Because the new formal looks good irrespective of the length of posts it means I can regularly post small updates, with large proper blog posts now and then.

As always, you can find my daily ramblings on Twitter.

If you’re interested in it then I encourage you to watch the brief animated video below, it weighs in at roughly 8 minutes and doesn’t go into lots of detail (to keep things simple and understandable for everyone).

Click here to view the embedded video.

The latest EA Newsletter

Geez EA surely you have someone who can do a better reflection than that…

We certainly do at ProActive Software! After Julian took a look at the image, I got it back roughly 2 minutes afterwards…

Julian's two minute fix

Click here to view the embedded video.

Firefox 3 Warning Message

Google Chrome Warning Message

Google Search Warning Message

While this is obviously very bad for Reading cinemas (maybe they should take better care of their site!) it’s great for me personally because it validates the importance I place on secure websites, it’s the type of issue that is becoming startlingly common, large (high traffic) websites that get infiltrated with malicious software.

A big thumbs up to Google & Mozilla for keeping their users safe, if you use Internet Explorer you go straight to the site with no warning or message… no wonder they have a problem with their image as an unsafe browser.

After a couple of checks, Safari & Opera go straight to the page as well, with no warning message or prompt… thumbs down!

Reading Cinemas Website

“Studio light sparked out setting off all the sprinklers in the studio.”

- David Ellis 

Well you can do just that through the use of the + symbol.

There are many special characters that trip up email address’s and the internet in general when used in place of simple text, as a result many sites have added validation to their email forms that may prevent this method from working for you (there’s no harm in trying though!).

When a machine reads your email address it sees {user}@{domain}, if you happen to add a + symbol then it ignores everything after that symbol it until it gets to a symbol it recognizes, you can use this to your advantage by adding notes or messages after the {user} part of your email address.

Whenever you sign up for a web-service or newsletter add their web address into your email address so it would look like {user}+website.com@{domain}, this won’t affect the delivery of the message (it will still get to you), but you will be able to track where they originally got your email address from.

Adding a + to an email address

This works great for newsletters & static mailers, but be wary of using it on services that require you log in with your email address as you’ll need to remember to include the + symbol and the domain you originally used. (as long as you come up with your own standard for how to write email address’s using this method you’ll be fine.)

While this helps you track where people originally found your email address, it won’t stop the email getting through, it’s nice to be able to see where they got your email address though!

The Good

Above all a 404 page should be helpful, you’ve already inconvenienced the user with a page they didn’t want (who’s fault it is doesn’t matter to the user) making sure they get to the content they wanted is what matters.

In my opinion a good 404 page should include the following…

• An apology – It sounds a little silly, but it’s never too late to apologize, you don’t need anything fancy just a simple “I’m sorry the page can’t be displayed”.
• An explanation – Explain to the user why the page can’t be displayed, if it’s a 404 page then obviously it’s because the page can’t be found on the server.
• A list of solutions – Include links that can help the user find what they were looking for … links to the homepage, sitemaps, archives, categories etc

Optionally you can also include some suggestions based on what the user was looking for, whether by checking referring sites, spellchecking the URL etc. Previously this could only be done by the most technologically savvy, recently however Google has updated their webmaster tools to incorporate this exactly functionality.

Log-in to Google Webmaster Tools then go into the site you are creating the 404 page for (the site has to be verified), go into Tools then select “Enhance 404 pages”. While still experimental (it was only made available last week) the final aim is to have other pages on your site suggested to the user based on what they were looking for.

The Bad

As an interesting experiment I thought I would try forcing a 404 page on the top 50 sites according to Quantcast.

• Youtube.com – Default server 404 page, “404 Not Found” in large bold letters. (73M+ U.S. monthly people.)
• Information.com – A blank page… and you call yourself a search engine. (34M+ U.S. monthly people.)
• Go.com – Lets me know they are having an outage, apparently caused by my made up URL. (33M+ U.S. monthly people.)
• Blogger.com – Default server 404 page, “Not Found, Error 404″ in large bold letters. (28M+ U.S. monthly people.)
• Imdb.com – Wow where to begin, first I’m told to sign up for a trial of their paid search service, then I’m told not to contact them about my problem, then I’m told to enter search words in a search box to the left (when it is at the top of the page), then it gives me my server and cookie information. My mother would have no idea what you just said and I find it reprehensible advertising a service on a 404 page. (23M+ U.S. monthly people)
• Bizrate.com – A blank page… (22M+ U.S. monthly people.)
• Shopzilla.com – A blank page… (15M+ U.S. monthly people.)

I’ve only noted sites that stand out as being horrible, there were many cases of redirection (with most happening without alerting the user) and dubious grammer, like live.com “Search for what you’re looking for using the search box above”, while not specifically “bad” they’re not very helpful.

Why should you care?

You should have a useful 404 page because although users generally won’t see it (if you’re lucky), if they can’t find what they want there’s a good chance they’ll just leave the page.

While disabling these features means you are certainly losing some functionality, I am happy to lose it in exchange for the dramatic speed increase on both my Dell laptop and work PC, remember that all these items can be re-enabled at any time.

Visual Effects

I’m constantly surprised by the number of people that never change these settings, they have been adjustable since I can remember (running back through all the version of windows I’ve ever used) and they can have a substantial hit on system performance if you have them all turned on and (like me) have multiple windows open simultaneously.

1. Click into the start menu
2. Right click on “Computer” and select “Properties” from the available options
3. On the left in the tasks pane click “Advanced system settings” (and click continue in the UAC prompt)
4. Click the “settings” button in the “performance” section
5. Select the “Custom:” radio button, then just turn on
   1. Enable desktop composition
   2. Enable transparent glass
   3. Show preview and filters in folder
   4. Show thumbnails instead of icons
   5. Show translucent selection rectangle
   6. Show window contents while dragging
   7. Smooth-edges of screen fonts
   8. Use a background image for each folder type
   9. Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop
   10. Use visual styles on windows and buttons
6. Click OK
7. Click OK

And you’re done!

Realistically if you want to get the best performance possible you could also turn off some additional options like transparent glass & thumbnails, but I find them useful so I’ve left them on.

Indexing

Indexing is a great feature for a lot of home users, it’s what makes Windows search so snappy, it works the same as Google Desktop by creating a large database (or Index) of all the files on your computer so that when you search for an item it can quickly search the database instead of having to manually search over every file in your system.

While it is great for a lot of users, the only thing I use search for is to find items in the start menu quickly (which really doesn’t require an index), and disabling indexing can make your system both noticeably faster and quicker to boot.

Just be aware that disabling indexing also impacts the search speed if you’re using Outlook 2007, searching in the quicksearch bar at the top of your email list will no longer use a database.

1. Click into the start menu
2. Right click on “Computer” and select “Manage” from the available options (then click continue in the UAC prompt)
3. In the left pane double-click “Services and Applications” then click “Services”
4. Scroll down the list to “Windows Search”, Right click it and select “Properties” from the available options
5. Click “Stop” to stop the service, then change the “Startup type:” to Disabled using the drop-down list
6. Click Ok

If you have Nero 7 (or newer) installed then you can disable Nero’s Cache as well

1. Scroll down the list to “NMIndexingService”, Right click it and select “Properties” from the available options
2. Click “Stop” to stop the service, then change the “Startup type:” to Disabled using the drop-down list
3. Click Ok

Offline Files

If you don’t use Offline Files (where you can have a local cache of a network folder etc) then you can disable it completely, otherwise just set it to manually start (when required instead of automatically).

1. Scroll down the list to “Offline Files”, Right click it and select “Properties” from the available options
2. Click “Stop” to stop the service, then change the “Startup type:” to Disabled or Manually using the drop-down list
3. Click Ok

ReadyBoost

Readyboost lets you plug a USB stick or other removable media into the PC to act as additional RAM, if you don’t use it then you can either disable it completely or set it to manually start (when required instead of automatically).

1. Scroll down the list to “ReadyBoost”, Right click it and select “Properties” from the available options
2. Click “Stop” to stop the service, then change the “Startup type:” to Disabled or Manually using the drop-down list
3. Click Ok

SuperFetch

SuperFetch monitors which applications you use the most and pre-loads these into your system memory on startup so they load faster when you need to use them, this is great for people with a lot of ram, but on computers with less ram (laptops especially) this can have a big hit on system performance.

1. Scroll down the list to “SuperFetch”, Right click it and select “Properties” from the available options
2. Click “Stop” to stop the service, then change the “Startup type:” to Disabled using the drop-down list
3. Click Ok

You can now close the Computer Management window.

A Less Annoying UAC

While the UAC (User Account Control) is great in concept (asking user permission for every large system decision) the fact that it elevates the prompt to a secure desktop ends up getting annoying having to wait for the darkened screen to come up.

The reason for it going to the heightened desktop is a simple one, increased security, because it means a program can’t spoof the pop-up (because it doesn’t have access to the heightened desktop).

What I do is disable the secure desktop but still leave UAC turned on, so instead of seeing a darkened screen with a prompt overlaying everything, the prompt just appears like a normal dialogue box. While you are more at risk of a Shatter Attack (where malware fakes a UAC prompt) because you don’t have that extra level of security, it doesn’t bother me at all, I like to think I’m above randomly clicking prompts not knowing what they are prompting me for.

1. Click into the start menu
2. In the search bar, type “Local Security Policy” then click the program (and click continue in the UAC prompt)
3. Double click “Local Policies” in the left pane
4. Click “Security Options”
5. Scroll down the list to “User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation”, double click the option then select the “Disabled” radio button
6. Click Ok

You can now close the Local Security Policy window.

I have done all of these on my own machine with no ill effects, remember any of these settings can be changed at any time so don’t be afraid to change them.