I’ve just had a short holiday… and it led to discovering a couple of problems, one with typing on tablets and one with Windows 10. And I suspect I’m not the only one with either of them…
How to look at photos easily in Windows 10
Since time immemorial (well, actually since 1995 I think, which is hardly time immemorial but “since 1995” doesn’t sound so good) you’ve been able to put your digital photos onto a Windows PC and easily flick through them on screen.
There are various programs to do this but I use the one built into Windows. You just find the photos (in My Pictures or wherever you copied them to from your camera), double click on the first one, look at it and then either press the right cursor arrow key or click the right arrow beneath the photo to go to the next photo.
Then keep going until you’ve looked at them all.
Simple enough. But Microsoft have added a new, fancy photo viewer to Windows 10. And when I got back from a few days away and put my photos on the computer and started to look through them, I discovered this doesn’t work – so I couldn’t easily flick through the photos of Alastair and Edward standing next to “Lightening McQueen” or racing Mum and Dad along Mount Batten pier.
Why, I’ve no idea. It seems a pretty obvious feature to keep. Having to go back to the folder of photos and double click on the next one each time you want to look at the next photo seems a bit clumsy… a bit of a pain in the neck.
Luckily , they haven’t actually taken away the old photo viewer (at least not if you upgraded to Windows 10, even from a new PC) – just hidden it.
So if you (like me) use this way to look at your digital photos on screen, here’s what you need to do. Instead or double clicking on the first photo to look at it, right click on it instead. Then choose “Open with…” then choose “Windows Photo Viewer”.
That’ll display it in the old photo viewer and you can use the right cursor to skip to the next photo as before.
(Alastair won the race – but then, he knew we were off to the pub for lunch, so he had a strong motivation)
Problems with typing on screen on a tablet – a solution I’m not very good at
While I was away from home for a few days, I still wanted to check my email now and then. And I’d taken an iPad with me so I could log into webmail – checking my email on the email company’s webpage.
But I had a problem that’s quite common when you’re typing something into a webpage on a tablet.
I’d started typing in my email password and part way through the keyboard would disappear and before I knew it, instead of typing the next letter in my password, I’d tapped an advert on the webpage and was taken to their promotional page.
It kept happening – and the same thing can happen on any webpages you type stuff into, not just when you’re typing your password into a webmail page.
What’s going on is that I’d started typing the password before the page had finished loading. And when the next bit finished loading, it became the “live” bit of the page. And since it didn’t need the keyboard, it made it disappear – at which point I tapped on an advert for handbags or whatever instead of the next letter.
The solution is simple (but I find it hard) – simply wait for a few more seconds after the page appears for all the parts of it to finish loading. Just waiting five or ten seconds is plenty. Then you can tap in the password box and type it in without the keyboard randomly disappearing as you type.
As I say, I find it hard, not being blessed with a huge supply of patience. But it is less frustrating than being taken to promotional webpages all about handbags, shoes or pet insurance…
I find with the new Photo app that I can use the left and right keys to go through all the photos in a file. One benefit is that it will also view GIF files. The problem for me is that it organises photos by date and I don’t want that because all mine are organised by subject and I haven’t found any way to find the folder structure from Photos.
The moving iPad screens are a problem. If you stop typing to refer to something else there is no point in trying to select the input box because the screen can move anywhere and something else can be selected and all the work lost. My method is to touch and hold a “safe” area of the screen first then it is possible to go back to the input box.
How to look at photos easily in windows 10 (reference to Tim’s newsletter of today – 07/09/15)
Here is a solution to the problem:
Decide which app / program you feel comfortable using e.g.
Windows Photo Viewer, Photo Gallery, Photos etc…
I am going to use ‘Windows Photo Viewer’ in my example.
Type ‘default programs’ in the Cortana search box (Bottom left of task bar)
Click on ‘Default Programs’ (entry under Best match)
Click on ‘Set your default programs’ to produce list of all the programs.
Scroll the list until you find ‘Windows Photo Viewer’
Click on ‘Windows photo Viewer’
Click on ‘Set this program as default’
Click Ok
Close the window
To view your photos using ‘Windows Photo Viewer’ as the default program:
You just find the photos (in My pictures) or wherever you copied them to from your camera). double click on the first one, look at it and then either press the right cursor arrow key or click the right arrow beneath the photo to go the next photo.
If you prefer a different program, replace ‘Windows Photo Viewer’ in the above instruction with your choice of program e.g PHOTOS
Hope you find this helpful.
Using Microsoft Edge to reply does not work. No error messages and the reply goes in a black hole. Used google chrome to reply.
testing reply from edge after update
Hello – thanks for letting me know.
It turned out for some reason Akismet (the software we use to delete spam comments – we get hundreds every day) was marking any comments made on Edge as spam and getting rid of them. I’ve taught it the error of its ways now, so Edge should work properly with it now.
Tim
Thank you Tim for your instructions of how to look at photos in Windows 10, they also work for Windows 8.1 which makes life easier.