposé is a graphical desktop feature proprietary to Macintosh. In Mac OS X, users can click the left or right button on a mighty mouse (the mouse that comes with a Mac standard) and all active windows will be displayed where the user can see them clearly. Then, a user can select the window they want by hovering over it and pushing left or right on the mouse. This feature is comparable to Windows AERO 3D flip in Vista; only Mac’s Exposé offers customization in the system preferences menu in OS X.

Written by Clio

External Commands

External commands are commands in DOS that don’t reside in the command.com file. They are less frequently used and therefore not loaded right into RAM at start up. Commands such as edit, tracert, batch files, and executable files are example of external commands.

Written by Clio

Internal Commands

Internal commands are commands in DOS that are apart of the command.com file. Internal commands are loaded into RAM at start up for faster, more frequent use. An example of an internal command would be dir, cd, and copy. These are all commonly used commands within the DOS operating system.

Written by Clio

ASCII

ASCII is an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information Interchange. Since computers only understand binary language (i.e: 0’s and 1’s), numbers are represented for English letters. Almost all programs such as word processing programs store data in this format to allow easy transfer of this data between other programs and computers.

Each English character makes up about 7 bits with some exceptions (Note: 8 bits = 1 btye). Other characters such as international characters and mathematical symbols make up more than 7 bits for example.

Written by Clio

Command Shell

The command shell is an universal operating system term. It executes operating system commands. The two types of command shells are the Graphical User Interface (GUI) and the Command Line Interface (CLI).

An example of the Vista GUI command shell for example is Windows Explorer. It allows for file management, searching, and associating between file types. Mac OS X’s Finder would also be the comparable command shell to Vista. The CLI command shell in Windows would be Command Prompt (DOS), and Terminal would be the CLI command shell in Mac OS.

Written by Clio

Shell

The shell is a universal operating system term. It is the outer-most layer of a program. It’s both an interface and interpreter for application and system software.

The shell is not to be confused with the kernel: the first part of the OS loaded into RAM.

Written by Clio

AERO

AERO is an acronym in Windows Vista. It stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open. It refers to the graphical enhancements in Vista, such as the transparent effects and Windows 3D Flip. AERO is included in the premium versions of Windows Visa (such as Home Premium), not Basic.

Written by Clio

Kernel

The kernel is a universal operating system term. It is the first part of the operating system loaded into RAM at start-up and stays there while the computer is turned on. The operating system loads into an isolated area of RAM known as Kernel space.

There are several different types of Kernels. A monolithic kernel includes all of an operating systems core functions, but can take up more space. An example would be Linux. Other kernels includes a Microkernel (Ex: Mac OS X) and a Hybrid kernel (Ex: Windows Vista).

The kernel is not to be confused with the shell: the outer-most layer of a program

Written by Clio

The Dock

The Dock is a GUI metaphor proprietary to Macintosh. The Dock contains shortcut icons to programs and applications.. At the far left of the Dock is the Finder which can’t be moved, and at the far right is the Trash which also can’t be moved.

Users can add and remove (or “hide”) programs from the Applications menu in the Finder by using the “drag and drop” method. The Dock itself can also be customized in System Preferences.

Written by Clio

File Naming Rules

Prior to Windows 95, files were limited to the 8.3 format, or short file names. This meant a file could be 8 characters long with a 3 digit extension. For example: letter1.doc. No special characters were permitted with this naming rule.

The present-day file naming rules allow up to 215 characters. In addition, spaces in file names as well as characters such as: +, ; =, [, and ] are permitted. However /,\,:, *,?,>,< , and | are not permitted as they have other core functions with the operating systems.

Folder naming are rules the same as file naming rules minus the extension.

Written by Clio