How to Increase the Display of Your Browser

If you use a laptop or notebook you may have trouble reading text on a web page. You can increase the size of the display by holding the Control key down and rotating the mouse roller (between the left and right mouse buttons) away from you.  Conversely, you can decrease the size of the display by holding the Control key down and rolling the roller towards you.

Creating an Electronic Form Using Word 2010 Content Controls

To create a form in Word 2010, the form fields are on the Developer toolbar in the Controls group. Click the Legacy option’s dropdown to see form fields (Word 2003) and ActiveX controls.

If Word 2010’s Developer tab isn’t visible, do the following to display it:

1. Click the Quick Access Toolbar dropdown.
2. Choose More Commands.
3. In the left pane, click Customize Ribbon.
4. In the list to the right under Main Tabs, check Developer and click OK.

In the Controls group (on the Developer tab), you’ll see a number of other controls - some seem to duplicate the Legacy option’s controls. These new controls are content controls.

You can insert form controls directly into a document, but consider inserting them into a table instead. They’re a little easier to organize that way. For instance, There's a two-column, five-row table in the document shown below. In the left column, there are descriptive labels for the content controls. (Choose Table from the Insert menu/tab.) Here is where to enter the appropriate content controls into the right column. Specifically, enter two text fields, one date field, and two lists.

First, enter a text field for the class ID as follows:

1. Select the first cell in the right column (to the right of the label, Class).
2. Click Plain Text Content Control in the Controls group (on the Developer tab).

You can click Properties (in the Control group) to better define the control. For now, the default options are fine. Enter a second Plain Text Content Control for the instructor’s name. Next, add a Date Picker Content Control as follows:

1. Select the third cell in the right column and click Date Picker Content Control in the Controls group.
2. Click the Properties option in the Controls group, set the format to m/d/yy, and click OK.

At this point, you have three control.

Add a control that lets users choose an item from a list. Specifically, add a list of ratings so the students can score the instructor on preparation and content. Specifically, create a list of five possible scores, from very poor to excellent, as follows:

1. Select the fourth cell in the right column and click Drop Down List Content Control in the Controls group.
2. Click Properties.
3. Click Add.
4. Enter Very poor in the Display Name control.
5. Enter 1 in the Value control.
6. Click OK.
7. Repeat steps 3 through 6 to create the list shown below. When you’re done, click OK.

Repeat the above instructions to add another Drop Down List Content Control for the last cell in the right column. Or, simply copy it.

Once you’ve inserted all the content controls (or form fields), protect the document as follows:

1. Press Ctrl+A to select the entire document (or select only the table if you’re working in a larger document).
2. Choose Group from the Controls menu.
3. Click Restrict Editing in the Protect group.
4. Check 2. Editing restrictions.
5. From the dropdown, choose Filling In Forms.
6. Save the form, close it, and reopen it.

To use the form, press tab to select the first content control. Enter a class ID and press tab. Enter the instructor’s name and press tab. To enter a date, click the dropdown and click a date. Word will enter the date in the format you selected when you set the control’s properties. Press Tab to move to the next control.

The next two controls are list controls. Click the dropdown for each and select one of the list items.

Word content controls and form fields are good way to implement control and consistency when gathering information.

An Easy Way to Color Correct in PhotoShop

Open a photo, and from the Layer menu and select “New Adjustment Layer”, then “Curves.” This insures you don’t damage the original image.

On the bottom of the curves window, you’ll see 3 little eyedropper buttons called “set black point”, “set gray point” and “set white point." The goal is to click each eyedropper in the blackest, grayest, and whitest parts of the image as you remember them.

Click the left “set black point” eyedropper. Find a point on the image as close to pure black as you can and click it.

Click the right “set white point” eyedropper. Find a point on the image as close to pure white as you can and click it.

If you can find something on the image that is gray (like 128,128,128 RGB) use the middle eyedropper. If you can’t find anything gray in the image, look for concrete or try the off-white part of a subject’s eyes. If you can’t find anything gray you’ll have to depend on the “auto color” feature, and that is a gamble.

What you are doing is telling Photoshop to ignore your monitor, ignore the image RGB values, and to balance every color in the image against a known black and white to set the density and a known gray point to fix any color cast.

The curves eyedroppers doesn’t always give the results you want. Sometimes you have to delete the curves layer and start over again. But the results are almost always better than the “auto levels," “auto color," and “variations” options in Photoshop.

Create a Logon Message in Windows 7

In Windows 7, click on the Start button and type regedit in the search box. Click on the regedit.exe file in the list of items and answer the UAC prompt. Once in the registry editor (Figure A), navigate to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\System

Figure A

Find the legalnoticecaption key in the right-hand pane and double-click it. Enter a heading for your message in the Value Data field, as shown in Figure B, and then click OK.

Figure B

To enter the actual message, double-click the legalnoticetext key in the right-hand pane and enter your message, as shown in Figure C; when you are done, click OK.

Figure C

A couple of caveats: the message has to be text-only and there is a character limit, and in order for this tweak to take effect, you will have to reboot your PC.

When you are happy with your message, close regedit and reboot — you should see your message displayed before you get to the official Windows logon screen.

If you decide you don’t want the message anymore, just delete the Value Data field for each of the keys.

Five tips for using Ccleaner to degunk your system

There are a lot of tools out there that handle a lot of tasks, from antivirus tools that also clean your drive of temporary files. Ccleaner is one fo the best and it's free.


Ccleaner easy to use and will keep your computer cleaner, more secure, and running faster. It achieves this by safely removing temporary Internet files (and other means of tracing Internet activity), cleaning up the Windows registry, and removing temporary files and recent file lists (MRUs) from various 
applications.


But even though Ccleaner is a simple tool to use, that doesn’t mean you should just jump in and start cleaning everything without a bit of thought. Here are some things all users should consider before and during the use of this powerful tool.

1: Analyze before running the Cleaner

I know a lot of admins who just fire up Ccleaner and hit the Run Cleaner button without doing an analysis first. Yes, this is a fast method of getting rid of temporary Internet files. But there’s no way of knowing what’s going to be deleted (until it’s deleted) and there’s no way of knowing how much free space the deletion is going to create. Make sure you hit the Analyze button first. Then, after you read the report, hit the Run Cleaner button. Using Ccleaner this way ensures that nothing is deleted that shouldn’t be deleted. Also, after you run the analyzer, you can look at detailed information (by application) and then add exceptions directly from the list.

2: Set up cookies you want to keep

When you run the Cleaner, cookies are deleted. By default, cookies are retained from Google and Yahoo, but other cookies might need to be retained. To manage this, click on the Options tab and then on the Cookies button. From that window, any cookie currently on the system can be selectively added to the exclusion list. By adding these exclusions, you don’t have to worry about important cookies disappearing after each run of Ccleaner.

3: Always back up the registry

No matter how reliable Ccleaner is and no matter how many successful registry cleanups it does, never do a cleanup without first backing up the registry. Ccleaner will go so far as to remind you to back up the registry every time you run a registry cleanup. If the registry is not backed up, one of those corrupt or missing registry keys that Ccleaner fixes might not really have needed fixing. If that key is then broken and was not backed up, the issue caused by Ccleaner could become catastrophic. Fortunately, Ccleaner makes backing up the registry as simple as a couple of clicks.

4: Use the tools to manage startup applications

Ccleaner comes with a bonus: It lets you enable, disable, or remove programs from startup. I have always found this method of managing startup applications far easier than using the standard Windows method. What I like most about this feature is that startup applications can be enabled and disabled without removing them completely. This means if you need to temporarily prevent an application from starting up, it’s easy to do by going into the Tools tab, clicking the Startup button, selecting the application to be enabled/disabled, and clicking the appropriate button. When the application needs to be re-enabled/disabled, reverse the process.

5: Use the uninstaller

One of the best aspects of Ccleaner is the ability to remove applications from within it. It typically just starts the uninstaller, but I have found that running the application uninstaller this way ends with fewer registry issues than when I uninstall from the Windows Add/Remove Programs tool. And if there are registry issues after the uninstall, registry cleanup is only a couple of clicks away.

Great tool, used wisely

Ccleaner is more than just a tool to clean the registry or empty a computer of temporary Internet files. It also makes it easy to remove applications from startup and remove applications from the machine. Just make sure you use this powerful tool intelligently to avoid rendering your machine unusable.

What is Chromium?

Chromium is the open source project that serves as the foundation for Google Chrome. Think of Chromium as the bleeding edge version of Chrome created by the open source community. However, Chromium is not for everyone. It’s not nearly as polished or bug-free as Chrome, and while Chrome silently updates itself in the background, Chromium has to be updated manually (and there a new builds available almost every day). The process of updating to the latest build of Chromium is made easier by tools such as Chromium Updater

One reason to consider using Chromium over Chrome is security. While Google promises that Chrome isn’t reporting back to Google with any additional data about your browsing habits — at last no more than any other Web browser — you may not completely trust Google in that regard. The company has too much to benefit from gathering as much data as possible from every single user. Because Chromium is open source, if there was any kind of supposedly-harmless data collection going on, the open source coders would likely spot it and alert the community and the public. That, and the extra speed boost from running the cutting edge software builds, are what are some things to consider about using Chromium..


If you are using Mozilla Firefox (I quit using Firefox months ago) then checking out Chromium will likely result in faster, more efficient browsing.

A registry tweak to make application choices more efficient in Windows

Every once in a while in Microsoft Windows, you will come across an unknown file type. When you double-click that file, Windows asks you to pick an application to open that file, but only after it first offers to check a web service for potential applications (Figure A). Most of the time, you know exactly which application you’d like to run for the file in question, so the web service dialog box is more annoying than helpful.


Note: This Quick Tip is using Windows 7, but the basic principle should apply to both Windows XP and Vista.


Figure A

With a small tweak to the Windows Registry file, you can permanently skip the Use the Web Service to Find the Correct Program dialog box and get right to the list of potential applications (Figure B) already installed on your system.

Figure B

Registry Edit

Standard disclaimer: The Windows Registry File is vitally important to the proper operation of the Windows operating system. Please back up the file before you make any registry edits.

Click on the Start button and type regedit in the search box. Click on the regedit.exe file in the list of items and answer the UAC prompt. Once in the registry editor (Figure C), navigate to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Figure C

Right-click in the right pane of the editor to create a new 32-bit DWORD value with the name NoInternetOpenWith (Figure D).

Figure D

Right-click on NoInternetOpenWith and navigate to the Modify menu item, then enter a value of 1, as shown in Figure E.

Figure E

Close regedit. To restore to the default, just change the value of the NoInternetOpenWith key to zero.

A registry tweak to make application choices more efficient in Windows

Every once in a while in Microsoft Windows, you will come across an unknown file type. When you double-click that file, Windows asks you to pick an application to open that file, but only after it first offers to check a web service for potential applications (Figure A). Most of the time, you know exactly which application you’d like to run for the file in question, so the web service dialog box is more annoying than helpful.


Note: This Quick Tip is using Windows 7, but the basic principle should apply to both Windows XP and Vista.


Figure A

With a small tweak to the Windows Registry file, you can permanently skip the Use the Web Service to Find the Correct Program dialog box and get right to the list of potential applications (Figure B) already installed on your system.

Figure B

Registry Edit

Standard disclaimer: The Windows Registry File is vitally important to the proper operation of the Windows operating system. Please back up the file before you make any registry edits.

Click on the Start button and type regedit in the search box. Click on the regedit.exe file in the list of items and answer the UAC prompt. Once in the registry editor (Figure C), navigate to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer

Figure C

Right-click in the right pane of the editor to create a new 32-bit DWORD value with the name NoInternetOpenWith (Figure D).

Figure D

Right-click on NoInternetOpenWith and navigate to the Modify menu item, then enter a value of 1, as shown in Figure E.

Figure E

Close regedit. To restore to the default, just change the value of the NoInternetOpenWith key to zero.

How to apply your favorite Word styles with a single click

Word’s new Quick Gallery (in Word 2007 and 2010) provides a one-click method for applying a style but only a few styles are available. The Quick Style Gallery displays the first few Styles (listed in the Styles pane). If the styles you use the most are at the bottom of the list, they’re not visible in the ribbon group and therefore, not available with just a quick click.

Fortunately, you’re not stuck with the default arrangement; you can move your most-used styles to the top of the list and into the Quick Gallery as follows:

1. Click the Styles dialog launcher to open the Styles pane. The launcher is the small arrow in the bottom-right corner of the group.
2. Click Manage Styles at the bottom of the Styles list.
3. Click the Recommend tab.
4. Select the style you want to move. (Use Sort Order to display an alphabetical list if that helps.)
5. Click Assign Value and give the style a value from 1 to 99—a value between 1 and 4 will push the style to the ribbon display.
6. Click Show.
7. Choose As Recommended from the Sort Order dropdown.
8. This behavior belongs to the specific document, by default. If you want to move a style to the Quick Gallery for all documents, be sure to click the New Documents Based On This Template option.
9. Click OK.

If the style doesn’t show up, display the Styles pane, select the style, and choose Add To Quick Gallery. Once you move a style to the top of the list, you can select text and click the style in the Quick Gallery–a quick one-click solution to assigning styles.