Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on March 27, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

In Windows when you right-click on a file there will likely be an “Open With” menu that lists the various applications that can be used to open that specific file. I use it all of the time because there’s never really just one application that I want to open a file. For example, with HTML files the operating system naturally want to open them in a browser by default, but you may need to open them in Dreamweaver or Notepad to make some changes. The Open With menu makes that possible.

Today we’re going to show you how you can add or remove programs in the Open With menu. In the end you’ll truly appreciate how much easier it is to open files in several different applications that are installed on your Windows computer.

–Add Programs from Open With Menu–

Adding an application to the Open With menu is a pretty easy task, and can actually be done in a few different ways. The easiest way is probably to right-click on the type of file that you want to alter, go to the Open With menu, and click the Choose Default Program option pictured above. You should now see a window similar to this one:

(Click to Enlarge)

The applications listed underneath the Recommended Programs section are the ones that already appear in the Open With menu, and then underneath those are some of the other apps installed on your computer. If the program you want to add to the menu is listed just select it and hit the OK button. Otherwise you can use the Browse button to hunt down the program on your computer.

One thing that you may want to think about before hitting the OK button is whether you want to make the new application the default for that specific type of file. If you don’t you’ll want to uncheck the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file box.

Any programs that you select from this window will be added to the Open With menu until you decide to remove them.

–Remove Programs from Open With Menu–

Unfortunately there is no fancy interface for removing programs from the Open With menu like there is for adding items. To do this you’ll need to fire up the Registry Editor by opening the Run command (Windows Key + R), and then typing regedit into the box. Messing with the Registry Editor is not for the faint of heart, and I recommend that you understand how it works before diving into it.

The programs listed in the Open With menu should be located in one of two locations in the Registry:

1. HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ FileExts \ .FileExtension \ OpenWithList
2. HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \ .FileExtension \ OpenWithList

Note: Replace “.FileExtension” with the extension of the file for which you’re looking to modify the Open With menu.

You should find the applications listed according to their executable name, and all you have to do is right click on the entry and have it deleted:

Tip: If you’re having troubles finding the application listed in the Registry Editor it might be easier to perform a search for the name of the executable. Just make sure that the entry you are deleting is located underneath an OpenWithList entry.

After you’ve successfully deleted the OpenWithList entries related to an extension you’ll want to restart your computer to see the changes take place.

–Overview–

So that’s how the Open With menu works! If you’ve got any suggestions as to easier ways to manage the Open With menu we would love to hear them.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Your Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryYour Week in Review with Sunday’s SummaryChange the Default Programs in WindowsCyberNotes: Minimize Programs To The System TrayYour Week in Review with Sunday’s Summary

This article was written on September 17, 2010 by CyberNet.

Windows only
I regularly find myself in a situation where I have to open large text or log files, and trying to view them using the built-in Windows Notepad will return a message saying that the “file is too large for Notepad”. Heck, sometimes my trusty Notepad++ can’t even handle them. When it comes down to files that are over a couple gigabytes I have to turn to a text editor that is a bit more reliable, and the one I’ve been using lately is called Large Text File Viewer.

This free application requires no installation, and is more than capable of handling those enormous files that other programs cringe at. I tested this with a 1GB file that had over 12 million lines, and I was able to start viewing the contents of the file in under a second. It then progressively loaded all 12 million lines over the next minute.

One important thing that makes this application useable for me is how smooth the scrolling is throughout the file. Sometimes when viewing a large text file it becomes extremely choppy to try and scroll through it, but with this viewer that is nowhere near being an issue. Opening a 1GB file and scrolling through it doesn’t feel much different than opening a simple text file in notepad that is less than a few megabytes in size.

Here are some of the features that Large Text File Viewer has to offer:

• Designed for viewing large (>1GB) text files.
• Uses very little memory (around 8-10MB on my system) and the executable is just 572KB in size.
• Background file indexing makes browsing even faster.
• It opens files that are currently being written to by other programs, and automatically checks and reads the files if new contents have been appended.
• You can split the view either horizontally or vertically, and have each side show different portion of the same file.
• It allows the user to perform high-speed complex text search by means of plain text or regular expression. (Note: The regular expression syntax is slightly different than normal)
• For CSV (Comma Separated Value) files, when the user hovers the mouse over any field in the file, a hint automatically appears with the field name.
• Customizable appearance (background, text color, etc…)
• Automatic detection of URLs (HTTP, FTP and email addresses).

If you’re trying to open or view large text files and logs then this is definitely an app you’ll want to have around.

Large Text File Viewer Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Find Large Files and Folders with Advanced RegEx FilteringHow to Share Large Files for FreeBulk Edit Text Files in Notepad++ (Without Opening Them)Bulk Open URL’sGoogle’s GDrive Slips Up

This article was written on April 27, 2011 by CyberNet.

Windows only
When Microsoft released Windows Vista they had a lot of great innovations in it despite the constant complaints people had with the OS. One of the best things that came out of Vista is Aero, which is what powers the Flip 3D (Windows Key + Tab), the Taskbar thumbnails, the blurred border around all the windows, the thumbnails used in Alt+Tab, and more. Those things are all great, but I’ve always felt that the thumbnails in the Alt+Tab popup are sometimes too small to even be useful. I mean if you have multiple Windows Explorer windows open it’s hard to distinguish between them using a thumbnail that’s barely bigger than a postage stamp. That’s why a few years ago we wrote about how you could increase the thumbnail size in Vista with a Registry tweak, but it’s gotten easier since then.

A skilled developer put together a super simple application called Alt+Tab Tuner for changing the size of the thumbnails in Windows 7. Most of the changes seem to take affect immediately after you hit the Apply button, except for the “Thumbs Grid” settings. For this you need to restart Explorer, which can easily be done by checking the “Autorestart Explorer” box in the bottom-left corner. The next time you hit the Apply button it will automatically restart the Explorer process for you.

To add a little perspective to some of the changes here are some before/after screenshots of a few changes I made:

Before (default Windows 7 settings):

After (larger thumbnails, smaller margins):

Not bad, huh? It’s a free and portable app that does exactly what it is designed to do. It’s hard not to love apps like that.

Note: The file will likely fail to download if you are viewing a translation of the download page, which is in Russian. Just look for the red “Download” text and click the link next to it.

Alt+Tab Tuner Homepage (Windows only; Freeware; Portable)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

OnTopReplica: Create a Live Thumbnail of Any WindowCyberNotes: How to get Bigger Thumbnails in the Vista TaskbarCyberNet Tour: Advanced Thumbnail NavigationOnTV: TV listings on your GNOME desktopHow To Display The Size Of Folders In Windows Explorer

This article was written on July 14, 2008 by CyberNet.

Anyone that has ever built a computer knows what a time consuming process it can be to find and price out all of the different parts that you need. The PC Incubator site wants to help ease the burden of finding the best parts by laying them all out in an easy-to-configure fashion.

Once you visit the site the first thing that you’ll notice is that all of the products listed on the page come directly from Newegg. They pull in the top three parts from each of the categories, and then you can go through selecting which ones you actually want. When you’re done configuring your custom built computer you can see the total price in the right column, and then adding all of the items to your Newegg cart takes just one more click.

One of the more useful aspects of the site would be the price history aggregation which pulls in price data for each of the items so that you can see if the price might go down. A good example I found was with a Logitech Speaker system. I had taken this screenshot on July 10th, and as you can see the price on the previous day was $15 less which means I might want to hold out on the purchase:

I think the site is very well laid out, and it almost feels like you’re configuring a computer at Dell. The only difference is that you’ll be getting all of the individual parts so that you can build your own PC.

The only thing that I don’t like about Incubator is that it only retrieves the top three items in each of the different categories. Clicking on a “See more” link just takes you to the Newegg site, which means you’ll no longer have access to things like the price history. If you’re looking to purchase the most popular items, however, this can be a handy little tool.

PC Incubator Homepage
Thanks Jeremy!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Picture Of Google’s Crowning AchievementMake Your Own USB Charge With Just 9 PartsCreate A More Powerful Battery-Powered USB ChargerGet Your Dell OS CD’s FOR FREE!!CyberDays: The Amazing Commodore 64

This article was written on July 13, 2011 by CyberNet.

Whenever you’re working with a lot of smaller images you’re supposed to combine them into a single one called a sprite. You can get an example of what I’m talking about by looking at Google’s sprite, which has most of the little icons you’ll come across while searching.

How can you build these yourself? Well, you can try to carefully craft a grid of icons and then calculate the offsets you need to use in your CSS code, or you can take the easy way out. There are a bunch of sites out there that will assemble multiple images into a single sprite, and then they give you the CSS code you need to access those images. One of my favorite sites is Instant Sprite.

For me Instant Sprite has all of the right features, and aside from being easy to use it also takes just a few seconds to get exactly what you need. You can even change the order in which the images appear in the sprite, which many of the services don’t allow.

I recommend bookmarking Instant Sprite, and then you’ll be more likely to pull it out the next time you’re doing a little web development.

Instant Sprite Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Generate Icons For Your Email AddressGoogle Calendar Button GeneratorMake Cool Logos For YourselfCyberNotes: How to Put Microsoft Word to Work for You!Regular Expression Generator and Tester