look, mum, no hands!

Category: Navigating Windows XP

I found that these default Windows/Office settings get in the way of using Dragon smoothly:

"Condensed" menus in Office programs
When I say "File" in Microsoft Word, it's much easier if i can see all of the options on the file menu straight away.
The fix: follow these instructions.

Long start menu shortcut names in Office 2003
I find I am not able to say "start Microsoft Word". Instead, I have to say "start Microsoft Office Word 2003".
The fix: navigate to the start menu shortcuts for office 2003 programs. On my computer, this is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\Microsoft Office. Rename each program shortcut to a short, unique name you'll remember. I renamed mine as "Word", "Excel", etc.

The ever-growing and shrinking system tray on the lower right
Perhaps this is just a personal preference, but I wanted to show all taskbar icons at all times (see step 17 of this article for instructions). Then I could easily access ones I did use, and delete unwanted icons. Doing so reduces the number of programs that launch on start-up. Or rather, reducing the list of start-up programs reduces the number of icons in the system tray.

By default Windows Explorer shows files and folders in tile view, and does not show hidden files
I like to view files as a list and view hidden files by default.

By default .rtf files created in Dragon pad will open in Word
The fix: it doesn't seem possible to associate the .rtf file type with Dragon pad. But one compromise is to select a .RTF file and associate it with WordPad.

Although not strictly a Windows setting, while doing the above I found it useful to create a Vocola command for inserting curly quotes, with thanks to the authors of this forum post.