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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘Windows 8’ Category

Windows 8.x: Three keyboard/mouse ways to zoom in or out on start screen (via: YouTube)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/22

I love it that in Windows you can do everything both by mouse and keyboard.
Take the start screen: there are 3 ways (mouse only, mouse + keyboard, keyboard only) to zoom in/out in the start screen. Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Keyboards and Keyboard Shortcuts, Power User, Usability, User Experience (ux), Windows, Windows 8 | Leave a Comment »

Windows: Where is my DropBox configuration?

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/18

Running DropBox on a roaming profile is a pain, especially when DropBox auto-starts.

Limitation: you can now use it on only 1 PC in the roaming profile domain at a time (I’ve not yet tried Open Source Software and Windows 32-bit: Multiple Dropbox (Do It Yourself).)

The reason is that depending on the logoff/logon order of machines, DropBox will overwrite parts of its configuration, and then think it needs to start with a fresh configuration.

Solution: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Windows key character that displays on non-Windows systems (like Mac)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/08

Though there is a Unicode character for the Apple Command Key, there is none for the Windows Key.

The Windows font WinDings does have a character 255 for it, but that font usually is not installed on non-Windows systems. There it will look like Unicode Character ‘LATIN SMALL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS’ (U+00FF)

This Unicode code point comes closest to the Windows key: Unicode Character ‘SQUARED PLUS’ (U+229E) and is used by Windows Key page on WikiPedia.

  • The WinDings character looks like this: ÿ
    (non no Windows systems, it will look like an y with two dots on it: ÿ)
  • The Unicode Codepoint U+229E like this: ⊞
    Not a complete match, but pretty close.

The Unicode code points for Mac modifier keys are these:

–jeroen

Posted in Development, Encoding, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Software Development, Unicode, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows-1252 | Leave a Comment »

7zip on a Mac: Keka, 7zip on Windows: their plain installer.

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/04

Though I’ve written only a few blog posts about 7zip – my compressor of choice ever since I discovered 7zip some 10 years ago around version 3.13 (their history goes much further back: 1999) – here is a fresh one:

7zip is a fast, free, multi-platform and has great compression. No wonder Toms Hardware gave them an award last year: And The Undisputed Winner Is… 7-Zip.

For Windows, I take the downloads from 7-Zip: there are both x64 and x86 versions (x64 supports more memory so can handle bigger archives).

For Mac, I’ve been using Keka – the free Mac OS X file archiver. Both compressing and decompressing involve dragging the uncompressed or compressed files to the Keka dock icon.

That is slightly more involved than the context menu in Windows, but it works great.

For Windows command line usage, I use either 7za.exe or 7z.exe (uses DLLs, supports more compression)

For Mac command line usage, I use p7zip.

–jeroen

Posted in 7zip, Apple, Compression, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

When combined with Ctrl or Alt: RDP Shift Key Gets Stuck (via: davidbond.net)

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/08/01

When using Windows RDP you have the risk of a Shift key getting stuck.

This happens when press Ctrl and Shift. Make sure you release Shift first, otherwise Shift gets stuck.

Same with Alt and Shift: you have to release the Shift key first.

This is not a problem when using the OS X Remote Desktop application 8.x from Microsoft: only the Windows MSTSC.exe applications included in Windows 7 and higher suffer from this when you connect to Windows 7 and higher (including connecting from Windows to Windows Server and from Windows Server to Windows).

It does not happen with the MSTSC.exe in Windows 2000/XP and Windows Server 2003/2003 R2.

Results

Here are the important results:

  • Press Shift and Control (either order) -> Release Shift -> Release Control: Normal state
  • Press Shift and Control (either order) -> Release Control -> Release Shift: Problem state 

Conclusion

RDP has a bug whereby the shift state incorrectly remains in the “pressed” state if, after pressing Shift+Control, the Control key is released first.

Bug reference

Bug is with Microsoft: https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/feedback/details/766863/rdp-shift-key-gets-stuck

And the comments there:

You have described the exact same problem that I am having, only in my case it’s with RDP between two Win7 machines. […]

I have been using RDP for years without problems, until about 2 or 3 weeks ago when it suddenly starting going wrong.

Too bad the connect issue requires logon: I have no idea if this is ever going to be fixed.

–jeroen

via: davidbond.net: RDP Shift Key Gets Stuck.

Edit: some comments on G+

made in Delphi :)
Happens to me sometimes when connecting from Win7 to XP+.
Seems closely relatedhttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/978829 in older OSs.
Frequently beaten by “Securing remote connection…” delay http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2915774

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 | 2 Comments »

HTTP debugging tools

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/07/15

Any web developer should know how to capture and trace HTTP traffic.

I’ve written about Fiddler before, but that’s a Windows specific tool.

Time to have a small list of posts and links to tools that work on various platforms.

I’ve left out Java based tools as there have been too many security issues with Java over the last couple of years.

Tools: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Apple, Development, Fiddler, Linux, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, SOAP/WebServices, Software Development, SuSE Linux, Web Development, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »

via: What’s the difference between F5 and F8 at the boot screen? – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/07/14

via: What’s the difference between F5 and F8 at the boot screen? – The Old New Thing – Site Home – MSDN Blogs.

F5 has become F8, and with Windows 8, a (sometimes automatic) reboot option, even for getting into the BIOS settings.

–jeroen

Posted in BIOS, Boot, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

Windows: programmatically setting date/time stamps of files

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/07/01

For DOS programs, date and time stamps were used to mark versions of files. For instance, Turbo Pascal 6.0, had a 06:00 time stamp on every file.

You can still do this in Windows, but need to watch for a couple of things:

  • daylight saving time
  • more than one time stamp per file

There are various ways to do it. Besides a graphical Attribute Changer at www.petges.lu (thanks User Randolf Richardson), these are console approaches via How can I change the timestamp on a file?:
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in *nix, Apple, Batch-Files, Cygwin, Development, Linux, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, PowerShell, Scripting, Software Development, SuSE Linux, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | 2 Comments »

Changing the Windows Console Height/Width and screen buffer Height/Width

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/27

Console settings are kept in the registry.

The default settings are under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console in the DWORD values ScreenBufferSize and WindowSize.

Examples:

  • buffer height/width 9999/120 is hex value 0x270f0078 in ScreenBufferSize (default 300 x 80 "ScreenBufferSize"=dword:012c0050").
  • Window height/width 69/120 is hex value 0x00500078 in WindowSize (default 25 x 80 "WindowSize"=dword:00190050).

Depending on the window title, settings specific window title (console window name) are in additional keys under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console; each key has the name of the “console window name” with two twists:

  1. backslashes are replaced by underscores.
  2. your Windows directory is replaced with %SystemRoot%

So if your console window name is C:\Windows\system32\cmd.exe, the key name is HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Console\%SystemRoot%_system32_cmd.exe Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2000, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »

tools for iPad as second screen, or show iPad screen on your computer

Posted by jpluimers on 2014/06/24

While Watching the CodeRage Mobile conference last week, I noticed Bruno Fierens showing his iPad on a PC.

I also thought about the other way around: show your PC or Mac on your iPad or using your iPad as a second (third?) monitor to your regular machine.

So here are some links to tools I want to look into further:

I’ve not done comparisons yet. These sites have compared some of the products though:

–jeroen

Posted in Apple, Hardware, iOS, iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, Mac OS X / OS X / MacOS, Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, MacBook, MacBook Retina, MacBook-Air, MacBook-Pro, OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, Power User, Windows, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista, Windows XP | Leave a Comment »