Change the Windows Desktop Theme November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Writing, Troubleshooting, Cool Tricks, Tips , add a comment
Like its brother-in-arms, the Screensaver, the Windows Desktop Themes eat away at your computer’s memory. Unless you really need them, uninstall! You’ll have a much quicker and more reliable machine.To change or remove desktop themes, follow these steps:
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On the Desktop, right-click and click Properties.
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Click the Themes tab.
3. In the Theme box, select the theme you want or click None.
Tip: if you have to use a theme, select one with few graphics.
Why doesn’t the Date update when I open Word? November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : How do I ?, Troubleshooting , add a commentThere are two steps involved here:
To add a date that Word will updated automatically, you need to insert a ‘field’.
To do this, go to Insert, Date and Time and choose the format you want. This inserts a field in the page which displays the time. This time, by the way, is determined by your computer’s clock.
Check “Update Automatically” so that it will update when you print.Tip: to manually force an update, click in the date and press F9.
The second approach is if you want to change the format of the date field or work with the other features.
To do this: click File, Insert, Field, Date and Time. Select Date from the field names list and pick a format that suits your needs.
Modifying Styles November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Cool Tricks , add a commentTo modify a style in Word, follow these steps:
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Got to Format, Style and Formatting.
This opens the Style and Formatting task pane in the right hand side of the screen. -
Click on the style you want to change, for example, Body Text.
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Hover your mouse over Body Text.
An arrow appears in the right corner.
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Click on the arrow and select Modify.
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In the Modify Style dialog box, use the different options to change the font, paragraph, and other settings.
Visio Hyperlink Problem in Internet Explorer 7 November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Misc, Cool Tricks , add a commentVisio is used by many Tech Writers and Programmers to create diagrams and flowcharts.
Some of you have encountered issues involving hyperlinks in Visio’s HTML output and Internet Explorer 7. For example, clicking a hyperlink in a drawing saved as HTML from Visio 2003 results in an error that says “Internet Explorer cannot open the Internet site. Operation aborted.”
Then you may want to read this post as it offers some ways to work around it. Visio’s HTML output and IE7
When is a document not a document? November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Misc , add a commentThe new Word Blog over on MSDN keeps cranking out the good stuff.
Scroll down this page and read the Q and A about document types.
Q: When is a document not a document?
A: When it’s a form.
“This is another question that we spent a lot of time discussing when we started to think about building what became content controls. We didn’t just want another tool for doing online forms in Word – not only is there a great tool to do it today, but people already know how to do that in Word and don’t need another way to do the same thing.
Read more here.
The Office 2007 UI Bible November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Misc , add a comment
Jensen Harren has compiled the 200 or so posts he’s made since starting last September.
To make it easier for the rest of us he and a colleague created a Table of Contents of all the posts.
“I’ve been meaning to sit down and create a kind of table of contents for all of the posts here—a starting point for people to read about the Office 2007 UI. But then, I found out that someone already did the work for me. Patrick Schmid, a OneNote MVP and friend of the Office 2007 UI, put together what he called the Office UI Bible on his blog—a fully organized catalog of many of my posts.”
This is worth bookmarking if you’re interested in the new Office user interface.
Use ClearType to improves Readability on Laptops and high-quality flat panel displays November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Cool Tricks, downloads , add a comment
If you use a laptop to write, then you have to get this!
This free download from MS ”delivers improved font display quality over traditional forms of font smoothing or anti-aliasing. ClearType improves readability on color LCD displays with a digital interface, such as those in laptops and high-quality flat panel displays. Readability on CRT screens can also be somewhat improved.
Tip: Use this online tuner to turn on and tune your Windows XP ClearType settings. If you experience problems download the Windows XP PowerToy version of the tuner. The online tuner does not currently work with Windows Vista.
ClearType works by accessing the individual vertical color stripe elements in every pixel of an LCD screen. Before ClearType, the smallest level of detail that a computer could display was a single pixel, but with ClearType running on an LCD monitor, we can now display features of text as small as a fraction of a pixel in width. The extra resolution increases the sharpness of the tiny details in text display, making it much easier to read over long durations.
WordPress Enter Corporate Marketplace November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Writing , add a commentWordPress CEO Toni Schneider outlines why Wordpress have moved into the enterprise space. He highlights that, “Fortune 500 companies are discovering WordPress. They are figuring out that blogging is a great tool for fostering more open and active collaboration with customers and between employees.”
Wordpress began addressing this “enterprise demand” a few months ago with our professional support subscriptions for companies who need help deploying the WordPress open source package.
He then continues by adding that ”knowing that we have little experience with enterprise sales and integration, we decided to look for a partner. Our search led us to KnowNow, a leading provider of enterprise RSS solutions. KnowNow is building an impressive list of Fortune 500 customers for their RSS aggregation tools. Given their proven ability to satisfy enterprise customers and the complementary nature of RSS and blogging, we feel that they are an ideal partner to bring to market an enterprise optimized version of WordPress.”
You can learn more over here at the KnowNow WordPress Enterprise Edition site.
New Wikipedia of Organization Charts November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : downloads , add a comment
No Inc have taken AJAX and “Web 2.0-ness” to create CogMap, which is a terrific Wikipedia of organization charts.
Their own site is an organization chart wiki! This means that it is a collection of organization charts online that anyone can edit, add to, and help maintain.
CogMap is a tool for sales people, entrepreneurs, and recruiters to understand organizations and keep information up to date. If you are like us, you had some of these things happen to you:
- Worked at a company without a published organization chart and had no idea who worked for anyone else
- Tried to figure out who to call at a company and come up empty
- Bought a list of people to call and had all the information be wrong
- Met people that all had different titles and been unable to tell who was the decision-maker in the room!
There are several demos over here http://www.cogmap.com/help.php including one on Microsoft.
Hotkey Extender November 29, 2006
Posted by iawalsh in : Cool Tricks, downloads , add a comment
Donationcoder continue their excellent series of products with TapTap Hotkey Extender, a tiny super-efficient tray-based utility (under <100k) for keyboard fanatics.
It monitors hotkey combinations not supported by most programs (e.g. like doubletap right shift key). When such hotkey combinations are detected, TapTap will simulate a normal hotkey that the user has configured.
In this way, you can configure any of your programs to respond to these extended hotkey events as if they supported it natively.
For Example:
You might have a program which normally triggers on Alt+Ctrl+F5, but you want to configure it to trigger with a double tap of the right control key. You can use TapTap to detect Right Control Doubletap events, and send a Ctrl+Alt+F5 when it does. In this way, you can control your programs the way you want to, and they never know the difference.
TapTap Hotkey Extender is written in lean and mean C++ and highly optimized for insignificant cpu/memory access. It makes no changes to any system files and is completely safe. Comes with an installer but you can unpack the download manually and run it without installing.
Download it here: http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Mouser/TapTap/index.html