Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Customising your computer

10:04 / 13.01.04

I know nothing about computers. This much is a matter of record. But by accident or the intervention of the sympathetic I've discovered that there are a various easy tweeks and freebies that I can't believe I didn't know about from the off. For example, by selecting ClearType in 'Display Properties' - 'Appearance', on-screen text becomes so much easier on the eye. And a Mac-wielding friend of mine has an accessory which will read his emails in a number of amusing voices.
I can only imagine that there are other gems hidden from the ignorant. So, full-blown applications aside, what accessories do you love, extras would you add, settings would you adjust etc, to get the most from a virgin googlebox?

10:25 / 13.01.04

For PCs: my two favourite "secret" shortcuts.

If you hold the windows button (betwixt Ctrl & Alt on the bottom left of keyboard) and the letter d - all windows minimise so you can get back to your desktop.

When typing accents (usually using the Alt key and numbers from the right hand keypad) the e acute can be done byholding Ctrl & Alt and then tapping é.

Hey presto!

11:15 / 13.01.04

ALT+F4 can be very handy for quickly closing pop-up windows and all else...

My favourite recent discovery was that if you hold down ALT you can type accents, e.g. ALT+0241 = ñ.. the letters basically run from 0191 to 0255 in alphabetical order... you can write some fun symbols with the other numbers as well...

12:28 / 13.01.04

Lots of nice windows key trickery:

Windows+E runs explorer.
Windows+M also minimises all (Windows +D = Show Desktop)
Windows+F runs "Find File"
Windows+R opens the "Run Program" dialogue.

Ctrl+Backspace delets the previous word, not letter.
Shift+Cursor keys select; Ctrl+Shift+Cursor selects by word.

Tab skips you through fields one can enter (eg on a web page, in a dialgoue); shift-tab skips you backwards through them.

Without keyboard shortcuts, life is meaningless.

.

12:55 / 13.01.04

For tweaking a whole load of the Windows user interface stuff that you can't get to ordinarily, I highly recommend Tweak UI. It's especially good for turning off all those annoying "helpful" windows features, like those help baloons that appear if your pointer lingers for too long over menu options.

13:05 / 13.01.04

Keyboard shortcuts, lovely things. Even in this age of peripheral overload, I still find a keyboard th most convenient way to do most everything except graphic work, and it really irks me when applications discard windows widgets, replacing them with their own pretty(or often butt-ugly) bitmapped interfaces which half th time don't support keyboard navigation. Flash used to be pretty bad at this, not supporting [TAB]ing backwards and whatnot, but recent versions have shown improvement. Sorry, went completely off-topic there. If you are looking for customization, free/libre/open-source software is th way to go, like Mozilla Firebird and Thunderbird, http://www.mozilla.org 's answers to Internet Exploder and Outlook Exstress, but Mozilla & co are built on their own XUL platform, which is totally open, meaning there are loads of extensions written by volunteers outside of th project. Basically, if there is a feature you wish firebird or thunderbird had, someone has probably already written an extension to do it, from sensible things like image zooming or drag-n-drop re-arrangement of tabs(tabbed browsing, one of my favourite things about firebird), to things like tetris, and solitaire. Shows th power of th platform I guess though.
Well, that's my FLOSS rant for th day. Toodle-da

13:08 / 13.01.04

I know all the keyboard shortcuts.

13:29 / 13.01.04

I was waiting for that link, Bizunth.
Still, keyboard shortcuts are handy, and another thing I'm only just on nodding terms with. Until recently I was oblivious to Ctrl+A and Ctrl+F, and they're written on my fucking keyboard. I am the Barbetard.

Tweak UI was another recent discovery for me, .. This is exactly the sort of thing I mean.

I've tried Mozilla, but I have to confess that I didn't get on with it very well. Although this was largely because it did inexplicable things to web-page formats that no one else seemed to suffer from. But tell me, Boffy, what's so good about tabbed browser windows? Apart from being able to bookmark groups of sites, what's the advantage over having a collection of windows minimised at the bottom of the screen? I'm almost certainly missing something.

13:44 / 13.01.04

Mozilla is very nice...

Keyboards are great, my typing speed seems to increase every year - I am the fastest typer in the south (as long as nobody is watching, what's up with that?)

I'm still waiting for a music program that translates your keyboard into notes, so I can play muisc with ease....

For the fully customized PC you have to go for an Aston Shell, so nice and shiny think I might have to buy the full version when I get my new PC...

Also it's weird the ammount of people who never run defrag on their PC or even a simple disk cleanup...

What's up with Alt Gr though, anyone ever use it?

13:52 / 13.01.04

I used Alt-Gr when I was in Germany.. you have to press Q and Alt-Gr at the same time to get an @ symbol there. Or something like that.

13:54 / 13.01.04

Just to say that I personally use shortcuts all the bloody time. In fact if I type Alt-B on my keyboard it automatically pastes a TV/Film reference or extremely lame joke into the thread of my choice.
Alt-Gr is the shortcut to Grandma's house.

22:46 / 25.06.06

Get Firefox - it's a good web browser that has hundreds of freely available extensions (like Adblock Plus). The Scheduled tasks program (found in the 'Control Panel') allows you to have programs loaded as soon as you log in, too.

17:32 / 26.06.06

I'm still waiting for a music program that translates your keyboard into notes, so I can play muisc with ease....

I've seen that, I think. I'll put up a link if I can remember where...

Ah- there are a bunch at hitsquad.com. Knock yerself out!

Happy Dave Has Left

08:57 / 27.06.06

You guys seriously need to check out Launchy if you like keyboard shortcuts. I haven't touched my ridiculously bloated Start menu in a week. Top tip, download from the Netherlands mirror, the one in the UK appears to have a knackered copy that crashes all the time.

11:44 / 27.06.06

For OS X, I've just discovered the loveliness that is Quicksilver - a funky do-everything launcher that manages to make Spotlight, the Dock and Finder near-obsolete. Plus it does other stuff. Download it, read a few of the tutorials and go 'ooh. wow!'

Another nice thing is Salling Clicker which lets you use any bluetooth device (phone, plamtop etc) to control your bluetooth enabled mac. Very handy for flicking thru iTunes, playing videos from the sofa and doing erm.. business presentations or whatever it is that people who use their computers professionally do...

It also appears to be available for Windows, so all you XP-types should check it out too. It's really rather good.