After some research into the best profiling tools that work cross-browser I stumbled across a forum post talking about Fiddler. Fiddler is a complete network profiler, allowing to to monitor all network traffic. But it also gives you the ability to limit it to just browser traffic, which was idea in this case. Simply starting up Fiddler and hitting F12 started the capture process (alternatively, File -> Capture Traffic) and reloading the page captured all traffic. It lists all the items that were loaded on the page and lets you select any number or combination of them to get the total load time for those elements. This feature alone is great because it gives you an overview of all Javascript, or all image files. It even breaks down the distinction between .gif, .jpg and.png files so can see how they rate individually.

As an added bonus, Fiddler even generates charts to compare loading times based on the elements that you selected. This is a great way to provide a quick overview to prospective clients on where their website is slowing down and gives you a leg up in figuring out how to improve this. As a freelance consultant, tools like this really make things a lot easier and provide you with at-a-glance data freeing up your time to look at solutions instead of focusing on the problems.

One thing to note, I thought the Fiddler website looked a little shady, but it is completely legitimate and under active development.

http://www.microsoft.com/web/websitespark/

WIN+E
This shortcut allows you to pop open a new explorer window pointed at My Computer. I haven’t looked into if there was any way of changing the default directory, but even so being able to open a window like this is pretty nifty.

F2
If you select a file and press F2 you’ll instantly start renaming the file. It even highlights the filename and leaves the extension alone so that you don’t accidentally mess anything up.

ESC
The ultimate cancel. If you ever want to stop doing something, just tap the escape button. It works like instant cancel is most applications, and if you use it after F2, you’ll rename the file back to its original name and stop selecting it

Enter
I don’t think I need to explain this one. Enter acts like a universal accept button.

WIN
This key will pop open the start menu regardless of what application or game you’re in. A constant source of frustration for PC gamers who accidentally hit it during their gaming sessions.

WIN+R
This will pop open a little Run.. window which will let you enter different commands or utilities that you can launch. You can even specify a path to a directory and when you hit enter you’ll automatically launch windows explorer pointed at that directory.

WIN+D
Will toggle the “Show Desktop” button and take you to your desktop. Pressing it again will restore all the windows you had open

Alt+Tab
This is one that most people know. Alt+Tab lets you shift through all open windows.

Alt+Shift+Tab
This one you’re probably not all that familiar with. Instead of shifting forwards through tabs, using the Shift modifier you’ll now move backwards. Great for going back to a window after you passed it with Alt+Tab

Tab
Tab acts as either a “next” button or a larger version of the space button.

Alt
If you have a window open Alt will highlight the keyboard functions that you can perform. For example pressing alt will generally change your focus from whatever you’re working on to the menus in the window itself.

CTRL+Arrow keys
Skip a word in the direction you want

Shift+Arrow keys
Will highlight letters depending on which arrow key you hit

Shift+CTRL+Arrow keys
Will highlight whole words depending on which arrow key you hit

CTRL+A
Highlight the whole document

CTRL+C
Copy whatever you have highlighted and place it on your clipboard

CTRL+X
This will cut whatever you have highlighted from the document and place it on your clipboard

CTRL+V
This will paste whatever is on your clipboard.

There are probably a lot more commands out there for windows users, but to be honest, I haven’t had much time to find them all. If you think of something I missed, definitely post it in the comments and I’ll add it.

PDFCreator – virtual printer to create documents

I had thought for some time how should I organize jump from my report at work (beautiful mess of MySQL, PHP and my Google Charts class) to consolidated document.

I am no fan of PDFs, but they supposed to be made for such occasions. And aside from expensive editors fastest way to get PDF document is to use virtual printer like PDFCreator.

Do you have it?
Chances are, if you are the administrator of a server (even if it’s someplace you host your website online) you have access to FTP. Most hosting companies try to make it as easy as possible for people to set up their FTP accounts, and generally pouring through the help documents will ..well help. But if you log into your control panel (most likely cPanel) you can look for an icon that looks like this, or just says “FTP” on it
Setting it up
Essentially the page you are trying to get to will let you create and administer FTP accounts. The image below is what cPanel users will see. It’s a pretty straight forward form, and you just need to fill it out. The login is just the name that you will use to log in to your account. For my system, it’s set up to be login@feethavebeen.com, where “login” is a username that I created. The password is what you will need to enter to log in to your FTP account. Make sure it is something complicated, and if you’re not sure, just hit the Generate button and add a few characters onto the end. For some hosts, they automatically fill out the “Directory” setting. You should just delete this or set it to “public_html/”. That will ensure that the user you are logging in with can access all the files on your server. When you’re done just click the “Create FTP Account” button and wait for everything to be done. You’ll generally get to a confirmation page that will show you the username and password that you selected. Make sure you either write them down somewhere or remember them.

Accessing your account
Now that your account is created, the next step is accessing your server using that account information. To do this you have a couple of options. IE users can log in through their browser by going to ftp://www.yoursite.com and then logging in using their username/password combination. That’s fine for downloading files, but when you want to start uploading them, I’d recommend and actual FTP client such as one of the following:

http://www.smartftp.com/
http://winscp.net/eng/index.php
http://fireftp.mozdev.org/ -   Firefox Addon Only
http://filezilla-project.org/ – Supports both SFTP, FTPS and FTP

You can download and install the FTP client and start it up. Generally when the clients start up they ask you for your account information to log in. You can set the host as your website, the username as the username you gave in the form, and the password that’s associated to it. Make sure that the PORT is set at 21. FTP utilizes port 21 to perform it’s functions. By default winSCP is set to PORT 22 (more on this in a second). Once that’s done, you can sign in to your ftp account.

Using FTP
Using FTP through one of the clients is very simple. You are normally presented with a split view. The files on your computer are on the left, and the files on your web server are on the right. To move files, you just drag them from your computer to the web server, or from the server to your computer. The files are then transferred over. There are many advanced functions that each FTP program offers, but that is something that is beyond the scope of this article.

SFTP?
By default, FTP transmissions are not encrypted. This means that your files and more importantly your passwords (thanks for pointing out that I missed this part Felipe) are passing in plain-text between you and your webserver. Most times this isn’t an issue, but if you are transferring sensitive data, or are just paranoid like me, you’ll want to use Secure FTP. Secure FTP encrypts all data that it transfers and therefore, is a little slower than standard FTP, but it is worth it (at least tome). Out of the FTP clients I mentioned, only winSCP can handle the SFTP. When using SFTP, you have to make sure that your PORT is at 22 instead of 21.

Windows 7 officially launches today, but we’ve been testing, tweaking, customizing, fixing, and writing about this OS for a year now. We present here a guide to everything we’ve learned about the OS, from first install to final settings change.

Whether you’ve played around with Windows 7 during its beta or release candidate versions, launch day is finally here, and Windows 7 is finally ready for widespread, public consumption. This guide will take you straight through from system requirements and upgrading your PC to highlighting Windows 7′s best new features to helping you hit the ground running with all of the awesome tweaks Windows 7 has in store for you.

Browser

To me, you have two real choices here. Either Firefox or Chrome. Chrome doesn’t support extensions that I require so Firefox is it for me. Chrome offers allthe features that Firefoxdoes except for extensions, but if you just need something to browse the next, Chrome is it. You’ll find it faster than Firefox too when it comes to rendering pages, and when you have 20+ tabs open, it will feel a lot snappier. Firefox, on the other hand, offers an extensive extension library as well as tabbed browsing, password management (albeit very basic), anti-pshishing controls, standards compliant web-browsing and a pop-up blocker (Chrome offers these as well).The extensions add everything from Chat to advanced download managers to twitter clients. Once you get used to that, I’d recommend checking out this video I made a long time ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXGpBYjnFkE It covers converting your default browser to take advantage of as much screenspace possible, and also covers a more advanced tip about search shortcuts.

Winner – Firefox
Runner Up – Chrome

Chat Service

There are numerous chat services out there, but for me only two matter. Windows Live Messener (or MSN Messenger as it used to be called) and Google Talk. In fact, it’s safe to say that my chat services are dominated by WLM to the point that I can get by without installing Google Talk as a separate client and I just use the web version. This will sorta be dictated by geographic region, I find countries like India and Indonesia use Yahoo! Messenger more than WLM, which seems to dominate the West. You can also go with Skype, Digsby (if you’re into multiple chat clients), Trillian and a host of others. However, these are kinda dictated by your friends. If everyone uses WLM, you’re probably going to use it too.

Winner – Windows Live Messenger
Runner Up – Digsby

Anti-Virus
This is the biggest thing that Windows users need.  I can’t point my finger at Windows forbeing riddled with security holes in comparison to other systems. It’s just that so many more people use Windows, and so many people are looking for ways to break it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take a few steps to secure your system against threats. A good anti-virus program won’t cost you much (heck, it’s probably free) but will save you tons of time and headaches later on. A good anti-virus should provide constant scanning and frequent updates to its virus database. As well, it should be as light on resources as possible. Price is also a factor. For that reason I have chosen NOD32 and Avast!. Avast! offers a free version of their anti-virus located here, while NOD32 is pay only. I highly recommend NOD32 if you have the cash, because it is a great piece of software. However, if you’re strapped, Avast! offers much of the same functionality.

Winner – NOD32
Runner up – Avast!

Those 3 types of applications form the basis of all your computing. Your browser allows you to interact with the web, your anti-virus keeps you safe, and your chat services let you connect to friends. Everything else is just icing on the cake.

1. Rapidshare forces users to click a download link, even if they are premium users
2. Often times downloads are split into multiple parts

This guide will set you up for downloading everything you want from Rapidshare through Firefox, with the use of some handy addons.

Set Up Direct Downloads
This is something that can be configured through your Rapidshare premium account. Log in to your account and look for the account settings link. You want to look for the configuration section and make sure that Direct Downloads is checked off. Then you can save your changes. This ensures that if you are logged into your Rapidshare account you will be able to bypass the button click to download files. Simply pointing your browser to a valid file will let you download it. We’re almost done here, but DON’T click log out. Because of how Rapidshare works, as long as you are logged in you can continue to download without clicking the link and logging into your account.

Getting a Download Manager
Since at FHB we try to stay as cross platform as possible, I’m recommending one of the best addon’s you’ll find for Firefox, DownThemAll! DTA! lets you quickly download all the links or images present on a page. It also offers you a comprehensive download manager as well as a host of other options. I suggest you check out our post on DTA! for a full run-down. Regardless, even if you don’t use Rapidshare files, you’ll want to install this addon. There’s no point in using it just yet though as you’ll find that Rapidshare links are often posted as text instead of actual click-able links (referred to as Anchor tags). This is a problem since DTA! can only read actual links, so we’ll need some sort of mediator between the two.

FlashGot (The Mediator)
FlashGot also allows us to highlight links and select download, but it also offers us the handy ability to highlight a selection of text links and select “FlashGot Selection” to download them. This is what allows us one-click access to downloading Rapidshare files. The Problem with FlashGot is, it doesn’t come with its own download manager. It just sets up everything so that another download manager can get use them. When you first start FlashGot it will ask you what download manager you want to use, make sure you slect DownThemAll!. And that’s it, with this addon in tow, we’ve now got an excellent way to download any illegal legal rapidshare files.

Basically when Windows refuses (or unable) to delete file it means that some program is currently working with it and prevents that from happening. So Windows cries “I can’t!” and you have to go and get extra application for what OS is supposed to do on its’ own.

Both Unlocker and FileASSASSIN use same method – they attempt to “unlock” file by removing all related processes and then delete it.

Read the full post here: http://www.rarst.net/software/delete-locked-files-unlocker-vs-fileassassin/