Messages

9051

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst. Interface. Ever.

« on: December 04, 2005, 05:01 PM »

Draggable and skinned toolbars, lots of icons and gradient colors, and custom, custom non-client area icons... well, not my kind of thing. I like my explorer to be lean_and_mean.

I would be very concerned if I had ever witnessed your loss of settings, though. Especially the part about not being able to import from a .reg file (I'd be worried about the state of my whole system then :-) )

9052

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst. Interface. Ever.

« on: December 04, 2005, 02:48 PM »

Notice that the lite version is free (although finding the link for it on www.zabkat.com can take a few minutes ), that it supports dual- as well as single-pane, has tree view if you like that kind of thing, has a lot of nice configuration options,  "quick viewer", view filters etc. I'm sure Total Commander has everything xplorer^2 has and some more, but x^2 has everything I need, and doesn't look like crap :-)

9053

General Software Discussion / Re: Worst. Interface. Ever.

« on: December 04, 2005, 02:39 PM »

I hate QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player with a passion. I also find the .mov format highly overrated, those mac people should just go divx or xvid

I really hate the WMP (and similar apps) user interfaces - give me the clean and unobtrusive look of mplayer2.exe, thank you. I generally dislike all things skinned, but for winamp it's okay... I'm flirting a bit with MusikCube though, and considering foobar2000 as well.

Total Commander is another good pick - why does it still look like win3.x even in 2005? I used to be a hardcore Norton Commander fan, but that was because of the funtionality, not ugly looks . xplorer^2 (www.zabkat.com) is quite sufficient for my needs, looks prettier, and is stille pretty lean_and_mean.

(they bought everything that's popular, including the XP kernal)

Huh? MS hired (among others) David N. Cutler to design & write the NT kernel, which later progressed to 2000 (NT 5.0) and XP (NT 5.1). How did they "buy" the kernel?

Anyway, here's a screenshot of xplorer^2 customized for my use. Monospace font, no silly toolbars that only waste screen space (<3 shortcut keys), etc. As you can see it supports icon overlays, which is very nice when dealing with version control (in my case, subversion) - but can be turned off for very fast speed.

I think one of the prime examples of bad interface design would be the EMACS editor, but most opensores stuff qualify; at least there's common user interface guidelines for the windows world that a lot of people seem to respect.

9054

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: December 04, 2005, 02:07 PM »

Well, I have a back-button which is enough most of the time, and it doesn't get in my way. Some of the mice I've used when visiting friends and relatives have really pi$$ed me off, too many buttons programmed to do weird things. When I do need "forward", holding down the right mousebutton and moving the mouse right is easy enough

My current mouse (logitech mx300) is wearing out, though... sucks that the majority of non-crap mice around today seem to be very fancy-pants, I want something simpler (being left-handed and all).

9055

General Software Discussion / Re: Firefox Extensions: Your favorite or most useful

« on: December 04, 2005, 01:11 PM »

Adblock (and google for "adblock list" to make it effective)

Fasterfox - speed up your browsing experience by tricks like preloading links before you click them, tweaking memory and disk cache, etc.

Tabbrowser Preferences - for less sucky tabs

Download Manager Tweak - so download window shows as a tab, etc.

Mouse Gestures - because my mouse doesn't have a "forward" button.

ScrapBook - because it's way more handy than "file->save page as".

--- extensions added after reading this thread ---

ImageZoom
Tab X
OpenBook

9056

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Exact Audio Copy

« on: December 03, 2005, 12:56 PM »

I personally prefer plextools to EAC, it seems to do a better job (especially for those annoying protected CDs) - but EAC is a very decent tool nonetheless. I use it for generating cuesheets for my plex-ripped audio

9057

Living Room / Re: Van Zant CD taking a beating for containing this Sony Rootkit thing.

« on: December 03, 2005, 12:54 PM »

Nice, Mark0!

9058

General Software Discussion / Re: Just how bad is IE?

« on: November 29, 2005, 05:58 PM »

You can add AvantBrowser to the bunch, also using the IE html control.

Now, if Opera only had adblock + scrapbook and rendered a bit better (or well, "worse"/IE-compatible) I probably wouldn't have firefox installed. But with the recent 1.5 FF, it seems like some of my gripes with FF have been fixed, and I might start favoring it over Opera again.

But IE? Naw. I still view it as less secure than FF, although more and more FF exploits are showing up.

9059

General Software Discussion / Re: symantec kills free sygate firewall

« on: November 29, 2005, 10:46 AM »

At what point are Symantec going to be challenged for predatory monopolistic practices ???

It seems only Microsoft is being targetted for this... while IMO other companies are just as bad. I really hate the way norton/symantec f?ck up all the products they buy up, with their insane bloat and whatnot

9060

Living Room / Re: Van Zant CD taking a beating for containing this Sony Rootkit thing.

« on: November 29, 2005, 10:25 AM »

Nice!

But as Mark says, it's not a complete victory...

9061

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: Limited Time Offer: $20 (33%) off MSGTAG ... offer expires on 30th November 2005

« on: November 28, 2005, 12:18 PM »

Hm, I wonder how it works... one of those annoying things that insert a 1-by-1 pixel "tracking image"? (which thankfully don't work when you've disabled external images in your mail client). Or just one of the regular "read-notifcation-request" mail header thingies?

9062

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA - a simple way to batch rearrange blocks of text within filenames

« on: November 25, 2005, 06:54 AM »

Yes, a RegEx file renamer would be very nifty... I know some irc guy who wrote one a while ago (main purpose was renaming MP3s I think), but I haven't seen him in a while :/

9063

Living Room / Re: Odd problem ... Windows Task Scheduler hangs and crashes Explorer

« on: November 24, 2005, 02:05 PM »

You could try finding the scheduler process in sysinternals' Process Explorer, and use the thread view to see where it hangs... might not help a lot, and will be really annoying if the scheduler runs as a svchost process (which it probably does >_<)

9064

General Software Discussion / Re: Strange sites in my registry

« on: November 24, 2005, 08:25 AM »

That's how the Hosts file works, so that's what I figured they must be. 

-m_s (November 24, 2005, 08:14 AM)

No, the hosts file simply overrides normal DNS name resolution.

9065

General Software Discussion / Re: Strange sites in my registry

« on: November 24, 2005, 07:07 AM »

Hmm, didn't think Opera had the kind of security holes that lets sites add themselves to the "trusted zone" (which I believe is what those registry entries are all about).

9066

Official Announcements / Re: ANNOUNCING - DonationCoder.com Logo Contest

« on: November 22, 2005, 03:49 PM »

I really like the versions of the bird that are a bit sketchy, like sketch-bird-look-forward.png . It might just be my twisted head, but I feel it gives an image of software that's under perpetual construction. Not in this "oh gosh, this is unfinished junk" way, but rather the "is constantly adapter to users' needs". And it looks damn cute

I don't think the $ sign is any problem - it's a well-known currency symbol, and tends to be used universally when money is involved.

9067

FlipSuite and Flipbook Printer / Re: what's this?

« on: November 18, 2005, 07:51 AM »

f0dder's present? Awww, that's sweet of you, mouser 

9068

General Software Discussion / Re: software i love

« on: November 18, 2005, 12:50 AM »

Software that's part of my unattended installation CD
These are installed automatically when I install windows, and a lot of the software is also integrated into the system. One bootable CD for all machines in the house


Opera - integrated as default web browser
xplorer^2 lite - file manager, integrated instead of explorer.exe
Foxit Reader - small and fast PDF viewer
Notepad++ - free+fast+opensource programmer's text editor, supports plugins

WinDirStat - graphical representation of file/folder disk usage
WinRAR - IMHO simply the best archiving tool, with great commandline options
Screenshot Captor - need I say more?
ACDSee32 v2.4 - *fast* image viewer. All their later versions suck, though.
UltraISO - good tool for creating and manipulating CD/DVD images
Daemon-Tools - lets you mount CD/DVD images as a virtual drive

PuTTY and related tools - SSH client and more, for connectivity with my linux box
WinSCP (secure copy) - graphical SFTP/SCP client, again for linux connectivity
SubVersion - great source/version control software

SysInternals tools - especially pstools and Process Explorer. "pskill iexplore" is useful if you enter one of those a-zillion-popups websites.
WinSpy++ - spy on windows classes etc. (I also use their lightweight hexeditor)
TrID File Identifier - useful for identifying filetypes
PEiD packer/crypter identifier - useful for analyzing suspicious files
OllyDbg debugger - nice debugger when you don't need source-level debugging

Spybot Search & Destroy - spyware cleaner
AdAware - the "classic" spyware remover
CrapCleaner - cleans up various registry crap and more

9069

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: Translators Wanted

« on: November 18, 2005, 12:22 AM »

Hm, seems like the forum software doesn't handle unicode properly? Or perhaps I'm missing a font?

9070

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: UCalc Fast Math Parser 2.0 Pro License giveaway

« on: November 17, 2005, 09:00 AM »

Sounds interesting... but WHY does the screenshot show integration with MS Agent? >_<

9071

General Software Discussion / Re: Best FREE IRC client?

« on: November 17, 2005, 01:44 AM »

Hehe... Miranda is very nice for Instant Messaging (I hope they'll soon release an updated official version that fixes the numerous MSN bugs), but it doesn't do the trick for IRC for me... oh well

9072

General Software Discussion / Re: Best FREE IRC client?

« on: November 17, 2005, 01:05 AM »

I haven't been able to find a replacement for mIRC - nothing else really seems to do the trick. While mIRC isn't exactly LEAN_AND_MEAN, it's not the largest client either. The lack of updates doesn't bother me much, since it's pretty mature; new updates just for the sake of bumping version number is silly

I've tried XChat as well, nad it looks sorta okay when tweaked a bit. However the windows version is nonfree (because building the windows version is nontrivial? yay for ´portable´ programs, sigh). It also suffers badly from flickering when resizing, which is unacceptable to me.

9073

Activation/License/Language Help / Re: Translators Wanted

« on: November 17, 2005, 12:52 AM »

I guess I could do a little translation to Danish - I probably have a little more free time than poor ol' Jibz

9074

General Software Discussion / Re: WARNING - Fake Windows XP Service pack in circulation

« on: November 16, 2005, 02:59 PM »

Hmm... good to have people be aware of the possibility of a fake SP3. But "why not send a copy of this email [along with my nifty three self-promoting URLs at the bottom]" is a bit "meh" - he seems almost as self-promoting and big-word/colors-using as Steve Gibson

9075

FlipSuite and Flipbook Printer / Re: what's this?

« on: November 16, 2005, 07:00 AM »