Learn the language. Please?

I love to help people with their tech issues. I really do. But the most frustrating part of the job is often just trying to figure out exactly what's wrong, or what's being asked, because the user can't communicate clearly.   Today's gadgets are wonderful tools and can open up whole new areas of fun and learning. But you've got to put in some work if you expect your friends to help you out when you're in trouble. It's just like learning a few words of Spanish before you get on that bus that's going to take you into the backcountry in Mexico. You don't need to know any Spanish but you'll be glad you do if there's a problem.

The days are long gone when you could pretend you didn't know what a mouse was and people thought it was cute. It's time to cram some basic terminology into your brain.

Desktop - The word that people use for what you see on the computer screen when there are no programs running. It makes no difference that it doesn't particularly resemble the top of any desk  you're familiar with. That's what it's called. Live with it. There are usually icons on the desktop that you click on to open the programs. As with real desktops some are messier than others.

Browser - The program that you use to access the internet. There are quite a few options:  Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and others. You need to know which one you have. You should see the name of the program in the upper-left hand corner of the window when you have the browser open.

Address Bar - The area where you type in a URL (aka the web address) to get to a website. It is at the top of the browser window, but looks slightly different in every program.

URL - the address of a website - amazon.com is a URL

Search Bar - Most current browsers have an area to the right of the Address Bar where you can do a quick web search without going to a separate website. For example, regardless of what page you are currently looking at you could type search terms into the Search Bar and get taken directly to a Google results page. The Google Chrome browser goes one step further and lets you do searches by just typing in your search terms in the Address Bar.

Window - The rectangular area that pops up when you open a program that lets you work within that program. For example, if you open up the Word program a window will pop open so you can create a document. If you open up your web browser program (Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc.) a window will pop open that lets you go to web sites by typing in a URL . Windows can be resized and also moved around on the screen. That lets you look at more than one thing on your desktop at a time and you can bounce between the different windows and even copy text and images from one to another.