Tag: software

The Greatest Firefox Extension Ever

nosquint-logoUntil today, I have unsuccessfully waged my own private war against tiny text size on the internet.  Some sites use a default text size that renders microscopically on larger monitors at higher resolutions.  Changing the default text size at the browser level isn’t a solution, because then the text size on many sites is way too big.  It has been extremely frustrating.

Occasionally I google around in search of a solution.  Today I found one.  And based on 30 minutes of surfing around and actually being able to read the words on pages, I proclaim it the greatest Firefox extension ever.

NoSquint is the long awaited answer to the text size problem.

It allows you to set a default zoom level for all pages within Firefox (the suggested 120% works well for me).  The best part is that you can also set individual zoom levels on a per site basis.  This allows me to automatically increase the absurdly small Netvibes text to 140% and the almost as absurdly small My Yahoo text to 130%.

This may be the most significant advance in my internet experience since broadband.

I am very happy, though I can’t resist firing one last shot across the bow of the young and eagle-eyed developers who ignore text size issues: why does it take an extension to do what the sites themselves should already offer via the personalization settings?

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Annoying Windows Vista Problem Solved

Ever since I installed Vista on KN-1, my home built computer, I have had one extremely annoying problem.  After my computer runs for a while, the toolbar gets all out of whack.  Like this:

mess 2

The buttons get all jumbled up and stop responding.  It is very, very annoying.

The only solution I could come up with was to reboot, which was very disruptive to whatever task I was working on.  The problem was even more irritating because when this happens, the restart button stops responding, and I have to do the control-alt-delete thing just to restart.  This mess has been a major drain on my efficiency and I had even begun to consider trashing my computer and starting over- in a desperate attempt to solve this problem.

Weekends in the Houston language translates to “rains all day.”  So I decided to use my forced indoor time today to see if I could find a solution to this problem.  Of course, I started with the answer machine- Google.  After running down a few wrong trails, I came across this inviting Microsoft Knowledge Base page.  I first tried the work around:

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL.
2. Click Task Manager.
3. Click the Processes tab.
4. Click the explorer.exe process.
5. Click End Process, and then click End process.
6. Click the Applications tab.
7. Click New Task.
8. Type explorer in the Open box, and then click OK.

Lo and behold, that fixed the problem.  At least now I wouldn’t have to control-alt-delete and restart every hour or so.

Next I installed the hotfix from that page.  It installed.  I was hopeful.  I rebooted, even though I wasn’t prompted to.

Four hours later, I am still working and my toolbar looks normal.  And the buttons work.

I can’t adequately explain how happy I am to (cross my fingers) have this problem solved.

If this post can help one other person solve this problem, it will be worth it.

Very Annoying Firefox Video Problem

I love Firefox.  But I am having a problem that may force me back to Internet Explorer.

Can someone please tell me why, why a million times why, when I want to watch a video of the Loch Ness Monster (how do they know it’s a monster, but I digress) or just about any other non-YouTube video, I get this:

ffe

I can’t believe in this day and age when everything is about online video, Firefox can’t figure out how to play a frickin’ video.  And if this is some stupid thing Microsoft is causing, why some hacker in Sweden or somewhere hasn’t hacked away this annoyance.  I tried this, and it didn’t help.

This really irritates me.

Farewell Windows Live OneCare, Hello Kaspersky

My dislike of the once great Norton Antivirus has been well documented.  I have lately been on a quest for a simple, effective, non-intrusive antivirus program that doesn’t slow my computer to a crawl or try to operate it for me.

I don’t need a program to tune up my computer.  I don’t need a hundred pop-up alerts every time I log on.  Unless the black plague is running rampant on my hard drive, I don’t want to see anything related to my antivirus program.

When I ditched Norton, I tried the absurdly named Windows Live OneCare.  At first, I liked it, but that was the Norton effect.  After Norton, anything feels wonderful.  Over time, however, I came to realize that Windows Live OneCare was slowly taking over my computer.  Again, I don’t want a frickin’ computer tune up.  Not now.  Not ever.

So last night, I uninstalled Windows Live OneCare.  And resumed my search for the holy grail of antivirus programs.

Next up is Kaspersky Antivirus 6.0.  I’ve read good things about it.  So let’s install it and see what’s what.

It was easy to purchase.  Paypal payments are accepted, which is a plus for me.  The download file is around 19 megabytes.  Installation took a couple of minutes and seemed crisp and efficient.  By the time it was done, I had received an email with my license key.  Everything was activated and up and running within minutes.  So far, so good.

Time to restart my computer.

I noticed no delay in my boot up.  This is not telling, however, as FileBack PC, a great back up application, takes forever to load (note to FileBack developers- please figure out how to make the program load silently in the background, without stalling the PC).

Kaspersky ran a start up scan, which took a couple of minutes.  It was pretty unintrusive and didn’t stall my PC.  A full scan took 11 hours (I have a lot of files and an external backup drive, so most stuff was scanned twice).  The application ran relatively unobtrusively in the background.  It reported and neutralized several infected emails, mostly trojans, that Windows Live OneCare did not find.  In fairness, that may be because for the past few weeks I have been waging a computer turf war with Windows Live OneCare, hammering the “x” every time it launched an assault against my computer turf.

One thing I like about Kaspersky is that when you tell it to stop, it stops.  No pop-ups or warnings.

It’s too early to tell if Kaspersky is my holy grail.

So far, I’m optimistic.  Time will tell.

(Text) Size is Everything When It Comes to Start Pages

For years I have used two start pages to organize my internet activities.  The Home Place, my hand made page, and My Yahoo.  I have tinkered with Netvibes a little as well.  But I prefer the tradional My Yahoo look and feel to the Ajaxy look and feel of Netvibes and its newer competitors.

The biggest reason why is text size.  My primary monitor is a 24 inch Dell running at 1900 x 1200.  Most pages look really good.  But the text size on Netvibes is tiny.  Less than tiny.  Sub-tiny.  Until recently, text size on My Yahoo was fine.

But My Yahoo has been moving towards the Ajaxy look over the past year or so.  Now the new beta has moved the rest of the way.  My Yahoo’s new look is very similar to Netvibes.  Including the sub-tiny text size (the clip to the left is the actual size).  In fact, thanks to My Yahoo’s decision to run back to the pack, Netvibes has a cleaner, neater look.  It’s an easy to implement stock portfolio module away from being the better choice.

But the text sixe problem needs to be fixed.

These applications need to give users a way to permanently set the text size, preferably at the module level.  Sure, I can change text size at the browser level, but that makes every other page look too big.

The first one of these applications to give me a way to permanently set text size will become my primary start page.  I suspect there are scads of other baby boomers like me who also want and need this feature.

I don’t understand why it doesn’t exist.

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Not Slow, But Not Revolutionary Either

vista

Ed Bott posts a defense of claims that Vista is slow.  He cites another post by Carl Campos, summarizing his 10 weeks with Vista.  I agree that Carl’s post is a good overview of what’s right and what’s wrong with Vista.

I installed Vista on the day it was released and have been running it on 2 desktops and 2 laptops ever since.  Leaving aside my horrible experience with the 64 bit version, my experience has been mostly positive.  The question is whether it has been positive enough to recommend people upgrade from XP.

Here are my thoughts after a couple of months with Vista.

First, User Account Control is still extremely annoying.  I disabled it on all of my computers.  That helps, but disabling it causes problems to pop up elsewhere from time to time, particularly when you try to delete certain files.  The only fix I have found for that is to re-enable User Account Control temporarily, delete the file and then disable it again.

Since I have a Radeon X800 video card, I had to wait for new drivers before I could run certain programs, such as Second Life (where I still have a ton of visitors and no way to monetize them, sort of like most Web 2.0 applications).  Once the updated drivers were released, I was able to log back into my Second Life account and reset my dance pads, so I could give away more Linden Dollars.  Need some Linden Dollars?  Come see me at Sibine 03 (106,33).

The biggest annoyance is that when I bring Windows back up after the screensaver has been active for a few hours, my taskbar looks weird and mouse clicks, including the one to Restart, are non-responsive.  I have to Control-Alt-Delete and then Restart from that screen, where the mouse once again works correctly.  I reconfigured my power options so that neither the monitor nor the computer would be shut down or “put to sleep.”  No help.  I hoped the new video card drivers would fix this, but they didn’t.  Ed, any thoughts?

Vista certainly doesn’t seem any slower than XP.  It may be faster, but if it is, it’s not significant enough that I notice it.  Other than one scary RAID corruption (which may not have been Vista’s fault), Vista has been pretty stable for me- again, other than the annoying mouse/taskbar problem mentioned above.

Like Carl, I’m not crazy about the new Start menu layout.  You can arrange your application the way you want, but it takes some effort.

Search is much better.  Still not as good as X1, but Microsoft is closing the gap.

One of the new features I like the best is the Folder (named after the account- mine is “Kent”) where all of your downloads, documents, contacts, etc. are easily accessible.

Vista is a step forward, for sure.  But unless you are a computer expert or are having problems with XP, I’d probably wait until your next computer to upgrade.

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When I’m 64

64

I might be happy using a 64 bit OS.

But for now, I have punted.  I wiped my new laptop and installed a good ‘ol 32 bit version of Vista.

Now, I can pull my POP email (couldn’t before).

Now, I can access my office email with Outlook web access (couldn’t before).

Now, I can access my office via its portal (couldn’t before).

Now I can use Rhapsody (couldn’t before).

Now my built-in web cam sort of works (didn’t before).

Granted, I knew when I bought a 64 bit system that a lot of stuff wouldn’t work.  But I was surprised at how much didn’t work.

Maybe I’ll reinstall the 64 bit OS in a few months, if more applications are compatible.  In the meantime, I have happy to have my old, slow, insecure 32 bit OS that runs the applications I need.

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My Adventures in Vista

vista

Over the past week or so, I have installed Vista (Ultimate Edition) on three computers, with mostly positive results.

Computer One: The Mothership; RAID 0

First, I did a clean install on my primary computer, which I built myself a couple of years ago.  It has a RAID 0 set, as well as 3 other drives for music and video creation and storage.  I was a little nervous about installing Vista on my existing RAID set.  While I have an 80G partition solely for the OS, I did not want to lose all the music and video files on the two other partitions.  I know from prior experience that you have to load the RAID drivers in order for Windows to see the RAID disk configuration, but since I was dealing with a RAID set that contains a lot of huge, not all the way backed up, music and video files, I was concerned that I might accidentally send my RAID set into the ether, with all of the songs I have written and recorded and all the videos I have made along for the ride.  My worry was for naught, as Vista immediately prompted me to install the RAID drivers from a floppy or CD and as soon as I did, it notified me that it could see and install onto my C drive.  Installation was pretty quick and it wasn’t long before I was running Vista on a clean C partition and able to access my music and video files on the D and E partition.

Vista even stores your XP user data in a backup file on the C drive.  Once I knew that I was up and running, I deleted the old data to save space.

My Vista user experience has been mostly positive, after I disabled the unbelievably annoying User Account Control.  I don’t find Vista to be a revolutionary change from XP, but the more I use it, the more intuitive it seems.  The only problem that persists is that when I bring Windows back up after the screensaver has been active for a few hours, my Taskbar looks weird and mouse clicks, including the one to Restart, are non-responsive.  I have to Control-Alt-Delete and then Restart from that screen, where the mouse once again works correctly.  Annoying, but not the end of the world.

Computer Two: The Backup Server

Next, I did a clean install on a relatively new HP Media Center computer that I bought a few months ago after the power supplies on the Mothership exploded (literally) twice in a three day period.  This computer now serves as a backup server for our home network (for which I use and recommend Fileback PC).  The install worked like a charm and, perhaps because this computer is newer, I have had no problems whatsover, including no Taskbar issues like I described above.

A happy by-product of this upgrade was the extermination of all the bloatware and upsell pitches that HP puts on these otherwise very nice computers.

Computer Three: The X41 Tablet

Having had two pleasant upgrade experiences, I decided to push the envelope a little by doing a clean install on my trusty Thinkpad X41 Tablet.  Since the X41 does not have an internal CD or DVD drive, I had to dig up an external DVD drive.  This computer has a 1.5 GHz Pentium M chip and only 512 MB of RAM- paltry by today’s Vista standards.  Installation took longer, but it worked and so far I see no sluggishness.  Vista did not intall drivers for the thumbprint reader, but the first time I booted up, Vista prompted me to visit the manufacturer’s web site (via a supplied link) and download the new drivers.  That’s a very handy feature that saves a lot of time.

Conclusions:

Microsoft has clearly worked hard to make the installation process easier and faster.  Only time will tell how much better Vista is than XP, but so far I’m pretty impressed.

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Buggy Like a Fox?

firefoxI love Firefox, and it is hard for me to imagine changing browsers.  But I have had nothing but crash after crash since updating to version 1.5.0.7 a couple of days ago.  Among the many web sites that consistently crash Firefox, but work in IE, are the Time Warner, Houston page, Feedburner and Webshots (which is a great application for hosting images like the one below).

UPDATE:  Actually Webshots is great for losing photos when it died.  I lost this one and tons more.

I expect I am not the only person having these problems.

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Down to 999,999

firefoxEd Bott says there’s one less reason to use Firefox, now that someone has made an add-on that replicates Firefox’s find box.

That’s a neat feature, but the fact remains that Firefox has left IE in the dust.  From time to time, IE might close the gap a little, but barring some radical open source move from Microsoft, the race for the power user is over.

One add-on to replicate one feature is simply not going to matter in the long run.  In the time it took to write that one add-on, hundreds of Firefox plugins were likely written, updated, etc.  There is too much developer support behind Firefox for IE to regain the momentum.

There are, of course, millions and millions of Windows users who don’t know anything about Firefox.  So it’s not like IE is going to fade into oblivion.

But I can’t think of a legitimate reason why a tech savvy power user would prefer IE over Firefox.

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