Configure Thunderbird to Ignore Aero Theme

I’m running a basic theme on my Windows 8 Professional system, mostly because I do not like the transparency effects at all. If you have installed or updated the email client Thunderbird recently under Windows, you may have noticed that Mozilla Messaging went in heavy in regards to Aero support. All toolbars make use of Aero extensively which basically makes them transparent on the system. Some users, myself included, think that this is distracting. While it is possible to switch to Aero Basic in Windows 7, some users might want a local solution for Thunderbird instead. Before we look at those, I’d like to show you how Thunderbird looks like with Aero enabled.

As you can see, lots of border and toolbar transparency. You basically have two options at your disposal to get rid of the Aero theme and transparency that comes with it: Install a different theme.

Ignore Aero

Ignore Aero is a theme for the Thunderbird email client that disables some, but not all, of the Aero effects. The title bar and borders still use transparency, while the other toolbars do not.

The extension is not an ideal solution for users who want to get rid of Aero completely, as it reduces the Aero effects only in the email client. You can download the Ignore Aero add-on for Thunderbird from the Mozilla Thunderbird Extension repository.

Alternative themes that pretty much have the same effect are NoGlass or Classic Reloaded.

Compatibility Workaround

You can run Thunderbird in compatibility mode to disable Aero automatically and only for that program and no others running on the system. For that you need to right-click the Thunderbird shortcut that you click on when you start the email program and select Properties from the context menu. Switch to the Compatibility tab in the Thunderbird Properties window.

Enable “Run this program in compatibility mode for:” and select Windows XP (Service Pack 3) from the options.

Running Thunderbird in compatibility mode has the same effect as installing one of the themes mentioned earlier in this article. The title bar and borders remain transparent, the other toolbars turn solid.

Disable Aero transparency

If you dislike the Aero transparency, you can disable it in Windows 7 by right-clicking on your desktop and selecting Personalize from the options. You then need to click on Window Color at the bottom of the Personalization window. Here you can uncheck “Enable Transparency” to disable it completely or use the color intensity slider to modify it.

Inspiration for this post taken from Ask VG.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: aero, thunderbird, thunderbird themes, thunderbird tips, transparency, windows aero

Ghacks September 2011 Best Of

The months are flying by, it seems. September 2011 has been an exciting month. Microsoft released a developer preview of their upcoming operating system Windows 8. I have added a Windows 8 category in this roundup so that you can read up in case you missed the launch hype. Coverage will slow down now until Microsoft pushes out the first public beta of the operating system. I expect the beta to be revealed in January 2012.

Mozilla at the same time continued their rapid release process and released the stable version of Firefox 7, and shortly thereafter Firefox 7.0.1 (the same happened for Thunderbird where version 7.0 and 7.0.1 were released).

Mike’s first videos went live on Microsoft’s official support web site, which we want to congratulate him for.

We have published a total of 195 articles in September, which is 6.5 articles per day. The most popular article with 68 comments was “What I do not like about Windows 8″ followed by “How to install Windows 8 from USB key” with 61 comments and “XSUsenet, Free Lifetime Usenet Access” with 61 comments as well.

There were quite a few articles with 0 comments, including a review of Nirsoft’s WebCookiesSniffer, a Team Fortress 2 review and news about the Facebook Subscribe button. I’d like to hear your opinion on this.

Hardware

Only one review this time, would love to do more though.

Dell Precision M6600 Workstation Laptop Review

How-Tos, Tutorials

Tutorials and how-to articles have always seen a strong showing here at Ghacks, and it is my intention to continue with that.

Bitlocker, a Guide for the Uninitiated

Dealing with Protected PDF Documents and Batch Document Conversion

How To Check Your Computer’s Ram For Upgrade Possibilities

How to Create a Flow Chart in Microsoft Word

How To Extract Images Or Text From PDF Documents

The complete guide to Windows 7 Shortcut Keys

Use Dapper To Create RSS Feeds From Any Page, Including Google Plus Posts

Software

Some great programs have been released or updated in September 2011. You find a selection below.

AVG Anti-Virus Free 2012

Free Ringtone Maker

IObit Uninstaller 2.0, Windows Program Uninstaller

Microsoft Mouse Without Borders, Control Multiple PCs With One Mouse

NetworkTrafficView, Network Monitoring, Statistics Tool

Network Planning, Mapping Software PrimeDesktop

Repair Internet Connection Issues With Connectivity Fixer

Wireless Connection and Diagnostic Tool TekWiFi

Web Browser

The majority of browser related items are Firefox related, which can mostly be attributed to the fact that I use the browser as my main Internet browser.

Customize Shortcuts, Firefox Keyconfig Alternative

Delete Old Extension Preferences In Firefox

Firefox: Add HTTP Back To Address Bar

How To Install Google Chrome For Multiple User Accounts

How to Run Portable Google Chrome from a USB Flash Drive

IPvFox, Display All Connections A Web Page Makes

Make Firefox Start Faster On Windows

ShareMeNot, Block Automatic Social Media Button Information Sharing

Windows 8

Lots of Windows 8 articles. You find even more at our sister site Windows 8 News.

5 Things I Love About Windows 8

How To Install Windows 8 From USB Key

What I Do Not Like About Windows 8

Windows 8 Download, Developer Preview

Windows 8 Fast Startup, Faster Boot Times

Windows 8, How To Automatically Log On

Windows 8 Product Key, When Resetting, Reinstalling

Windows 8 Sign-In With A Windows Live ID

Windows 8 unveiled with a focus on Metro

Think we missed something this month? Let me know in the comments.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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UAC Process Analyzer

As a system administrator you sometimes may need to analyze the running processes. Not only to make sure that no unknown processes are running, but also to make sure they are running with the correct rights. While you could use a program like the Windows Task Manager, or the advanced Process Explorer for that, you could also use a specialized tool like UAC Process Analyzer to analyze a running Windows process.

UAC Process Analyzer is a free portable software for Windows that can be used to analyze any running process of the Windows operating system. The program scans the system for running processes automatically to display them all in a selection menu at the top. You can use the menu to select a process that you want to analyze, or hit the refresh button to run the process identification scan again.

Once you have selected a process you need to click on the Analyze button to populate the information in the lower half of the screen.

The program displays the process’ name and file path next to security details. Listed there are the process’ Integrity level, UAC Virtualization, Trusted Directory and whether it is signed with a digital signature.

A link to open the publisher certificate is displayed if the process is signed with a digital signature. The information presented by the program are mostly useful for system administrators and not the average user.

UAC Virtualization for example is an advanced concept which basically redirects write attempts to protected storage to the user’s own directory. It is more complicated than that, and if you really want to know more about it you could read the introductory post over at Technet.

Interested users can download the latest version of UAC Process Analyzer from the official website. The program is compatible with both 32-bit and 64-bit editions of all versions of Windows since and including Windows Vista. (thanks Venkat)

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Completely Remove Security Software With AppRemover

When AppRemover was first published in 2009 I reviewed it and came to the conclusion that it was a great software for users who had troubles removing security software like antivirus, anti-malware or firewalls from their Windows operating system.

Two years later and the application is still around. The development company OPSWAT has improved and maintained the application in that time, more about that later.

AppRemover is designed to give users a reliable option of removing security software from that system. It is for instance helpful if the default uninstaller is not working correctly, if you suspect file and Registry leftovers after uninstallation or if a program is acting up and you need to remove it completely from the system.

The list of supported vendors and products has been improved significantly in the last two years. New products such as Microsoft’s Security Essentials, latest 2010 and 2011 editions of security suites and other security related products are now supported by the software uninstaller. Software companies supported by AppRemover include Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Avira and Trend Micro.

You find an up to date list of all supported applications here on the product website.

When you first start AppRemover, a portable application by the way, you get the option to remove installed security applications or to clean up failed uninstalls of security software on the system.

The first option works much like a standard program uninstallation, the second will crawl folders and the Registry to find and remove leftovers.

The program will scan the system and display a list of found applications, application leftovers depending on the user’s choice.

You are then presented with a list of applications discovered. You can select none, one or multiple applications that you want to remove from the system. A reboot of the computer system may be required after the removal process.

The program supports more applications and developers which is a good thing. There are two things missing that I’d like to point out. It first lacks a backup and restore option which some users may want to avoid removing the wrong programs or files from the system. The second missing feature is the ability to find leftovers of programs that the initial system scan did not detect.

Windows users can download AppRemover from the official program website. The software is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the operating system.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Your PC Doesn’t Support Virtualization? Dual Boot Windows 7 and Windows 8

The word is out: Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview recently and many users want to try it out. All it takes is a CPU that supports virtualization and virtualization software. Wait a second. What if your CPU does not support virtualization? Does this mean that you can’t try out Windows 8? As long as you have a hard drive capacity of 500GB or greater and at least 20GB of free space on the drive, there is a way to dual boot Windows 7 and 8 on the same computer. In fact, the Windows 8 Developer Preview looks much better on a dual boot than on a virtual machine like VirtualBox. As long as you know a little bit about hard drive partitioning and changing boot priorities in the BIOS, this will be easy.

You will need to download the Windows 8 Developer ISO disk image and burn it to a DVD or put it on a USB device. Here is the link for the ISO: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/home/. You can save it in the Downloads folder until later in the tutorial where we will demonstrate how to create the disk image and boot it.

Create a hard drive partition of at least 20GB. Open the disk management console in Windows 7 by going to the start menu and typing in “run” and press Enter. Type “diskmgmt.msc” in the Open field and click OK.

This opens the console. To create a new partition, right-click on a Healthy Logical Drive and select Shrink Volume. Enter the amount of space for the partition in MB. So, enter 20000. This will actually give you 19.53 GB and therefore you may want to allocate 21-30GB for the partition to ensure functionality. On the PC used in this demonstration, entering 20000MB worked out fine in the end. It is your call.

You can see from the screenshot below that a new partition exists for the Windows 8 Developer Preview. Now it must be formatted and given a name.

Right-click the empty partition and choose “New Simple Volume”. The Wizard will launch and you will be prompted to enter the amount of unallocated space to use. Use the original default to avoid wasting any space. You will be asked to assign a drive letter. Do so and click Next. The following window will present and the only thing you have to do is enter the Volume label, or name of the partition. Click Next.

This will format the partition and you are now ready to install Windows 8 Developer Preview.

You should have downloaded the copy of the Windows 8 Preview by now. You will have to burn the ISO disk image to a DVD or USB device. Right-click the ISO disk image and select “Burn to Disk” and choose the disk for burning. Restart your computer and configure to boot from the appropriate source as the primary boot option in the BIOS. When booting from a DVD, you should see “press any key to boot from CD or DVD”. Press any key immediately. It will take just a moment, but the installation will begin.

Simply follow all of the steps to install. Accept the license agreement and choose custom installation. Select the appropriate partition created earlier or you will erase all data on other hard drives and partitions. It may take some time for the installation to complete. This is normal. Wait patiently. It is worth it.
The installation will commence and you will be asked to name the PC. After this, you will be prompted to choose express settings or custom settings. You can log into the computer using a Windows Live ID or create a local account.
Restart the computer after logging on so that the default returns to Windows 7. Reconfigure the BIOS and the next time you log on, you have the option between the two operating systems.

There it is! Now you are ready to preview Windows 8 without virtualization. Explore and have fun.

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© Melanie Gross for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: disk management, dual-boot, Windows, windows 7, windows 8

Firefox 9 Features, Changes

With the release of the stable version of Firefox 7, or more precisely Firefox 7.0.1, came also updates to the beta, aurora and nightly channels of the browser. Each channel has been bumped up a version. Firefox Beta to 8, Firefox Aurora to 9 and Firefox Nightly to 10.

Whenever Firefox Aurora gets a bump, I write about the new features and changes of the release to give beta and stable users a heads up what they can expect when their channel moves to that version.

Firefox 9 introduces type inference in the browser which improves the browser’s JavaScript performance in the two digit range. The Mozilla developer who worked on introducing type inference noticed performance increases of up to 44%, independent testers results between 20% and 30%.

The few remaining features and changes are not that spectacular. Mozilla notes that the browser is now supporting the new application toolbar and icon styles of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion as well as multi-monitor support and two-finger swipe navigation gestures on the operating system.

Web developers can make use of JavaScript DNT Detection which detects if a user has opted out of behavioral tracking. The only other feature is supported for chunked XHR requests which can be utilized to display “data as it arrives instead of waiting for an entire download to complete”.

Firefox for Android users who can download a version of Firefox 9 for their system as well will notice a lot of changes. The browser now has a new look and feel to it. This includes a new awesome bar design with quicker access both to bookmarks and history items but also to preferences, add-ons and downloads. Back and forward buttons have been added to the awesome bar for easier navigation.

Firefox for Android users will benefit from faster start-up times, especially on devices with slow file systems.

Type inference is without doubt the biggest new feature of Firefox 9. One could say that it is the only end user feature of the desktop version. Only Mac users benefit from additional support for the new Lion operating system.

If you are interested in Firefox 9 you can download it from the Future of Firefox website for desktop and mobile devices.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Team Fortress Arcade [Game Saturday]

When I look back at the games that I played this year, there is one name that sticks out: Team Fortress 2. The game, which is now free to play, is without doubt one of the best multiplayer shooters ever created for the PC. I’d go as far as to place it right in the second spot after the godly Unreal Tournament 99 (Epic then decided to turn to mediocre games with nice visuals, a shame).

Team Fortress has a huge following. You can see that when Valve pushes out new community maps and items, which they do on a regular basis. Game Maker Eric Ruth’s love for the game made him think about a 2D arcade version of the game. And so, Team Fortress Arcade was born.

The game is a typical side scrolling jump and run game set in the Team Fortress 2 universe. You can play all classes of the original game. Since it is 2D the designer hat to make compromises but more about that later on.

The game begins at the class selection screen where you and up to three buddies (hot seat for the win) can pick their classes. Some classes are better suited for a single player play through, but since you have got unlimited continues, you should not have problems completing the game with any class available.

You should take a look at the readme as it contains the controls for each player. Player one for instance uses WASD to move, H to shoot and U to jump. You can press both the shoot and jump button together for a powerful melee attack.

All characters have at least one special ability. The Soldier can rocketjump, the Scout double-jump and the Spy can cloak.

Probably the biggest let down of this game are the enemies. Instead of having to fight against characters of the Red team, you fight against red robots. While that’s nice and entertaining for a while, it does not motivate as much as beating the crap out of Team Fortress classes.

You have to battle a red Team Fortress 2 class at the end of each stage in a boss fight. These fights are usually not that difficulty to complete, even though the bosses have lots of life.

Stages include the good old attack maps where you just have to reach the end of the stage, but also payload and control point stages known from the game. The variety is good in this regard.

Team Fortress Arcade is most fun with at least one additional human player. You may have troubles playing the game with four players on one keyboard at the same time, especially if one of the player’s has big hands and fingers.

Playing with additional players opens up interesting options. You could go for a heavy medic combo for instance, or medic soldier for that matter. The medic’s ability to heal is invaluable in the game if you want to complete it without dying.

Team Fortress Arcade offers enough variety for Team Fortress fans to justify a play through. The game would shine if the developer would replace the robots with members of team red.

You can download the free game for Windows PCs from the developer website. Eric Ruth mentioned that he will update the game in the coming months with new modes, difficulty challenges, online co-op (awesome) and player versus player matches.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: game saturday, pc game, team fortress 2, team fortress arcade