Messages

176

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: April 04, 2006, 11:23 AM »

I've known about iMatch for years, it seems. I just dumped it as a possible option because I believe it used to be rather expensive for one.. and secondly its target audience used to be much less the broad range of photographers of all sorts of skill levels that it is today... they used to target photo pro's and advanced amateurs and companies specifically. Now it seems they've changed the philosophy around a bit and are offering a much more accessible tool for just about anybody interested in digital photo management. I do remember loving it when I tried it, but couldn't justify the price at the time. I'm willing to say that iMatch may be good enough to blow both APE and ACDSee out of the water in terms of image management capability. The reason I say this is because iMatch has been focused on image management specifically, for YEARS. ACDSee has always been more of an all-in-one type deal, with image browsing, editing and some organizing thrown in for good measure, and Photoshop Album is for noobs, more or less. Not only that, but it ALSO is more of an all-in-one type application, except that the organization component is very strong and everything else is not all that great from what I could tell. I also remember reading extremely good reviews of iMatch back at the time when I tried it.

Do post impressions of iMatch if you try it. I'd be HIGHLY interested. I may try it out myself if I get to it this week.

EDIT:
Overall, I must say I like APE's way of dealing with image management more than ACDSee overall so far. It's much more intuitive and I never had any trouble finding all my catalogued images in APE while with ACDSee, I had to post about the problem before I figured out the image well was what I was looking for.. also, in APE any image can easily be excluded from the catalogue by simply selecting it and hitting the delete key on your keyboard, or via right-click context menu, and leaving the "Delete file from disk as well as from catalogue" (or similar) option UNCHECKED in the delete dialogue that pops up. It's that simple! And in ACDSee I'm supposed to deal with filters and be limited to only being able to exclude whole folders from the image catalogue? Also, APE's interface is far prettier to look at and has some very sexy features ACDSee can not call its own. One of those is image stacking. In APE, you can stack images that are very similar, (like burst-shot images for example, or other very similar images), on top of each other, which is represented in APE by a thumbnail that has visible layers below it to signify a stacked little collection. The top image will have a showing thumbnail, the ones below will not be visible, but the stack can quickly be stacked and unstacked via the context menu. Another sweet thing about APE is how it deals with categories/tags. You can create multiple categories and then you have the option to either create a SUBCATEGORY or a TAG in an existing category. It makes far more sense than ACDSee's universal naming of tags as "categories". As I said before in this thread, you don't want to call a person, for example, a category. Rather, you want to have that be a tag, which is much more intuitive and logical than ACDSee's way of handling this problem. Also, each tag, after having been assigned to at least one photo, in APE, actually gets its OWN THUMBNAIL. Now THAT is cool. On the right in the organization panel, when you are looking at tags, you will actually see small thumbnails ON each tag, the source images for which seem to be selected more or less randomly. I suppose the tag just gets thumbnailed with the FIRST image that was tagged with that tag.

Little things like that are what make me think APE better than ACDSee at this point.

177

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: April 04, 2006, 01:41 AM »

In ACDSee, is there an easy way to REMOVE images from the catalogue? ACDSee picked up all kinds of files I really don't want in my image catalogue. Example in the screenshot. All the Skype files and the ones with no real thumbnails should be dropped from the database.

178

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: April 03, 2006, 11:46 PM »

Shit! Nevermind.. THE IMAGE WELL is what I was looking for, and ACDSee totally has it! Sweetness. Finally. Aaaaaaaaah great. Truly great! Still.. I like how APE has "image stacking" and also calls sub-items of tag categories image TAGS and not actually CATEGORIES. I mean.. under PEOPLE I usually put people's names, so it's awkward ACDSee calls the names CATEGORIES as well, when really they're just tags. APE makes more sense in that respect. But APE does not have a duplicate image finder tool built-in, nor are its editing features as good as ACDSee's I suppose. Then again I shouldn't be saying that because I've just about never used either one's image editing features. I just imagine ACDSee's are better. Whatever. God damn. Now to REtag my entire image collection. Shit.

179

General Software Discussion / Re: Foxit Reader (fast pdf reader alternative)

« on: April 03, 2006, 11:36 PM »

I've downloaded Foxit, but the instructions weren't clear on how to make it my default PDF reader.  Can anyone tell me how to do that?  (I use Firefox, Outlook, Windows XP)

Thanks again,

-Betsy (April 03, 2006, 11:27 PM)

Click HELP on the file menu, and you'll see it right away.

* moerl loves FoxIt. He dropped Adobe Reader a LONG time ago because of FoxIt Reader.

180

Image Manager Shootout / Re: Where is Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0??

« on: April 03, 2006, 11:34 PM »

can you give me and idea of what you typically do with photoshop elements, i.e. do you transfer your photos from camera to hard drive then pick out certain ones and give them a specific tag, then tag some others, and then a few more, etc. until you have tagged every image.

or do you tag a few and then organise the rest by their date or some other attribute.

i'm curious as to your none folder specific method.

-nudone (March 29, 2006, 01:35 AM)

As a first action, I try to tag ALL images so I have them all organized. So..

1. I add all images I have to the catalogue. As a result ALL images are browsable from inside the application because they are in APE's catalogue.
2. I then start tagging. I create relevant tags as I go.. places, people, and make subdivisions of tags, like "family" and "friends" for people, for example.
3. I have views for tagged and untagged as I go, to easily be remember to keep up with what I've already tagged and with what has not yet been tagged.

That's how it works for me. What I find annoying about ACDSee is that even though I've added all images to its catalogue, I see no way to browse them without still depending on the actual folders the images are in. I've been looking for a BROWSE CATALOGUE option everywhere but could not find it. So even though ACDSee has catalogued all the images I have in my collection, it still depends on folders for browsing? That sucks. That's where, IMHO, APE has it beat completely. And this is a huge and important difference

181

General Software Discussion / Re: Need app to find album cover art?

« on: April 03, 2006, 11:17 PM »

Oh trust me.. I googled as well. Had I found what I'm looking for by Googling, this thread would never have been born. I found the second link, for example, by googling. That looks EXACTLY like what I'm looking for, except it seems it's only for Linux and I'm running Windows

I'll see if I can find anything good from the first link though. Thanks.

EDIT:
Shit, nevermind! The guy DOES have a Windows version up of Album Cover Art Downloader! Sweetness. I have to check it out. Right now! I'll still read the FB2K thread. Looks good -- Thank you for finding this, and for motivating me to recheck out Album Cover Art Downloader.

182

General Software Discussion / Re: Need app to find album cover art?

« on: April 03, 2006, 09:35 PM »

I use Foobar2000 :/, but thanks for trying.

183

General Software Discussion / Re: Group/Project oriented, web-based productivity environment?

« on: April 03, 2006, 09:29 PM »

Did you look at
http://www.writeboard.com/ ?
(you may have because its associated with 37 signals/basecamp)
tony

-tsaint (April 03, 2006, 09:20 PM)

When one signs up for Basecamp, one gets two free writeboards inside, so we're aware. It's an excellent feature. We have the two writeboards set up already, one is "Bibliography", the other "Outline" .

Most of the group members just have not even logged in yet because they are retarded. Working with incompetent people blows.

184

General Software Discussion / Need app to find album cover art?

« on: April 03, 2006, 08:36 PM »

I need an alternative to Album Cover Finder to find images for the albums in my music collection. My music is all MP3's, and all are organized in this way:

Artist - Album/Artist - Album - Track # - Track Title.mp3

Now, I'd love to get the above mentioned Album Cover Finder, except it seems it only works with iTunes. The feature where it can find ALL the album cover art for your entire music collection in one step, at least. That would be EXTREMELY handy. Anyone know of another app like this?

Thanks

185

General Software Discussion / NetJaxer -- Have your Web 2.0 ON YOUR PC :)

« on: April 03, 2006, 05:21 PM »

http://www.netjaxer.com/

Just wanted to share my discovery. Cool shit!

186

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: AlertBear 104 -- First Impressions

« on: April 03, 2006, 03:10 PM »

Is it ok now?

-moerl (April 03, 2006, 10:20 AM)

It's ok now - I took the liberty to change it a *cough* little Just making it big doesn't make it obvious it's a (clickable) URL hiding behind the text.

-brotherS (April 03, 2006, 03:03 PM)

Works for me. To me it was very obvious, since a link has a different COLOR than normal text, so I'm not sure what the problem was in knowing that part of the text is actually linked to outside content. Also, you could have underlined the word "AlertBear", but I like your method better. Whatever works for you guys. I normally tell links from regular text by its color.

187

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use RSS feeds?

« on: April 03, 2006, 03:07 PM »

but I guess I'll live - the interface *is* nice and slick. But I'll probably miss the RegExp features of website watcher...

-f0dder (April 03, 2006, 08:27 AM)

What for are you using RegEx together with RSS feeds?

-brotherS (April 03, 2006, 02:58 PM)

Ignoring dynamic parts of a feed - like "Times viewed *", which shouldn't trigger the feed item as 'new', only new items or changed 'content' should trigger...

-f0dder (April 03, 2006, 03:02 PM)

But then you're talking about tracked websites... not actual RSS or Atom newsfeeds. With the latter, you don't have to ignore anything. When a new feed entry is up, you get it, whatever the time or any other counter on the page.

188

General Software Discussion / Re: Group/Project oriented, web-based productivity environment?

« on: April 03, 2006, 02:57 PM »

Still off-topic: Nice! I thought the only colors available were the ones in the drop-down menu.. Thanks! 

-jgpaiva (April 03, 2006, 02:53 PM)

I thought that WAS in the drop-down menu? It's not? Haha.. guess I just typed in "grey" at the beginning of the color tag without giving it much though.. see what happened was is that I tried one color, then decided I wanted a different one, and when that happens you can't just use the color drop-down again because it will insert a NEW tag. So I edited the tag manually instead, typing in "grey", thinking that should also be an option on the drop-down menu. Oh well. Now we know

189

General Software Discussion / Re: Group/Project oriented, web-based productivity environment?

« on: April 03, 2006, 02:50 PM »

Offtopic again: hey, how did you put that text? it's great for posting offtopic stuff, but i can't find that color!
I know it doesn't use curly brackets, but if i posted with the other brackets, you wouldn't be able to see the syntax, only the link.
I've just found this option, it's fun!

-jgpaiva (April 03, 2006, 01:17 PM)

Aaaaaaaahh.. so you were just using the curly brackets to make an example! I get you. Ok then . And the color I used for the off-topic part is grey.

190

General Software Discussion / Re: Group/Project oriented, web-based productivity environment?

« on: April 03, 2006, 01:03 PM »

Offtopic, but you need to see the correct way to insert links, you're not using bbcode. it is {url=www.donationcoder.com}Donation Coder's site{/url} replacing the {} by square brackets ( [] )

-jgpaiva (April 03, 2006, 10:54 AM)

Off-Topic: Thanks for letting me know about my incorrect formatting. While we're at corrections, however, let me correct you as well. BBCode has never used "curly brackets", i.e. {}. It has always used standard brackets, i.e. []. Such is the case on this board as well. There was something else that was wrong with my post.. but you can verifiy the truth of this correction of mine by using the "insert hyperlink" button here when you are editing a post. You will see that it will drop this in your edit box:

[Select]

[url][/url]

That's how I fixed my incorrect formatting now and it works.

I have this same thread running here as well as over at DSLR to get the most responses for the question. Severus at DSLR has posted a helpful link that points to 37Signals' Basecamp forums, listing multiple alternatives to Basecamp. I read the thread and checked out some of the alternatives and after some selective elimination, I ended up with nothing but http://www.officezilla.com/, which looks VERY interesting. I'll have to check that one out some more. It has more features than Basecamp and it's free. Basecamp has a free subscription type as well, but the features in that are quite limited, whereas I expect Officezilla! to be quite free of restrictions.

I'll post back when I find anything new

EDIT:
Edited HEAVILY not for content but for formatting. Something weird happened with this post.

191

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: AlertBear 104 -- First Impressions

« on: April 03, 2006, 10:20 AM »

You should add an URL for http://www.alertbear.com/ in a larger font in the first post

-f0dder (April 03, 2006, 08:27 AM)

You're right.. though DC users are all far more than skilled enough to google something . You're right, a direct link should be included. Is it ok now?

192

General Software Discussion / Group/Project oriented, web-based productivity environment?

« on: April 03, 2006, 10:15 AM »

I didn't know what else to call it. It's pretty much exactly like 37Signals' Basecamp, except I need it to be free. In fact, Basecamp is free too, except with a very limited feature-set. It may just be enough though.. I don't know.

I'm in a group of seven, and we are writing a 50-page paper on "free trade, fair trade and poor nations" and right now, all our communication is based on email. This means that one person will send an email to the six other people involved. Then the six other people will use REPLY TO ALL and reply with their two cents to that email.. so we are sending emails back and forth in quantities that remind me of the amount of water molecules the see moves back and forth in a cycle of ebb & flow. We need a kind of service, like Basecamp, that will let us communicate with the group easily, schedule meetings and such.. and be efficient at it all. A small forum would be great too.

Any ideas?

I haven't checked out Basecamp yet so it may actually be exactly what we're looking for.. let me know what you think.

193

Living Room / Re: Great Software blog has moved

« on: April 01, 2006, 04:28 PM »

The first image for ACDSee Pro loads only halfway. 'Tis a shame!

194

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: AlertBear 104 -- First Impressions

« on: March 31, 2006, 12:31 AM »

Thanks guys for the very positive feedback! I appreciate the comments, and please feel free to correct me if I got anything wrong, or to add anything that may be missing

195

General Software Discussion / Re: Do you use rss feeds?

« on: March 30, 2006, 11:30 PM »

My choice for the poll would have been "Yes, I love them, but I wouldn't die if they weren't here". I chose the second one from the top. I can't say I couldn't live without RSS.. but I do love the fact that it exists. I haven't been reading any newsfeeds in over a week, simply because I haven't installed a newsreader since my last fresh installation of Windows, which happened, well, about a week ago

I still have to install GreatNews to see if it's as good as FeedDemon. I've tried it before, of course, but it was at a time when I wasn't even too fond of FeedDemon. I have a different perspective now and am eager to judge GreatNews RSS based on that new view.

196

Living Room / Re: Great Software blog has moved

« on: March 30, 2006, 11:26 PM »

it's an absolutely beautiful theme for wordpress you found there by the way.

-mouser (March 30, 2006, 09:27 PM)

Amen to that! Beautiful looking. And I was wondering if GS had died.. it seems it hasn't been updated in FOREVER. Glad to hear the flame behind it is still flickering. Perhaps it's time to turn the knob wide open on the gas pipe that keeps that flame flickering?

197

General Software Discussion / Re: Office 2007 user interface video

« on: March 30, 2006, 09:14 PM »

Erm ... I have to admit it does look kinda neat. Now all I have to do is find the £300 ... or whatever they plan to ask for the upgrade ...

-Carol Haynes (March 30, 2006, 05:25 PM)

I wonder what the pricing will be as well. Seeing as how I am a student, I am sure I will find a favorable academic deal somehow

198

Mini-Reviews by Members / AlertBear 104 -- First Impressions

« on: March 30, 2006, 05:55 PM »

So I finally decided to check out AlertBear (http://www.alertbear.com/). Let me put it short and say that BrotherS's hype was not unjustified .
I thought I would give you a quick overview over how AlertBear works and why it might be worth your time and attention to check it out.
 
AlertBear comes with with the following preset of feeds:



I left them all enabled for the time being and will customize the list later. To do that, I can select the option CHOOSE FEEDS, which will pop up the following window:



As you can see AlertBear is fully equipped with most options you would expect. You can edit feeds, (duh), export and import OPML lists, (nice! even if this feature is fairly standard today, I'd say ), and add and edit categories. This last feature is particularly welcome as it will let you organize your feeds in categories of your own choosing. In the first screenshot I posted, categories are the terms with blue backgrounds.
 
AlertBear lives in your system tray. It is designed not as a full RSS/Newsfeed client/reader but more like a feed-tracker. This claim is also underlined by the fact that, as I said, it lives in your tray. That being said it should come as no surprise that AlertBear is controlled by right-clicking the tray icon, which will get you to all the commands you need to modify options and generally control AlertBear. Here's a shot:


 
Now, let me tell you about how AlertBear works. The most prominent architectural element of its functioning is what it calls "The Stack". If you use an IM client and it supports tray status messages, you will be familiar with what this looks like. But just to put us all "in the same room" for the purpose of this overview, here's yet another screenshot, (and not the last one, either ):



See what I mean? That's the stack. It slides in with a super cool animation from the right onto the screen, and slides out just as sexily. It's a very satisfying animation to watch, if I may say so without sounding weird. In the stack we also find AlertBear's philosophy, which is based on the idea that the reading of newsfeeds should not be treated the same way as the reading of emails. In other words, the idea behind AlertBear is to plug the user into a continuous "river of news" that keeps flowing. This means, in English, that as newsfeeds are updated, the stack slides onto the screen and shows you the latest newsfeed entries from the respective sources. A nice idea indeed, you will have to admit. Now, this idea is not entirely without its problems and I will get to that later, but the shortcomings are very subjective to my own experience and it is quite possible that you will disagree with me.
 
To get back to the stack, here's how it works:



I reused the previous screenshot, except in this one, I've added highlights. What I highlighted with blue rounded boxes are the feed entry info areas. The text in my blue boxes becomes underlined when you hover your mouse anywhere in that feed entry's bubble, and when clicked, it will open that particular feed in your default browser. Obviously, this will let you check out the very latest feeds faster than ever before. It's hard to imagine a more direct way to get to the latest feeds. The red rounded box highlights the "open in AlertBear" buttons that are available for each individual feed entry. Here is another aspect of AlertBear's that will not take a few days to let you realize how great and handy it is. Clicking the blue arrow will open the following window:


 
You can tell what that is, right? You guessed it, it's AlertBear's very own more traditional feedreader overview window. Luckily for me, there is not much to say about it. It is as basic as what you see in the screenshot, but with all its simplicity, it is nevertheless a crucial feature. AlertBear would be a lot less functional and useful were it not for this overview window. As you can see there is a list of your subscribed feeds on the left showing, just as you're used to from your email client, the numbers of new and unread feed entries in parentheses next to the feed's name. You can't right-click anywhere in this whole window. Well, you can, of course, and many times if you like... it's just not going to do anything . This is no complaint, mind you. Sure, it would be handy if you can right click feeds on the left and have an option to jump to the "edit feed" screen right from there, but you can do that easily by clicking "choose feeds" from AlertBear's tray context menu. Double clicking any of the feed entries in the main list on the right will open it in your default browser. The filter you see on top filters feed entry titles only, not the bodies of the feed entry's themselves. It's a small detail, but a good thing to know.
 
One more thing about the stack: hovering your mouse anywhere on the stack and scrolling your mousewheel will scroll through all the feeds in the stack based on when they reached your AlertBear. It's a nice touch and gives AlertBear additional points for intuitive interface design. You can quickly find feed entries that showed up a short time ago, and if you have to find a particular feed entry from yesterday or earlier in the day, you can always open the overview window mentioned above, and perhaps look for it using the filter field--if you can remember the feed entry's title.
 
You can see on AlertBear's context menu some self explanatory functions. "Mark all as read" requires no further explanation, "Hide history" hides what I have hitherto called the "overview window", ("history" is AlertBear's name for it), and if it's hidden it turns into "show history", of course. "Empty stack" will delete all feeds currently in the history and will let you start with a naked AlertBear. Take from that comment what you will. As I've discovered yesterday in the IRC channel, many people who hang out there might as well be logged in from mental institutions :D:D, so perhaps this particular comment got you thinking?
"Check feeds" is as self explanatory as toilet paper, "About" needs no mention, and because the one option I have not yet mentioned is so glass-clear I will not even say about it that it needs no mention, I actually won't mention it!
 
We are all advanced software users here, and many of us even software makers, so I've probably gone into far too much detail already. But here are the screenshots of all of AlertBear's option dialogs, to give you an idea of what more you can do with AlertBear:
 

 
The preferences tabs and all of its content should be self explanatory and do not demand further explanation, save for one exception: Bearkey. I have no idea what that is myself, so if anyone wants to add that in a later post in this thread, please do.
 
I set up a hotkey for showing and hiding the stack with ALT+A and it works beautifully. Fast and stable as it is, it's a joy to hit the hotkey and see the stack slide in and out of the screen. It's the type of thing I could see myself doing if I get bored... keep hitting that hotkey and watch the animation over and over and over again .
 
And there you have it! A pretty complete overview of AlertBear. I should mention that it was updated today as well, from build 103 to 104. I'm not aware of the changes made as I installed it today, but BrotherS may notice some changes as he has been using it for a few days already.
 
I was on my way to install Greatnews RSS when I decided to give AlertBear a try first. AlertBear is a radically new approach to RSS. It's not your typical newsfeed client/reader. And this may be the right place to tell you about what I am not so fond of in AlertBear.
The River of News concept is a very nice idea. But one thing about this philosophy could be somewhat problematic for some people.. imagine yourself actually trying to be productive, trying to complete work at your PC. With a more traditional newsreader like FeedDemon or Greatnews, you are in control of when you will read newsfeeds. With AlertBear, on the other hand, you will be interrupted at regular intervals, and not just with harmless popups from the tray, but with extremely potent distractors! They are newsfeed entries after all, and you know how efficient RSS can be at robbing you of your much valued time, right? Of course there is a mirror image to this "complaint", which really is no complaint at all. After all, this is a question of philosophy, not an actual deficiency in AlertBear itself. I can think of at least two ways to render this "problem" sterile. You can set the feed update time to something very high.. like one hour, two hours, or even more.. that way you will barely ever be interrupted by AlertBear, and its updates and stack slide-ins may even serve as a way to relax you at regular intervals. After an hour of work, you may even want to read a feed here or there, to take your mind off of what you're doing and learn something new. The other way would be to turn automatic checks off completely, which I assume is possible by setting the check interval time to "0". If you do that, you can simply check for new feeds manually from AlertBear's context menu in the tray.
 
One thing I would love to see added to AlertBear is the support of favicons in the stack. The way things are now, all the stack bubbles look exactly the same, and it's not easy to see what feed entry came from where, nor are the titles very easy to tell apart. If AlertBear could display favicons of the particular feeds, the stack would not only look much cooler, you could also see at a glance where the latest feed updates are coming from. Also, the text formatting of the text in the stack bubbles should be fully customizable to allow the user to change the font style, size and color. Of course AlertBear is still young, and all those things may be real possibilities down the road. The "history" window is very basic and while it does its job just right and does everything just as you would expect, it probably could be furnished with another feature here and there. What those features might look like I will leave up to you to think of, but you get the point that it is all at a basic stage at this point. That's no bad thing in itself, I'm just letting you know.
 
Also, from what I can tell at this point, there is no way to save your favorite feed entries in any way. That would be a nice touch to have in addition to what AlertBear already offers.
 
AlertBear is one fine free application. Let its relative simplicity in design not fool you. This is a great way to keep up with the latest newsfeeds. Personally, I think I will stick with the more traditional approach after all, and here's why: FeedDemon got me addicted to reading feeds with the "newspaper" view. This means that a newsfeed is taken and from it is generated a stream of the latest unread entries which you can then scroll and read very quickly. It looks very pretty too, with different styles for newspaper display available. Since I heard Greatnews actually has this feature as well, I am very eager to see how Greatnews handles this and whether it is as good as FeedDemon. Also, I like the idea of having all my feeds in one more sophisticated interface more than having to deal with a tray-based application, as cool as AlertBear is/may be. I like to open an actual RSS client and see all the latest stuff at one glance, then decide what I am interested in and which channel I would like to read. AlertBear will simply let me know of the very latest feed additions, based on when they are published. Of course this means I can choose right then and there whether I'm interested and if I would like to read that feed, allowing me to effectively skip it if I don't think I will want to read an entry at all. With the more traditional approach, I will have to make these decisions while looking at ALL the latest entries at once. But that's where the newspaper feature comes in: it makes that very task blazing fast. Further, if you listen to podcasts here and there, I don't know how AlertBear would deal with that. I am sure support will be added sooner or later, but again I would like to have all my feeds organized in one window which will let me read feeds in a reading pane, rather than having me open them in a new browser window unless I expressly wish to do just that.
 
I could probably go on, but I think I've said not only far more than I first intended to, but more than any of you would care to read, so sorry about that

199

General Software Discussion / Re: Office 2007 user interface video

« on: March 30, 2006, 03:43 PM »

Holy shit... that's EXTREMELY impressive. This video just made away with all the doubts I had about whether Office 2007 will actually be a worthwhile and justified upgrade to the current latest version of Office. The stuff they've come up with here is jaw-droppingly cool. By far the MOST impressive and most USEFUL feature of all is what they call "Live Preview". That's literally going to revolutionize the way we work with office. Of course everything else is very impressive and cool as well, but that's the one feature that I found will have by far the biggest impact on the way we all use Office. If you ask me, that feature alone will be worth the upgrade, not to mention the absolutely sexy looking ribbon and everything else. STUNNING Video. Thanks for sharing!

200

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows Keyboard Layout/Language Setting Question

« on: March 30, 2006, 02:05 PM »

The last link in your post seems to hold the best solution. AllChars is simple enough, but I don't like the fact that it requires you to press some modifier button first to then be able to get at the Umlaut. Imagine how much that would slow typing speed if you're typing in German... it's not a very good solution. The AHK solution respects this problem by making the Umlauts the primary output of the original buttons, though making the actual buttons from the American keyboard still vailable by double-pressing of that button. Pretty elegant solution, I must say . I've never used AHK though.. so I suppose there's going to be some figuring out to do..