I should be using Chrome but I use Firefox

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Well, some people can say that about Internet Explorer or Opera too. I have been in software industry much before internet came in, heck, for that matter even before GUI came in.  I was there when Mosaic made a debut, I used the first version of Internet Explorer, I started using Firefox when it was not even called Firefox but was called Phoenix Browser and didn't even have a setup.. you simply had to copy the files in a directory of your choice and start using it. Yes, I watched the browser wars and saw IE beat Netscape.. I sided with IE then for the same reason I side with Firefox today. Let the better technology be used. I guess I am a technology junkie who wants to try out every piece of technology out there and figure out what works for me.

Do we really need multiple browsers?
HTML is supposed to be a standard and thus every browser should give us the same experience.. but reality does not follow standards and the fact it that each browser has different support for standard and different features

Today we have five major browser which are competing out there – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. There are many more lesser known or even unheard of (SRWare Iron, Flock, Stainless, Camino.. here is a complete list Mega list of Browsers). So, while theoretically all browsers should be born equal, all of them have different capabilities and feature and therefore users have their favourites and preferences.

So which is the best browser
Reading this far you may have started expecting that I would show you benchmarks and list out individual capabilities of each browser and maybe announce a winner… NO. I am here to say why I switched from Internet Explorer to Firefox and why I might switch to Chrome in future.

Why Firefox
I am not a fanatic type of techie, so I don't get taken in (at least very easily) by war cries like “Open Source”, “Multi Platform”, “anti M$”. For me, the technology should impress me, suit my purpose and generally make my life more comfortable. Personally I find Windows 7 a better platform over Mac (while Mac has a smoother UX, it doesn’t quite have the apps eco-system that Windows has), Firefox a better browser than IE, .NET a better development platform than Java, MS Office a better suite than OpenOffice and Thunderbird a better email client than Outlook. In fact, I wonder if having a better eco-system lures more users to a product. Look at it – Windows, Firefox, iPhone, Thunderbird and now Android. Most of these have a huge eco-system built around them.

The single reason why I use Firefox? Add-on. Yep, that’s right.. not speed, not open source, not HTML5 support but the ability to customize the experience for me. Chrome and Opera are busy making land speed records on browser but that does not make me lust for them. I believe, millions of other Firefox users are also with Firefox because it allows you to customize and control virtually every aspect of the browser. I am not just talking about visual themes and personas, but stuff like displaying all open tabs in thumbnail view in a sidebar, protecting yourself from rogue scripts on websites that you visit, synchronizing your password, bookmarks and even tabs across computers and devices. Firefox has created a vast eco system of extensions for its browser and while others browsers are waking up to it and realizing what a honeypot it is for the users, Firefox has raced way ahead in this area.

Firefox Add-ons
I am an avid surfer from the days when it was still called World Wide Wait and my lack of patience saw me opening multiple windows of IE (no tabbed browsing then) and switching impatiently between different windows to check which one has finished loading and rendering the page. With advent of tabbed browsing, all that changed was instead of windows, I was switching between tabs. Then one day I stumbled upon something called “extension” for Firefox called Tab Sidebar (check out the thumbnails in sidebar in the image). It allowed me to open multiple sites in different tabs but showed them in live thumbnail view on the side, letting me know when a particular tab has finished rendering or watching live preview in a tab while I am in a different tab. For many users this may not make much of a difference, but to an impatient user like me it brought a lot of calmness. It also introduced me to the world of browser extensions and how I could customize and personalize my browsing experience.

I have replaced Tab Sidebar with a similar extension called Showcase and till date it remains the single biggest reason why I haven't switched to Opera, Chrome or back to IE even though they are setting land speed records of performance. I have discovered a lot many more useful extensions like Fission, LocationBar, NoScript, CookieMonster (which I might blog about later). I am hoping that Chrome expands its extension capabilities the scope it has of today and the day it gives me a Tab Sidebar, its speed would become the differentiator for me.
So go ahead and give Firefox a try along with a few add-ons. If you don't like it, you can always go back to IE, Chrome, Opera or Safari.

Happy Browsing

Windows’ built in magnifier tool

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As I am growing old, the ability to read fonts on 1900x1200 resolution screen is becoming a bit difficult. I have a 17” MacBook Pro with OSX SnowLeopard and I had quickly discovered that CTRL-SCROLL zooms the screen and that too live, meaning that its not just a screen shot but magnified state where I can continue to click and type. It became a regular habit when filling forms on the browser or even editing. The transition is so smooth that you don't even feel any delay when going into zoomed mode. I have been using Firefox (largely due to showcase extension) rather than Safari and am also used to zoom for within the browser window using Command + and Command – in OSX (Command is the “Apple” key but mostly work like counterpart to CTRL key of Windows). When Windows 7 RC arrived, I excitedly installed it in my boot camp partition and was very happy with the improvements it had over Vista. I installed Firefox and started using it and in no time as part of habit, I hit the Command + key to zoom inside the browser. Wow! The browser didn't zoom but the entire desktop zoomed. Wow! Neat.

Windows 7 not only matched what OSX provides but actually surpasses OSX in terms of screen magnification. Lets discover the magnification features in Windows 7 and how to use them efficiently in our day to day work and during presentations.

Activating the Zoom

Pressing Windows and + key brings up the magnifier panel and zooms the entire screen to the last zoomed state. The Panel contains zoom out and zoom in buttons but you can continue to use Win + and Win to continue your zoom in and out.

Full screen zoom is a live zoom and not a snapshot, which means you can continue to work with windows, clicking things and type without having to switch the zoom off. This may be convenient in a situation when you are presenting to an audience in a large hall and want to focus on a particular part of the slide or screen. You can also use it while working when the fonts or images are two small and you want a clearer image.

Docking the old style

Before Windows 7 we did have zoom but it was always docked as a panel where you could see the zoomed image as you mouse moved on the screen. This option still exists and can be activated.

As you can see, there is a docked magnifier at the top, above the Opera window and you can see Opera title bar, menu button and address bar in magnified state. The Dock follows your mouse pointer and you show you the area under selection magnified..

How much dock to dock?

Magnifier dock starts off with a standard height but you are not limited to the standard size and you can resize the dock to a much larger size, covering almost the entire desktop (do this when you are going blind ). Take a look at the picture below.. the magnifier dock covers almost half the height of the desktop. Remember, you need to click at the bottom edge of the magnifier and drag it downwards. It has a small bug that it shows you a 4-headed “move” pointer and NOT the 2-headed “size” pointer which can be confusing as you can land up undocking it by “move”.

Undock the dock

Some people may not like the entire top section of their screen to be blocked by a magnifier, so a better way would be to “undock” the magnifier into a smaller window and keep it afloat on the screen as you work.

 

Wait.. there is more…

Lens mode is excellent during presentations as it shows you a lens like view which follows your mouse pointer magnifying the area around it. I find it useful when delivering presentations as it not only magnifies the code I want to show but also forces the audience to focus on what I am showing rather than getting distracted by rest of the screen. The lens is configurable in terms of size and you specify the height and width of the lens using SHIFT-ALT .. LEFT/RIGHT to adjust width and UP/DOWN to adjust height.  You can also move the lens using keyboard shortcuts of CTRL-ALT-Arrows. The image below shows a section of the slide being magnified, focussing the attention of the audience on that section.

Getting back to Full screen zoom and getting perspective

Having experimented with Dock (CTRL-ALT-D) and Lens (CTRL-ALT-L), lets get back to full screen.

In this mode, as we started, the entire screen is in a “live” zoom state. While this maybe preferred by some, it can also get a little disorienting as to where we are on the screen. To get a perspective, press CTRL-ALT-SPACE and momentarily the screen will unzoom highlighting the area which is under zoom mode and then quickly return to zoom mode.

 

To end it all

Some people struggle to end the zoom as the key combination is not well documented or made obvious.It can be frustrating in middle of a presentation to have started Len mode zoom but struggling to return back to normal mode. If you are in full screen zoom mode, just keep pressing Win – until it restore to normal, unfortunately, that doesn't work in Lens or Dock mode. In fact Win+ and Win – control the level of zoom in all modes. To get the Dock or Lens mode completely off, just press the following..

Happy Zooming

How to delay Startup apps and influence performance

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Couple of years ago Raj Chaudhuri and I were talking about how it takes a long time for Windows XP to start up due to a lot of applications installing themselves into the Startup folder and Run registry. It seemed ALL applications back then wanted to run with windows Startup and live forever in your system tray. While most applications would politely ask if you wanted to install them in Startup, some sneaked in without asking and I am not talking about the virus variety here. Some others are even sneakier.. they install themselves not in Startup or Run registry but in Windows Task Schedule (e.g. Google Updater).

Back then, I used to have a folder on my desktop containing shortcuts of applications which I wanted to Startup but not all together attempting that at boot time. So after a quick boot and when Windows was usable and responsive, I would go to the folder and start them up one by one in between my current work. This was obviously tedious and sometime I would get too engrossed in my work and forget completely about. The Solution?

WinPatrol

WinPatrol is a small little utility which basically watches over your Startup folder, run registry, services and pops up a warning whenever any application tries to add itself to these. It even fights with those applications which on every run try to re-establish themselves into the registry by blocking every attempt. While this action can keep you safe from virus and unwanted program, you still land up adding quite a few application in your start up which delays your boot process.

Delayed Startup 

Winpatrol has an option of Delayed Startup, whereby WinPatrol adds itself into Startup registry and then allows you to mark other Startup program as “delayed”. You can simply select a Startup app in WinPatrol window and select “Move to delayed Startup program list”. This by itself may not solve the problem but merely postpone it as these apps would again try and Startup together causing slowdown while you are working. So in addition to delaying the program, Winpatrol also allows you to specify the delay period. which can range from seconds to hours (Who really wants Java Updater to run the very second I boot up? I have it starting after an hour). So you can stagger your Startups with a few minutes delay between them, prioritizing  apps based on how soon you would start using them (Open Outlook after 5 minutes of boot, Vuze after 10 minutes..). In fact, if you think about it, you may now want to add more applications to your start up and pop them up after few minutes or even hours like a reminder (Windows Live Writer pops up after 2 hours as a reminder to blog ).

After installing WinPatrol, launch it from system tray and select the “Startup Programs”” tab. This lists all the program listed in the registry, Startup folders, etc.

Now, right select an entry to bring up the context menu showing you a host of options. One of these options is “Move to Delayed Startup Program List”.

Once the program has been moved to delayed list, switch over the that tab and you will see a list of delayed apps with their deferred times.

Select an app and click on “Delay Option” button to specify the delay before launching this app. You can have a maximum of 60 minutes and 50 seconds of delay added.

Similarly, go ahead and defer each app with a different delay and your boot process with become snappy as all apps wont try to Startup at the same time.

There are other solutions available in market like Soluto (Wow UX), Startup Delayer etc., but they are too focussed only only delaying Startup, whereas WinPatrol doubles up as a sentry against applications trying to install Startup registry entries, services and scheduled tasks.

Happy Delaying!

PortableApps, SyncToy and Windows Task Scheduler

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Three things that Windows users should be using but they aren’t. Seriously.

First of all, like many other users, I am growing weary of applications that have to be “Installed” which make entries in Windows registry and spew files all over the file system. .NET framework gave a ray of hope as your application can be totally self contained in a single directory.. however, old habits die hard and we still have .NET apps which manipulate windows registry which makes it “unportable”.

Imagine this, you installed a software on your C: drive and now are running out of space, so you decide to move it to D: where there is ample space. So you move C:\Program Files\Microsoft to D:\Microsoft Office… what do you think happens next? Yeah, total chaos.. All your registry entries are still pointing to old C: location and nothing would work. This is true not only of Microsoft Office but most application which are available for Windows.

Portable Apps

PortableApps.com is a website which re-packages applications (mostly opensource) into applications which do not require windows registry or files outside its own folder. These applications can be simply copied into any location on your hard disk and executed from there. These applications don't even use User Profiles from their regular location like User\AppData\Local making it very convenient to move these application from one directory to another or one drive to another but also from one computer to another without any loss of information, history or preferences. In fact, these applications are meant to be installed on a USB drive which can then be used on any computer without having to transfer these application to that computers hard disk. However, if you are using PortableApps directly from the USB Drive, given the speed of USB, it can be slow to launch applications and writebacks to the USB can be even slower. But who says PortableApps are meant only for USB drives? I find them very useful even on my laptop, where I can copy them and run them without having to install and configure.

This brings us to another issue.. What if I want to use PortableApps on my laptop when connected but at the same time be able to carry them with me on a USB when I go out. I would want to carry all my applications, preferences settings on my USB drive and be able to bring them back to my laptop once I return. This lead me to go back to a less-used application from Microsoft.

Sync Toy

Sync Toy was released by Microsoft long ago for Windows XP and has been updated for Vista and Windows 7. It a simple application albeit a very useful one, which synchronizes files between any two folders. It is essentially meant for backups where you can copy files from work folder into backup folder on a periodic basis. SyncToy is perfect for our scenario as it will help us keep the PortableApps on the laptop as well as on USB to remain in sync. This way, I can download my mails using ThunderBird onto my laptop folder, sync it onto USB, go over to another computer, plug in the USB and have access to all my mails on that computer without having to install even one byte of any software. If you download mails when on that computer, once I get back, I will be able to sync back the changes back to the folder on my laptop and will have the newly downloaded mails now on my laptop too. Life is so Simple

To enable synchronization, just run SyncToy and create a folder pair. SyncToy asks for “Left side” folder and “Right side” folder to give a visual sense of the operation. Select your on-computer PortableApps folder on the Left side and choose the USB drive as the right side folder and select Synchronize option. Make sure to do a “preview” before you land up copying massive files into the USB due to choosing wrong folder setting.

Now you are set.. Use PortableApps on your laptop or desktop and when you are ready to leave just plug-in you USB, run SyncToy and copy all your applications, preferences, data files onto the USB drive and you are ready to go. When you return back, plug-in the USB again and SyncToy will Sync back the changes onto your hard disk. Don't worry about the direction as will figure out what has changed and on which side.

You still have to remember to run SyncToy every time you plug-in the USB though and that brings us to the third great application.

Windows Task Scheduler

It is possible the most underutilized feature of Windows while being capable of doing amazing thing. Task Scheduler is meant to schedule periodic tasks like drive backups, cleanups, daily mails etc. Most of these tasks are scheduled at a particular time but Task Scheduler is also capable of triggering on events like Hardware events, shutdown, start-up, user login etc. We need one such event to automate our SyncToy.

Run Task Scheduler and Create a new Task. Give it a friendly name like “Run SyncToy on USB”

Next step is to trigger it when the USB is inserted. This is a little tricky because we need to know which hardware event is triggered when the USB is inserted in the laptop. To find out, got Event Viewer and look at entries under Microsoft-Windows-DriverFrameworks-Usermode-operational. You will see the event ID for the USB you have inserted. In my case it is 2101. So, in the next step create a trigger for this event,

You are almost done, the last step is to provide an action of running the SyncToy. You should not run SyncToy in a mode where is comes up and starts copying the files automatically as you don't want this to happen to any USB you insert. It would be a good idea to just bring up SyncToy as a reminder when you insert a USB and then you can decide either to run it or close SyncToy without Synchronization.

 

There… you are done. Now, every time you insert your USB drive, it will popup SyncToy as a reminder to sync your PortableApps with the ones on your USB.

Happy Porting!