Attackr.com » Developer Portal for web designers, developers and programmers http://www.attackr.com Come To Share, Come To Learn Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 Customizing Ubuntu http://www.attackr.com/customising-ubuntu/ http://www.attackr.com/customising-ubuntu/#comments Wed, 04 Jun 2008 17:07:59 +0000 Aeriff http://www.attackr.com/customising-ubuntu/ So you’ve installed Ubuntu and your system is rearing to go, but what next? How about we go adding a few bells and whistles? There are many things you can tweak on your Ubuntu desktop, let alone the applications, but a simple area that is often overlooked are the panels and their gadgets.

Unlike Windows, your get two panels on your desktop: top and bottom. The majority of the bottom panel is given over to the window selector for your running applications. For most users, this leaves the top relatively empty, apart from the Ubuntu system menus on the left and the date and time on the right. So let’s make use of that space.

Applets

If you right-click on the top panel and select ‘Add to panel’, you’ll be presented with a list of cool panel applets. There’s quite a few to play with, but here’s my pick of applets to add.

System Monitor
This displays helpful information such as CPU, dick or network usage. When it appears it’s just a single black rectangle and a tad short for what it displays, so do the following:

  1. Right-click on it and select Preferences
  2. Tick the Network and ‘Hard disk’ boxes
  3. Set ‘System Monitor Width’ to 60.

Now you should find three nicely spaced graphs for CPU, network and disk usage.

Weather Report
To set this up for Australia (wherever your location may be), right-click on it, select Preferences and under Location, drill down to your state and city. Under General, make sure the temperate unit is set to Celsius. Then click Close, right-click it again and select Update. Left-clicking on the applet will give you a detailed report.

Deskbar
This is one of those cleve utilities you can’t do without. Based on the same principles as Apple’s Spotlight, when clicked on, it will provide an input box — whatever you type will be matched against a command, email contacts, local documentation, dictionary search, internet search and more. You can use it to both find information and open or launch the references it finds. Right-click and select Preferences to expand the list of sources used for searching.

Eyes
This is just a bit of fun and actually a very old application from way back when Unix was something you would only find in server rooms. What does it do? Watch the eyes as they follow your mouse around!

Launchers
You’ll note Ubuntu already provides launchers for Firefox, Evolution and the help system; but you can add your own. To add something from the Ubuntu menus, simply scroll through the menus to your application, then left-click and drag it to the panel. If you want to add a program not in the menu system, first right-click on the desktop, select ‘Create Launcher’, fill our the details and then drag it from the desktop to the panel. You can move and arrange them by either left-clicking or middle button-clicking and dragging them. You can prevent certain launchers from being moved by toggling ‘Lock to panel’ when right-clicking.

Top Tip

Size it up
You don’t have to stick with the default panel sizes Ubuntu provides. On larger monitors the text and icons can be smaller, so enlarging them can help. Simply right-click on a panel and select Properties and then adjust size in pixels. It will happily expand to 120 pixels in height, but you’ll probably find a setting of 30-40 to be more amiable. The top and bottom panel can be sized independently, so you can keep the bottom task window smaller while making your program launchers and applets on the top bar larger.

Related Posts:

]]> http://www.attackr.com/customising-ubuntu/feed/ 2 Undo For Browsers http://www.attackr.com/undo-for-browsers/ http://www.attackr.com/undo-for-browsers/#comments Tue, 16 Oct 2007 03:32:35 +0000 Aeriff http://www.attackr.com/undo-for-browsers/ If you’re really long in the tooth, you’ll recall when Microsoft introduced the undo command in Word for DOS. This little piece of bacon-saving magic was one of the great milestones in user-friendly software development.

It’s taken a while for browsers to catch up with the delights of undo. Of course, the need for an undo command only really became pressing once tabbed browsing appeared on the scene.

Before that, you could always return to a site during a session using the Back button, or from session to session by using the browser’s history cache.

Once we gained the ability to view multiple sites concurrently using tabs, the Back button was no longer sufficient. With multiple sites open, it’s all too easy to close one of those tabs and then realize you need that site open after all.

Opera, not surprisingly, was the first to bring the undo concept to the browser. It gave us the ability to undo a closed tab by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Z.

Then it went further and added a multilevel undo in the form of the Trash Can. The Trash Can stores each tab you close during a session, plus every closed popup window. Click the Trash Can at the far right of the Tab Bar and you can open any of these closed items.

Firefox has had tabs all along, but no undo. Due to its support for extensions, though, third-party developers were happy to remedy that omission.

A number of extensions provided basic undo functions, all the way from the single-minded Undo Close Tab to the spectacularly all-inclusive Tab Mix Plus.

The folks at Mozilla have since seen the list and in Firefox 2 you can undo a closed tab by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T. If you already used the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-T to open a new tab, that’s particularly easy to remember.

If you close a series of tabs, you can reopen each of them by pressing Ctrl-Shift-T repeatedly. It’s a LIFO stack (Last In, First Out), so Firefox will open the most recently closed tab first, then the next most recently closed and so on.

Firefox also includes a (less elegantly implemented) version of Opera’s Trash Can: to select from a list of closed tabs, click History —> ‘Recently Closed Tabs’.

Reopening a closed tab also restores that tab’s history, in both Opera and Firefox, so you can browse back though the sites you viewed on that tab.

So where’s the undo closed tab feature in Internet Explorer 7? It’s not there. Microsoft is still playing catch-up with it’s browser.

Up A Notch

Reopening a closed tab is handy, but wouldn’t it be great if you could undo a browser crash or re-display a bunch of sites after you’ve accidentally closed your browser? That’s where crash recovery comes in.

Once again, where Opera leads, the others have followed.

Opera will automatically load your last session exactly as it was – all the tabs and all the windows – if you click Tools —> Preferences —> General and from the Startup menu select ‘Continue from last time’. You’ll no longer have to worry about accidentally closing a bunch of tabs.

Firefox has a similar options: go to Tools —> Options —> Main and in the ‘When Firefox starts’ box, select ‘Show my windows from last time’.

Once again, IE 7 doesn’t quite get it right. There is an options to re-display the currently open tabs, but there’s no way to set this to occur automatically. Instead, you have to remember to do it each time.

  1. Open at least two tabs.
  2. Click IE’s close button. A dialog will appear, asking whether you wish to close all tabs.
  3. Click the ‘Show Options’ button.
  4. Tick the ‘Open these the next time I use Internet Explorer’ options and then click ‘Close tabs’.

Firefox and Opera have the ability to recover from a crash. Should your computer or browser crash, the browsers will automatically offer to reload your last session. It’s not fool-proof, but it usually works.

Matching Opera

To match Opera’s graceful undo handling, Firefox and IE 7 both need the help of add-ons. For Firefox, you should install Tab Mix Plus, one of the all-time great Firefox extensions.

Tab Mix Plus provides a huge array of tab options, including a right-click ‘closed tabs list’, as well as it’s own highly flexible crash recovery and sessions saver.

Once installed, navigate to Tools —> ‘Tab Mix Plus Options’ —> Session to find settings to suit your needs.

For Internet Explorer, there’s IE7Pro. This add-on provides a whole bunch of enhancements for IE, including crash recovery and advanced tab management.

Tips

Tweak Firefox
If you like fiddling under your browser’s bonnet, you can manually tweak Firefox’s session restore and crash recovery settings.

Type about:config in the address bar and set the Filter to session.

You’ll see all of Firefox’s session-related settings. Double-click a setting to change it.

Related Posts:

]]> http://www.attackr.com/undo-for-browsers/feed/ 0 Linux For Your iPod http://www.attackr.com/linux-for-your-ipod/ http://www.attackr.com/linux-for-your-ipod/#comments Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:03:42 +0000 JeremyD http://www.attackr.com/linux-for-your-ipod/ I was looking around Google for something (I can’t remember what) I stumbled upon a list of things you can do with your Apple iPod.

One was record audio files for free (the standard method requires a special iPod attachment) with a microphone plugged into the iPod.

One link led to another and I found out that in order to record audio files, you needed an application and in order to use the application, you needed Linux for iPod.

I was reluctant to install it, because I was afraid it would void my warranty. But after some reading, I discovered that since it doesn’t change any of Apple’s software, it doesn’t void the warranty.

It does this by partitioning the hard drive. Before you get all “woo hoo I’m getting this!”, I must warn you that, for me at least, every time I update Linux-related files (applications, games, schemes, etc.) it deletes some of my music.

I’ve been searching around iPod Linux’s forum for answers, but I have yet to find them.

Also, you’ll have to keep the Apple OS and the Linux os on the iPod, because Linux does not yet have a way to play music on its own, although there are applications that can be installed that allow it to do so.

Either way, I would suggest keeping a backup of your music on your computer just in case.

iPod Linux can be found here. Enjoy.

Related Posts:

]]> http://www.attackr.com/linux-for-your-ipod/feed/ 1 Rumor Control: Windows Vista (part two) http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-two/ http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-two/#comments Fri, 15 Jun 2007 07:43:09 +0000 JeremyD http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-two/ This is part two of my Windows Vista article. Part one can be found here.

“It prompts me to allow or deny every two minutes!” Not true! While Vista does have a security feature that prompts you to allow certain things, it is no where near annoying as commercials make it look.

Pretty much anything involving altering your computer (installing/uninstalling programs, connecting to the internet via a non-browser program, deleting important files, etc.) prompts the allow/deny popup.

But for running your programs, saving your files, and pretty much everyday computer-use stuff, you won’t be seeing much of the allow/deny prompt. But if you’re annoyed by the prompt, you can very easily turn it off and it will never bother you again.

“It crashes a lot! There’s Blue Screens of Death EVERYWHERE! AHH!!” Also not true! Unlike XP and the Windows’ before it, Vista does NOT crash often.

I’ve been running Vista for months now and the only time I’ve seen it crash was when I overloaded my graphics card by playing a game that didn’t support it.

Furthermore, the blue screen of death is more like the blue screen of reboot these days. A simple reboot usually fixes whatever caused the pretty blue screen.

“It stole from Mac OS X! Bill Gates is a pirate!” Not really true. The biggest similarities between OS X (which is really 4 different Operating Systems) and Vista are the quick search and sidebar.

First of all, Vista didn’t steal the quick search from OS X. It might have taken the concept of an instant search (which I find to be faster than OS X’s anyway) and recreated it, but it certainly didn’t steal the technology.

Then theres the sidebar, which lets you dock little widgets on the side of your screen, or let them hover around on your desktop.

OS X has a very similar feature, but again its more of concept recreated for Windows than it is stolen from OS X.

This might sound like a case of “well technically its borrowing, not stealing”, but its not that at all.

The fact of the matter is that OS X and Vista share similar concepts and each does it differently. If companies didn’t do that, we’d all be using the Nexus (also known as “World Wide Web”) browser.

So in conclusion, some of Vista’s rumors are true, and some aren’t. Microsoft is usually pretty good with fixing problems when they release Service Packs, so hopefully most, if not all, of Vista’s bugs and problems will be cleaned up by the SP.

Related Posts:

]]> http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-two/feed/ 2 Windows Vista Tip: Using WinRE To Repair Damaged Systems http://www.attackr.com/windows-vista-tip-using-winre-to-repair-damaged-systems/ http://www.attackr.com/windows-vista-tip-using-winre-to-repair-damaged-systems/#comments Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:21:57 +0000 Sean http://www.attackr.com/windows-vista-tip-using-winre-to-repair-damaged-systems/ Although with Vista, Microsoft has made great strides in the stability of its Windows operating system, things can still go wrong.

What happens when a key driver goes missing or a system disk fails? How would you go about recovering the system and especially, all your precious data?

Problem: How do you recover a damaged Vista system?

There are basically two ways to recover a damaged Windows Vista system: the installation DVD or the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE).

Solution #1: Use your installation DVD to boot up your system.

This is the simplest method. All you have to do is locate your installation DVD and use it to boot up your damaged system. This launches the Windows Vista installation.

Don’t worry, you’re not going to reinstall Vista. All you want is to get to the “Install now” screen.

The process begins by launching the Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), a simplified version of Windows that runs in memory only and is designed to replace DOS. Then it presents a screen which asks for three things:

  • Language to install
  • Time and currency format
  • Keyboard or input method

Making a selection and clicking Next will bring you to the “Install now” screen. What you’re looking for is the two options in the lower left corner of the screen:

  • What to know before installing Windows
  • Repair your computer

Clicking “Repair your computer” will move you to another screen that lets you choose your existing system partition. When you click Next, you’ll get a series of choices for system repair. From there on, just follow the prompts.

Solution #2: Use the WinRE console to diagnose and repair the problem.

The problem with using the installation DVD is that you might not always have the disk on hand. If you want to make sure your system is always running but don’t want to depend on the installation media, then you can use WinRE.

The WinRE console is new to Windows Vista and is specifically designed to support the recovery or repair of a system. It is based on WinPE and offers features such as:

  • Automatic diagnosis and repair of boot problems with the Startup Repair tool
  • A centralized platform for advanced recovery tools

You can even use WinRE to reinstall Windows without damaging your data, since the image-based setup Vista uses protects data during an upgrade process.

The ideal way to install WinRE is to create two disk partitions as you install Vista on your system: one for Vista and one for WinRE.

This way, WinRE will be accessible if you run into system disk problems and Vista won’t start. The WinRE partition only requires 1GB of space, since WinRE is a very small system. Both partitions must be primary and active.

To install WinRE, you have to create a system image that you can install on your system.

For this, you’ll need the Windows Automated Installation Kit, which kit gives you the tools you need to customize a WinPE image and turn it into a WinRE image.

Once the image is ready, you simply apply it to your WinRE partition. Full instructions for this operation are located in this step by step.

Once you’re done, you’ll never be caught off guard if things go wrong on your Vista PC.

Did you find this article useful? Why not visit the authors site today.

Related Posts:

]]> http://www.attackr.com/windows-vista-tip-using-winre-to-repair-damaged-systems/feed/ 5 Rumor Control: Windows Vista (part one) http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-one/ http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-one/#comments Tue, 12 Jun 2007 22:02:20 +0000 JeremyD http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-one/ We’ve all seen the Mac commercials: PC goes off to be upgraded to Vista and his return is uncertain. And when he finally does return he’s bloated with trial software like that snobby blueberry girl on Willy Wanka & The Chocolate Factory. But is this all true, or just a big exaggeration?

In this article, I’ll be covering a few of the most popular rumors. Feel free to email me rumors you’ve heard (at toxicityj@gmail.com) and I’ll gladly update this article and reveal the truth behind the rumor.

“You’ll need to buy a new computer for Vista, because your computer isn’t good enough” This one might be true if you haven’t upgraded in a while.

For example, if you’re like my mom who lives off of 128 megs of RAM and uses the cheapest graphics card Dell could find, then you’ll need to buy a new computer (or invest a few hundred and upgrade your RAM and graphics card, which is very easy to do).

But if you’ve been good to your computer and have a nice chunk of RAM (512MB required, 1GB recommended), a decent processor (800MHz required, 1GHz recommended), and DVD ROM drive (required), you’ll be fine (I would suggest going for the recommended rather than the required, but that’s your choice).

In the long run, if your computer isn’t up to date as far as specs go, you’ll probably be dishing out maybe $200-$300 in upgrades.
“Nothing works on Vista! UGH!” While “Nothing” might be a overstatement, it is true that Vista has a few backward compatibility issues (meaning it has a few issues running things that worked fine on XP, ME, 2000, 98, etc.).

In fact, most programs work fine on Vista but there are some that simply don’t work. Hopefully, this will change with the release of a Service Pack. So if you want to be 99% sure that your programs are going to work on Vista, wait for the SP to come out before you upgrade. Or, just grab Vista and live without a program or two for a while.

Related Posts:

]]> http://www.attackr.com/rumor-control-windows-vista-part-one/feed/ 3