Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 26, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft was finally able to take a step back and look at how many licenses of Vista are actually in use right now. According to their numbers, there were more than 20 million licenses sold from January 30 to February 28. That is nothing short of impressive!

That number does include upgraded versions of Vista from people who bought new computers before Vista was actually released, but CNet says that when they questioned Microsoft on how many of the 20 million licenses were from upgrades the response was:

It’s boosting the overall number, but it’s certainly not the core component of the 20 million.

To put the number in perspective Microsoft said that 17 million Windows XP licenses were sold after two-months, which means Vista more than doubled its Windows predecesor! The thing that made this number the most astonishing was that there are a reported 20 million Mac users (source) in total, and in the first year of Apple’s next OS release they are expected to sell 10 million licenses. By the end of this year Vista is expected to hit more than 100 million licenses.

Mac’s numbers are by no means shabby, but it just goes to show how widespread Windows really is. CNet also noted that Vista Ultimate sales are doing better than expected, although Microsoft has not released specific information regarding how many licenses of each version of Vista were sold:

Mannion said that Microsoft is even seeing better-than-expected sales of the pricey Ultimate edition. “We have relatively modest expectations for Ultimate, but it’s exceeding that on both new PCs and the packaged product.”

…

He likens it to car buyers who buy more horsepower than they need. “How many people buy the V8 instead of the V6?” Walker said. Or how many go with the optional towing package, “even though they have nothing to tow?”

I am a little surprised that people are picking the Ultimate Edition, but when purchasing a new PC, the upgrade to Ultimate from Home Premium is typically just $100. That is much more reasonable than spending the $400 on a retail copy of Ultimate, and the retail version can be switched to a new PC if that need should arise.

Having used the final version of Vista for nearly two months I would have to say that I am impressed with its capabilities. In the next few months I will be purchasing a new laptop that supports the Aero graphics, and I can’t wait because there are a lot of cool applications emerging that utilize Vista’s advanced graphical capabilities!

Microsoft Press Release

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 02, 2007 by CyberNet.

There is no doubt in my mind that Switcher is the best Exposé clone ever made for Windows, and only Vista users get to bask in the features that this free program has to offer. Switcher 2 Beta has just raised the bar several notches by adding features Apple’s own Exposé doesn’t even have!

Among many other things the new Switcher has tremendously improved the smoothness of its animation. You’ll see this in the video demonstration below, but first lets take a look at some of the great new features.

–Custom Window Labels and Backgrounds–

You can now have labels on windows as well as customized backgrounds and borders. You would probably think that the labels only tell you what the title of the app is, but you can put multiple things in the label. My personal favorite is having it show the number of megabytes the particular program is using, but you can also have it display the program’s icon, the filename of the application, or the process name.

–More Productive–

Now the first 9 windows in Switcher are assigned numbers. This makes it a lot easier to move between windows without having to shuffle through them one-by-one.

One of my favorite features in Switcher has always been the customizable shortcut keys though. That’s also been taken up a notch by adding several new commands that can be assigned shortcuts, including "Begin and Select Next." That command behaves similarly to the standard Windows Alt-Tab where upon activation the last-accessed window is selected. I love this option so much that I’ve gone ahead and assigned it to be the default action. A more Alt-Tab like appearance can also be seen by using the new Grid View, which aligns all of the windows to a grid in number order. I’m sure the Alt-Tab fans out there will choose this to be their default preference.

Another shortcut action that was added was the ability to close a window straight from Switcher. I set it up so that anytime I right-click on one of the thumbnails in Switcher it closes that particular window.

–Live Filtering–

The live filtering gives you the capabilities to only show certain sets of windows at any given time. For example, you can have all minimized windows be hidden or you can only show windows from a certain program (like Windows Explorer). Here are the various options for filtering along with their default shortcut keys:

• Search by window title (default shortcut Ctrl+F, or simply type to automatically display the search box). You can search using regular expressions (an obscure feature that I keep forgetting about).
• Exclude minimized windows (default shortcut Ctrl+M).
• Hide a particular window (default shortcut Ctrl+H).
• Show only the windows belonging to a certain program (default shortcut Ctrl+W).
• The default shortcut to remove all filters is Ctrl+R.

After trying out the search feature I couldn’t stop myself from creating a video to show off this cool feature:

–Overview–

I honestly can’t believe how much Switcher has evolved since I first started using it, and it’s quickly become something that I recommend to anyone using Vista. Of course, if you’ve never used Alt-Tab before then you’ll probably never think to use this, but I’ve quickly found this to be a valuable tool in my daily work.

Get Switcher 2 Beta

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on March 03, 2010 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

Windows only
Reading web comics can really brighten your day, and there is no question that XKCD is one of my personal favorites. Sometimes a quick little comic that takes less than a minute to read can actually put a smile on your face, and the free Windows app called Comical aims to make the most of those minutes.

What makes Comical so awesome is that it not only aggregates all your favorites into one list, but it can also archive them for offline reading. You can specify the interval that you want to check for new comics (or you can do it manually), and a little green icon will appear next to the ones that have new content. A simple double-click on that particular comic will open and save it off to your computer so that they can be viewed even when you aren’t near an Internet connection. It would be even better if it could also download the new comics during an update check, but that might be a feature we’ll see in a future release.

If you don’t mind diving into some XML you can also add your own comics. In the XML you’ll specify the URL of the page that always has the latest comic as well as a simple regular expression that matches the format of the comic’s filename. So you can actually customize this to grab new images from just about any site.

Aside from all that the app is actually rather simple. You can create lists of your favorites so that you can make sure those get read first, and there are some settings you can customize… such as how file archiving, whether you want to be notified if there are updates, and so on. If you’re against all forms of laughter this is a good time to move along, otherwise proceed with the free download.

Comical Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on February 07, 2007 by CyberNet.

Mozilla has just released the English version of Firefox 3 Alpha 2 (codename Gran Paradiso) and it is the first release of Firefox that passes the Acid 2 test. Well, it is still a pre-release version but it is on its way to be the final version that will be released later this year. If you haven’t heard by this point, the big thing with Firefox 3 is replacing the rendering engine with Cairo…which has improved a lot of things including how it scales images. Here is a list of what’s new from the Firefox 3 Alpha 2 release notes:

• Core layout code affecting the calculation of widths in tables, floats, and absolutely positioned elements has been rewritten. The code for handling incremental layout of pages (as data arrives over the network, as images load, or as dynamic changes are made) has also been changed extensively.
• Resolved remaining issues with ACID2 test compliance.
• Support for the Web Apps 1.0 API for changing stylesheets.
• The inline-block and inline-table values of CSS 2.1’s display property are now implemented.
• XML documents can now be rendered as they’re downloaded instead of only after the full document has been loaded.
• Greatly improved Mac widgets support since Alpha 1.
• Improvements in the Cairo graphics layer.

I’m definitely excited about this release, but I just can’t bring myself to switch to this as my primary browser at this point because my GMarks extension doesn’t work. I know that I could just use the built-in bookmarking system but it is always nice to have my bookmarks available wherever I go. I’ve contacted the extension developer and he is currently looking into it, and once that gets fixed I plan on permanently switching over.

So what does the future look like for Firefox 3? As of right now the Alpha releases will be every 6 weeks or so, but they do not mention exactly how many of them they plan on doing. That puts us at the End of March before we see the next Alpha release and my estimation for the final release date is sometime this summer (probably the June/July timeframe). It will definitely be fun to see what the future has in store for us!

Note: In case anyone is wondering Places has not been put back in yet.

Portable Firefox 3 Alpha 2 for Windows
Windows: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 exe
Mac OS X: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 dmg
Linux: Gran Paradiso Alpha 2 tar.gz

Thanks to natmaster for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on October 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

Many of you with your own web sites know that getting your site to look “Web 2.0ish” can be tricky.  Rounded corners are in, as are rounded tabs, striped backgrounds, and Ajax. Today we’re going to take a look at four different web sites that offer image generators to help web developers create the perfect Web 2.0 look.  I think you’ll find that they’re also huge time savers because each site offers a service that is very simple to use. Let’s take a look…

–Rounded Corner Generator–

Rounded corners are in these days, and so it helps to have a tool like RoundedCornr.com to generate a box with round corners for you. This particular site is great because it provides you with with the HTML and CSS code that you’d need to put rounded corners around content on your site. They also provide you with a link to download the rounded corners as image files.

When you go to the site, you’ll notice three different options for creating rounded corners.  You can do a RoundedCornr with a color gradient, a Rounded Cornr with a border, or a single RoundedCornr Image. For each of the different options for creating rounded corners, you can specify things like the corner radius size, the gradient height, a border color, etc. Below are two examples of what you can do.  The top image shows the rounded corner with a gradient while the other shows you what a rounded corner with a border looks like.

Visit RoundedCornr

–Stripe Generator–

You’ve probably noticed that many sites these days use some type of stripe design in the background whether it’s a thick strip size, or a thin strip size. If you’re wanting some type of striped design for your site, I recommend using www.stripegenerator.com.  Just like the RoundedCornr service, there are so many different options that you can tweak so that your stripe pattern will look exactly like you want it to.

Options you have include:

• strip size
• spacing
• stripe colors
• background style
• shadow
• background colors
• stripe orientation

Another great feature on this site is that there are “shared stripes” that you can get the code for. This stripe generator is perfect for when you want a seamless stripe texture. Of course you could create your own, but this is quick and easy. To boot, it’s got a great interface.

Visit Stripe Generator 2.0 – The Ultimate Tool for Web 2.0 Designers

–Tab Generator–

Brought to you by the same people that created Stripe Generator, Tab Generator is the simple and easy way to create great looking tabs for your site.  Much like the stripe generator, there are plenty of options to choose from so that you can create the perfect tab.

Options include:

• height
• width
• border size
• corner radius
• background
• fill style
• fill colors
• border color
• orientation

Once you’ve specified how you’d like your tab to look, you can download the code and then it’ll be ready to use on your site. This is one of the simplest ways I know of to create perfect tabs.

Visit Tabs Generator

–Ajax Loading Generator–

Ajax has become a staple of many Web 2.0 sites.  A site called Ajaxload.info will help you come up with the perfect Ajax loader icon for your site.  All you have to do is select the type of indicator that you want (there are over 30 different types of indicators), select the background color you’d want, and then enter the foreground color that you want.  From there you just click generate and then you’ll see a preview of what your loading indicator will look like.  If it looks good, just click “Download it” and it’ll be ready to use.

Visit Ajax Loading Generator

If you know of other tools that will help out web designers, let us know!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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