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Feb 20

Remove Items from the Windows Explorer and IE Context Menus

This article was written on June 29, 2012 by CyberNet.

When you install applications such as Adobe Acrobat they like to tuck away menu items in the context/right-click menus in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. They tend to think that this kind of stuff is there to make your life easier, but often times they end up cluttering up the menus so much that it takes even longer to find the things you really need.

MenuMaid is an app that is will help you do some housekeeping on the menus in Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer by giving you a list of all the non-standard entries that have been added. Simply uncheck the boxes next to any of the items you want removed and the change will be made immediately. If you change your mind and want to add the entry back just check the box again.

The really handy thing is that MenuMaid will tell you when the context menu entries will appear in both Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer. From the screenshot above you can see that some of the entries appear when I right-click on everything, some only on drives, and then some only on folders. That can be really handy to know to help ensure you disable the correct thing.

MenuMaid Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Feb 19

Best Greasemonkey Scripts: Google Reader Feeds in Gmail

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on February 07, 2008 by CyberNet.

(Click to Enlarge)

I really wish that Google would integrate a bunch of their services into a single interface, but it doesn’t look like that will be happening anytime soon. Some of their services, such as Google Notebook and Google Reader, would feel pretty natural if they were part of the Gmail interface.

A good example of how it would work can be found in this Gmail + Reader Integrator Greasemonkey script. Once you install the script there will be a new section in the sidebar that lists off all of the feeds, with unread feeds in bold. The reading area for your feeds is located underneath the emails in your Inbox, which can be a little annoying if you have a lot of emails in your Inbox. Unfortunately there is no way to collapse your Inbox. 🙁

There are a handful of settings that can be configured as pointed out by the developer:

You can change the height of the Gmail thread list and the embedded reader by modifying the values in about:config (filter by ‘reader’). You can also revert to the old behaviour of not expanding the folders in the feed list by setting expandFolder in about:config.

The only disappointing thing is that this script is only available for Firefox, and not nearly as nice as it would be if Google had their own system available.

Gmail + Reader Integrator

Feb 18

Fix Vista’s Slow File Transfer (Vista SP1 Beta Download?)

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on July 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

Vista Update

One of the things that people complain about the most in Vista is that transferring large files is painfully slow compared to previous versions of Windows. Thanks to a post over at Neowin, both users of the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Vista are able to install a performance and compatibility pack that will address this issue as well as several others.

Some sites appear to be thinking that these patches will be released on Patch Tuesday (a week from tomorrow) via the standard Windows Update system. I’m not so sure about that, and if you look at the bottom of this post I outline all of the things that these patches fix. It’s quite a lengthy list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft held them back for the release of Vista SP1. So I would say that this is kind of like the Beta version of Vista SP1 that we never got.

As soon as I saw this I couldn’t wait to download the fixes, but the problem is that they haven’t been officially posted by Microsoft yet. Have no fear, these updates have been leaked (download links posted below), and I’ve already installed the 32-bit versions on my Vista Ultimate installation. There are just two installation files included that you need to install, and then you’ll reboot your computer. If something does go wrong your System Restore should have automatically made a restore point before proceeding with the installation of the updates (I checked and mine had made the restore point automatically).

What’s the result? The file transfer times are dramatically reduced, and it no longer takes forever for Vista to calculate the remaining time! AeroXP has even gone as far as to say that the transfer times are half of what they were.

If you decide to try these out you should remember that they have not been officially released by Microsoft. In fact, they could be some sort of beta version that isn’t even complete. I’ve had no troubles with either of the updates on my 32-bit version of Vista, but your experience may vary.

IMPORTANT: One thing that a Neowin user pointed out was that the 64-bit version will require that you disable driver signing each time your computer starts, which can be done by pressing F8 during the boot process. This includes everyone that’s using Rivatuner, atitool and/or Peerguardian on Vista 64-bit.

Update:

Microsoft has made these packs officially available.

Download from MediaFire: 64-bit and 32-bit
Download from MediaFire (requires 7-Zip to extract): 64-bit and 32-bit

Here are all of the details regarding the two updates:

938979 Vista Performance and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the performance and responsiveness for some scenarios and improves reliability of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

Improves performance in resuming back to the desktop from the Photo and Windows Energy screensaver.
Resolves an issue where some secured web pages using advanced security technologies may not get displayed in Internet Explorer on Windows Vista.
Resolves an issue where a shared printer may not get installed if the printer is connected to a Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 system and User Access Control is disabled on the Vista client.
Resolves an issue where creating AVI files on Vista may get corrupted.
Improves the performance in calculating the ‘estimated time remaining’ when copying/moving large files.
Improves performance in bringing up Login Screen after resuming from Hibernate.
Resolves an issue where synchronization of offline files to a server can get corrupted.
Resolves a compatibility issue with RAW images created by Canon EOS 1D/1DS Digital SLR Camera which can lead to data loss. This only affects RAW images created by these two specific camera models.
Resolves an issue where a computer can lose its default Gateway address when resuming from sleep mode.
Improves the performance when copying or moving entire directories containing large amounts of data or files.
Improves the performance of Vista’s Memory Manager in specific customer scenarios and prevents some issues which may lead to memory corruption.

938194 Vista Compatibility and Reliability Pack
This update resolves a number of individual issues which may be affecting some computers running Windows Vista. These issues have been reported by customers using the Error Reporting service, product support, or other means. Installing this update will improve the reliability and hardware compatibility of Windows Vista in a variety of scenarios. Some examples of the improvements contained in this update are:

Improved reliability and compatibility of Vista when used with newer graphics cards in several specific scenarios and configurations.
Improved reliability when working with external displays on a laptop.
Increased compatibility with many video drivers.
Improved visual appearance of games with high intensity graphics.
Improved quality of playback for HD-DVD and Blue-Ray disks on large monitors.
Improved reliability for Internet Explorer when some third party toolbars are installed on Vista.
Improved Vista reliability in networking configuration scenarios.
Improved the reliability of Windows Calendar in Vista.
Improved reliability of systems that were upgraded from XP to Vista.
Increased compatibility with many printer drivers.
Increased reliability and performance of Vista when entering sleep and resuming from sleep.

Feb 18

Simple Note Taking App

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 30, 2010 by CyberNet.

notes application.png

One of my favorite applications on my computer is definitely Evernote, but there are a lot of people I talk with that don’t like the complexity it has to offer. They just want something simple that they can use to jot down a phone number or other basic information. For them I typically recommend Simplenote since so many different apps have been created to sync with this free online service.

If you use Simplenote you may want to check out an equally simple desktop application called Notes that syncs with the Simplenote service. As you can see from the screenshot above there isn’t a lot of features packed into this portable program, but that’s intentional. Here are some of the features the developer points out:

Plain text database
On the fly note saving, no need to remember filenames or locations
A portable app with no external DLLs or other installation hell. Copy the directory to your flash drive and take it with you
Database export function that will save each note as a single plain text file for archiving
A UI that is simple by default (if you press F9 you can even hide the toolbar) and keyboard driven. You can leave your mouse home.

One thing they don’t mention is that this also works great with a service such as Dropbox since it’s portable. Everything is stored in one directory (including the data file) which makes it easy to sync across multiple computers. So if you’ve been looking for a simple note taking app this is definitely a worthwhile contender.

Notes Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Feb 16

Resizeable Text Boxes & Form Fields In Firefox

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on October 30, 2006 by CyberNet.

Firefox Resize Text Box

Do you never have enough room to write your comments here, or anywhere for that matter? The Resizeable Form Fields extension allows you to resize text boxes to anything that you want. I’m sure you’ll find this extremely useful on blogs and in forums where it would be nice to see your entire comment without needing to scroll.

It appears to work on almost all of the pages I have tried it with. I have noticed that it doesn’t work, however, on the SlashDot submission page for some reason. I’m sure there are a few other places that it won’t work but you’ll find that it works with many sites.

Feb 16

Create and Edit Windows 8 Libraries

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on December 12, 2012 by CyberNet.

Windows 8 libraries

Starting in Windows 7 Microsoft introduced a new feature they called libraries. The libraries are designed to give multiple folders a single unified view that can be used to manage your media and documents. This is especially useful for anyone with files spread out across multiple hard drives and network locations because it will all appear as a single folder on your machine.

The downside to this awesome feature is that Microsoft never provided a great way for managing the libraries, but third-party developers stepped in to fill the gap. The same goes for Windows 8. An app called Librarian supports creating, updating, and removing libraries on both Windows 7 and also on Windows 8.

As you can see in the screenshot above this particular app gives you full control over how the libraries behave. One thing I really like is that it lets you choose the default location to save files, which I know is something I’ve had many people ask me about before. If you don’t use an app like this to change the default save location Windows will decide where it should put files when you do things like save files to the library. Now you’ll be able to choose where you want the files to go.

If you’re looking for a way to simplify folder management on your computer this app may be the key to doing that.

Librarian Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Feb 15

Opera Mini 4 New Feature: PC-View

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on June 19, 2007 by CyberNet.

Speculation is now over as to what the new Opera Mini 4 feature is…PC-like Web browsing! When I first saw this feature I was wondering how well it was going to work, but it is actually really incredible. Just like the iPhone you get a zoomed-out view of a website, and then you can zoom into certain areas of the site by navigating around with the cursor.

The cursor is kinda intelligent because it will snap to the content and hyperlinks as you move it around, which makes it a lot easier to pull up the content you want. Not only that, but Opera Mini arranges the content on the site in a way to minimize the amount of horizontal scrolling that you have to do. For example, on our site our large content area in the middle is shrunk down so that when you zoom in it fits the width of your phone’s screen perfectly.

Here’s a quick video of this feature in action:

Just like before Opera Mini still works by sending your website request to a remote server that pre-processes the content before sending it to you. That way they can ensure that it will look good, and in the case of Opera Mini 4 it creates a thumbnail which is what you see when you’re "zoomed out."

You can download the new Opera Mini 4 Beta by visiting this site, or you can play with it all you want with this interactive demo that they have setup. Opera Watch also has a bunch of screenshots from different sites which demonstrates how well they are rendered.

Now I just can’t wait for them to release their Flash replacement for Opera Mini.

Oh, and here is a video of Opera Mini vs. the iPhone…it’s pretty funny:

Source: Opera Watch
Opera Mini 4 Features

Feb 14

CyberSearch 1.0.2: Pull Up Google Results Page Faster

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on August 04, 2008 by CyberNet.

cybersearch 102.png Another day, another CyberSearch release. 😉 Over the weekend I had some time to work on a new CyberSearch feature that I’ve periodically received requests for. Like most features I had to think this one through to ensure that it wouldn’t interfere with the built-in Firefox keyword system.

So what have I added? In CyberSearch 1.0 you might recall that I added an entry onto the bottom of every search results list that would take you to the Google results page. Now we’re making it even easier for you to pull up the Google results page!

When CyberSearch recognizes that you’ve typed in a keyword or domain followed by the Enter key (or Go button) it will instantly take you to the Google search page that shows the same results you were looking at in the address bar. Obviously if you select a result from the drop-down list this feature will be ignored, but pressing Enter without selecting an item from the menu will pull up the Google results page.

This option comes enabled by default, but can quickly be disabled in the settings. You’ll find the option in the General tab:

enter goes to google.png

Keywords that have already been assigned in the browser’s search box will take precedence over any of the ones from our extension. The extension, however, does not look at the keywords you’ve created in your bookmarks, which means CyberSearch will override any of those. For that reason we recommend transitioning your bookmark keywords over to the search box, and I’ve found that the Add to Search Bar extension is useful in doing just that since it will let you add any search box from any site.

Get CyberSearch

Feb 14

CyberSearch Publicly Available on Mozilla Add-ons

Posted in: Today's Chili

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

It’s taken a few months, but I’m happy to announce that anyone can install our homegrown CyberSearch extension for Firefox without needing a Mozilla account. Just yesterday our extension got pushed out of the sandbox, and a big thanks goes out to all of the CyberSearch users who took the time to leave a review. The average rating from our 54 views is a 4.70 out of 5.00, and that means we have some very satisfied users.

The stats for our add-on are publicly available as well, which means you can follow how many downloads and active users there are for CyberSearch. You can also break it down even further to see things like which operating system people are using with the extension. As of right now there are 3,200+ of you who have our extension installed.

At some point I’d like to see CyberSearch become a recommended add-on by Mozilla, and possibly even get some recognition on the add-ons homepage. I’m thinking it will be a little while before that happens though, but I’m optimistic.

I’d also like to give a big thanks to the Mozilla add-on editor who approved our extension!

Get CyberSearch for Firefox
CyberSearch Homepage

Feb 13

Quickly Switch Your Primary Monitor with Dual Monitor Tools

Posted in: Today's Chili

This article was written on June 17, 2011 by CyberNet.

Dual monitor configuration

Once you’ve had the pleasure of using dual monitors it can be tough trying to go back to a single screen. There are, however, some things that Windows doesn’t handle so gracefully. A good example of this can be seen in one of our most popular articles where we walk you through how to change your primary monitor (the one where the Taskbar appears). There has got to be an easier way to do things like this, right?

There is, and it is with a free utility called Dual Monitor Tools. This is a collection of five standalone utilities that you can run whenever you want without going through a setup routine:

Swap Screen uses hotkeys to simplify the process of handling windows in a multiple monitor setup. This includes features such as moving the current window to the next screen and minimising all windows on a single screen only. It also includes mouse/cursor control allowing you to lock the mouse onto a single screen or providing resistance to moving between screens.
Dual Launcher allows you to launch your favourite applications with a few key strokes and to position them at pre-configured positions on any of your monitors.
Dual Wallpaper simplifies the process of using images as wallpaper on multiple monitor setups. You can have a single image which is spread across all of your monitors, or you can have different images on each monitor, or if you have enough monitors, you could say have an image spread across 2 of your monitors with another image displayed on the third monitor.
DisMon gives you some control over which monitors are disabled and which is the primary monitor when running another application.
Dual Snap allows you to capture the image on the primary monitor and display it on the secondary monitor by the use of a user defined hotkey. This works with both normal window applications and most full screen applications like most games.

The DisMon utility is the program I want to highlight since it will let you easily select which monitor should be treated as the primary and which one as the secondary… that is the problem I mentioned above. This is the easiest way I’ve come across for addressing that.

Dual Monitor Tools Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Hasta La Gadget!

Remove Items from the Windows Explorer and IE Context Menus

Best Greasemonkey Scripts: Google Reader Feeds in Gmail

Fix Vista’s Slow File Transfer (Vista SP1 Beta Download?)

Simple Note Taking App

Resizeable Text Boxes & Form Fields In Firefox

Create and Edit Windows 8 Libraries

Opera Mini 4 New Feature: PC-View

CyberSearch 1.0.2: Pull Up Google Results Page Faster

CyberSearch Publicly Available on Mozilla Add-ons

Quickly Switch Your Primary Monitor with Dual Monitor Tools

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