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2426

General Software Discussion / Re: What the hell is OpenCandy?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 16, 2009, 03:28 PM »

Regarding SiteAdvisor, I've seen a decent amount of false positives there as well.

-drapps (May 16, 2009, 02:45 PM)

The bigger problem with SiteAdviser is that someone can set up a site that looks totally legit and then after gaining approval from SiteAdviser introduce anything on to that site without MacAfee retesting the site on any sort of regular basis - in some cases seemingly initially legitimate sites have been found pedalling trojans and viruses while MacAfee still make them as safe for over a year.

2427

General Software Discussion / Re: What the hell is OpenCandy?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 16, 2009, 10:08 AM »

Sorry if I am being dim but there are a couple of questions I don't really get:

• When you install an application are the recommended title installers included in the download or does the installer download the extra software as required by the user? If the latter is the case then this is a better alternative than every bit of software you download including extra crap - I am personally sick of wasting time and bandwidth downloading Yahoo toolbar every time I download a shareware trial or update an application (like CCleaner). If the installer merely contain the suggestion and a pointer that to me would be a step forward.
• How easy wold this system be to spoof and cause real mayhem across the internet - if there is no control over where you choose to download applications from I think there is a serious potential for major abuse of people's systems.
• In the long post above a number of checks are listed. I have serious problems with some of those checks - MacAfee SiteAdviser is known to be broken because they don't update their system often enough. I have also found a number of legitimate sites blocked by some of the free HOSTS files you mentioned (and is one of the reasons I gave up using a downloadable HOSTS file for security - there is no way anyone can check 170000 entries manually so how do you know they are legitimately blocked).

If you must use advertising within installers (which I personally abhor - in fact I abhor the whole advertising 'culture' that has been lying to and abusing western society since the 30s) then I would much prefer that you list your recommendations simply with a link tot he developers website and preferably a link to a trusted download website where apps are test for spyware and allow user feedback. If you want to receive click through revenue from this you still can but it would be more reassuring that the end user gets to at least see who the developer is and some feedback from real people before committing to installing the application.

2428

General Software Discussion / Re: Win7, disk imaging, vmware

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 15, 2009, 05:51 PM »

Having said that, what is the major advantage from the 'VM to real' conversion against a fresh install? Pre-installed software like an office suite for example? Or just because one can do it?

-Shades (May 15, 2009, 01:46 PM)

Even if you do get it to work you won't avoid activation issues in software that requires activation as the hardware machine ID will have changed significantly.

I have tried this in the past with Acronis Universal Restore and haven't had much luck - even though the product is sold specifically for this kind of thing.

Probably quicker (and with a better, more consistent outcome) to install from scratch on the hardware and then image a clean copy. At least you know what you have then and you don't inherit PITA issues in a months time that aren't instantly apparent.

2429

Living Room / Re: how the hell do i access a xampp virtual host from inside vmware RESOLVED.

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 15, 2009, 04:20 PM »

I haven't tried it but if your VMWare machine is using NAT networking the simplest solution is to go to the webpage http:\\hostmachinename\testingsite

This works across my network fine and in theory at least NAT based VM machines should just appear as separate machines on the main network.

2430

General Software Discussion / Re: My great doomed CMS search continues...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 12, 2009, 06:27 AM »

I haven't had any problems with JCE installing? Maybe something is corrupt or as you say maybe there is a mistmatch. I have attached the 1.52 version plugin to this post - see if that helps.

You don't have to create menus for every article - you can include category pages or section pages in list or blog formats. I haven't tried applying different templates to different pages much so I am not sure how that works but are you actually sure that is what you want? I thought you wanted to use a standard layout for articles within the current template - have I got that wrong (sort of an article template that displays within the normal page)? I am not sure that exists as a standard feature but you could do it by creating your own 'artlicle template' in HTML and paste that into each article before you fill in the content.

If you actually want different templates for different parts of your site these are linked to menu entries but they don't have to be single articles - I have just tried this out on my own server and I can change template for a category blog layout and it works fine with a number of articles list underneath.

I know what you mean about moving a static site to Joomla (it also applies to moving WordPress sites to Joomla!) - there is a lot of work but using internal links does work (and they are automatically updated if you change an article). Granted doing each link via a dialogue is a bit slow and irritating (especially as it doesn't remember where you were last time so you have to navigate the tree from scratch each time). I suppose the simplest solution would be to use something like clipboard help and spell (one of Mousers applications) or AceText (from JGSoft) to keep a list of content link prefixes which you just add the article alias too manually - which would do what you want - though not as neatly.

Have you looked to see if there is a link plugin that will do what you want? If not do you fancy writing one - I am sure it would be really appreciated!)

Picking a link from a dialog box is fun the first three times, but not when you're migrating content from a static site and will be creating / updating hundreds of links between articles.

Just a thought have you considered using Search and Replace on the original static HTML pages to replace all the links with the new ones. Create a set of sdummy pages, update all the links en masse in the original HTML files and then import them to the new empty pages?

2431

General Software Discussion / Re: My great doomed CMS search continues...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 11, 2009, 07:54 PM »

You said in another thread you were about to give up on Joomla - can I ask why? I have started to use it and as far as I can tell from your list it supports most of the things you wanted above - and anything that isn't there as standard is almost certainly available via an extension.

-Carol Haynes (May 11, 2009, 07:05 PM)

Hi Carol, thanks for being so patient with me

In that other thread I listed some of the deal-breakers. The wysiwyg editor is horrid if you ever hope to maintain consistent layout of pages, and when you switch to html mode, it's unusable (try it), so much so the only viable option is cutting and pasting between the browser and a desktop html editor. Strike one.

Then the issue of linking. I didn't realize before it was going to be such a big deal, but use internal linking a lot in whatever I write. having to use links like this http://eee.example.c...;id=26&Itemid=40 is another dealbreaker; even clean URls aren't too good because you still have to look them up every time and they can go stale easily. Strike two.

Strike three is that the sections and categories just seem to be empty vessels. They have no structural meaning and no functionality. And there seems to be no way to predefine page layouts for specific sections and categories. Basically, every time you go to create an article, it's a blank page. I need to be able to associate - automatically or even manually - layouts to sections (or individual articles, at least) to keep the page layout consistent. (It's completely impossible to achieve with a wysiwyg editor).

I haven't given up completely on Joomla, because I've invested much time in it already, and because I really love the templates I mentioned. I can't believe that last third point is a no-go. But the first two definitely are. Installing Joomla is a breeze, configuring it likewise, but adding articles, structuring them, formatting and linking between them is a surprisingly fragile process. Then I saw that all editor add-ons for Joomla are wysiwyg (except one that hasn't been updated for 1.5), and that was where my knees went weak

-tranglos (May 11, 2009, 07:28 PM)

I think you are missing some things in Joomla:

1) Install JCE Editor for your editor - it is much better than TinyMCE and you can use HTML (and advanced HTML). You can even embed objects and include PHP etc if you want to. You can download it from the extensions website.
2) Rename htaccess.txt to .htacess and then go to Global Configuration and all the SEO settings to YES and hey presto you get meaningful URLs complete with .html extensions!
3) You don't need to enter any internal links. In JCE Editor select your text and then click the link with the green star - you can then navigate via a section/category tree to the content you want to create the link (which is then automatically updated if you edit pages and change their IDs).
4) There are a number of ways to use Category and Section views on the website - when you create a menu entry choose artcile and experiment with options other than Article Layout.

Re. standard layouts for articles - you can really do what you like - you can even use overlays in JCE to build layers of content, you can insert and style div tags, use tables - you can even import content from Word documents.

Why not just decide on your the layouts you want and then copy the HTML to a text editor and simply paste it in to each new document. To be honest I have looked at a lot of CMS systems and haven't seen any that provide a way of applying standard layouts to each article other than by coding the layout yourself as I have suggested here.

The only thing I would warn about is that if you allow 'front-end' submission and editing of articles Joomla seems to prohibit some HTML and code based content (presumably to avoid potential security issues). This is not the case if you submit new articles and content from the backend.

Also I mentioned Artisteer before to you - it really is a fantastically easy application to generate templates for Joomla/Drupal/Wordpress etc. without having to do anything really by way of design - just choose a few fonts and change a few pictures and dimensions until you like what you see.

If you want a hand just send me a PM and maybe we could arrange to be online at the same time and use a messenger client to chat (I am no expert but I will try) .

2432

General Software Discussion / Re: My great doomed CMS search continues...

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 11, 2009, 07:05 PM »

You said in another thread you were about to give up on Joomla - can I ask why? I have started to use it and as far as I can tell from your list it supports most of the things you wanted above - and anything that isn't there as standard is almost certainly available via an extension.

2433

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you recommend friends to use XP or Vista?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 11, 2009, 04:15 AM »

Sorry MrCrispy but no one should be using Win7 yet on anything but a testbed machine - it is time limited and you won't be able to upgrade to the final version when it is released (or downgrade to anything else). Only time will tell if it lives up to the current impressions in the final release and we have yet to see if they have really improved software compatibility (given that for most people XP mode won't work) and better hardware compatibility than Vista.

Vista works fine but to say it is more functional and supports more devices than XP is just plain wrong and is one of major the reasons it is a duff Windows release that has largely been rejected. It supports far few devices than XP because manufacturers have, by and large, continued to produce products with XP drivers to support the existing majority user base whereas many devices designed for XP simply don't have Vista drivers - the manufacturers expect you to buy new devices!

As for more functional - name 10 ways! I have yet to find a significant reason for upgrading from XP to Vista - but as I said above so long as you have enough memory there is also no reason now to downgrade to XP unless you have unsupported devices or software. I do think 2Gb should be the minimum to run Vista - even on a clean system Vista to struggles to run smoothly with 1Gb without even installing any software beyond Windows itself. 2Gb makes the whole machine feel more responsive and there is significantly less disk chatter. The true test of whether a system works properly is when you install it with default settings - tweaking is fine for people who are happy to do that but it shouldn't be the required norm for a newly installed system.

The main tweaks I perform on any new system are:

• use a fixed size pagefile (not windows managed) and use PerfectDisk to defrag it and place it so it remains defragged. This is an enormous boost.
• if there is a second hard disk move the pagefile to the first partition on that drive (and make it a small partition exclusively for pagefile usage)
• on multiboot systems set all systems up to share the same fixed pagefile
• remove (or disable) pointless software such as Windows Defender
• move all user storgae folders to a new partition

Vista is supposed to be more secure but the only security that I have seen added are UAC which is universally hated and ignored by most people (trouble is you either turn it off or become click happy and it has no finesse whatsoever), Windows Defender which doesn't seem to defend anything but is an uncontrollable monster that makes life very difficult at times (So much so you are better off removing it altogether) and an in/out firewall which is an improvement on XP SP2 firewall but no one I know has the faintest idea of how to use it beyond the way XP SP2 works and there is precious little documentation - consequently people are not getting the benefit.

Having now spent time with it I don't mind the new Windows Explorer - in fact it has many benefits over XP's. I also like the way common user folders have been broken up to make data storage both more easily organised and separable from the OS partition - not that many systems come installed that way or any helpful clues are provided within Vista for the average user.

2434

Living Room / Re: My daughter kind of stuck in France

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 10, 2009, 11:31 AM »

Anywhere outside big cities I would say Youth Hostels - though how long she can stay I am not sure. City prices are quite high these days.

How about YMCA/YWCA they often have cheap accommodation.

2435

General Software Discussion / Re: Would you recommend friends to use XP or Vista?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 09, 2009, 05:58 PM »

Having been using both for a while now I'd say use what is on your machine.

For me there is no compelling reason to move from XP to Vista at all - you may as well wait until 7 is released and make the move after the initial flurry of patches settles down (3 months after release).

If you have Vista on your machine I can't really see any compelling reason to ditch for XP any longer so long as you have a minimum of 2Gb of RAM - less that that and I would suggest upgrading RAM. Vista is faster to startup in my experience (by a big margin for me but that might just reflect the installed lifetime of the two OSes). Initially I hated Vista but now that it seems to have been fixed it runs nicely for me and I don't have any particular issues with it.

Either way it looks like Windows 7 is the next move though there isn't a big incentive to move up from XP or Vista in any particular time frame. The RC of Win 7 seems pretty solid and functions well and some of the annoyances of Vista seem to have been ironed out.

The only plus about running Vista is that you will be able to do an upgrade to Win 7 (you can't directly from XP). Having said that I never recommend upgrade installs because you just carry any current issues to the new installation so it isn't a big deal.

2436

General Software Discussion / Re: Dell site won't help me: Please direct me to source of 64-bit drivers for XP?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2009, 03:18 PM »

I hated Vista when it came out (and it was a resource hog). My laptop only had 1Gb of RAM and it was a nightmare with constant disk trashing.

Having said that since SP 1 was released it works fine on my system. You do need 2Gb of RAM and you need to tweak a bit to turn off pointless stuff that irritates but once it was set up properly it works just as well as XP for me.

I still have a desktop running XP and my laptop with Vista32 HP and I now find myself using the laptop more as it boots up quicker and seems to run pretty smoothly (with pretty much the same software set installed and similar performance hardware).

If you haven't used Vista give it a try for a month before you give up on it.

If you are going to use Windows at all you may as well get used to Vista as XP is pretty much on its last legs and when Windows 7 comes out you will only be able to upgrade from Vista (XP upgrades are not supported). Windows 7 is looking very promising and face it ultimately they wil stop security support for XP and at that point you will have to take the plunge.

WRT Windows XP 64-bit you are probably on a hiding to nothing if you have a motherboard that doesn't have drivers. You might stand a better chance with 32-bit XP as there always was a better range of drivers. If you want to you can dual boot the two operating systems on two partitions - then you can have the best of both worlds. It isn't as easy to install XP as a second OS to Vista because XP doesn't detect Vista being installed so doesn't configure the boot system properly. A quick search on the internet can tell you how to do it though.

2437

General Software Discussion / Re: Dell site won't help me: Please direct me to source of 64-bit drivers for XP?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 08, 2009, 03:36 AM »

Have you actually installed Windows64 yet? If not try it on a small empty partition and see how many drivers you are missing.

As already suggested try to identify what is present - you can take the side of the machine and look at the motherboad for the make and model number (often printed between PCI slots) or use SIW to identify the motherboard then download the latest 64 bit drivers for that motherboard from the mobo manufacturers website (if they in fact have any).

My guess is that most of the problems will be sorted at that point - if not you need to identify the missing devices and go to the item manufacturer's website to see if there are any drivers for the device in 64 bit mode.

One of the big issues with XP 64 was that not all devices are supported by 64 bit drivers. It may be that Dell can't supply 64 bit drivers because they don't even exist. Don't forget that Dell are basically box shifters. All of their computers are made with parts by 3rd party manufacturers and Dell just assembles the final package (often performing unnecessary mods to make life complicated for end users) and install an OEM copy of Windows.

If they only supply 32 bit Windows Vista it isn't totally reasonable to expect them to supply drivers older versions of Windows - those drives may not even exist. As Dell does not write drivers they have to rely on manufacturers to supply suitable drivers and manufacturers don't tend to write legacy drivers for defunct OSes (which XP officially is now).

Is there a specific reason you need XP 64? Vista was a bit of a dog when it was released but it seems OK now so long as you apply the updates.

2438

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: New program: ActiveHotkeys (freeware)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 07, 2009, 04:37 PM »

Thanks - nice little tool.

Request: Is there any way to identify the application that registered the keys in use?

Bug: If the "About" tab is open when you click "Test Active Hotkeys" you get an error. You need to force it to open the Active Hotkeys tab before attempting to test.

2439

General Software Discussion / Re: Is Windows 7 RC spyware?

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 07, 2009, 04:27 PM »

Even if your software isn't reporting on you your ISP probably is and even ananoymizer services are now disclosing information to government agencies.

Democracy - you have to love it!

2440

General Software Discussion / Re: Help for solving a XP home lan mystery

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 07, 2009, 08:24 AM »

I am using it and haven't noticed a lot of disk activity - in fact it seems remarkably quiet and has almost no impact on day to day computer use.

2441

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 07:26 PM »

It was always unlikely people with older computers would upgrade the OS any way, most people get a full new PC. Now with that they won't have to worry about existing apps not working.

-Eóin (May 06, 2009, 04:35 PM)

Not true - precisely the corporate and medium sized business market that MS are targeting with Win 7 XP mode are the people who have volume license agreements with MS so that they get the latest versions of software as a matter of course.

There were two reasons Vista failed in this market:

• extra hardware demands
• lack of backward compatibility for key apps

Many PCs (and even more laptops) are still supplied without CPU level virtualisation support and so many business who have purchased computers in the last year or two won't necessarily benefit from XP Mode. Older computers just forget it.

A lot of businesses run their computers into the ground - and almost no company is going to have an annual replacement of technology (unless you are actively involved in the development of technology - but those companies won't worry about XP Mode anyway).

The biggest potential problem for MS are the non-adoption of Windows 7 by business users and is precisely why they put XP mode in the code - it is not there for home users and is why it is restricted to the higher cost versions only which are aimed at the pro market. However, there is a bigger problem in my opinion - over-hyping XP Mode in Windows 7 and the fact you don't need to upgrade hardware beyond the Vista required level only to the majority of their target audience frustrated and disappointed.

If MS miss the boat with buisness and Windows 7 they will have a real problem. Businesses will simply stick with Windows XP and with two strikes they can't afford a third - and I suspect many businesses would even start contemlating moving to open source solutions because MS give the impression of being all marketing and no real delivery.

Another potential loss is market share in terms of volume licensing - why pay for a license for software assurance only to find you can't use it?

2442

General Software Discussion / Re: Help for solving a XP home lan mystery

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 04:22 PM »

Try www.avast.com - the do a free home version and it is excellent and low impact on your system.

2443

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 01:13 PM »

OK if you have those settings and it works on your machine I suppose that is OK for you. The main issue I see is that business still running Windows XP software and as a result are locked into using XP are unlikely to want to buy new computers so that they can run XP software in an XP Mode virtual PC - what do they gain apart from a large bill for new computers?

Hyper-V comes from the error message generated by XP mode when it refuses to run.

2444

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 12:13 PM »

Go to the Virtual PC web page and it says Hyper-V is a rquirement.

http://www.microsoft...ual-pc/download.aspx

Windows Virtual PC requires a CPU with the Intel™ Virtualization Technology or AMD-V® feature turned on. This feature must be enabled in the system BIOS.

When you run XP Mode on my systems (all less than 3 years old - one less than a year old) it says Hyper-V support is not available. No BIOS options.

2445

General Software Discussion / Re: WINDOWS 7 THREAD (ongoing)

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 11:13 AM »

XP mode is dead as a dodo!

It requires Hyper-V enabled CPUs to run!

If businesses are reluctant to upgrade from XP how many of them are going to have Hyper-V enabled systems throughout the organisation???

None of my systems have Hyper-V enabled CPUs (a mixture of AMD Athlon64 single and dual chips, and Intel dual core) so I can't even test it.

The stupid thing is that VirtualPC worked fine (albeit as a crappy VM option) on all of my systems - now they are updating it to make it pointless for most people. What is even worse is that it isntalled without a squeak - it is only when you actually want to use the f****g thing that it tells you to b******r off.

What's the betting it is to do with security!!

So the answer is don't get excited about XP mode in Windows 7 it is likely to be a damp squib at best but more likely to be the ulitmate option to REALLY piss off business customers who thought MS might finally have take the hint over application compatibility.

2446

LaunchBar Commander / Re: Bug: Portable LBC issues when switching machines

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 10:58 AM »

Can't you set the drive letter to be the same on all computers? Just use Disk Management to change the drive letter.

PITA I know - but that is Windows!

2447

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Locate 3.0 - great *FAST* HD search tool!

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 06, 2009, 04:35 AM »

I have moved from Locate32 to Everything and find the latter much quicker to use everyday. It indexes incredibly quickly (without permanently storing large index files), it now detects removable drives on the fly (both insertion and removal) and it finds files as you type the name so you rarely have to type anything complete. I also love the simplicity of refining a search by adding deparate extra bits (an extension, a drive letter etc).

Give it a try (it is a tiny download) - it will be on your desktop and working within a minute (including downloading it)!

2448

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 7 Release candidate available for download

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 05, 2009, 07:54 AM »

Download speeds aren't too bad either at the moment (about 55 minutes for the 32 bit version for me).

2449

General Software Discussion / Re: Help for solving a XP home lan mystery

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 03, 2009, 05:15 AM »

Me too - it seems to me that the first computer active on a Workgroup seems to accept the role - but there doesn't seem to be any way to have any control over Master Browsers.

2450

General Software Discussion / Re: Help for solving a XP home lan mystery

« Last post by Carol Haynes on May 02, 2009, 12:54 PM »

Have you tried http://kb.monitorwar...nt-id-8032-t529.html