Ramblings of a Coder's Mind

Your first thought on reading this probably is “Why in the world would I need to do that?” Well, I would have thought of it the same way a week back. But it seems some times, Windows does not want to give access to certain features such as Advanced File Sharing options. It states that the administrator on my machine has disallowed this operation. Guess what? I’m the only administrator on this machine! Since I was unable to find the option to get that feature working, I decided to resort to some good old Command Line usage :)

To remove a file/folder from share and type the following command in an elevated instance of command prompt:

net share <shareName> /delete

To add a file/folder to share and type the following command in an elevated instance of command prompt:

net share <shareName>=<pathToSharedFile>

An example of an add and delete command would be as follows

net share “Completed Downloads”=”D:\Completed Downloads”
net share “Completed Downloads” /delete

At times, I was not required to use an elevated command prompt instance but if you get message stating “Access Denied”, you should run the command after elevation. To do so, type out “Command Prompt” in your start menu and then use the right click > Run as administrator option or you could simply use Shift+Enter to do the same :)

Simple enough, right? ;)

Ever since I started using Win7 (first public beta) I have liked one thing about Internet Explorer that Firefox couldn’t do. This was the ability to use Win7′s Aero prowess completely rendering each tab in the Aero preview for Firefox. At the time, Microsoft hadn’t come out with the Win7 UX Interaction Guide but it’s been out for a few months and I was quite disappointed that Mozilla didn’t jump at the opportunity to release an upgrade.

A couple of weeks back, I saw screen shots of my friends’ browsers and noticed they were using Minefield. They confirmed that 3.7a1pre does indeed have full Aero support so I finally upgraded. I must say, it’s a great update.

As you can see from the screen shot, it doesn’t really like some pages in the Aero preview. I am pretty sure it’s an AJAX thing.

Of course, if you consider updating, quite a few of your plug-ins will not work simply because of the version compatibility checks. A simple way to by pass this is to install the Nightly Tester Tools to skip Firefox’s version compatibility checks. Most add-ons should work fine.

There are a few add-ons I’d like to recommend with this alpha. Try checking out Strata40, StrataBuddy and StrataGlass. StrataGlass is amazing (works on any machine running on Vista/7) but it did give me problems on some pages so I disabled it. However, it is a great idea and it looked really nice. If someone irons out the wrinkles, I’d love to wear it everyday with my Firefox :)

Another small change I’d definitely recommend to users is going to about:config, past the warning, searching for the browser.ctrlTab.previews setting and setting the value to true (simply double click on it to toggle). After this, try Ctrl+Tab to get tab previews. If you think this is cool, try Ctrl+Shift+Tab to get previews with the ability to search between them. Doesn’t that make life easier when you have loads of tabs? ;)

I’d like to thank my friend Nitro for showing me the Strata add-ons and telling me about the Ctrl+Tab setting ;) Ctrl+Shift+Tab was purely luck ;)

PS: Manan asked me over twitter about the memory usage of Minefield 3.7a1pre and I must say, it’s quite low. In fact, with 8 tabs (none of which are heavy on AJAX other than the WordPress panel), I’m using 125MB RAM. Though I’ve not confirmed it, I’d say that’s slightly lesser or the same as regular Firefox and Minefield even seems a tad bit faster and more responsive even with all my regular add-ons ;) Impressive :)

Windows 7 Launch Party is a party organized by individuals in their homes, offices or other commercial venues celebrating the launch of Windows 7 and showing off its prowess. Its being done through the House Party website and the only reason its not called that is because Microsoft didn’t want to restrict the venue to homes. Great PR is what I say.

Why am I giving you stale news? Well, this isn’t really news but I applied around the first week of September got selected first as a candidate host then got a confirmed host status. Last night I got an e-mail stating my party package is on its way.

All hosts will receive:

• One limited Signature Edition Windows^® 7 Ultimate
• One Puzzle with Windows^® 7 Desktop Design
• One Poster with Windows^® 7 Desktop Design
• Ten Tote Bags with Windows^® 7 Desktop Design for hosts and guests
• One table top centerpiece for decoration
• One package of Windows^® 7 napkins

The package should arrive by this Tuesday or Wednesday. The party is planned for the 23rd of October at 7.00 PM and is an invite only party. So drop in a line and I’ll try to get people in :) After all, my room can only fit that many people in.. :P

I noticed that Dell had finally released updates for some of their drivers on their support site for a Dell Studio XPS 1640 on Windows 7 x64. I immediately started downloading them and after a reboot noticed that the update for IDT sound driver causes a freeze in any application trying to do anything related to sound. No updates on their track pad drivers it is so we continue to use Windows Vista drivers.

Speaking of IDT drivers causing serious woes, I would suggest to every Dell Studio XPS 1640 user planning to upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 manually (ie. not using a ghost image provided by Dell) that you kindly DO NOT DO SO. Drivers such as the ones for IDT consume 40-50 CPU constantly for doing nothing of essence in the background. A simple “remove driver” wouldn’t work either. If Dell plans on shipping drivers like the current one, I would not even go to Dell for an upgrade to Windows 7.

Dell better come up with a fix quickly. I think I’ll call up Dell’s premium tech support just to tell them about this issue and hope its fixed quickly. On a side note, for some reason, side scroll on the track pad doesn’t work on Windows 7 in the current version of Firefox :( It works fine for every other software. Weird.

Update: Just talked to tech support. Seems I’m the only one who has issues. Weirdly enough, a reinstall of the driver seems to have fixed the issue. ¬¬ Some odd quirk I guess.

Sensible Vision came out with this pretty amazing software called FastAccess that does a decent job at facial recognition. But using it on Windows 7 has given me a few issues so I thought I should just talk about it.

I’ve been using Windows 7 ever since the first beta was made public. I have been using Sensible Vision’s FastAccess on every build I’ve used so far. Currently, my laptop is on Windows 7 build 7137.

I have 3 major issues with FastAccess.

1. On every boot, it refuses to log me in. But if I logout/lock workstation and return a few times, it starts recognizing me. It seems as though it is not able to store its data and every reboot needs it to be recalibrated (even though there are different texts for the first software boot as opposed to every other time it starts up, it just seems that way).
2. This is not really a Windows 7 specific bug but why can’t Sensible Vision start its software after the camera boots up? Not doing so seems pointless to me.
3. Fine, you can’t bring the camera drivers up the boot order. I think I’ll just type in my password if you don’t mind. But FastAccess does mind. It actually logs me out 5 seconds after I logged in. I find this extremely irritating.

I have tried googling up for Windows 7 support and there seems to be none. In fact, when searching for “Sensible Vision FastAccess Windows 7″ on Google the second result you see is of this blog :|

First, I’d like to hear feedback from any FastAccess users out there who are on Windows 7.
Second, I’d like Sensible Vision to let its users know about its Windows 7 plans and whether it is planning to use something like the Windows Biometric Foundation (WBF) (Assuming they are applicable).

Note: As far as I’ve read so far, WBF seems to be for Fingerprint sensors though I’m hoping they might provide support for other kinds of biometric data such as facial recognition. Still looking into things though.

The Windows key might have started as something a tad bit redundant (considering Ctrl+Esc does the same thing) but the Windows Key is so much more.

I have already spoken about the Win+(1-9) to activate programs in Vista’s Quick Launch Toolbar and its transition to taskbar applications in Windows 7. Of course, everyone knows about Win+Tab activating Aero Flip 3D but there is more to this.

Here is one that really strikes me as super-useful. On Windows 7, you can now use Win+Up to maximize a window, Win+Down to restore a maximized window and minimize a restored one, Win+Left/Right to Aero Snap it to the left/right of the screen. Keyboard warriors such as myself are going to love this! :)

I’ve already fallen head over heals for Aero Snap on my 1080p laptop monitor. It kind of makes up for my need for dual monitors. Aero snapping with the laptop track pad was a tad bit inconvenient. Issue no more! :)

Here’s a list of Win shortcuts I can think of which work in Windows 7. I have found that a lot of keyboard warriors don’t know quite a few shortcuts. Sharing always helps ;)

• Win: Open/Close Start Menu
• Win+F: Windows Search
• Win+Tab: Aero Flip
• Win+Up: Maximize a restored window
• Win+Down: Restore a maximized window or minimize a restored window
• Win+Left: Aero Snap to the left of the screen
• Win+Right: Aero Snap to the right of the screen
• Win+D: Show desktop (Forced)
• Win+M: Minimize all windows
• Win+M+Shift: Restore windows after Minimizing all of them
• Win+(1-9): Activate Window from task bar
• Win+X: Open Windows Mobility Center (Non Desktops only)
• Win+L: Lock Desktop
• Win+Space: Show sidebar (in Vista); Possibly doing the same in Windows 7 (different Sidebar functionality in 7)
• Win+E: Open My Computer
• Win+B: Jump control to (select) Notification Area (System Tray)
• Win+Pause/Break: Open System Properties
• Win+P: Computer Projection modes
• Win+F1: Open Windows Help and Support
• Win+R: Open Run Dialog
• Win+Shift+Left/Right: Move to the monitor to the left/right of the screen (circular; for multi-monitor systems)

I’ve had a bit of reprieve from work here and I finally got some time to install Windows 7 on my laptop. Though my desktop has had the latest builds available to me, they have all been on a test drive. My laptop however had to wait until I was done with my academic work before it could move permanently to Windows 7 and afford any issues that might come its way.

So here are a few things I’ve found interesting in Windows 7 that should make your Windows 7 User eXperience a lot more enjoyable.

1. Basic Application Overhaul: This one is something that us users have known would be part of Windows 7 for months prior to the first Public beta. Windows ships with a lot of basic applications that make life so much more awesome. These applications have been more or less the same for ever now. Well, its 2009 and its time for a facelift and some bottox ;) The most notable ones are Paint, Wordpad and Calculator
2. Virtual WiFi: Bhavik Vora told me back in 2007 about Microsoft working on a certain technology to connect to multiple WiFi networks virtually by using continuous switching. I was excited back then to see this in action but the lack of an actual WiFi device other than my Windows Mobile made practical applications limited. You’ll be happy to hear that Windows 7 is shipping with this technology (limited a tad bit though) allowing you to do more with your Windows. Read the original post by Long Zheng on Windows 7 adding native Virtual WiFi technology from Microsoft Research. If you’re asking yourself why do you need Virtual WiFi, refer to my reply to AI’s comment which says..
   

   @AI: Why wouldn’t you? :P Ad hoc networks are totally awesome. With the ability to (virtually) connect to multiple networks, you can create mesh and relay wireless networks. Say user A is in range of an access point X but user B isn’t. But user B is in range with user A. User A could relay the connection from X to B providing B with an active connection to the network.
   Also, you can play multiplayer games without need for any ethernet cables on your laptops or any other infrastructure for that matter. No need for a router or any other hardware to create a local area network ;)

   If you can have all this, why wouldn’t you want virtual WiFi? ;)

3. UI Standardization: Windows 7 products UI consistent with first looks at Office 2010 previews. A couple of days ago Long posted some blurry screencaps of Office 2010 which are consistent with the UI seen in Windows 7. Do you notice the similarity in the new Ribbon on the two products? Not that Vista and Office 2007 weren’t in sync, its just that a lot of the applications packaged with Windows Vista weren’t all in the same UI style. Some still seemed to style legacy looks. Windows 7 does seem a lot more complete though there are still some exceptions.
   
4. Open in new process: Here is something new. Pressing shift+right clicking on a folder/app allows you to launch it in a separate process. If you do this to open a folder, you will see a second explorer.exe in your task list. This could open up whole new avenues for polygamy ;)
   
5. PowerShell is in!: And its about freaking time! I first came in contact with PowerShell a day after its v2 release (a coincidence). I needed to use it to do a couple of things and it did it really well. I loved the power it possessed but I never really needed it again. I was always wondering why they took so long to make it main stream. I’ve known about it for years now, blame Matt for it :P
6. XP Mode: Do you have applications that don’t work on Vista? Usually using Vista’s compatibility wizard helps. Still, there are some which don’t work. Windows 7 has a much more elegant solution (at least in my opinion). Install XP in Virtual PC and start up XP mode ;) For more information, read the Life Hacker page on Setting Up and Using XP Mode in Windows 7
7. In-built and custom create-able Troubleshooting wizards: Windows 7 became the first operating system that I know of, at least in the Windows line up that has in built support to fix issues. Jus click start and search for “Fix” and the first result you get should be “Fix problems with your computer”. If you have issues listed there, the tool will provide you with a chance to fix it ;) How does it work? Simple! Its a collection of uber-powerful Powershell scripts. Can you make your own? Sure you can! Just head on over to WithinWindows.com and Rafael will explain the rest ;)
8. Popular keyboard shortcuts all retained: I don’t know about you but I certainly loved Windows Vista. I wasn’t a fan of its UAC, but I liked the OS. One of the things that made me love the OS so much were the nifty keyboard shortcuts which keyboard lovers like me can’t live without ;) Two of my favourite ones were the Win+<num> to access quick launch icons and Shift+right click to open command prompt in specified folder. Considering that the new Windows 7 Superbar has no such thing as a quick launch, the Win+<num> shortcuts now refer to the icons on the superbar ;) The shift+right click to open command prompt in specified folder sure does save a lot of time for users like me who are command prompt addicts. ;)
9. Remembering System Tray Icon Status: This is one that almost everyone would know out there but its important enough for me to put up because it was really irritating for me in Windows’ past Operating Systems. Now, if you ask Windows to hide an icon in the System Tray and then the application crashes, you no longer need to reset the status (Hide always, Hide when not being used or Show always) when restarting the application. Sure, you still need to wave your mouse over the icon to make it disappear and until then, two copies are shown but that’s still better than having to reset the status.

Also there are a few things that need to be fixed.

1. Maximum usage = 101%? :D Just have a look at this screenshot and it should be clear what I mean :-D This one is included for the lulz :)
   

   Have a look at the Maximum Frequency and you'll see what I mean

2. New User Account Control: Well, I’ve already made it clear that I find UAC on Vista extremely irritating bugging simply because I needed to (at least in Vista RTM) acknowledge an action multiple times. Microsoft did make a few changes to UAC since then to make it single prompt but it still remains off on my desktop. On my laptop, considering I don’t often do work that would set off UAC (unlike work on the desktop), I let UAC stay. When it comes to Windows 7, Microsoft has made a few changes to the implementation to make them “less irritating” by allowing auto-elevation of processes. A few concerns were raised by certain tech users made popular by Long Zheng and Rafael Rivera in posts such as Malware can turn off UAC in Windows 7; “By design” says Microsoft. Clearly, Microsoft needs to move back to Secure Desktop for changes to UAC. We don’t mind UAC prompts as long as we don’t have to go through multiple windows like Vista RTM where you’d have to sometimes go through a normal prompt and a secure desktop to perform a restricted action (For example: addition/modification/deletion of Start Menu entries).
3. High Quality Icons: As I’ve already mentioned in my previous post, with the arrival of Superbar, the icons being shown need to be of a much higher resolution to avoid tearing. Yet some icons are still not up to the mark. This is like Windows Vista’s non-standardized UI all over again just not as bad. Microsoft has put in a lot of effort into revamping the UI on most applications but I guess it has missed out on a few. Nothing that can’t be fixed in a giffy ;)

There are more features in Windows 7 just waiting to be discovered. Windows 7 RC does look quite promising. These are just some of the things that make this such a great OS. Quite a few of them are minor, probably don’t feel like much when being mentioned while others are fixes to old problems that have plagued users for many a year but all of it contribute to make this a worthy successor to Windows Vista :)

I admit, its not a public build but I really couldn’t help myself so I got hold of a copy off a public torrent and here I am. I’ve had Windows 7 discs and keys around for a couple of months now but I never really got time to install them. Finally, I queued up the latest build a couple of nights ago and FINALLY it completed downloading.

Needless to say the new taskbar is pretty cool. I do have a few suggestions though.

1. Aero Snap for minimization: Aero Snap provides us with a set area on the screen, where if a window is dragged to, it snaps vertically or maximizes. Taking it to the left/right of the screen causes it to vertical snap to the left/right of the screen (respectively) while taking a window to the top causes it to maximize. Why not allow minimization when the window is dragged to the bottom (towards the taskbar).
2. Jagged Icons: Seriously.. this is 2009. Anything that expects to show up in the taskbar deserves a 256×256 pixel icon to be shipped with it. Also, I am not sure how the UI team didn’t notice that the middle click to scroll (what I call “smooth/easy scroll”) icon is terrible! For an OS with high emphasis on UX (User eXperience), this sure seems to be a bad move :P

All this being said, there are a few things to give Microsoft real credit for. On my desktop, I didn’t need to install a single driver to start using the machine and get on to the internet. Now that’s called a fully functional operating system ;) I’ll try the same on my laptop (Dell Studio XPS 1640) and I hope to get a similar result. The only thing I expect to install is the Sensible Vision FastAccess facial recognition software which I hope works. It certainly is bound to Dell machines (I’m sure it checks for Studio XPS 1640s via the same source as dxdiag) but I hope it won’t mind if I try to make it work on Windows 7 :)

One of my favourite parts about this OS so far is the ability to easily hide system tray icons. I hope that unlike previous versions of Windows, it doesn’t have a habit of forgetting these settings :) Hopefully, it also remembers the new applications options instead of tagging everything as new randomly. I’m also yet to check out if the Vista start menu bug of “Programs” showing up still exists, after all Windows 7 is an incremental build of Windows Vista, ain’t it?

Another change is that Windows 7 doesn’t calculate the Windows Experience Index (WEI) score during first boot which is surprising to me because I remember it doing something like that. WEI takes a lot longer to run through now as compared to Vista but also has increased the maximum WEI score from 5.9 in Vista to a 7.9 in Windows 7. I’m sure all you high end machine owners can’t wait to run the new WEI ;) I know I can’t wait to do so on my laptop :D

Speaking of WEI, the ugly Games folder opening freeze bug hasn’t come up so far. For those who aren’t aware, Windows Vista came up with the new style Games folder (that people like me love and use a lot :D). Its extremely useful, though there could have been a few improvements. Quite a few games aren’t automatically detected and added and so their game art isn’t downloaded either. You could always add the icons there automatically but you would be unable to have game art unless you have a tool. But this wasn’t the worst thing about it. Some times, the games folder would take up to 30-45 seconds to open up which was because it was reading the WEI score for your system (speculation based on observation but no conclusive proof). I think Vista saw that your WEI score was outdated and tried to do something about it. Hopefully, Windows 7 won’t fall prey to these two issues. The former I can test in a couple of hours by installing a few games. The latter on the other hand will have to wait a while for :) If I have any interesting results, I’ll let you know :)

In the up coming weeks, I’ll try to go deeper into Windows 7 trying to unravel new features along the way. I shall also try to check out if Microsoft has fixed every annoyance I have ever had in Windows Vista in Windows 7. That way, we can all expect a better UX (User Experience) ;) Hopefully, my orals examinations in the upcoming weeks and final project presentation in college won’t come in the way :)

Earlier today at CES 2009, Microsoft announced that they would release 2.5 million copies of Windows 7 for public beta (build 7000) which came out around 25th December, 2008 for all those lucky people who have MSDN subscriptions.
The plan was to release the ISO around 12 CET and a page to release 2.5 million keys but here’s what happened.

12 CET – Nothing’s up on TechNet :(
12.30 CET – A statement stating the site is ill equipped for the load and things are being “set up”.. sure I’d buy that :P
13.30 CET – Start download from direct download links.. not ETA on the keys
13.45 CET – Download links killed. If you have the beta, good for you. If you don’t.. well.. :P

I guess I’ll have to wait for the official serial. I guess I can run the 30 day beta till then and keep rearming the beta (if any of you tested the Windows Vista beta or used the Windows Vista RTM early, you’d remember that :P). Either way I can’t install the beta until I get my new 1 TB HDD (should take a couple of days) due to lack of space :(

* JA has to wait a bit longer before getting a chance to test Windows 7 :(

Thanks for ruining my sleep for tonight by making me wait for a key for nothing :(