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 May 22, 2008 by CyberNet.

Google Docs just added what I consider to be a feature that is needed to help bridge the gap between desktop and online word processing. They added a page view (as expected) that is typical of any desktop word processor, and it’s almost like getting a live print preview while you work. To access the new setting go to the View menu, and select the fixed-width page view option.

It’s still not quite perfect though. For one it doesn’t take into account any margins you specify in the File -> Print Settings. So it still makes it difficult to see exactly what your document will look like before you actually print it, because after all there is no real “print preview” option. And even though this is considered a page view it doesn’t actually flow onto another page as you reach the end of one. Instead it just extends the height of the page as much as necessary.

Replicating a page layout seems to be a tough chore for these online word processors. Zoho has a page layout option as well, but when using theirs you cannot edit the document. So it would actually be better suited to be called a print preview since it actually does split the document up onto multiple pages as needed.

I don’t know about you, but when I write documents I like to keep them in a page layout. That way you have some idea of just how long it actually is, and Google has made a step in the right direction with this update. It may not be 100% what I was hoping for, but I’m sure they will continue to improve on it.

Google Docs [via Google Blogoscoped]

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on July 24, 2012 by CyberNet.

I have quite a few friends that have tried out Windows 8 at this point, and the first question they always ask is “how do I shutdown Windows 8?” It might sound like a stupid question, but Microsoft ditched the Start Menu that has been in Windows for a long time, and as a result the shutdown/restart buttons also got tucked away in a new spot.

Why did Microsoft make the shutdown and restart buttons so hard to find in Windows 8? The general philosophy with computers these days is that you don’t need to turn them off. If you’re using a laptop you just close the lid and it will go to sleep, or for desktop users the machine is set to go into standby after it sits idle for a period of time. There will always be instances where you might want to shutdown or reboot your computer though, and I’m going to show you how to go about doing that.

Method 1: The Charms Bar

The first thing you’ll need to do is move your mouse to the bottom-right corner of the screen to activate the Charms bar, and then click on the Settings icon:

Now you should see the Settings sidebar appear along with a Power icon. Click on the Power icon, and choose whether you want to shutdown/restart/sleep your machine:

Method 2: The Hotkey/Keyboard Shortcut

For the keyboard junkies out there you’ll be happy to know that there is a quick way to access the power options. If you press the WinKey+I you’ll immediately be shown the same Settings sidebar that appeared using the previous method, but with fewer steps. The other bonus is that the keyboard shortcut also works from the Windows Desktop, which means you can restart your computer without having to first go back to the Metro interface.

Method 3: Desktop Shortcut

The final option that I’m going to present to you is creating your own desktop shortcut. We wrote an article about how to create a desktop shortcut to shutdown your computer 6-years ago, and so I’ll just refer you to that. Those same instructions still work in Windows 8.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on October 24, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

One of the new things in Ubuntu 7.10 is the ability to read and write to NTFS formatted drives, which is great for Windows XP and Vista users. What that means is that you can create a Firefox profile in Windows and set it up so that Ubuntu uses the exact same profile.

Why would that be nice to have? Any bookmarks, extensions, and options you configure in Windows will be used in Ubuntu as well. You won’t have to spend extra time trying to setup a Firefox profile just for Ubuntu, which for me makes this trick a must!

Here’s what you have to do:

1. Call up the terminal in Ubuntu, and type firefox -profilemanager at the prompt:
   
2. You should be presented with the Firefox Profile Manager which we’ll use to create a new profile. After you press the Create Profile button you’ll need to click Next on the following screen.
   
3. Here you’ll want to type in the name of the new profile, and once you’ve done that click the Choose Folder button:
   
4. This is where you need to hunt down the location of your Firefox profile on your Windows partition, which in my case was labeled by default in Ubuntu as “sda2″. The profiles are located at Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows XP/2000 or users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ on Windows Vista. After you select your Firefox profile folder click the Open button.
   (Click to Enlarge)
   
5. Now you can finish up the profile creation process. When you’re taken back to the Profile Manager, select the new profile that you just made, and start Firefox. If you check the Don’t ask at startup option, Firefox will always use that profile as the default one.
   

See, I told you it was simple! The same type of thing can be done with Mozilla Thunderbird, but I thought Firefox was a good place to start. Enjoy having all of the same extensions, bookmarks, and settings in your Windows and Ubuntu versions of Firefox! 😉

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 16, 2008 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Sometimes it’s hard to grasp just how valuable something as simple as a screenshot can be. When we first started writing on CyberNet we didn’t always focus on providing screenshots of the things that we wrote about, but it didn’t take long for us to see that they often got our point across more than words ever could. And that is part of what’s made our site as successful as it is.

So what about taking screenshots yourself? Sure there are all kinds of applications out there to do it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the screenshots you want to take are only of websites. If that’s the case and you’re a Firefox user then this is the article for you! Today we’ve got two different Firefox extensions that will appeal to both novices and professionals alike.

–Abduction (Homepage)–

First up is Abduction. This extension is rather different from the other one below. It’s not geared towards the people who want a screenshot utility brimming with features. Instead it focuses on how it can make snapping screenshots as easy as possible.

To activate Abduction just go to the File menu or right-click anywhere on the current site, and then choose the Save Page as Image option. You’ll immediately be shown a window similar to this one:

 
(Click to Enlarge)

Immediately after snapping the screenshot the entire site will be highlighted. That means if you hit the Save button without making any changes you’ll be including everything on the page… even the areas you would have had to scroll to see. That can easily be changed by drawing a box around the area that you want the screenshot to capture.

Abduction also lets you choose whether to save the screenshot as a PNG or JPG depending on what filetype is your preference. That’s it. No fancy interface and nothing to confuse you. Just snap your screenshots and go!

–FireShot (Homepage)–

FireShot, on the other hand, takes a completely opposite approach to screenshots. It’s possible to grab snapshots of a website in mere seconds, but it comes with a lot of additional tools that some users may not want. In particular it has a built-in editor that is extremely handy should you decide that you want to annotate a screenshot.

Here’s a list of features that I assembled after using FireShot for a little while:

• You can take a screenshot of the entire site (including scrollable area) or just the area currently visible. And then:
  • Modify the screenshot using the built-in editor
  • Upload it to screenshot-program.com where it will be hosted completely free
  • Save it to your computer
  • Copy it to the clipboard
  • Open it in an external editor that you specify
• Built-in advanced editor
• Add shapes, drawings, lines, or text to any screenshot
• Crop, blur, convert to grayscale, invert colors, or add a glowing border to any area you select on the screenshot
• Color-picker available when selecting colors, which makes it easy to match any color on a screenshot
• One-click screenshots are available using the settings you specify in the options.
• You can automatically have a website URL added as a removable object to each screenshot

The editor aims to keep things simple, but it has a lot of different controls that take a little getting used to. Here is what the editor looks like:

(Click to Enlarge)

–Overview–

The Firefox extension that you choose to use for taking screenshot really depends on what you’re looking to accomplish. If you just want to share a screenshot with someone I recommend Abduction because I found it to be a fast and efficient way to save a screenshot. However, if you need to point things out and need some more advanced tools FireShot will better suit you. Whichever you choose you really can’t go wrong!

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com