Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 13, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

There’s an application that I’ve been using for years that has saved me a lot of time and trouble. It’s a Windows application called Sizer, and it is completely free and extremely small in size. Those of you who have installation-phobia can rest easy knowing that there is a no-install version available.

Sizer doesn’t require much of an explanation in order for you to start using it. Basically it will let you resize a window to a set of predefined dimensions. There are plenty of applications out there in the wild that do almost the same thing, but there are some features that really make Sizer stand out from the crowd.

Once you have Sizer running there are several different ways you can use it to precisely resize a window:

• Shortcut – Hold down the Control key while resizing a window to have it snap to an invisible grid. By default the grid is set to 10 pixels, but you can adjust that number in the configuration.
• Tooltip – When you’re resizing a window you’ll see a little tooltip appear by your mouse that tells you the current dimensions.
  
• Menu – When your mouse turns into the resizing arrow (the double-ended arrow) you can right-click to see a menu of predefined sizes. You can customize the options that show up in the menu, and we’ll demonstrate how to do that in just a minute.
  
• Titlebar – Another way to access the menu is by right-clicking somewhere on the titlebar for the window. There will be a resize/reposition menu which will expand to show your predefined sizes.
  

Now that you know how to use Sizer lets take a look at how you can configure it. If you right-click on the System Tray icon you can open up the configuration screen to change some of the settings. This is where you can add or remove predefined resizing options from the menu:

You’ll also notice that for each menu item you create you can adjust the positioning of the window. For example, you can have a window resized to 640×480 pixels and centered on the screen! The “Move to” drop down menu will let you choose just about any corner of side of the screen, or you can specify a custom position in terms of pixels.

Towards the bottom of the configuration window is a box where you can enter in the “snap size.” I talked about this earlier where you can hold down the Control key when resizing a window to have it snap to an invisible grid. The larger the number you enter in this box will cause the grid to be less precise.

Sizer is a relatively simple application in terms of how it works, but if you’re constantly resizing windows this can become a huge time saver. Jump on over and give it a whirl if you’re a Windows user.

Note: The author of the application put a note on the site that Sizer has some issues under Windows Vista, but when I was testing it everything worked perfectly. I used the no-install version that was available which might be the reason why I didn’t run into any problems.

Download Sizer

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on March 08, 2010 by CyberNet.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about. Don’t forget to send in your own tips, or just leave a comment on this page if you think you’ve got something we should include.

–News–

Ubuntu 10.04 To Sport a New Theme
After six years the Ubuntu operating system will be going under the knife, and will come out with a fresh new makeover. They are dropping a lot of the brown that users had come to associate with Ubuntu, and the old design dubbed “Human” is taking a backseat to “Light.” Everything has been revamped from icons to the boot screen, and even the logo has been modernized a bit. Canonical expects the facelift to represent the operating system for years to come.

Picnik Gets Acquired by Google
Picnik is an online photo editor that was being managed by just 20 employees… until last week when they were acquired by Google. According to their team nothing will be changing immediately, and integration with third-party services such as Flickr will still remain available. It seems only natural that Picnik will become heavily integrated into Picasa, but that will likely take months (if not longer) for them to accomplish.

–News in Brief–

Google Open Sources reMail
Not that long ago Google acquired the makers of an iPhone app called reMail, and they are now open-sourcing the technology so that iPhone developers can have an excellent starting point for creating apps that need to access IMAP email accounts.

Office 2010 Upgrade Guarantee
If you buy a copy of Office 2007 between now and the release of Office 2010 (business launch is May 12th, consumer launch is in June) you will get a free upgrade to the latest version.

Google Docs Welcomes DocVerse
The acquisition of DocVerse means that Google officially supports integration with the widely popular Microsoft Office desktop applications.

iPad Available on April 3rd
Apple announced that pre-orders for the iPad will begin on May 12th, and will be available at stores on April 3rd.

10 Billion Tweets
Twitter boldly passes the 10-billion tweet mark, and to celebrate the event tweeters around the world… tweeted some more.

Roger Ebert Regains Voice with Mac Software
Thanks to a heavily customized text-to-speech Mac application Roger Ebert can now speak in his old voice.

TiVo Unveils Series4 DVRs
This week TiVo held a media event to show off the new Series4 DVRs that include a revamped user interface and some new online video integration.

More than 90 Million Copies of Windows 7 Sold
In less than 5-months Microsoft has sold more than 90 million copies of Windows 7.

Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Windows Live Messenger Service
Interested in what goes on to keep one of the most popular messenger services running? Microsoft divulges some details on what it takes to make a few thousand servers work together to provide 300 million users the joy of instant communication.

Opera 10.5 Released, and Speedier than Ever
The newest milestone of the Opera web browser boasts significant performance and functionality enhancements.

Winners of the Street View Trike Contest
Google talks about what areas (such as college campuses) will be added to Street View via a man-powered trike.

–Tips, Tutorials, and Reviews–

Firefox Developer Preview Isolates Plugins
Mozilla has posted a preview release of the Gecko platform that forms the basis for apps like Firefox. The preview can isolate plugins like Flash and Silverlight from the rest of the browser. If one of those plugins happens to crash the rest of the browser will be fine. They offer a version of Firefox that can expose this feature, but keep in mind that it is currently not available for Mac users… it will be by the time they are done though.

Geosense for Windows
Some young pioneers decided to whip up a sensor for Windows 7 that will determine your approximate location using your WiFi and IP address info. This information can then be relayed on to apps, such as the weather widget, that can use that data to add relevancy. There aren’t many things that take advantage of it at this point, but I can see apps incorporating this functionality in later releases. It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

–Tips in Brief–

Get Google Wave Email Notifications
You can finally get notified via email when a response is posted to one of your waves.

Quickly Create Personal Websites
Flavors.me is a free service that lets you easily create a personal website without using any desktop software.

Increase Live TV Pause Buffer in Windows 7 Media Center
This will let you pause the television stream in Windows 7 for more than the default 40-minutes.

Setup Your Own Proxy Server
A quick set of instructions on how to set up your own free proxy server in just a few minutes.

Monitor for Experimental Firefox Extension Updates
This add-on will let you update your Firefox extensions whenever an experimental release is posted. That means you won’t have to wait for Mozilla’s stamp of approval.

Make Windows 7 Remember Explorer Windows’ Size and Position
This free app should resolve the issue where Windows 7 doesn’t always remember the last size and position of a Windows Explorer window.

Visually Browse Open Chrome Tabs
Get a coverflow-like interface for viewing all of your open tabs in Google Chrome.

Utilize Drop.io for 100MB Attachments in Outlook
Attach files up to 100MB in size to your emails without leaving Outlook by using the free Drop.io service.

Analyze Hard Drive Usage with Disk Space Fan
A fast and beautiful hard drive analyzer that can help you determine what’s eating up all your space.

–Downloads–

• AIM 7.2 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Audacity 1.3.12 ^RC1 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Cobian 10.0.0.394 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Eudora 8.0.0 ^{Beta 9} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Evernote 3.5.2.1663 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• FeedDemon 3.1.0.20 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Firefox 3.7 ^{Alpha 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Foobar2000 1.0.1 ^{Beta 2} [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Google Chrome 5.0.342.2 ^Beta [Homepage] [Mirror]
• K-Meleon 1.5.4 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Miranda 0.8.16 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad++ 5.6.8 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Notepad2 4.1.24 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Opera 10.50 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• Recuva 1.36.479 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• SetPoint 6.0 [Homepage] [Mirror]
• uTorrent 2.1.18304 ^Alpha [Homepage] [Mirror]
• WinSCP 4.2.7 [Homepage] [Mirror]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on June 23, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

About a month ago Adobe released some of the first Beta apps from their Creative Suite 4 product line, and that included Dreamweaver CS4. The one app that was disappointingly missing was Photoshop CS4, which has left a lot of people wondering what’s going on with it.

Just like with Dreamweaver CS4 the new Photoshop is going to be receiving a revamped interface, and it looks as though there’s a handy tab system for switching between your open images. That’s definitely a long overdue feature. Aside from that a notable new feature is the app frame that will be available to Mac users. This feature, as described by John Nack from Adobe, will treat the Photoshop application as a single window.

Current users of Photoshop CS3 on Mac know how the application “floats” around your screen, and it feels completely different than the Windows version. Personally I strongly dislike the applications on a Mac that do this because it feels more natural to have everything contained in a single window, but maybe that’s the Windows side of me shining through. Either way this is a feature that I’ll really be able to appreciate.

This is something that will be optional for Photoshop users on a Mac according to Adobe (can be toggled by going to Window -> Application Frame), and as of right now they’re not quite sure whether the application frame will be enabled by default. Here’s the argument that they provide as to why this type of design is beneficial:

• It facilitates N-up (2-up, 3-up, etc.) document layouts that adapt as you adjust the interface. Think “live window tiling”–great for comparing, compositing, etc.
• It makes it easier to move the entire application and its contents, including from one monitor to another.
• It prevents documents from getting obscured by panels (palettes).
• It blocks out the contents of the desktop, minimizing visual clutter. (A number of Mac users have requested this option for many years. I’ve known quite a few people who open a small blank document, hit F to put it into full-screen mode, and then put it into the background to hide the desktop. Willingness to live with that kind of hack demonstrates some genuine desire for a real fix.)

I would suspect that a Photoshop CS4 Beta will be coming any day now, but in the meantime here’s a quick video demonstration of the new application frame on a Mac:

Photoshop CS4 UI [via Mac Rumors]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on November 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One feature that I’ve always wanted in Windows was the ability to have windows snap to the edge of the screen. Some people see that feature as an inconvenience because the operating system is trying to do something that the user may not have intended, but it can be useful when trying to quickly arrange windows.

Today I’m going to show you how to unobtrusively snap windows to the edge of the screen using a free program called FreeSnap! There are no options to configure, and there isn’t even a System Tray icon. The only way you’ll know the program is running is by the splash screen that’s shown when it starts. There is a predefined set of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to increase/decrease the size of a window, move it to one of the corners of the screen, or snap it to an edge of the screen.

–Keyboard Shortcuts–

Keyboard shortcuts are what make FreeSnap so wonderful. When I first started getting used to the program the shortcuts seemed unnatural, and nearly impossible to remember. It wasn’t until I visually drew a box around each set of keys that I began to understand why they were laid out the way they were (well, at least the ones for snapping and moving are intuitive). To help you visualize the keys I’ve color coded the groups and mapped them to a keyboard layout below.

• Snap…
  to top: Windows Key + I
  to bottom: Windows Key + K
  to left: Windows Key + J
  to right: Windows Key + L
• Move…
  to top-left corner: Windows Key + T
  to bottom-left corner: Windows Key + G
  to top-right corner: Windows Key + Y
  to bottom-right corner: Windows Key + H
• Center window: Windows Key + C
  Grow window: Windows Key + Z
  Shrink window: Windows Key + X

–Snap Windows–

The snapping feature is definitely my favorite part of the program. Naturally you would think that this would create some sort of “magnetic edges” on the program windows so that when you come in contact with another edge it is attracted to it. That’s not the case at all, and therefore it is much less likely to annoy you.

Instead when making a window snap to the edge of the screen it will extend the window to that edge. So let’s say you want a window to span from the top of your screen to the bottom, all you would have to do is press the Windows Key + I and then the Windows Key + K. To make it a little clearer I’ve created an animated image that shows what happens when I snap an application to the right side of the screen:

–Resize Windows–

The grow and shrink (Windows Key + Z or X, respectively) feature will resize windows to the most common sizes. This is really handy for website and program developers to see what their work will look like on computers running at various resolutions. Here are the five preset resolutions that FreeSnap will shuffle between:

• 640 x 480
• 800 x 600
• 1024 x 768
• 1152 x 864
• 1280 x 1024

–Move Windows–

Moving a window is different than snapping  it because the height and width of the window remain untouched. When you initiate a move it will be sent to the respective corner, such as in this case where I sent the window to the upper-right corner of the screen:

The shortcut keys, Windows Key + T/G/Y/H, makeup what appears to be a box on the keyboard. You can see this in the keyboard layout I posted above, and each letter corresponds to a corner of the box. That is important when it comes to remembering what key does what.

–Overview–

I think this program kind of provides the best of both worlds for users. You don’t have to worry about magnetic edges on windows which can get annoying after awhile, but you are still able to send a window to the edge of the screen. The only thing that takes some getting used to are the keyboard shortcuts. 😉

FreeSnap Homepage (for Windows only)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on May 28, 2009 by CyberNet.

RocketDock is definitely one of my favorite application launchers because of how well it is designed to mimic the functionality of the Mac Dock. It can also be extended with skins to change the appearance, or with docklets to add more features.

The most popular addon across all of the different categories is the Stacks Docklet with over 800,000 downloads! As you can see in the screenshot to the right this emulates the Mac version of Stacks very well, and it’s pretty hard to tell it apart from the Mac Dock if you’ve got the right skin.

The addon hasn’t been updated in a little while, but that doesn’t mean development has stopped. In fact the developer is currently working on rewriting the Stacks Docklet, and if you’re feeling adventurous you can jump in on a pre-release version.

Stacks Docklet Homepage
RocketDock Homepage

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com