Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Windows 8 Task Manager, A Step In The Right Direction?
If you have followed the buzz surrounding Microsoft’s upcoming operating system Windows 8 you may have noticed that the Redmond company has redesigned the Windows Task Manager. When you first open it it only displays programs that have been started by the user. While that’s probably ok for the majority of users, it is nothing that experienced users would want to work with.
A click on More Details in the Task Manager expands the display to make it look more like the Task Manager known from previous Windows versions.
When you look closer though you will notice that there are fundamental differences that may make the Task Manager unusable for system administrators and tech savvy users. Lets take a look at the Task Manager in Windows 8:
And now as a comparison the Task Manager in Windows 7:
Probably the first thing that you will notice is that the Windows 8 Task Manager is dividing processes into groups like Applications, Background Processes or Windows Processes. This may provide a better overview of tasks, but some users may criticize that it is now more difficulty to look at all tasks as they are not sorted alphabetically anymore. You can change the display with a right-click on the status bar and a click on “Group by Type” there.
If you look closer, you will notice that Windows 8 displays service and application names instead of the process executable. Microsoft has removed the option to add or remove columns from the View menu. You now need to right-click on a column in the Task Manager to see the selection of available information that you can display in the window. Among the options is the process name which adds the file executable to the interface again.
Good thing is that Windows will remember the modifications that you have made to the Task Manager. It will launch the task manager in detailed view directly and with the layout changes that you have made in a previous session.
I personally dislike the way the new Task Manager is delivered to the user. The default state is absolutely useless and the detailed view only becomes a working solution once you make the modifications mentioned above. Once you have modified it it resembles the old task manager. Some users on the other hand may feel the need to switch to a task manager replacement like Process Explorer instead.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: process explorer, task-manager, windows 8, windows task manager
Context Peek, Display Information In Popups
Sometimes when you surf around the Internet you may feel the need to look up additional information. This can be a definition of a word that you are not sure about, information about a phrase at an online encyclopedia or a location on Google Maps. Whatever it is, it usually leads to opening a new tab or browser window to perform the operation.
Context Peek is a Firefox add-on that streamlines the process by displaying the information in a small popup next to the select word or phrase on the page.
The add-on is very versatile, as it allows you to configure your own services in addition to the default services it ships with. The three look-up services it ships with are Wikipedia, the Free Dictionary and Google Translate.
Lets take a look at how it works first before taking a look at the configuration of new services.
All you need to do to use the add-on is to select a word, phrase or sentence first. You then right-click the selection and select Context Peek > Service from the context menu.
The add-on opens the information provided by the selected service in a popup which auto-closes when you click outside the popup window.
To configure existing services and add new ones, you select Context Peek > Configure from the menu.
Configuration is a little bit tricky as you need to have a target url at hand to add new services. You can basically add any server that uses parameters in the url. Lets take Amazon
You then take the target url
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=TEST&x=6&y=15
and replace TEST with the variable used by Context Peek which is CPTEXT so that your target url for Amazon would look like the following:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=CPTEXT&x=6&y=15
All that is left now is to enter a title that appears in the context menu to add the new option to the available services.
Context Peek’s configuration can be a bit tricky. It could however be well worth the troubles as it provides an elegant way of looking up information on the Internet without having to open a secondary tab or browser window to do so.
Firefox users can install the add-on from the official Mozilla add-on repository. The add-on itself requires no browser restart. Changes to the configuration on the other hand do.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: context peak, Firefox, firefox add-on, lookup
Linux has “only 10 great apps” according to Gnome Creator
When Microsoft released a late alpha, but generally stable version of the Windows 8 Developer Preview the other week a great many people, including myself, were greatly surprised. This is because it goes against everything Windows chief Steven Sinofsky generally believes. But it was very clear why Microsoft had made this decision.
They know full well that any modern platform will live or die on the number and quality of the apps available for it and, in order to gain any kind of critical mass on tablets and other mobile devices when it ships next year, Windows 8 will need a good number (we’re talking thousands) of good quality apps in a wide variety of categories sitting ready in the new Windows Store.
When you count how many great desktop apps there are on Linux, you can probably name 10. You work really hard, you can probably name 20. We’ve managed to piss off developers every step of the way, breaking APIs all the time.
He also cites the confusion caused by so many completely different distributions of Linux on the desktop as a reason for the platform’s failure to take off in any meaningful way.
To be honest, with Linux on the desktop, the benefits of open source have really played against Linux on the desktop in that we keep breaking things. It is not only incompatibilities between Red Hat, Unbuntu, Suse, but even between the same distribution. Ubuntu from this week is incompatible with the one nine months ago. And then there are multiple editions, the KDE version, the Gnome edition, the one that is the new launching system.
It’s unusual that only a few short years ago we were all saying that what set one operating system apart from others were factors including ease of use, power and flexibility. Then along came the iPhone and almost everything changed to the quality and availability of apps, so much so that this has even now become Microsoft’s new focus; this is despite the fact that nobody would ever criticise the Windows desktop platform for ever being short of software.
He was also asked about Windows 8 and said…
They are Microsoft, it’s going to succeed. In three years they are going to have this thing on half a billion computers, so it will be out there. I have to say, I actually like Windows 8. I am not a Windows user. It’s probably the first time that I would use a Windows machine.
This may be somewhat optimistic as first Microsoft will need to placate business and IT pro users who like the flexibility and power of full desktop apps. There can be no doubt that he is a man who knows what he’s talking about though. He still is critical about Windows though where it’s deserved.
Right, and it is needed, they definitely need to fix this mess, a lot of malware, spyware, and the fact that everybody is sysadmin, and has to reinstall their machine every so often.
In the defence of GNU/Linux (which isn’t something I’m often accused of doing) it has a lot going for it with modern distributions, I even have a full chapter devoted to it in my book Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out and will probably do the same for the Windows 8 edition next year.
© Mike Halsey (MVP) for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: GNOME, Linux, Miguel de Icaza, windows 8
WebCookiesSniffer, Capture Cookies In Realtime
The main purpose of cookies is to make life on the Internet more comfortable. The little data files can however also be used for tracking purposes. They are needed but at the same time very controversial. I have touched the subject quite a few times here on Ghacks. In How To Whitelist Cookies And Delete The Rest Regularly and Configure Firefox To Delete All Cookies On Exit But Select Ones I explained how to make sure you’d only keep a set of “good” cookies while deleting the rest regularly to avoid tracking and spying.
Sometimes though you may want to see which cookies are written to the system in realtime. While you could configure your browser to display warnings about each cookie that is about to be written, it is often not the most comfortable thing to do considering that it breaks the workflow big time.
The new Nirsoft application WebCookiesSniffer on the other hand deals with cookies without interrupting the browsing experience. The program requires the free software WinPcap Capture Driver or Microsoft’s Network Monitor Driver to capture cookies in realtime. You can alternatively try the Raw Socket method which is however less reliable than the other two options.
When you first start the program you are asked to pick a capture method and network adapter. The program will then pick up all new cookies that are created on the system. The program itself is browser independent which means that it will display cookies from all web browsers installed on the system.
Each cookie is displayed with its host name, request path, length, count and string. When you select a cookie all of its values are displayed in the lower half of the screen. There are no options to edit or delete which is unfortunate. As is that you cannot link a cookie to the website that triggered its creation.
The portable software comes with the usual assortment of exporting options. You can create HTML reports or save selected cookies as text, xml or csv files.
The ability to edit or delete cookies would come in handy. As would an option to display the website that triggered the cookies creation. Finally, an option to filter by browser would be handy as well.
Windows users can download the latest version of WebCookiesSniffer from the official Nirsoft project website. The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: cookies, nirsoft, portable software, web cookies, windows software
Windows 8 Sign-In With A Windows Live ID
One of the new features that Microsoft has added to Windows 8 is the ability to sign-in with a Windows Live ID instead of a local user account. One first start of the operating system you are asked to create an account. You can select to create a local account or use an existing or new Windows Live ID to do so. Some users may wonder what the benefits are of signing in with a Live ID instead of a local account. (To be precise, you associate a Windows Live ID with a local account)
The core benefit is that some data gets synchronized with the cloud. This includes common Windows settings, Metro style app settings and sessions, saved sign-in credentials for apps and websites, and automatic sign in to all apps and services that are powered by Windows Live. Settings include the lock screen picture, desktop wallpaper, user tiles, favorites and the history, Windows Explorer settings, mouse settings and many other settings that are stored in the cloud.
When you buy a Windows 8 PC and set up your user account for the first time, you can optionally choose to create an account that is associated to a Windows Live ID. You can either use an existing ID or create a new one. If you choose to create a new one, you can use any email address you want as your new ID, and then create your unique password. For example, you can use example@live.com or you can use someone@example.com. You just need to identify an email address that you want to have associated with the Windows Live ID service, and provide a unique password. Of course, you can also continue to use local Windows accounts as you always have and obviously, domain-administered accounts work as they always have as well.
You can configure the types of data that you want synchronized when using a Windows Live ID to sign in.
Groups include:
- Personalize – colors, backgrounds and lock screen
- Themes – background image, sounds, and more on the desktop
- Ease of access – speech recognition, magnifier, on-screen keyboard and narrator
- Language preferences – keyboards, other input methods, display language, and more.
- Apps – certain settings in your apps
- Web browser – Internet settings like history, bookmarks and favorites
- Other stuff – taskbar, Windows Explorer and search, HomeGroup, mouse and your account picture
- Some passwords – for apps, websites and networks
You find the options in the Control Panel. Click on Sync PC Settings to enable or disable specific features.
There is one restriction in place that can be of importance if your computer system has a monitor that runs a resolution larger than 1920×1200. Windows will automatically compress and resize background images that are larger than 2 Megabytes to 1920×1200.
With cloud syncing, privacy and security becomes even more important. Microsoft has implemented safeguards to protect the Windows Live account from unauthorized access. This includes having to select a strong password and a secondary proof of identity which can be a secondary email address or phone number among other options. The proof of identity is used to establish trust and enable all synchronizing options (like passwords).
We’ve taken measures to safeguard the ID and password you use to sign in to Windows. We do this in a couple ways. First, we will require a strong password (and you can’t leave password blank). Next, we’ll collect a secondary proof of your identity. This will allow us to establish “trust” with specific PCs that you use frequently or own. This in turn will also enable more secure syncing of private data like passwords. Collecting the secondary proof of your identity also helps make account recovery easier and more secure. Examples of secondary proofs are alternative email addresses, mobile phone numbers, and questions with secret answers—something that generally only you will know.
Another benefit of using a Windows Live password to log in to Windows is the ability to go to the Windows Live website to reset the user account password.
Synchronizing data with the cloud makes sense from a usability perspective, but only if the user works on multiple Windows 8 machines. Single-computer users do get a few benefits, like the ability to reset the password online or the ability to sync settings after reinstalling the operating system. It remains to be seen if this is enough for using a Windows Live ID to sign in to Windows. What’s your take on this new option? You can read more about it on the Building Windows 8 blog.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: windows 8, windows live, windows live id, windows sign-in
Simple IP Config , Configure Network Adapter Settings
Modern operating systems make it a lot easier for users to connect to the Internet. You may not need to configure network settings at all before connecting to the Internet via a network cable. Even wireless connections have become easier to configure, as it is usually only needed to enter the secure code to establish the connection.
Things get more complicated when you need to connect to a network or create a network. That’s when you come into contact with IP addresses, DNS servers or default gateways that you need to configure.
While you can do that under Windows’s control panel, it is not the most comfortable thing to do, especially not so if you have multiple network adapters installed on the system.
The free portable software Simple IP Config can be used to configure network settings for all installed network adapters.
You need to start by selecting a network adapter from the selection menu at the top. Hit the refresh button afterwards to refresh the information if it is not done automatically.
You should now see the adapters IP address, subnet mask, default gateway, dns server and IP type in the interface. You can start modifying settings on the right side of the screen. It is possible to clear, edit or add values to all fields.
Make sure you do not forget to hit the Submit button after you have finished configuring the settings for the selected network adapter.
Three additional options are available. You can hit the renew or release button on the left side to renew or release the IP address. It is furthermore possible to enable or disable the Windows Firewall and to enable DHCP.
Experienced users may not need to use Simple IP Config. It is nevertheless handy to have all settings on one screen. Inexperienced users can do all configuring of network adapter settings in one simple to use interface instead of having to make their way into the depths of the Windows control panel.
Interested users can download Simple IP Config from the project website over at Sourceforge. The portable program is compatible with all recent 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system.
© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: network, network adapter, Open Source, portable software, win ip config, windows software
