Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on November 08, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

One feature that I’ve always wanted in Windows was the ability to have windows snap to the edge of the screen. Some people see that feature as an inconvenience because the operating system is trying to do something that the user may not have intended, but it can be useful when trying to quickly arrange windows.

Today I’m going to show you how to unobtrusively snap windows to the edge of the screen using a free program called FreeSnap! There are no options to configure, and there isn’t even a System Tray icon. The only way you’ll know the program is running is by the splash screen that’s shown when it starts. There is a predefined set of keyboard shortcuts that you can use to increase/decrease the size of a window, move it to one of the corners of the screen, or snap it to an edge of the screen.

–Keyboard Shortcuts–

Keyboard shortcuts are what make FreeSnap so wonderful. When I first started getting used to the program the shortcuts seemed unnatural, and nearly impossible to remember. It wasn’t until I visually drew a box around each set of keys that I began to understand why they were laid out the way they were (well, at least the ones for snapping and moving are intuitive). To help you visualize the keys I’ve color coded the groups and mapped them to a keyboard layout below.

• Snap…
  to top: Windows Key + I
  to bottom: Windows Key + K
  to left: Windows Key + J
  to right: Windows Key + L
• Move…
  to top-left corner: Windows Key + T
  to bottom-left corner: Windows Key + G
  to top-right corner: Windows Key + Y
  to bottom-right corner: Windows Key + H
• Center window: Windows Key + C
  Grow window: Windows Key + Z
  Shrink window: Windows Key + X

–Snap Windows–

The snapping feature is definitely my favorite part of the program. Naturally you would think that this would create some sort of “magnetic edges” on the program windows so that when you come in contact with another edge it is attracted to it. That’s not the case at all, and therefore it is much less likely to annoy you.

Instead when making a window snap to the edge of the screen it will extend the window to that edge. So let’s say you want a window to span from the top of your screen to the bottom, all you would have to do is press the Windows Key + I and then the Windows Key + K. To make it a little clearer I’ve created an animated image that shows what happens when I snap an application to the right side of the screen:

–Resize Windows–

The grow and shrink (Windows Key + Z or X, respectively) feature will resize windows to the most common sizes. This is really handy for website and program developers to see what their work will look like on computers running at various resolutions. Here are the five preset resolutions that FreeSnap will shuffle between:

• 640 x 480
• 800 x 600
• 1024 x 768
• 1152 x 864
• 1280 x 1024

–Move Windows–

Moving a window is different than snapping  it because the height and width of the window remain untouched. When you initiate a move it will be sent to the respective corner, such as in this case where I sent the window to the upper-right corner of the screen:

The shortcut keys, Windows Key + T/G/Y/H, makeup what appears to be a box on the keyboard. You can see this in the keyboard layout I posted above, and each letter corresponds to a corner of the box. That is important when it comes to remembering what key does what.

–Overview–

I think this program kind of provides the best of both worlds for users. You don’t have to worry about magnetic edges on windows which can get annoying after awhile, but you are still able to send a window to the edge of the screen. The only thing that takes some getting used to are the keyboard shortcuts. 😉

FreeSnap Homepage (for Windows only)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 29, 2008 by CyberNet.

Time Saving Tuesday

This article might seem familiar to some of you because we’ve covered shutdown utilities quite a bit in the past, but rest easy knowing that this is going to be different than anything you may or may not have read. We’re going to cover some of the best shutdown programs and tips out there since, as Ashley has pointed out, this coming Saturday is Shutdown Day.

By shutting down your computer you can save a lot of energy, which is merely money in the bank for you! If you’re one of those who leave your computer on 24-hours a day then think about the money you could save by shutting down your computer overnight. It’s estimated that 25% of people leave their computers on at the end of the day (whether it be at work or home), and so a simple shutdown would be very much welcomed. Heck, we’ve already seen how much money Vista saves because of its various power schemes.

Alright, let’s jump into the different ways to shutdown your Windows computer…

–Shutdown After BitTorrent Downloads Finish–

I’m sure many of you have left your computer running overnight to download something from the BitTorrent network. That’s definitely understandable considering how long it can take somethings, such as Linux DVD’s, to finish downloading especially when you don’t have a fast Internet connection.

One of the most popular BitTorrent clients, uTorrent, has a feature buried within the Options menu that you may not have seen before called Auto Shutdown. Check it out… you can have uTorrent shutdown your computer when the downloads complete:

–Schedule and Shutdown From Anywhere–

I have a server that I like to shutdown at night before I head off to bed, but one of the problems is that it’s not connected to a monitor or anything. So what I end up doing is remotely shutdown the computer from a web interface using Shutter, and thanks to a little port forwarding on my router it’s actually accessible from outside of my network. Don’t worry, you can specify a username and password so that some joe schmo from your local cafe isn’t rebooting your computer every 10 minutes. 😉

(Click to Enlarge)

To setup web access beyond the computer you’re on you’ll need to pull up the options, and there is a tab called Web Interface that you’ll need to jump to. You’ll want to change the Listen IP from the 127.0.0.1 to the IP address of the computer, and it’s probably easiest if you leave the port set to 80.

Tip: There’s also a Screenshot option that you can select on the web interface which is really nice. It will show you a screenshot of your desktop at that moment, which is handy when you don’t have a monitor hooked up!

–Shutdown After Firefox Downloads Finish–

Maybe it’s not a BitTorrent file that you’re downloading? No problem. If you’re using Firefox you can have it shutdown your computer after all downloads in the browser finish. All you’ll need is the Auto ShutDown extension.

Once installed the extension will place a “Shutdown” checkbox in the download window, which essentially gives the browser permission to shutdown the computer once the downloads complete.

If you really get into using this you may want to checkout the options it has to offer. You can change around how it works quite a bit, but the default settings will be fine for most people.

–Bulk Shutdown Computers–

Have too many computers that you need to shutdown? PowerOff Beta has an option available where you can specify multiple computers that you would like to shutdown according to IP address, name, or by browsing for them. Naturally you’ll need to know any usernames and passwords for the computers you want to shutdown… otherwise we would all be having too much fun randomly shutting down people’s computers. 😉

(Click to Enlarge)

–Shutdown Shortcut–

Looking for a blazingly fast way to shutdown your computer? What’s faster than creating a shortcut that you merely have to double-click? There are a lot of different options available when shutting down your computer via a shortcut, and so I’m just going to point you in the direction of our fairly comprehensive article on creating the shutdown shortcuts.

–Overview–

So I think you’re all set for Shutdown Day on Saturday, May 3rd! Shutdown your computer, get some fresh air, and then come Sunday you can stop hyperventilating from the severe withdrawals you went through.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on December 21, 2007 by CyberNet.

If you’ve been brave enough to venture into the realm of Firefox 3 Beta 2 there is no denying that you’ve seen the newly designed Location/Address Bar (pictured above). It’s big, prominent, and is likely to irritate some people who prefer the more streamlined Address Bar that we’ve come to know and love. Give me just 30 seconds of your time and we can bring back the classic look…

1. Start Firefox.
2. In the Address Bar type “about:config” and press Enter.
3. Right-Click and select New->Boolean.
4. A box requesting the Preference Name will popup and you should enter “browser.urlbar.richResults ” (without the quotes). Press OK to continue.
5. Select “False” from the box and press OK again.
6. Restart Firefox

Now you should be able to enjoy your single-line condensed view of addresses that are shown when you begin to type in the Location Bar. Obviously this setting will have no effect on older versions of Firefox, but a lot of people I know have already jumped on the Firefox 3 bandwagon so I thought it would be a good time to share this tip.

Oh, and don’t forget about the last Address Bar tip we posted. That works in all versions of Firefox.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on January 31, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

A couple of weeks we wrote up a tutorial on how to create a single batch file that would simultaneously launch several different applications. It’s a handy little trick that many people found useful because they are frequently running the same programs on their computer. For example, when you start your computer you might open a browser, media player, and document editor. Instead of clicking on each of those shortcuts individually you can create a single batch file that will do the dirty work.

In the comments of that article “ExitRitual” asked a great question. He was wondering if it would be possible to do the same thing, but for closing programs. This would come in handy if, for example, you were getting ready to play a computer game. Most people shutdown a majority of the running applications to ensure that the game runs smoothly, and it can all be done in a single batch file.

We’ve shown how to do something similar in the past, but we were using a free third-party program because it was a little more powerful for the task at hand. This time around we’re going to use a command line option that is built-in to Windows.

–Instructions–

1. Open Notepad (Start Menu -> Accessories -> Notepad):
   
2. Now you need to find the filename of the programs you want to close. I believe the best way to do this is to open up the Task Manager. Do this by right-clicking on the Taskbar and choosing the Task Manager option. Then look for the filename of the program you want to close.
   
3. Now you’ll need to use the taskkill command in Notepad, along with the filename(s) that you just grabbed in the previous step. Each command will look like this:

   taskkill /im firefox.exe

   Where firefox.exe is the filename of the program you want to close. Put each of these commands on a separate line like this:
   

4. Save it as a .BAT file by manually entering in the extension at the end of the file name.
   
5. Double-click on the new file that you just created to test out the results. Each program listed will be closed in a friendly fashion instead of being shutdown forcefully.

The batch file will be smart enough to skip over any applications that are currently not running. So throw all of those extra programs in the batch file, and don’t forget to include things that might be running the the System Tray.

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 10, 2008 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

Grouping similar Taskbar buttons in Windows is either a feature you love or hate. It’s nice because when your Taskbar starts to get full it will start grouping applications together to conserve space. For example, if you have 10 Firefox windows open at a time they will only show up as a single button on the Taskbar if you have grouping enabled.

This may not only help reduce clutter in your Taskbar, but for some people it could help maintain their sanity. The only thing is that the grouping of similar buttons will only occur once crowding sets in on the Taskbar. Don’t worry, it’s actually possible to let the feature kick in regardless of how full your Taskbar is. Just look at this screenshot I took after applying the tweak I’m about to show you:

It grouped the two Windows Explorer windows into a single button despite there being nothing else on the Taskbar. Feel free to proceed if you’re running Windows XP or Vista…

–Customizing Taskbar Grouping–

1. To simplify the process we’ve created this registry file that you can download (advanced users can find the registry information toward the end of the article). After you download that go ahead and extract the file. If you double-click on it right away it will set the Taskbar to start grouping when two or more of the same applications are open.

   If you want to change it to, for example, group only when there are three or more of the same applications open you’ll need to edit the file. To do this right-click on the TaskbarGroupSize.reg file you downloaded, and choose the Edit option. You would replace the “2″ with a “3″ in this case resulting in the line looking like this:

   "TaskbarGroupSize"=dword:00000003

   Similarly setting the value to “0″ will force the Taskbar grouping to return to the default method.

2. Now you need to enable the setting. If you feel like killing some time you could restart your computer or logoff, but it’s probably easier to just re-enable the option in the Taskbar properties. To do this right-click on the Taskbar and choose the Properties option. Uncheck the Group similar taskbar buttons option if it is already checked, and then click Apply. Now check the Group similar taskbar buttons box, and click OK:
   
3. The feature should now be enabled. If you didn’t modify the Registry setting in Step 1 you should see that any two similar windows will be grouped together regardless of how much space is being occupied in the Taskbar:
   
4. You can go back and modify the Registry setting in Step 1 at anytime. Running it again will merely overwrite the current value, and setting it to “0″ will return the grouping back the Windows default method.

–Advanced Users–

If you’re an advanced user and know your way around the Windows Registry you can create the necessary value yourself. You’ll need to navigate to this location:

HKEY_CURRRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced

Then you’ll need to create a new DWORD (32-bit) value called TaskbarGroupSize there. A value of “0″ will disable the feature, while a larger numerical setting (2 or higher) will initiate the grouping when that number of similar windows is open.

–Overview–

So now I’m curious… how many of you use Taskbar grouping in the first place? I generally don’t use it, but I know a lot of people who do. Drop us a comment below with your thoughts.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com