Getting the most out of IE 9

Posted by on October 1, 2010 1 comment

Microsoft tried to make a comeback with Internet Explorer 7 & Internet Explorer 8 for Windows Vista & Windows 7 but the market share of Windows XP is too much to remove IE 6. New versions of IE did bring CSS & HTML enhancement to the software but a complete layout engine re-design was required for Internet Explorer to survive in the new era.

Today the browser market is very different compared to what it was at the beginning of this decade with Firefox, Google Chrome giving IE a very strong competition on Windows platform. Internet Explorer 9 is here is the beginning of GPU hardware accelerated web where a browser & websites are no longer just software & portals. They are now parts of our life & Web Applications/services.

Internet Explorer 9 with Quick Tabs open

Internet Explorer 9 beta 1 can be downloaded from the official website for Windows Vista & Windows 7. Windows XP is no longer supported.

Microsoft has also created demos to show the power of IE 9 & enhancements over the browser of competitors. Considering that more than any other vendor, Microsoft is able to better integrate IE 9 in Window, things couldn’t be better for regular Windows users for who IE is finally all what they were looking for.

This post is not about what is new in Internet Explorer 9, to know that you can visit here. This post is about how to get the most out of Internet Explorer 9. I am assuming that you are already familiar with the UI of IE 9. Well, there isn’t much of a UI anyway as IE 9 is very cleanly designed.

  • Get Quick Tabs back – Internet Explorer 7 had a very nice feature called Quick Tab which used to show you a tiled view of all your  open tabs when pressing the shortcut key Ctrl+Q. This feature is still there in IE 9  but hidden by default as Microsoft recommends to use the aero peak feature of Windows 7 to navigate between your tabs. To enable this feature back go to Options menu -> Internet Options -> General tab -> Tabs section & click on Settings. Now click on the checkbox for “Enable Quick Tabs”. Now restart your browser.
  • Internet Explorer supports Add-on but most of the old versions are not supported by IE 9 right now. However, you can edit your hosts file which will block all unwanted Ads not only in IE 9 but also in other browsers. You can download from the mvps.org file & install using the methods written there. Keep in mind that this will not remove the boxes or section where Ads appear, it will just prevent the Ad from loading at all.
  • Internet Explorer also supports blocking Ads using InPrivate filtering which is also available in IE 8. To go Options menu -> Manage Add-On. Click on “InPrivate Filtering” in the left hand column. Now, import this xml file. Restart your browser
  • To enabled ClearType for all Webpages by going to Options menu -> Internet Options -> Multimedia section & select the check box “Always use ClearType of HTML”.
  • Internet Explorer provides an option to load your own CSS file to change the look & feel of websites as you like. This can also be used to block Ads on websites such as Facebook. To load your own custom css file, first create a CSS file somewhere in which you write all your custom css styles. Now, go to Options menu -> Internet Options -> General tab -> Appearance section -> Click on Accessibility & select to browse for the CSS file. Now, next time when you will browse any webpage, it will have the new style attached. As an example, here is the CSS code which will hide all Ads from Facebook.

#ssponsor, .footer_ad, .banner_ad, .social_ad, .ad_capsule, .sidebar_ads, .adcolumn, .admarket_ad, .sidebar_item.sponsor, .emu_sponsor, .home_sponsor, .UIHomeBox_Sponsored { display: none !important; }

  • If you are like me, you have subscription to multiple Web services with multiple password. Although I prefer to use AiRoboform which is a paid solution, there is another equally good solution for IE named LastPass. It is an automatic password manager for IE9 which saves all your password data in your computer only.

These are just a few of the tips & tricks for enhancing the usability of IE 9. I will be writing more of these soon

How I use my new toy….I mean Nokia N79

Posted by on June 20, 2010 103 comments
This is to inform everyone that I have shifted to a Nokia N8 & I am no longer using my Nokia N79. If you need some help, kindly look into the comments & in most cases, your problem might have been discussed before too.

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Since I use my phone for everything, I like to customize it. So far here is the list of all the applications I am using. I won’t be needing anything beyond these I guess. Most of these applications are freeware.

1) Opera Mini – Although Webkit is inbuilt but Opera Mini is still better & faster then Webkit & most importantly it saves lots of bandwidth & money when using over Pay-per-KB usage model usually available with Indian GSM Carriers. When I need to browser websites with a desktop like experience I use Opera 10. I use the Official GMail App for checking my GMail, and also the inbuilt mail client to check mails when I need to download attachment, send attachment etc.

2) For text chatting I use Slick & for Video Chat or Voice Chat over Skype & Google Talk I use Fring

3) For personal expanse management I use Best Expanse. It costs $12.

4) For downloading torrent files in the phone itself over Wi-Fi I am using SymTorrent.

5) I found a great application called WordMobi for managing WordPress blogs. I can write new posts, moderate comments, Delete comments, & reply to comments. It lacks the best UI out there but better then visiting the Dashboard using the inbuilt browser which is very small for this task.

Word Mobi & some other applications require the Python Runtime for Symbian S60, however, installing Python runtime on Nokia N79 is tricky so I recommend either using the inbuilt Nokia App update to download the latest version or downloading Python runtime 1.9.6 fixed or above from Maemo Garage. Keep in mind that all python applications should be installed on the same storage  where the runtime is installed.

6) Although I convert videos to native H.264 AVC based MP4 file before copying to phone, I still have CorePlayer installed in case I have a DivX encoded video to play.

7) Since I was having trouble installing unsigned applications, I installed SignSis & registered at symbiansigned.com to get my own certificate & published ID for my phone’s IMEI. Now I can sign any application in my phone itself, for my phone only.

8 ) The file manager of Symbian OS is good enough for my needs but I have also installed Y-Browser, just in case I need it.

9) For task manager, I use Handy Taskman. It’s quite good & simple & takes over when you press the Symbian menu key for some time. It costs $15.

10) Since N79 already has inbuilt search, I use it to search for information anywhere I am either on GPRS or Wi-Fi. It support searching on multiple search engines but I prefer to use Google.

11) To upload images & videos to Facebook & Twitter, I use Furtiv. It allows me to upload from the inbuilt Share online app of Nokia

12) I use Screenshots for Symbian to capture screen shots of my Mobile phone’s screen. Its quite simple & easy to use. Just start it & press the camera key for sometime & it takes a picture & saves it in memory card under a folder by the name screenshots.

13) For watching YouTube videos I use the official YouTube app for Symbian OS which can be downloaded by going to m.Google.com from your Nokia phone’s inbuilt browser.

14) If you want to use a picture with your contact which you will see when they call or you call then use Full screen caller.

You need to have good resolution pictures of all your contact if you want to use them. The screen resolution of N79 is 240X320 so ideal size which I have found for the picture is 120X160 pixel. Convert your contact’s picture to this dimension then use Nokia Ovi suite to attach the pic to a contact. On the next sync, the edited contacts will have the picture associated when they call.

15) When it comes to video conversion I use MediaShow Espresso on my PC to convert video with the following settings…

Video size = Keep the aspect ratio same, but reduce the size to 320X240. 16:9 Videos look contracted when converted to 4:3.

Video bit rate should be 384 kbps, H.264 AVC, keep the frame rate as original.

Audio = 128 kbps MP4 unless the source is having lower bit rate.

16) For Music sync, I simply use Windows Media Player which automatically syncs the song to the phone when connected in Media transfer mode.

17) Using Vectir I am able control my PC over a Bluetooth connection & control Windows Media Player, Media centre, Desktop etc. There is no need to buy a Media Centre remote now.

18) There is a great handy software called JoikuSpot Premium using which we can connect a PC to 3G internet of a Mobile phone. JoikuSpot turns your phone to a secure mobile WLAN Hotspot. No need for USB dongles, cables or Bluetooth. The light version is pretty much useless so premium is all you should buy if this is what you need. However, if you have Nokia Ovi Suite, you can also tether the connection.

Get more out of Windows Live Essentials : Photo Gallery

Posted by on June 6, 2010 2 comments

I have been using ACDSee for all my lite image editing tasks & management of over 4000 pictures since 2006, when I got my first camera Phone. But, the need for ACDSee reduced once I moved to Windows 7 with an evolved version of Microsoft Paint, a simple yet effective & good enough tool. I removed ACDSee as for my heavy Image editing tasks I already use Photoshop & for image management I now use Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Windows 7 has a simple Picture Viewer application inbuilt which supports basic image formats like JPG & PNG. Nearly four years ago, Windows Vista introduced a modern and extensible imaging framework called Windows Imaging Component (WIC). WIC made it possible for 3rd parties to add support for additional image formats to the operating system, complete with thumbnail views in Explorer, previews and slideshow in Windows Photo Gallery / Photo Viewer and on Window 7 Home Premium and Ultimate, also in Windows Media Centre.

Since I moved from ACDSee to Windows Live Photo Gallery for all my image management needs I was missing the ability to preview Photoshop PSD files. With ACDSee, such codec was already available, but there is no such codec available for Windows from Adobe due to which we cannot preview PSD files in Windows without having Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Bridge.

Preview helps, as most of the time I don’t want to edit the images, I just want to see which PSD is for what. I want a small preview, that’s all. If you have Photoshop installed then by default the PSD files will open in it which takes time to open such a big application & opening it just for a 10 second preview is again, useless. Thankfully, there is a way.

I found that Microsoft Expression Design 3 has the ability to import Photoshop PSD files in it, which means it has a compatible decoder codec. By using a simple trick you can enable preview of PSD files in Windows Explorer & Windows Photo Gallery.

  1. Expression Design 3 comes with a compatible PSD Decoder codec called PSDCodec.dll which can be found in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Common\Imaging\3.0.269.0
  2. If you do not have expression blend then just download the trial from here. Then Using 7-Zip, open ‘Blend_Trial_en.exe’ and in the ‘Setup’ subfolder, open ‘BlImp.cab’ then extract ‘PSDCodec.dll’. You can also download the codec from my skydrive.
  3. Keep the codec file somewhere safe in your PC. I recommend keeping in C:\program files\Codecs\
  4. Now register this dll by going to command prompt with Admin rights & run command “regsvr32 C:\Program Files\Microsoft Expression\Common\Imaging\3.0.269.0\PSDCodec.dll”. The file path can depend on your installation of Expression Design.
  5. Right click on any PSD file & click on “Open with –> Windows Live Photo Gallery” & check the box below the application selection which says “Always use the selected program to open file of this type”.
  6. Now, when you will double click on the PSD file, it will open with Photo Gallery app & you will also be able to see each layer of the PSD file individually.

If you want even more codec support, consider buying FastPictureViewer Codec Pack 2.1R2

Now, that was just one trick. These days, people use many social networking services like Facebook & Twitter. How about uploading images to Facebook directly using Live Photo Gallery application? You can do that by using Live upload to Facebook. Once you install this plug-in, you will be able to upload to Facebook, by clicking on Publish in the toolbar & then “Live Upload to Facebook”. You will need to authenticate your account though which is a requirement of using Facebook.

ixEdit : jQuery for Dummies

Posted by on April 13, 2010 4 comments

Recently, with the help of my fellow ex-SlideShare buddy Sri Prasanna, I started learning bit of JavaScript for my interaction design needs. JavaScript has always fascinated me & considering in today’s time all the browser vendors out there are trying to make JavaScript compiling as fast as possible, combined with the advent & arrival of HTML5… JavaScript is sure to take on the world.

However, I don’t know JS programming, though I have been reading by the tutorials at Eloquent JavaScript as suggested by Prasanna, but I was still looking for something which will let me do my interaction design, without going into coding. This is where ixEdit hails.

 

ixEdit is a visual JS coding tool. It comes as a JavaScript file package only combined with CSS & works under your browser. You can simply add 2 lines of code to your HTML & rapidly start to design stuff in the browser itself with real time results.

It uses Google Gears to store the changes & JS as you are working, on your local computer only as long as the filename or browser doesn’t changes. This I hope will be changed to HTML5’s “File” feature for local storage.

The best part is, you can make all the interaction, events you want & then just deploy them at which ixEdit will give JS code which you can either put in your HTML file itself or modify to include in a separate JS file.

Vectir : The only remote control you will need

Posted by on February 3, 2010 1 comment

When I had my old Sony Ericsson K750i  it had a feature using which I could control Windows Media Player or any other compatible media player using my phone over Bluetooth. It was quite a useful feature as I didn’t need to buy a Windows Media Centre remote to control the media players. Besides, its just one less device to deal with as K750i used to do it all.

After buying my Nokia N79, I was missing this feature a lot & was looking desperately for some application which could give me this or similar feature. I tried various application for my N79 but either some of them refused to connect or just didn’t work. Few days ago I tried Vectir & to my surprise, it worked flawlessly with my N79 & Windows  7.

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Vectir works by installing the application on your system  & installing a small Java based app on your mobile phone. All you have to do is to start the application on your PC and then start the application on your phone. Once the Phone app has started, it will search for your computer, after which you can connect either automatically or if Bluetooth serial port service is not installed in the computer then by setting a COM Port manually.

It also supports connecting via WiFi but this I wasn’t able to test as I don’t have a WiFi card in my desktop.

Once configured, you can also change the keypad shortcuts to your liking. This I liked as now I have almost same keypad shortcuts for both Windows Media Player & Media Centre.

What I like about Vectir is that it doesn’t come in your way when using. You just start the application on your computer & it can continue to work in the background. I would have appreciated if it could run as a service, as once configured, we don’t need to see the configuration part again.

Since Vectir is still quite new & considering Windows 7 was jut released, I hope the developers do decide to include some features like jumplist support in future as the entire right click menu of Vectir tray icon can come in a jumplist.

A more native UI to Windows 7 would also be appreciated though its not as important currently because once running, users will hardly see it again as it runs completely transparent in your system. The entire UI of Vectir is made in WPF & being a .net application, not only it is fast but also secure & efficient on RAM.

Currently Vectir runs with any mobile phone supporting Java based apps whether it is normal keypad based or Touch Screen. It is one app which you should sure try before buying a Media Centre remote for your PC.

You can download a trial and check how good it works for you.

TeamViewer 5 : Better & easier than Windows Remote Desktop

Posted by on January 29, 2010 7 comments

I was in need of a software using which I can access my family’s laptop at home in Lucknow over the internet to make changes or do regular maintenance. Windows has such a solution called Windows Remote Desktop, but frankly, I never understood it to configure or maybe I just never paid attention.

Few days ago, I was talking to my friend Mayank Dwivedi who is working with Microsoft Desktop support team. He told me about TeamViewer saying its easier & no-nonsense solution for what I am looking for, so today I tried it and he was correct, it is indeed good solution.

TeamViewer 5 is available free for home & personal use on both Windows & Mac OS. I haven’t tested it on Linux though using Wine.  It is much easier to use compared to something else free like UltraVNC

When you start TeamViewer app, you have an option whether to install it or run as you do not even need to install it, just run it directly. Once started, it will give you the choice depending on whether you want to connect to another PC/Mac running TeamViewer or whether you are waiting for someone to connect to your PC & work as shown in the screenshot above.

When I have to connect to the laptop at home,  all I do is tell someone there to turn on the PC & start TeamViewer. They don’t even have to install as they can also use TeamViewer Quick Setup which runs without installation. Then, they tell me the ID shown there & password which I enter in my TeamViewer & I connect to that PC instantly.

I configured TeamViewer here on my PC & exported the settings, mailed it to my sister & now TeamViewer is also configured there too so all I have to do is to start my TeamViewer here & start working on that PC. It also gives me the power to remotely reboot & login to the other PC. It also allows me to transfer files back & forth between both the computers or setup a VPN

I don’t know about the server or headless host controlling part, but as far as simply connecting to your other computers are concerned, TeamViewer free is a good solution.

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