Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on February 14, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the things that really seems to draw people to CyberNet is the posting of Firefox Portable builds for pre-release versions of Firefox. Right now Mozilla is testing out Firefox 3 Alpha builds, and the ability to play with it appeals to a lot of people. A while back I wrote a guide on setting up your own version of Firefox Portable, but that was still when the application was called Portable Firefox.

I receive requests all of the time for providing nightly builds of Firefox 3 in a portable fashion so that there is no fear of messing up your stable profile. Heck, I’ll even show you where to copy the contents of your existing profile to in the Firefox Portable so that it is really easy to see if your extensions will work. Let’s go ahead and get started…

–Setting Up Your Own Firefox Portable–

1. The first thing that you’ll need to do is download my “blank” Firefox Portable ZIP file. I say that it is blank because it doesn’t include the actual Firefox files that are needed to run the browser. You’ll be adding those in a few steps from now. Also, it is important to note that the installation I am providing to you is setup to not show a splash screen and to allow multiple instances of Firefox to be running side-by-side. That means you’ll be able to run your nightly build at the same time you’re running your stable build! See this article for an explanation on how I did that.
2. Extract the contents from the file you downloaded in Step 1 which should result in a folder called “FirefoxPortable“.
3. Download the latest nightly trunk to play with the bleeding edge version of Firefox. This is the most recent that you can get, and to find the file that you want to download look for the most recent date that has a “win32.zip” extension.
4. Extract the contents from the file you downloaded in Step 3 which should result in a folder called “firefox“.
5. Drag the firefox folder from Step 4 into the FirefoxPortable -> App folder from Step 2:
   
6. That’s all, now just go back to the FirefoxPortable directory and run the FirefoxPortable.exe file. This is what your directory structure should now look like:
    
7. Note: For future reference, you can update Firefox Portable the same way that you update regular Firefox by going to the Help Menu -> Check for Updates.

–Copying Your Current Profile To Firefox Portable–

When you’re testing out Firefox, it would be nice to just copy all of your settings, bookmarks, and extensions over to the portable version so that you can see what works and what doesn’t. No problem! It just takes a few steps to copy everything over:

1. Locate your existing profile:
   Windows 2000/XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<Windows login/user name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
   Windows Vista: C:\Users\<Windows login/user name>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<Profile name>\
   
2. Copy ALL of the files and folders of your existing profile into the FirefoxPortable -> Data -> profile folder (make sure to delete everything in that directory if it is not already empty):
   
3. That’s all, the next time you start Firefox Portable it should run your existing profile.

–Overview–

That is basically what I do each time that I test out Firefox builds. Similar things can be done using the portable versions of Thunderbird and many other applications. After you have done it once you’ll be able to do the whole process in a matter of seconds because it really is that easy. The thing that takes the longest to do is download the files. Enjoy!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Active Desktop was a feature included with Windows up until the release of Vista. It allowed HTML sites, among other things, to be viewed on the user’s desktop as if they were part of the wallpaper. They were then constantly updated to provide news, weather, and a host of other information at the user’s fingertips.

Microsoft had decided that it was time for Active Desktop to be retired with Vista because of the newly introduced sidebar. The sidebar gadgets can be dragged out onto the desktop, and they therefore were expected to serve a similar purpose.

I was never really a user of Active Desktop, but I know plenty of people who were. For that reason the How-To Geek started a $206 bounty to see if someone could replicate what the Active Desktop did on Vista.

Click to Enlarge

The same person stepped up to the plate that made a program to increase the Taskbar thumbnail size in Vista. The resulting application (Download Mirror) isn’t the most extravagant thing in the world, but it gets the job done. With it you can specify multiple websites, the number of pixels each should occupy on the desktop, the position of each one, and how often it should be updated. It works just as you would expect allowing all of your desktop icons to be placed on top of the items you add (as seen in the picture above with the Recycle Bin).

It doesn’t work exactly like Active Desktop did because none of the links are clickable, and the items can’t be easily resized and repositioned by dragging and dropping. Nevertheless, it might be exactly what you’ve been longing for, especially if you’re wanting to put some weather radar images on your desktop.

Active Desktop in Vista (Download Mirror)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on March 10, 2011 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Last year we wrote about a useful program called WizMouse that would let you scroll windows that were in the background (i.e. a window not in focus).  I use this kind of functionality all the time when writing articles, but it also carries over into other situations. For example, the other day I had two spreadsheets open and was comparing values between them. Normally in Windows I’d have to constantly switch focus between the two spreadsheets if I wanted to scroll each of them. With an app like WizMouse that’s not the case because I can simply hover my mouse over any window, and then use my scroll wheel to navigate through the content. This kind of behavior is built-in to Mac OS X, but not Windows.

I’m not here to talk about WizMouse though. When we wrote the article Amber left a comment with an alternative app called KatMouse. It has some settings that set it apart such as the ability to push in the middle mouse button to have it send the foreground window to the background. You can also specify custom scroll settings on a per-application basis, which is definitely helpful for those programs that seem to scroll at different rates. Plus you can always click on the cat icon in the System Tray to quickly disable/enable the functionality.

How do some of these features work? Here’s a slightly abbreviated version of the KatMouse usage as described by the developer:

• Scroll most windows page wise by holding the wheel button over the window and clicking the left (up) or right (down) mouse button. If you hold the left or right mouse button, you’ll get continuous, accelerating pagewise scrolling.
• To push a window to the stack bottom, just click with the wheel button on the window (double click on ‘always on top’ windows). This works even while dragging something with the mouse (i.e. copying files from one explorer to another). To raise that window again, click and hold the wheel button on it for some time.
• Choose individual wheel scroll settings for applications and windows. In the Applications tab, choose the applications executable file in the file dialog and set the desired scroll width by double clicking on the new entry in the list.
• In the Classes tab you can select the kind of window (its class) to customize by draggin the crosshair to the window. If the chosen window does not behave correctly you can disable the ‘Window has wheel scrolling support’ checkbox in its settings dialog. This will force KatMouse to use a different, possibly less efficient approach to scrolling the window.

The good news is that KatMouse is just as efficient as WizMouse in terms of memory usage. I found it consuming a mere 1.1MB on my system, and I’m definitely willing to give it those resources for the functionality I get in return.

KatMouse Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on December 16, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
Several years ago we wrote an article covering some different ways you can assign a drive letter to an FTP site, and now that some time has passed I decided to check been in on a few of the apps that we’ve mentioned. I had an issue finding Novell’s NetDrive app, but with a little Google searching I stumbled upon a similar app that also goes by the name of NetDrive (it’s only free for non-commercial use). It doesn’t appear to be affiliated with Novell’s program, but it left me impressed regardless.

MacroData’s NetDrive is a polished app that is able to connect to both FTP and WebDAV servers even over a proxy connection. It comes pre-populated with several notable FTP locations for universities and companies, but they are all disconnected by default. You can manually choose to connect any of them, set them to connect upon startup, or add your own custom FTP sites.

The thing I love about NetDrive is that the drive letter that is assigned to the FTP site can even be accessed by other applications including DOS. That makes this a great utility for anyone wanting to tinker around with batch files that transfer files to/from remote locations. Of course you could use built-in Windows command-line FTP interface, but being able to use something like robocopy with an FTP server is pretty huge.

Here are some of the features highlighted by the developer:

• You can use NetDrive Site Manager to easily register and connect to all remote servers you wish to access.
• Simply map your drive to a specific site and it will be configured automatically the next time your Windows starts. You can add as many sites as you want.
• When you connect to a remote server, a drive letter will be mapped and you can transfer files and folders by drag and drop in Windows Explorer. You can manage files and folders with a click of mouse.
• NetDrive supports direct file operation in mapped drive. You can run any .exe files in remote server from your Windows explorer. To watch a movie file in your remote server, you just need to double click it.
• Once you install NetDrive, you will see an icon created in your system tray. (Right click your mouse on the icon to view menu) NetDrive tray icon provides shortcuts to use.
• NetDrive. You can open the site manager, configure NetDrive, connect to registered site or view logs.
• You can customize the program settings from Setup menu. From Setup menu, you can manage action after connection, auto-connection to specific site when Windows starts and log monitoring.
• Since NetDrive provides Windows system driver to mount drive, you can use DOS-prompt to use commands like copy, xcopy and dir. Other DOS-based legacy applications can be used since NetDrive provides DOS based file access.

If you’re in the market for an app like this I’d highly recommend checking it out, but remember it’s only free for home/non-commercial use. Otherwise it will run you $29 for a license.

NetDrive Homepage (Windows only; Free for Home Use)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 20, 2007 by CyberNet.

Microsoft includes a feature in Windows that many people would love to use … if they knew about it. It’s the ability to completely control your mouse using only the keyboard, but since it is buried in the Accessibility Options a lot of people never know it’s there.

The feature is called MouseKeys, and once enabled you’ll be able to fully control your mouse using the number pad on your keyboard. One of the reasons that I use this from time to time is to move the mouse more precisely, which is extremely handy when doing graphics work.

So how do you enable the feature? Here are the steps needed for both Vista and XP…

(Click to Enlarge)

Vista:

1. Open up the Control Panel and type MouseKeys into the search box. Click on the option that says Move the pointer with the keypad using MouseKeys.
2. Check the corresponding box to turn on MouseKeys. For more advanced options (pictured to the right) you can click the Set up MouseKeys located underneath the checkbox.

XP:

1. Open the Control Panel, and click Accessibility Options.
2. Select the Mouse tab, and check the Use MouseKeys box to turn the feature on. For more advanced options you can click Settings.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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