Blogs

The next and probably last blog post about the user interface before getting to technical issues again is about the main windows, after we've already spend some time on information, confirmation and error dialogs. Our starting point here was to look out for visual arrangements that would reflect systems standards, but are individual at the same time. Creating a GUI (graphical user interface) that follows standards is a basic requirement by anyone who believes in ergonomics. Using standard interfaces should help the user into an intuitive usage where things do what he expects them to do. One issue about standards are custom controls. An application should only include those window controls (buttons, menus, lists, &c.) that the system...

Godt nok kan dette ikke baseres på noget statistisk, så det holder sådan set ingen steder, men programmet iflg. mig fuldstændig ukendt af danskerne. Der burde gøres mere ud af det, da programet har mange muligheder i et land som Danmark. Kunne man forestille sig, at der overhovedet er danskere der læser denne blog, denne artikel? :)

Hi If there should be any questions from danish users about the danish version of any the programs, feel free to contact me.

Do you hate the default avast! skin that looks more like what a media player should look like? Well you have 2 options: A - Go to http://avast.com/eng/skins.html and install a different skin OR B - If you don't like any of those skins you can actually disable skins altogether - many people do not know this. I quite like the 'no thrills' simple interface ;) To do this just go into Avast!'s Settings and under 'Common' uncheck 'Enable skins for simple user interface'. Avast! without skins enabled. Much more user friendly IMO. Enjoy! - honda

So, the story was that I received an iPod as a gift. I thought, "Hey, look at this cool music device". So I started exploring, by diving into the settings. The customization part was fun... Next came to adding the songs... toughie. Thing is that I couldn't add any songs, without using the tedious, boring, and dull GUI iTunes. A music player for a 57MB file?! I thought. Geez, Apple has sunk lower than Microsoft. :P. I know that Microsoft's products (excluding Windows XP OS) lags&lacks all that, and they take forever to patch, but what company forces a video player along with it too?! Such unfair business practices. Upon executing a 5-minute installation, my Task Manager was jammed with 5 more processes. Bonjour, heck I had no idea...

Hello there! Today's topic is video and audio conversion. Lets give a scenario: Bob downloads Y but he wants to stick it on his music player, but it won't play Y because it only supports Z. Well Bob needs to convert (encode) that Y file to a Z file So what do I think is the best audio/video converter? Lets find out... Super Super (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer to be precise!) provides a way to efficiently convert video and audio files. Pros - Efficient and fast - Can handle many file conversions (incl. psp, ipod) Cons - Many options in right click context menu - Occasionally crashes - Program skins aren't very pretty -The author's website is a maze to work through to actually go and download Download...

For my first blog post, I am going to be reviewing a couple of software update checkers Testing software requires the latest version, right?! As I always think "newer = better" (although this is not always the case), update checkers are essential Whether it is for patching up security flaws in your programs or just getting the latest features, a good update checker should provide a simple interface for checking and actually downloading the updates Oh yeah, I forgot to add: Any programs that I list are free to download and install FileHippo.com Update Checker This tiny app checks for updates amazingly fast and then displays any updates in your browser. You can then download the updated program from Filehippo.com itself Pros...

Since Adobe Reader 9.0 just got out, let me give you an explanation why it is useful to update. Adobe Reader 8 has a feature to save memory, which is a good purpose in itself, if it wouldn't go a bit too far. When you open your first PDF, a full instance of Adobe Reader is opened, but whenever you - or anyone else in your WindowStation - open additional files, parts of the already open instance are used. This in itself is no problem on single-user machines, but as soon as more than one person is using the computer, or more specifically if one person is using the computer using multiple accounts, a PDF opened with restricted rights can gain the rights of the first Reader instance, e.g. administration rights. Let's for example assume...

Sorry for going at Microsoft again in my second blog post here, but since the text was already written mostly, it's something I can easily add ;) Buffer overflows are a very typical source of security problems, emerging from a bit of carelessness on side of software developers. Buffers are areas of memory, used for example to contain text, and C [a computer language] developers need to take extra care to always manage their maximum length when handling them, since by nature, they're only limited by the first "zero" character. See the problem? You have the text Hello World, which has 11 letters. Add one zero character (not the "0" you know, but an internal value 0), and the computer will know the text ends at the d. Forget to reserve...