Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on November 22, 2007 by CyberNet.

Tutorial Thursday

For some weird reason, I’ve been a Microsoft Excel addict for as long as I can remember. When I was younger I remember being told by one of my teachers that Excel is one of the most powerful applications available, but most people will never touch it with a ten foot pole.

For over 7 years I’ve been programming Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) in Excel, which is essentially a way to extend Excel to do everything your heart desires. With it you can add more formulas, and create buttons that will execute queries on the data located in your spreadsheet. VBA is one of Excel’s best features in my opinion.

What I’m going to cover today is how to highlight cells based on their values in Excel 2007. This method is extremely simple and doesn’t use an ounce of VBA, despite an abundance of sites out there saying that VBA is required to do such a task. It’s all about Conditional Formatting!

Tip: This tutorial was created for Excel 2007, but the general principles will also work in older versions of Excel. The free OpenOffice.org Suite even has a Conditional Formatting option located under the Format menu, but it’s pretty basic compared to the one in Excel 2007.

–Preparation–

The values in column “C” and “D” are both formulas that I created to calculate the age of the person, and then how many days are left until their next birthday. That way I can prepare gifts or cards for any upcoming birthdays well in advance. The only problem is that when the list gets large it can be hard to see what birthdays are coming up.

I’m not going to walk through what all of the formulas mean, but to make it easier to follow along with our example, here’s what the content of the second row looks like:

• A2: John
• B2: 11/19/1984
• C2: =FLOOR(YEARFRAC(TODAY(),B2),1)
• D2: =DAYS360(TODAY(),DATE(YEAR(B2)+C2+1,MONTH(B2),DAY(B2)))

What I want to do with the data is highlight anyone with a birthday that is coming up within two weeks. To do cell highlighting, a lot of sites talk about how to use the Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), but that’s way more work than needed. It’s actually really easy to do …

–Instructions–

Note: Most of the screenshots below are thumbnails, so click on them for a fullsize version.

1. The first thing that you need to do is fill in a spreadsheet with some data to apply the conditional formatting. I’m using the data that I provided above for keeping track of birthdays, but you can use whatever you want.
   
2. I want to have the birthdays highlighted that are coming up in the next two weeks, so I need to highlight the cells in column “D” for that:
   
3. On the Home Ribbon is the Conditional Formatting option. Click on that and select the option for a New Rule.
   
4. There are several different types of data that you can look for in the cells that you’ve highlighted. For example, you can have duplicate entries or max/min values highlighted. For us we want to choose the Format only cells that contain option, and we want to check for a cell value that is less than 14. After that is entered in press the Format button.
   
5. Now we need to pick what the cells should look like that match the criteria, which in our case is all birthdays that occur in less than 14 days. I chose to make the background orange and also made the text bold.
   
6. You should see a preview of what matching cells will look like. Just hit the OK button to complete the conditional formatting.
   
7. Yay, it worked! Looks like John has a birthday coming up in 4 days!
   
8. Anytime the values in these cells change, Excel will automatically reanalyze them to see if they meet any of the conditional formatting rules. That means that once John’s birthday passes in 4 days it will no longer be highlighted.

This is just one of the nearly unlimited uses for conditional formatting. I use this all of the time in my spreadsheets because it helps recognize when an item needs attention. Some things I’ve used this for in the past is attendance lists for parties to highlight who’s coming and who’s not, budgets to see when money is getting low, gift lists to pinpoint who I still have to buy for, and a countdown fir events (similar to the birthday example I did in this article), and much more. Get creative!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on November 28, 2007 by CyberNet.

Web Browser Wednesday

Cookies in web browsers are an easy way for sites to store authentication/login information, settings, and so much more. One of the things that some sites do for security or privacy purposes is force the cookies to expire after a period of time. Sometimes they expire after a day, a week, a year, or when you close your browser. If there was a way to edit the cookies you would be able to adjust the expiration date so that you didn’t run into that problem.

Oh, but wait, there is a way to edit your browser’s cookies! It’s actually rather easy to do in both Firefox and Opera, so today we’ll take a look at how to edit cookies.

–Opera–

One of the great things about Opera is that they give you a lot of control over the content and properties of a cookie. If you want to alter a cookie it is as simple as heading over to the Preferences and clicking a few buttons.

To change a cookie in Opera go to Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Cookies -> Manage Cookies. Then find the cookie that you want to change, and click the Edit button. You’ll then be presented with a dialog where you can customize the expiration date or any other information contained within the cookie:

Click to Enlarge

As you can see it is rather easy to do in Opera thanks to the built-in advanced editor that the browser comes equipped with.

–Firefox–

Firefox is only able to view your browser’s cookies out-of-the-box, but as expected there are a few extensions available to do the dirty work. My personal favorite is Add N Edit Cookies, which has a simple yet powerful interface for managing and creating cookies.

Once you get the extension installed here’s what you’ll have to do to edit the cookies:

1. Go to Tools -> Cookie Editor, and then perform a search for the cookie you’re looking for. After you find the cookie you want select it and click the Edit button.
   
2. Now you’ll be presented with all of the cookie’s properties that you can edit. To change the expiration date of the cookie fill in the New expiration date bubble located at the bottom of the properties window:

   (Click to enlarge)
   

3. Save your changes, and then close out of the cookie editor.

–Recap–

To sum things up, it is pretty easy to manipulate the cookies in your browser, provided that you have the right tools handy. Some of the websites I visit have the logins expire after a very short period of time or when I close the browser, and it can get rather annoying. By adjusting the dates on some of my cookies I can avoid having to login to many sites over and over again.

Tip: You just need to be careful because often times these short-lived cookies are for your own protection and privacy.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Web Browser Wednesday

It’s been a year and a half since Mozilla shipped Firefox 3 Alpha 1, and what we saw initially wasn’t very breathtaking. For this first milestone release Mozilla focused on backend improvements that would, in the long run, make the browser a better competitor in a world that is largely dominated by Internet Explorer. Fast forward to the final release of Firefox 3 yesterday and we’ve got ourselves a rich browser that I believe Firefox users will embrace with open arms.

Firefox 3 has its sights set on Internet Explorer as it comes barreling through with over 15,000 updates. There have been enhancements to performance, stability, rendering, security, bookmarking, and much more that makes this the best version of Firefox yet. For the first time we’re going to list out all of Firefox 3′s best features for those of you who are jumping on the bandwagon for the very first time, and we’ll even take a brief look at the browser’s performance.

–Table of Contents–

In this article we’re focusing on several different aspects of the Firefox 3 browser, and we thought it might be easier for you to navigate if you had a table of contents. Here are the main topics that we’re going to cover:

1. Themes
2. Performance
3. Security
4. Usability
5. Developers
6. Conclusion

–Themes–

One of the most frequently discussed aspects of Firefox 3 is the fact that it ships with a handful of different themes that are all customized to the operating system you’re using. They’ve got one for Vista, Linux (varies depending on distribution used), Mac, and Windows XP. Each one focuses on trying to make the browser appear as though it was designed specifically for that operating system. There is, of course, some debate as to whether Mozilla succeeded in doing so.

Firefox 3 themes, from top to bottom: Vista, Linux, Mac, XP

The theme changes go beyond just a few changed icons, too. As you can tell in the screenshot above there are some rather drastic differences between each of the themes. A good example of that is the address bar and search box which have rounded corners on some operating systems, and don’t on others.

As you begin to dive a little deeper you’ll notice that the OS-specific skinning impacts more than the browser’s main window. Everything from the settings to managing bookmarks have all been designed to fit in with the general appearance of your operating system.

–Performance–

We’re not going to dive deep into the performance realm today because that’s something we plan on exploring more in the future. One thing that we can say is that the performance hasn’t changed much since our last extensive test, especially in the memory usage department. Firefox 3 still knocks the socks off of the competitors when it comes to minimizing the amount of memory it uses.

But you know darn well that we won’t move on without giving you some sort of benchmarks. We decided to see how Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3.1 do on the SunSpider JavaScript test. We left Internet Explorer out of this because it is pretty much the only one not claiming that it has significant JavaScript speed improvements. Here are the results from the three browsers running on Windows XP (a smaller number is better):

1. Firefox 3: 3057.6ms (results)
2. Safari 3.1: 3464.0ms (results)
3. Opera 9.5: 4440.0ms (results)

What’s interesting is that on Apple’s Safari site they say that “it executes JavaScript up to 4.5 times faster than Firefox 2 and up to 5 times faster than Opera 9.” While that may have been true at one point, I think they’ll need to be updating their facts. Although you know darn well that they won’t admit defeat to Firefox 3.

–Security–

Security is normally one of the main ways that people try to “sell” Firefox to their friends and family. They talk about how vulnerable you could be if you’re not using Firefox, and it looks like this will continue to be a selling point even in Firefox 3. Take a look at some of the new security features it brings to the table:

• Enhanced Web Forgery Protection: Firefox will try and block any sites that are infested with malware (example site), or are trying to compromise your confidential information through a phishing attack (example site).
• Antivirus Integration: After you download a file Firefox 3 will automatically scan it using any antivirus software that you have installed on your computer.
• Vista Parental Controls: I wish Mozilla got around to integrating with Vista’s parental controls a little better, because the only thing Firefox 3 will honor are any download restrictions that have been established. That’s nice and all, but website blocking is something most parents are probably concerned about more.

–Usability–

While Firefox 3 has a lot of improvements that are constantly working behind the scenes, there are also some great things that you’ll want to start taking advantage of right away. Here are the main features that you surely don’t want to miss:

• Enhanced Address Bar (a.k.a. Awesome Bar): The address bar has received one of the biggest overhauls, and it now uses an intelligent algorithm to determine which results you’re likely looking for. It uses a combination of the recency and frequency of your visits to figure out what belongs at the top of the list.
  
• Better Download Management: The download manager in Firefox was revamped a bit, but what’s more important is that in the Status Bar of the browser you can now keep an eye on how much longer your downloads have. Plus you can resume your downloads after you’ve restart the browser.
  
• “Remember My Password” isn’t so annoying: I absolutely hate when a browser asks you if you want it to remember your password before you even have a chance to see if what you entered was correct. I use different passwords on different sites, and now with Firefox 3 it will popup with an information bar along the top of the browser asking if I want it to remember my password. What’s nice about that is it doesn’t interrupt the page from loading, which means you can actually see whether the login credentials you used were correct before having Firefox store that information in its database.
  
• Simplified Bookmarking: Bookmarking a page is now as simple as clicking on the star located in the address bar. If you click the star a second time it will let you edit details such as the name of the bookmark, the location, and even any tags that you think will help find it in the future.
  
• Smart Bookmarks: The Smart Bookmarks are kind of like the automatically generated music playlists that applications like iTunes create. These special bookmarks can show a listing of your most visited sites, places you recently bookmarked, and more. We’ve even put together instructions on how to create your own Smart Bookmarks in Firefox 3.
  
• Full Page Zoom: By default when you go to zoom in and out on a website it will now zoom the entire page instead of just increasing or decreasing the size of the text. This is more like what the other mainstream browsers do, but you can always go back to the old way of “zooming” only the text if you want.
  

–Developers–

There are also some great things that developers of websites and extensions alike will want to take advantage of. Here are some of my favorites:

• Offline support: Firefox has the ability to take a website offline so that users can still interact with it even when not connected to the Internet.
• Web-based protocol handlers: We’ve already shown you how Firefox can integrate with online services (here and here), and hopefully there will be more web applications looking to take advantage of this feature.
• Animated PNG graphics: Could this be the thing that drives animated GIF’s into the grave?
• Several new XUL elements for extension creators: Now add things like date and time pickers to your extensions.
• And much more!

–Conclusion–

Firefox 3 is undoubtedly a next generation browser, and I’m anxious to see how well this version can compete against the other top-dogs out there. Let us know in the comments what you think of it, what your favorite features are, and when/if you plan on making the leap to Firefox 3.

P.S. Keep an eye out for next Wednesday’s CyberNotes as we show you some tweaks that can help make the browser even better.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Microsoft is throwing their weight around once again, and this time they are going against free and open-source software (FOSS). The 235 patent infringements in question are largely regarding the Linux operating system. They don’t give details as to what the patents cover, but they did break it down a little:

The Linux kernel – the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware – violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces – essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up – run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.

It’s almost as though Microsoft has been trying to build-up to this point because the graph seen above points out that in the past few years they have been going patent crazy. As you can see though, they don’t actually receive a lot of the patents that they apply for. I expect that the ones they do receive they are going to start fighting to protect.

Back in 2003 Microsoft executives decided that it was time to determine what they need to do to protect their patents. Here are the three choices that they had come up with.

1. They would do nothing, which basically means the patents would be donated to the community. This wouldn’t make shareholders very happy.
2. Sue everyone who is infringing on their patents.
3. Let others license the patents in return for royalties or access to their patents. This is the route Microsoft decided to take.

So now Microsoft wants royalties from all of the FOSS users, but in the end I think the FOSS community is going to be taking a different route. Obviously free and open source software is extremely popular for multiple reasons, but the biggest is that you don’t have to pay a thing. Don’t worry, I don’t think any of that will be changing, and one Slashdot commenter did a great job of summing it up:

Note: TCO = Total Cost of Ownership; OSS = Open Source Software; MAFIAA = Music and Film Industry Association of America; OSDL = Open Source Development Labs

This week press titles: “New Microsoft sponsored studies proves TCO to be higher for OSS because of patent fees“, “Microsoft to go after individual users MAFIAA style“

Next week press titles: “238 patches and upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu repositories“, “OSDL sponsored study proves that OSS has the highest reaction time in terms of patch release“

Now not every company is in trouble by Microsoft. For example, Novell drew up a deal with Microsoft last year where they agreed to give Microsoft a percentage of its Linux revenue up to the year 2011 (or a minimum of $40 million) in return for immunity from their lawyers. Other companies, including Dell and Samsung, have also drawn up deals with Microsoft which prevent them from getting sued.

I’m going to venture a guess that this is not going to settle well with the FOSS community. It will be interesting to see the reaction as more information is provided, and we find out what the actual infringements are.

Source: CNN Money [via Slashdot]

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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

Feed readers aren’t for everyone, and if you only have a few different sites that you follow you’ll more than likely find most readers to be a little extravagant. If you’re one of those people that are just looking for a quick way to keep up on the news then I think Taskable is just the right program for you. It is a tiny freeware application that sits in your System Tray and when you click on it will bring up a menu with all of your feeds.

Actually, this reminds me exactly of the Live Bookmarks that Firefox has. All you have to do is supply the URL to the feed and give it a name to display in the menu. You can then go through all of your feeds to look for news that might interest you…all without having to open an application. One thing that you can’t expect from this program is any kind of content from the articles that are shown. However, when you click on one of the items it will take you to the articles page in your browser.

There are a few things that you can do to help get the most out of this application. First off, when providing the URL for the feed you can also enter in the location of an OPML file. That is the filetype that most RSS readers will be able to export your feed list as so that it can be brought into Taskable without needing to enter a ton of URL’s by hand. Almost all online feed readers, like Google Reader, support exporting your feed list as an OPML file so it should be no trouble getting your list of feeds into the application.

The next thing I wanted to mention was using the new Yahoo! Pipes to bring multiple feeds into one so that you can mashup all of your favorite sites. I tried the service for the first time today and it took some getting used to, but I figured it out in the end. That large feed that you see in the screenshot is a compilation of Digg and CyberNet that I made with the Yahoo! Pipes. It doesn’t do any special filtering because I was just trying to learn the basics, and Yahoo! Pipes can definitely be intimidating when you first start using it. There isn’t any documentation available at this time to help you understand how to setup your own pipes other than this simple overview, but the sample pipes they have will surely help you figure things out.

The other reason I wanted to add Digg is to demonstrate what happens when there are a massive number of feed items available. Taskable does not have any sort of option to adjust how many items are displayed so it is only limited by the feed itself. For example, in our feed we show the last 10 articles that were posted so that is how many will be displayed in Taskable, whereas Digg displays a lot more. There is really nothing that you can configure in the program except for what feeds you want to show up in the menu.

This isn’t something that I would really use because we are subscribed to hundreds of feeds, but for the casual user I think this will be great. If it sounds like something you would like make sure to check it out!

Download Taskable (our mirror)

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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