Tag Archives: Windows

DeskSpace–3D virtual desktop for Windows

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20110316-deskspace

I use two monitors on my PC at home, three on my PC at work but frequently I still run out of room on my desktop to view all the applications that I’m currently running. That’s where virtual desktops come into play.

Virtual desktops have been common in the Unix and Linux world for a long time, Apple introduced them by default in Mac OS X 10.5 in late 2007, but Windows still doesn’t come with a virtual desktop application as standard.

Microsoft Desktops

Microsoft acquired Systernals in 2006. They launched Desktops in 2006 which allows you to organise your applications on four virtual desktops.

The application is small (the installer is only 60 KB), fast and reliable but it has limitations:

  • Maximum of 4 desktops.
  • Aero theme, Flip 3D and many notification icons only work on desktop 1.
  • You can’t move applications from one desktop to another.
  • You must have the same wallpaper on each desktop.
  • You cannot close Desktops, you need to either log off or reboot.

DeskSpace

After checking out various virtual desktop applications, including the freeware VirtuaWin, I settled on DeskSpace from Australian software company Otaku Software, which costs US$24.95 (currently around £15.50).

DeskSpace is fast, highly customizable and looks fantastic. A few of its features:

  • Maximum of 6 desktops, on up to 9 monitors.
  • Switch between desktops with a stunning animated 3D cube (which you can customize the speed and size of).
  • Customize hotkeys to switch between desktops, or use your mouse wheel.
  • Customizable wallpaper on each desktop.
  • Rename and assign a different icon to each desktop.
  • Drag applications from one desktop to another.
  • Assign certain applications to open on a particular desktop, e.g. Outlook always opens on Desktop 2.

20110316-deskspace-menu

When you right-click the icon in the notification area you can see what applications are currently open on which desktop. A really nice feature is the ability to drag applications from one desktop to another on that list.

Options

One niggle for me is that the options are split between two menu items—Configure and Manage—as I keep forgetting which configuration option is where; it would be nice to have all the options in one unified location.

I would also have liked to have seen some of the options combined such as customizing the wallpaper, names and icons for each desktop together on the same screen.

But these are minor points, as it doesn’t take long to set things up the way you want them and then just leave it.

License

One superb feature is that the software license is for individual-use which means that you can buy one copy and install it on as many machines as you use, for example a desktop and laptop.

Given that my laptop (as most do) has only one screen this has become an invaluable tool.

Conclusion

DeskSpace has been a really welcome addition to my workflow, particularly at work where I can assign separate desktops for dealing with support calls, FTP, graphics manipulation, etc.

It supports both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 on low-end netbooks, high-end desktops and everything in-between.

Why not download the trial version of DeskSpace today and give it a go?

Windows 7 synhronizing….

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Windows 7 wallpaper from PC Plus

I installed Windows 7 Professional (32-bit) on my main desktop PC the other week, having been using the Release Candidate on and off on both my main PC and one of our laptops for a good few months.

What an improvement over Windows XP (of which I have been a fan for many a year); and a tremendous improvement over Windows Vista (which I used for all of 1 week before upgrading my laptop to the Release Candidate and then Windows 7 Professional).

I’ve now installed it on one desktop and two laptops and each time the process was simplicity itself. The installer correctly identified all my hardware and installed the latest drivers for everything (apart from my Creative X-Fi soundcard the drivers for which I installed myself). From start to finish in less than an hour is pretty impressive.

However, despite the shiny finish and the months of beta testing by the public there are still a few rough edges, which will be hopefully corrected in a forthcoming upgrade. Like this typo in the Windows 7 Sync Center (sic):

Windows Mobile-based device
Synhronizing….

Windows Mobile-based device Synhronizing....

Social networks

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Workgroup list of 3 computers

Now, there’s a happy sight: all 3 main computers at Potting Shed HQ happily talking to one another on the local area network.

The two laptops (Gareth-laptop and Jane-laptop) are both running Windows 7 Release Candidate (build 7100), the desktop (Study) is still running Windows XP SP3.

At first my laptop wouldn’t appear in the list of workgroup PCs on the study PC, and vice versa — although each could ping the other and connect successfully by entering the UNC address (e.g. \\computername\foldername). I wondered if it was an issue with the NodeType setting in the registry.

As soon as I changed the NodeType setting on the XP machine it was picked up on my laptop. It could very well be co-incidence but I’m not complaining.

A reboot of all three PCs certainly didn’t do any harm.

So … I wish I could have categorically reported what I did to make it work, but as with so many things in life it appears that all I had to do was switch it off and switch it back on again.

For humans, I believe, they call that ‘sleep’. I’m retiring to bed now to switch myself off for the duration of the night.

Are you listening Reuben and Joshua? ;)

Custom labels for removable drives

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Registry Editor

I found a great tip in PC Plus this month (April 2009 edition) in an article about Registry hacks that allows you to give meaningful names to your removable drives in Windows; (UPDATED 10 January 2010) I’ve tried it with both Windows XP and Windows 7, so on those grounds I would imagine that it should also work with Windows Vista.

The issue

I’ve got a SanDisk multi-card reader attached to my PC via USB, and by default it displays four Removable Disk icons in My Computer with the generic label “Removable Disk (X:)” where X is the letter assigned to the drive.

Devices with Removable Storage

The problem is that I can never remember which drive is which. Is Q: for SD cards? Which drive is assigned to Compact Flash cards?

This Registry hack allows you to customize the label.

The hack

  1. Make sure you create a System Restore point before you start, just in case!
  2. Start RegEdit (Start > Run…, type regedit, click OK)
  3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer
  4. Within the Explorer key create a new key called DriveIcons
  5. Within that create a new key with the drive letter you want to customize, e.g. Q
  6. Within that create a new key called DefaultLabel
  7. Double-click this key’s (Default) value entry and give it the name you want, e.g. Compact Flash, and click OK
  8. Refresh your Explorer window to see the change.
  9. Repeat for as many removable drives as you need to customize.

Devices with Removable Storage, and customized labels

Now that’s much easier.

.reg file

Of course, if you don’t fancy poking around in the Windows Registry you can create a plain text file in Notepad (or another plain text editor) and create the settings there. An example file is below.

Simply change the letters of the DriveIcons and the @ values.

Then save the file as driveicons.reg, and double-click it to merge the values into the Registry.

Then remember to press F5 to refresh your Explorer window to see the changes.

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons]
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\Q]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\Q\DefaultLabel]
@="Compact Flash"
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\R]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\R\DefaultLabel]
@="xD Picture Card"
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\S]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\S\DefaultLabel]
@="Secure Digital"
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\T]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\DriveIcons\T\DefaultLabel]
@="Sony Memory Stick"

WeBuilder 2008 vs Dreamweaver CS4

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Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and WeBuilder 2008

I have two website editors of choice:

For years I heard that Dreamweaver was the Web editor of choice for the serious Web developer. At the time I wasn’t a serious Web developer, I was a lowly curate and couldn’t afford a copy (I made do with trial versions) so I had to find another solution.

From 1st Page 2000 to WeBuilder

For about five years I used Evrsoft 1st Page 2000. For a free text editor it did everything that I wanted and more — it was certainly a good step up from Notepad — but as the Web developed I grew increasingly frustrated by its lack of support for the latest standards (XHTML anyone? CSS 2.0, etc.). The application was really feeling dated.

But I hung on in the hope that a new, promised version would be the solution I was needing. Month turned to year, nothing appeared and I faithfully struggled on. “Better the Web editor you know …” and all that.

The day that I installed the first public beta on their new version, First Page 2006, was the day that I finally gave up on Evrsoft and moved to WeBuilder. I haven’t looked back.

WeBuilder

That’s when I discovered Blumentals WeBuilder 2005 (version 6.3). Not only was it similar in layout to 1st Page 2000 it far surpassed it in terms of both Web standards and application features.

I’ve now used WeBuilder (which I presume is pronounced “web builder”, although in the office we called it “we builder”) ever since, upgrading through versions 7 (2006), 8 (2007) and now 9 (2008). And it just gets better and better with each new release. There is a very active community forum and its developers really do listen to requests for new features. I’ve had one of my requests included (to do with how the file explorer displays files), and I put my voice to calls for Subversion integration, which appeared a version or two ago.

Matching and missing HTML tag highlighting

One of my favourite features in WeBuilder is the code highlighting:

Code highlighting in WeBuilder 2008

As you can see from the screenshot above, if you click within a tag it highlights the tag in green and shows the corresponding end tag. It also highlights broken tags – you can see immediately that there’s a problem with the anchor tag (<a>).

It’s a really impressive feature that makes navigating code very easy, particularly when you have quite a few nested DIV tags.

Meanwhile in Dreamweaver

Looking at the same code in Dreamweaver CS4, when I click on the list-item tag (<li>) nothing happens within the code window; there is no code highlighting.

Dreamweaver screenshot of code

Instead, the corresponding list-item tag in the code navigator bar at the bottom of the window subtly highlights. Clicking on that tiny navigation item then highlights the code in the code window but it’s nowhere near as intuitive, doesn’t give as much immediate feedback to the coder and involves having to move the mouse to the bottom of the code window which is fiddly.

File associations

Another area where I think WeBuilder outshines the mighty Dreamweaver is in the area of file associations.

When I first installed both applications they each asked me which file types I’d like to associate with that program, e.g. .css, .js, .php, .xml, etc. I made my selection and the application negotiated a deal with Windows, so that I could simply double-click a CSS file, for example, and as if by magic the Web-developer-application-of-choice appeared.

But what if you change your mind? What if you now want to associate PHP files with WeBuilder instead of Dreamweaver, so that when you double-click a CSS file it opens in WeBuilder rather than Adobe’s offering?

In WeBuilder …

In WeBuilder it’s quite simple. Go to Options > Preferences, click on Files then select Associations:

File associations dialog in WeBuilder 2008

In Dreamweaver CS4 …

In Dreamweaver … I’ve still to find out how to do it. I’ve read through two Dreamweaver CS4 books, searched Google down to about results page 10 and I don’t think you can. I think you have to do it manually via Windows Explorer: Tools > Folder Options > click on the File Types tab.

I can’t understand why. Unless, of course, Adobe reason: why would anyone want to use anything other than Dreamweaver?!

Question: does anyone know how to do this from within Dreamweaver, or how to get DW to run the initial file association dialog again?

Project management

Where I think Dreamweaver CS4 completely outshines WeBuilder is in the area of project management. In WeBuilder you can define projects, which is a really useful feature, but it doesn’t manage them to the same extent that Dreamweaver does.

Dreamweaver scans your site code and builds a cache. It knows what’s linked to what, so if you rename a file, for example, it will offer to update links to that file throughout your site. And if you site has 600+ pages, as one of mine does, you’ll realise what a time-saver that is. For that feature alone it’s worth the money!

I remember back in the days of 1st Page 2000 spending two weeks going through a site simply correctly links to files that I’d moved because I’d not planned the site in full before coding.

Extensions

The other advantage that Dreamweaver has over WeBuilder is its support for community-created extensions, which add extra functionality to the application.

Want to add microformats, Google maps, PayPal or Skype buttons, YouTube videos — just download and install the extension.

WebAssist

WebAssist create a number of amazingly good extensions. Some are free, the best ones cost, but are very reasonable considering what they do and the time and potential frustration that they avert.

I thoroughly recommend Eric Meyer’s CSS Sculptor extension and the related CSS Menu Writer extension, and I like the look of the new Jeffrey Zeldman’s Web Standards Advisor extension.

Conclusion

So, is Dreamweaver better than WeBuilder? In some ways, yes … but there are some features in WeBuilder that I struggle without now (particularly, especially the code highlighting). I can see me using a combination of them both for a few years to come.

That all said … I do fancy checking out WestCiv Style Master assuming that it supports CSS 2.1. I suppose it’s too much to expect it to handle elements of CSS 3, given that the latest version was released in 2006.

Fixing ActiveSync woes with Outlook 2007

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Microsoft ActiveSync

Now here’s a remarkable (even blogable) thing: my slow Windows Mobile to Outlook ActiveSync synchronization woes now appear to be a thing of the past. But not before running into some difficulties.

After I upgraded from Microsoft Outlook 2003 to Microsoft Outlook 2007 ActiveSync point-blank refused to connect to my beloved O2 Xda Orbit.

Not only had I upgraded Outlook itself, I’d also moved from the older “Outlook 97-2002″ PST file format to the newer “Outlook 2003-2007″ format. I didn’t even realise that I had been working with the older format. That must go back to my upgrade from Outlook 2000 to 2003.

My usual solutions did nothing to help:

  • Remove the Windows Mobile 6 device from the cradle and then reseat it.
  • Reboot the Windows Mobile 6 device.
  • Reboot the Windows XP device.
  • Run scanpst.exe on my Outlook.pst file.

I went for a solution-hunt on Google, and discovered that disabling the advanced nework functionality might just do the trick. And you know what: it did.

What I did

  1. Click Start > Settings
  2. Click on the Connections tab, and you see this:

Windows Mobile 6 Settings

  1. Double-tap the “USB to PC” icon
  2. Now untick the only option available: “Enable advanced network functionality”.
  3. Click OK button (top right).

Windows Mobile 6 USB to PC settings

Now everything seems to be running faster and more responsive on my O2 Xda Orbit (not just connecting to ActiveSync but accessing menus, calendar data, contacts, applications start faster), and it connects to ActiveSync first time, even straight after a system reboot. Previously it would always object, and I’d need to remove it from the cradle and leave it until after the system had completely booted up.

But …

The only thing is that I’m not entirely sure what “advanced network functionality” is. I’m not sure what I’ve disabled, what I’m missing out on … any ideas?

Reinstalling Windows XP Professional SP3: Operation PC Forgiveness 2008

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Screenshot of Windows XP

This week I’ve been enjoying a holiday at home with Jane: a chance to enjoy peace and quiet together for the last time before the children arrive, and to reinstall Windows XP on my main desktop PC. That’s been the main reason for my lack of recent blogging, and not laziness — oh no! Not that. No way!

Slowdown to upgrade

It’s a common problem with Windows: it gradually slows down over time. I install and uninstall all sorts of software on it, I use it every day for everything from checking emails to coding, photo editing to video creation. I’m not surprised it slows down over time.

But this time it was getting really bad. At times it wouldn’t boot properly (hardware driver conflicts I think). There was a serious issue with my sound card: if I played a Flash movie (e.g. YouTube) while listening to an MP3, for example, it would send my audio player crazy when I closed the browser window, playing any non-Flash audio two or three times too fast. It made everything sound like the Chipmunks had formed a metal band!

I also wanted to upgrade a couple of major pieces of software:

as well as various hardware drivers:

It was clearly time for Operation PC Forgiveness 2008.

Backup

On Monday and Tuesday I backed up everything. I used Second Copy 7.1 to copy the contents of each partition one-by-one to my external harddrive (Freecom 500GB).

I’ve tried various other applications over the years that take either images of the partition, or backup to a proprietary format, or first compress the files before storing them in a zip file, but in the end I’ve returned to a simple 1:1 copy on an external drive. That way I can access these files at any time from any PC without having to first install any 3rd party applications.

Second Copy

Second Copy allows you to create backup profiles that can be run either individually or within groups. So I have groups for:

  • Applications (e.g. Microsoft Money files, Microsoft OneNote data, WeBuilder settings, Windows Boot.ini file, Second Copy profiles, etc.
  • Outlook PST files, backups and stuff
  • WeBuilder reinstallation
  • Ultimate Backup to external hard drive

There are a few backups that I do manually, for example Firefox bookmarks and anything else that needs to be exported.

Screenshot of Second Copy

This way I can make sure that all my personalized settings have been backed-up before I run the “Ultimate” backup group profiles and copy it all to my external drive.

A couple of things that I always do when doing a reinstallation are:

  • Install and take a print out of all my installed applications using Installed Program Printer.
  • Take a screenshot of desktop (for location of icons).
  • Take a screenshot of Start Menu (for labels and icons).
  • Take a screenshot of the Firefox add-ons that I have installed.
  • Backup Programs folders within Start menu (both All Users and my username profiles). This way I can see how I organized my Start menu.

Reinstall Windows XP

With the backup complete it was time to bite the bullet and reformat my C drive. I have 12 partitions on my hard drives so wiping C simply takes out Windows and programs, all my data, images, videos, music, etc. are safely stored on the other partitions (and now also backed-up).

One thing that I forgot to do before I set the Windows XP installation CD loose on C: was to deauthorize iTunes. D’oh!

Essentials for a Windows XP reinstall:

  • Windows XP with SP3 and IE7 slipstreamed into it.
  • Latest hardware drivers, already downloaded and saved to another partition, external drive or CD-ROM.
  • TweakGuides Tweaking Companion for XP to follow advice on best order to install drivers, and various system tweaks to improve performance.
  • Notebook and pen (to write down everything you do, error messages, settings, passwords, etc.).
  • Laptop (or other PC) for looking up advice, error messages, etc. on the Web.

Reinstalling XP and hardware drivers took a couple of hours. Reinstalling the rest of my software took the best part of a day and a half. I have almost all my applications stored on another partition (I:\) and categorized which makes it very efficient to reinstall:

Screenshot of Install partition

Reorganize All Programs within the Start menu

Once I’ve installed the bulk of my applications, run Windows (or Microsoft) Update a couple of times to make sure that Windows and Office are up-to-date, and done a cursory defrag I always reorganize the Start menu.

This is how the All Programs part of my Start menu looked after I’d installed most of the applications that I use regularly:

Start menu with three columns of programs

That’s three columns with around 85 entries. Even though I’ve done a “sort by name” on the list it’s still a mess! What it needs is some categorization to group similar applications together.

All users

I generally start with the “All Users” folder (right-click START and select “Explore All Users”). I then create a number of new top-level folders to act as my main categories. These are generally the folders that I begin with:

  • Accessories
  • Bible
  • CDRW
  • Fonts
  • Games
  • Graphics
  • Internet
  • Labels
  • Mindmaps
  • Money
  • Multimedia
  • Office
  • PDF
  • Printers
  • Programming
  • Scanner
  • Startup
  • System
  • Windows Mobile
  • WinZip

All Users Start Menu Programs

As it happens, these are also the main category labels that I use on my Install partition (I:\). Keeping a one-to-one relationship between the start menu and the install partition makes it really easy to find installers should I need to perform an upgrade or reinstall.

Having a limited taxonomy makes it really easy to find any application that I have installed: all my graphics applications can be found under Graphics, office applications under Office, etc. It sounds obvious but I’ve seen too many users wasting precious time hunting through an unordered list of 60+ applications.

Sort the rest

Having created these new folders, I then move the remaining installation folders and icons into them before performing the rest of the clean-up on the Start menu itself, creating any sub-folders as necessary. For example, within Internet I always create:

  • Browsers
  • Email
  • Firewall
  • FTP
  • Instant Messenger
  • RSS
  • Server
  • Twitter
  • VoIP
  • Web Building

I prefer to use generic terms such as “Instant Messenger” and “Firewall” than “Windows Live Messenger” and “ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm Pro” as I find it easier to find them this way, it also doesn’t lock me into a particular application as I can use the same folder structure regardless of the applications that I have installed.

I also use this arrangement on my PC at work and on my laptop so it allows me to have different applications installed but use the same organizational structure.

Start menu lite

While it usually takes me about 30-45 minutes to sort out my Start menu at the start it must save me hours each month when looking for applications.

My new, slimmed down start menu then looks a bit like this:

Start menu

Now I have a clean installation of XP, with (almost) all my software installed and I can find things on my Start menu. Now I can get on and do something productive!