I have to take a lot of screen shots. Therefore, most of my computers tend to have a white background (they used to be the xman the machine was named after but alas, I’m older and now they computers are all named after Backyardigans;). Sometimes it’s hard to see your icons in Windows 7 on a white background though. If you grapple with this too then consider doing what I did and making the icons transparent. To do so, locate the HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced registry key and make a dword key called ListviewShadow with a value of 00000001. Or: [HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced] “ListviewShadow”=dword:00000001 To set it back, make that 1 into a 0. As…
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Show Desktop Icon for Windows & Windows 7
Ever delete the Show Desktop icon from Quick Launch? One of my favorite features of Windows, it is a big part of my everyday use of the OS. So when I accidentally deleted it I had to figure out how to get it back. And it wasn’t nearly as easy as I would have thought (in my case) as I had deleted the actual scf file. To recreate that file was a bit complicated. So I wanted to document my steps. First, create a new file called Show Desktop.scf. Then open the file in your favorite text editor and paste in these contents: [Shell] Command=2 IconFile=explorer.exe,3 [Taskbar] Command=ToggleDesktop Save the…
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Programatically Clipboarding in Windows
My last article showed how to interface with the clipboard in Mac OS X. Windows 7 comes with the same feature, but instead of pbcopy it’s simply clip. Since you don’t ls, we’ll pipe the output of dir into the clipboard: dir | clip Enjoy & no more complaining that I like one platform more than the other – you know who you are!
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Get A Dock in Windows
In addition to getting a theme for Windows that makes it look more like a Mac you can also now install a Dock in Windows! rocketdock.com
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Click-Matrix Leads to Death of a Trackpad
While preparing an image for the latest MacBook Pro we were going through a click-matrix and I noticed a funny usability issue. Basically, when you fire up VMware and log into the virtual machine, the trackpad keeps getting hit by little hands, which doesn’t work very well in typing class. I don’t ask why a piece of software is used in a VM vs. Boot Camp, etc. I just see a design consideration and look for a way to make it better. And in this case, the way to make it better was to disable that trackpad while someone was typing. And to assist, we found this handy-dandy little tool…
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Lots of new stuff: Command Line Wiki Integration
The Mac Commands page and the PowerShell Commands page are both now wikis and users with accounts on this site can edit them. Additionally I added a number of new pages worth of commands, FTP Commands, Windows Commands, Final Cut Server Commands, Amazon S3 Commands, Podcast Producer Commands and Xsan Commands; both of which are wikis as well.
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Vista & Windows 7 Optimizer
There are a variety of simplistic tasks that can be performed to optimize a Windowz box. Disabling unneeded services and protocols is a great start, but there are tons of other little things here and there. Vista Services Optimizer (works on Windows 7 & Vista) is a nice little tool for those who don’t have the time nor inclination to mess around with it too much. Nice tool at a great (free) price #thingsthatsounddirtybutaren’t
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Windows 7 HomeGroup
HomeGroup is a new home security feature of WIndows 7. HomeGroup resemble how you protect your home (an analogy I use in the Mac OS X Security book as well): Keep the outside doors locked and keep the interior doors unlocked (unless you’re on the crapper). HomeGroup can be initiated by any Windows 7 version other than Home Basic and Starter editions. Any Windows 7 machine can join a HomeGroup though and it is not a backwards compatible feature, meaning that if you’re still running Windows 95, 98 or Millineum don’t bother to upgrade (you probably can’t read this site anyway). But 2K to Vista, you gots’ta upgrade to play…
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Cross Platform Screen Sharing: TiffanyScreens
Sure, you can screen share using ARD – but to Windows? TiffanyScreens is a little application that can run on Mac, Windows or Linux. It allows you to share your screen to a number of client systems, very useful with presentation broadcasting, training and standard screen sharing. I’ve tested in my lab with Windows 7 and Snow Leopard and must say that I’m impressed by how well it shares screens and how zippy it is over my AirPort network. Nice little app that deserves a plug: http://www.tiffanyscreens.com
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That Wacky Adobe Security Flaw
Information about the exploit: Wacky Security Flaw Patch thyself: Adobe’s Mac patch site Adobe’s Windows patch site That is all I have to say about that.