Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on April 30, 2007 by CyberNet.

There is all kinds of Silverlight news going around right now because of Microsoft’s 3–day MIX Conference. It started with the announcement with Microsoft giving away 4GB of hosting space for developers to store their media, and then came one of the much awaited demonstrations…

When Silverlight was originally announced Microsoft made sure to mention some of the big companies that they had already partnered with. They obviously wanted to show that they could provide a great user and developer experience  that would compete with Adobe’s media player offering. Microsoft was able to get Netflix on board to develop a solution for movie subscribers to stream movies to their PC using Silverlight, which meant that the entire experience was all contained within the browser.

In just 3–weeks time (as stated in the video below) Netflix was able to put together a service to let subscribers instantly stream movies at HD-quality along with DVD-like navigation:

There are also some demos available right now that you can try out yourself. Here are a few that Microsoft has listed on the Silverlight Homepage:

• Fox Movie trailers – I have to admit that I would love to watch all of my trailers on an interface like this, and at that quality. I also like how it is close to watching a DVD since it has the “chapter” navigation.
• Dynamic ads – uh oh, there could be a new breed of “shoot the monkey” on the horizon!
• Future Microsoft Homepage – This is actually pretty cool even though the only functional thing on the site is the navigation box on the right side. The first thing I noticed is that it sports a live search feature that displays matching results as you type. If you click on any of the navigation categories you’ll be presented with the results in a customizable view (one of the options looks like the Flip-3D in Vista). You’ll also notice that the background is blurred out when this window comes up.
  
• MSDN homepage – Nothing overly exciting here…just a popup media player.

Silverlight can be installed by going to this page and downloading the 1.4MB setup file. I was able to have it installed in under 30 seconds, so the process is pretty painless.

Source: Webware

Thanks to Oliver Daniel for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Silverlight 1.0 Released – Linux Support Coming SoonWhat would you like to see with Internet Explorer 8?Opera 9.22 Available with Improved BitTorrent SupportMicrosoft Tafiti – Search RedesignedRemove The Shine From Your iPod

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

Yesterday I went through how you can enable restricted drivers in Ubuntu 7.10, but that was only part of my struggle while trying to get Compiz Fusion turned on. Enabling the advanced graphics should technically have been a piece of cake after getting my 3D-enabled ATI drivers installed on my ATI X1400 graphics card, but that wasn’t exactly the case.

I went to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and tried filling in the Extra bubble. That should have worked, but instead of being overwhelmed with the amazing eye candy that Compiz Fusion brings I was presented with an error message stating that “The composite extension is not available“. And I had my hopes up. *sigh*

I went hunting around the Ubuntu forum to see if I was alone in experiencing such an issue, and it turns out I wasn’t. There were a lot of people trying to figure out how to work around the problem, but one member hit it right on the dot. Here’s what I had to do:

1. Go to System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager. This is going to be used to install two packages that you’ll need to have.
2. The first package that you’ll need to search for is xserver-xgl, and check the box next to it.
   
3. Now do another search for compizconfig-settings-manager, which isn’t needed but might as well be installed. This provides a user interface for configuring the different settings of Compiz Fusion.
   
4. Go back to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects and fill in the Effects bubble.
   
5. You may need to restart Ubuntu, but after that you can use Compiz Fusion in all its glory!

I plan on writing up a review of several Compiz Fusion features later on, and I’ll admit that it is worth any extra work you need to do to get it running. Don’t forget that you installed the Compiz Settings Manager in step 3 which provides an interface for configuring the different Compiz Fusion plugins. That can be accessed by going to System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Advanced Desktop Effects Settings:

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Compiz Fusion Adds Cylinder EffectUbuntu 7.10 Review & Screenshots (Beta)Full Circle Magazine Issue #6Install and Enable Restricted Drivers in UbuntuHow to Install Compiz Fusion on Ubuntu

This article was written on June 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

When Google Maps launched their "Street View" last week it started a huge spectacle of people looking for odd photos. Some of the things people found were quite funny, but I’m glad that Google launched such a feature because it helps people become familiar with areas that they haven’t visited.

It’s definitely a cool feature, but let the truth be told that it doesn’t stack up to what Microsoft’s Photosynth can do. If you haven’t heard of Photosynth then I’m sure you’ll be quite impressed. It essentially "assembles" images into a 3D world that you can navigate, and it is even more amazing than it sounds.

The downside to Photosynth is that it requires a lot of processing power to assemble the images together into a structural model that can be navigated. For that reason it hasn’t been opened up to the public yet, so you can’t upload your own pictures to see what this thing can really do.

However, they have taken a big step forward in helping prepare a piece for BBC’s new series entitled "How We Built Britain." The PhotoSynth team has spent 6-months preparing image mashups for Ely Cathedral, Burghley House, the Royal Crescent, Bath, the Scottish Parliament Buildings, and Blackpool Tower Ballroom. As long as you’re running Internet Explorer or Firefox, feel free to check them out yourself (it does require that you install an add-on though).

For those of you who don’t feel like installing anything, I have put together a 4-minute video demonstration of each place they have implemented:

Pretty cool, huh? I thought it was awesome being able to fly around all of the different places, and it definitely gives future tourists an inside look at popular areas.

Whether the Photosynth team will ever be able to increase the performance of the image assembling process is still a question that I find myself asking. It took them 6-months to prepare these galleries, so making something available for consumers to use would not be an easy task. Although the video in this post by the Photosynth team implies that there are other things this technology can be used for.

If you’ve got some photos of Britain that you don’t mind including in the project, they can be submitted at BBC’s site here. Alternatively you could upload your photos to this Flickr group.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Space Shuttle Endeavour Photos on PhotosynthMicrosoft Actually Releases a Firefox Extension/Plugin?Microsoft’s Photosynth Project Launches to the PublicAwesome 3D Photo Viewer Trumps PhotosynthMicrosoft’s Photosynth Turns 2D Images Into 3D

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

Click to Enlarge

I don’t think that anyone would argue that getting used to Microsoft Office 2007′s new interface takes some time. I’ve been using Beta 2 for what seems like forever (probably about 8 months in reality) and I finally feel comfortable being able to find the commands that used to reside on toolbars and menus in previous versions of Office.

It turns out that Microsoft is working on a plug-in for Office 2007 with the codename Scout, according to I Started Something. It will offer an additional tab that is similar to the one pictured above so that users will be able to quickly search for the commands that they could instinctively find before. As you start to type a word in the search box, such as “pictur” in the example, it will show you live results from the list of available commands.

One recommendation that I can give you is to make good use of the Quick Access Toolbar that is located above the tabs. It keeps you from having to constantly switch back and forth between tabs to get to the commands that you use frequently. The easiest way to add something to the Quick Access Toolbar is to just right-click on any item located on a Ribbon, and select the “Add to Quick Access Toolbar” option:

To keep the toolbar from getting too cluttered you can customize it using the respective option on the right-click menu. That way you can reposition items and put separators in.

Of course, you’ll have to be able to find the command in the first place. I’ve found the help to be quite useful and it can save you more time than you think, but once the Scout add-on becomes available that will surely speed things up. This morning I actually came across an interactive tutorial that Microsoft is offering for Word 2003 users that lets you hover over a command to see where you can find it in Office 2007 (as pictured below). If that isn’t enough for you then click on the command and it will actually demonstrate how you can find that command in Word 2007.

I was really impressed that they even let you go through all of the menus and select commands there as well, so it will be pretty comprehensive for most Word users. It would have been nice, however, if they put a tutorial like this together for Excel and PowerPoint but I couldn’t find one.

Once you start to get used to Microsoft Office 2007 it is hard to switch back to the previous versions that only have the toolbars. Everything works so smoothly and, despite the initial frustration, you can find things much faster. If you really give the new interface a fair shot, and still walk away not liking it I would be quite surprised.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Microsoft Lets Users Test Drive Office 2007 OnlineMicrosoft Office 2007 Gets A Small FaceliftDownload Office 2007 Beta 2 Legally And FREEOffice 2003 and Office 2007 Toolbar/Ribbon Size ComparisonMicrosoft Releases An Office 2007 Video Demonstration

This article was written on May 19, 2008 by CyberNet.

Firefox 3 is scheduled to be finished in the next month or two, and with it users will begin seeing a completely redesigned interface that is tailored to the operating system that they are using. This version of Firefox has already made significant advances in terms of performance, and it seems as though the only thing people have been criticizing in Firefox 3 are the new themes. When it comes down to it there is a different theme available for Vista, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows XP.

Alex Faaborg, the user experience designer at Mozilla, put together a rather comprehensive review of how they visually tied Firefox 3 into the different operating systems. Personally the only thing that I really dislike in the themes is the “keyhole” design for the back/forward button. All of the themes, except for Linux, have this type of button. I find it to be gaudy and not flow well with the other aspects of the themes.

Luckily you can easily ditch the keyhole-styled button by enabling small icons. Just right-click on the navigation bar, choose Customize, and then check the Use Small Icons box. Notice how the oversized keyhole design is nowhere to be found?

I was really looking forward to Aero Glass integration in the Vista theme, but that won’t be happening this time around. For the time being we’ll have to rely on an extension to get that job done, that is until the next version of Firefox arrives:

On Vista we do a great job visually integrating with icons and with our set of secondary windows, although the main window is notably missing support for Aero glass. Users will hopefully be able to get this functionality using an extension during the life cycle of Firefox 3, and we will have glass support added to XUL for the next release of Firefox.

Faaborg even went as far as to say that “Safari 3.1 does a number of [visual] things wrong that we get right.” An example he gave was how the navigation buttons are not grayed out in Safari 3.1 when the window is not selected, which isn’t consistent with some other Apple applications. One commenter who goes by the name Superdotman called Faaborg out by saying:

Apple’s attention to detail is huge. If you see something that seems inconsistent, there’s usually a good reason.

Safari glyphs remain dark because when the window is deselected, they still accept click-through. Finder’s don’t.

Aqua controls are used for webclips because webclips are done with a modal dialog. Inline find uses the appropriate textured controls.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that you guys are trying to integrate more with OS X! Just tone down the ego a bit until you have some more knowledgeable Mac guys to back it up.

Mozilla definitely deserves some credit for being one of the first cross-platform browsers to developer OS-specific themes. I’m curious as to how many of you like the new themes, and how many of you will actually go hunting for a new one to use.

Thanks to “Change” for the tip!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

Related Posts:

Firefox 2.0 Themes – presented by Learn FirefoxFirefox 3 Themes: Vista on XP, or XP on VistaThemes For Your iPod – Make It Look Like FirefoxPersonas Offers Better Firefox SkinningFirefox Replaces Extensions Manager With Add-ons Manager