Tip of the day/General Tips etc

[atifsh]

That is what my dog Atheina is for. I have her trained very well.

i taught my son to start / shut my pc, i showed him where to press to open it or shut... then in a month time i had to change poweroptions to do nothing when power button is pressed, caused whenever he sees me on pc he comes and shut it down...

[MilesAhead]

i taught my son to start / shut my pc, i showed him where to press to open it or shut... then in a month time i had to change poweroptions to do nothing when power button is pressed, caused whenever he sees me on pc he comes and shut it down...

When my nephew was in the Terrible Twos(tm) naturally he used to love
to flick the room light on and off. I can just imagine what it's like for
people who made the mistake of buying The Clapper(tm) !!

[MilesAhead]

Hi Guys,

@ Miles ... what program do you use to make these Fancy Application
Boxes!?!?

G!

For AutoIt3, which I used for the Tray Open and Close, there's a Gui
Design Tool called Koda

The guys who did it are Delphi programmers so they made it as close as
they could get it to designing forms in Delphi. You can drag buttons,
listboxes etc. and move them around with the mouse. It just saves you from
filling in all the numbers for where everything is positioned plus it has
stuff almost like a video menu designer to space the buttons evenly,
center in form etc..

With Koda all it does is generate the AutoIt3 script to create the
form and the buttons on it and handle button clicks and whatnot. I like
Delphi also so it's very familiar to use it.

[MilesAhead]

The only time she digs is in the backyard and only in the summer. Then I have to fill the holes in with black dirt.

Heh. My mutt only weighed @25 lbs so when he played in the back yard, the neighbor's German Shepherd would take his collar in his teeth and spin him around a couple of times, then throw him up in the air!! It was weird to watch, but my dog seemed to enjoy it.

[MilesAhead]

What if you change your desktop to align to grid, won't they stay where you put them.

If there's a desktop refresh then stuff aligns along the left edge by default. I don't know how to change it. Anyway, I find it better with fewer icons on the desktop. The folder toolbar thing sort of ends up being my own Start Menu only without all the bells and whistles. I just leave the Start Menu so that programs with installers will be happy!! They can make a Start Menu Folder and all that. Then when the installer makes a Desktop Icon I just drag it into the appropriate folder. About the only time I launch from Start Menu is if I'm looking for the Readme file or uninstalling(although even then I uninstall with MyUninstaller freebie.) Thing I don't like about Start Menu is it changes with each Windows flavor. Although Vista did make one improvement by having a sorted scrolling list instead of fanning out over the entire desktop. That flip submenu scheme was really bizarre!!

[MilesAhead]

btw I updated the Tray gizmo so it remembers the screen position when closed. I don't have a multiple monitor setup to do anything fancy. Just saves Left and Top of the form to and from an .ini file in the install folder.

[MilesAhead]

Tray 2.0

I think I pretty much have this Tray gizmo the way I want it.
I eliminated params in favor of radio buttons for which drive
to open or close. The only "bug" is that if you have one
"real" optical drive and one "virtual" then the virtual drive shows
up as a radio button just like Explorer shows the fake drive.

But 999 times out of a 1000 the "real" optical drive should be
the first one, so you shouldn't need to change the radio button
setting.

My XP machine has a DVD drive and a CD drive and it works to
open and close the trays for both. Hopefully it's simple enough
to be reliable.

Enjoy.

[MilesAhead]

donationware

In the interest of seeing some people use a few of my gizmos on
Windows I've stripped out all the license checking code from all
my Windows utilities. There are Donation commands in the Start
Menu Group or in the Context Menu for the programs themselves,
but donations are strictly voluntary. All features of all applications
are enabled. There are no expirations or trial limits. There are no
nag screens.

The only proviso is if you are using 64 bit Vista the utilities that rely
on 32 bit Shell Extensions probably won't work with the Vista 64 bit
Shell.

Anyway, I wrote all these to use myself. I hope others find them
convenient to use on Windows. If you should see one of my
utilities on one of the download sites and it says anything about
requiring a license, just go to my site and download the latest
version directly.

FavesSoft Download Page

[blutach]

Thanks Miles.

Regards

[MilesAhead]

[MilesAhead]

Close to perfected .. I think

I've been messing around for years programming my own utilities to use with Windows Explorer. What I wanted was a utility that had both manual features, meaning I could deliberately add folders or shortcuts or whatever, and automatic features, meaning when I opened a new folder in Explorer it would be added to the list if not there already.

Finally after many different configurations I think I have what I want wrapped up in one setup program. It should run on any Windows Win98 or later.

FavesSA 3.5

Just set it to start with Windows and as you open folders you should see the list build up. Just saves drilling down to reopen folders but you can also launch shortcuts or batch files with it. To add items manually just drag & drop.

Esp. if you have 64 bit systems let me know if anything acts weird but it's pretty vanilla 32 bit executable code. No shell extensions, doesn't mess with the Registry(other than to register the .fsa file type, but that's optional during install and the uninstaller removes it,) no ActiveX, nothing exotic.

I hope somebody enjoys using it.

[MilesAhead]

Simpler is better

I managed to simplify the implementation of my Explorer Monitor idea. This is what I really wanted all along. A small window I could stick in the corner that automatically added folders I opened in Explorer. Just an MRU list to save me from drilling down again right after closing a folder.



XMon 1.0

Select items and either press Enter or right click the mouse to open.
Delete Key deletes the selections. All is discarded on program close.
Folders opened already in the list are moved to the top. Holds 10 items.

[MilesAhead]

Disable Mobsync in Vista

I ran across this utility on ZDNet to disable mobsync.exe in Vista.

Currently I run ProcessKiller to autokill mobsync, iexplore and wmplayer but if you just want to disable mobsync.exe once and for all you might be interested in trying it:

DisableMobsync

[MilesAhead]

XP Style fixer upper

Ever load in an XP style and it's great... but then you run across one item that ruins the pleasure of using it? As an example I recently loaded CoronaH XP theme and I was really enjoying it until I downloaded and the progress bar looked black on black!! Bummer!

Then I found a tutorial on the web that shows how to use ResourceHacker freeware to change that one color or whatever that's the fly in the ointment!

Here's the link for the Themes by Hand tutorial.

Here's a link for RescourceHacker download.

In my case all I needed to do to get a usable progress bar was load CoronaH.msstyles in ResourcHacker and go down into the Bitmaps to find the block used to fill as the progress bar moved. Right click on it and select Copy, then paste in a graphics editor like Photofiltre. Change the color with the Fill Tool, and save it as a .bmp. In ResourceHacker select Replace and select the .bmp file you just made. Hit Save and bingo!!

I loaded that style in and now my progress bars are blue on black. I can see the progress.

[MilesAhead]

Simple Minimize To Tray utility

A programmer on the AutoIt3 Forum(rasim) has done a really nice and simple "Minimize To Tray" program. You let it run in the Task Tray then if you want to minimize any window to the tray, just hold down the Shift Key while clicking the minimize control on the window. A single click on the tray icon restores. No feature bloat. Very simple.

WinTray 1.0

The source code is also available from the AutoIt Forum Article