HTMLCenter Web Development Blog

How The Scroll Wheel Should Work in Windows

Curtiss — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:25:39 +0000

I spend about half of my time on the computer working in Linux and the other half of my time working in Windows. As such, I have picked up a few habits about the way I have my computer set up and the way I use my computer. One of the great features of Linux (also present on Macs, apparently) is the way the scroll wheel on the mouse works. I would love to see this functionality added to Windows.

Within Windows, if you have a window focused and you use the scroll wheel, that action is going to have a single action attached to it. It will almost always (except for a select few programs) scroll the window frame up and down. If you are working within Outlook, whichever frame of the window you are focused in will scroll up and down, no matter where the mouse pointer is located on the screen. That’s all the scroll wheel will do.

However, in Linux, the scroll wheel will do all sorts of things depending on where the mouse pointer is located when you touch the scroll wheel.

Switch between windows – If the scroll wheel is on the taskbar, hovered over the window’s entry in the taskbar, the scroll wheel will switch back and forth between the open windows.
Switch between workspaces – Linux and Mac computers allow users to set up multiple “workspaces” (also known as desktops). It’s similar to setting up multiple monitors, but you only need a single monitor to make it work. When you are viewing one workspace, all of the other workspaces are hidden. You can then switch between workspaces. Using the scroll wheel while hovering the mouse pointer over the workspace switcher will switch between workspaces.
Switch between tabs – If you are using a Web browser that supports “tabs” (as do most modern graphical browsers), you can hover the mouse pointer over the tab area and use the scroll wheel to quickly switch between your open tabs.
Scroll vertically – This is the standard behavior of the scroll wheel. You scroll forward with the scroll wheel, and the window’s scroll bar will move up. Scroll backwards with the scroll wheel and the window’s scroll bar will move down. However, one big difference between Linux and Windows is that the scroll wheel will effect whichever of the window’s frames you are hovering. For instance, if you are using Evolution (a Linux program similar to Outlook), you’ll generally have at least two frames within the window that need to scroll up and down. On the left side, you’ll have the list of folders and e-mail accounts you have set up. On the right side, you’ll have the list of messages in the current folder. In many cases, you’ll even have a third frame above or below the message list with a preview of the selected message. Even if you are currently working within the list of messages, if you hover your mouse pointer over the list of folders and use the scroll wheel, the list of folders will move up and down. If you were to do the same thing in Outlook, the list of messages would move up and down instead of the list of folders.
Scroll horizontally – If you are using an application that has horizontal scroll bars, you can use the scroll wheel to scroll horizontally, as well. All you need to do is place your mouse pointer in the horizontal scroll bar, and the scroll wheel automatically realizes you want to scroll left and right rather than scrolling up and down.

One more great thing about the way the scroll wheel works in Linux is the fact that a window doesn’t have to have focus in order for the scroll wheel to work within it. Wherever your mouse pointer is pointing, the scroll wheel will effect that area. So, if I have two documents open side-by-side, and I am currently typing in the one on the left; if I place my mouse pointer over the document on the right, the scroll wheel will scroll that document up and down rather than scrolling the left one.

It would be really nice if Windows had these features. I have seen a handful of programs available that implement one or two of these features, but I’ve not seen anything that does it all.

Using Zune Within VirtualBox

Curtiss — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 02:30:48 +0000

Since the Zune 4 software was released, I have been using it fairly exclusively as my media player when using Windows. I really enjoy using the software, and I like the way it tracks and shares my recent plays. In the spirit of Xbox “achievements,” the Zune social system even issues “badges” once you’ve listened to a specific artist enough times.

Unfortunately, however, the Zune software is only available for Windows, and I use Linux about 99% of the time on my home computer. I do, however, have Windows XP installed as a VirtualBox guest so I can use Windows programs like Photoshop, Internet Explorer 6 (for Web development testing), etc. I thought it would be simple to use the Zune software inside of that VirtualBox. I was wrong.

Apparently, the Zune software will not recognize media files stored in a VirtualBox shared folder. When you attempt to play the files, you will most likely receive an error stating that the file couldn’t be played, and that it might have been moved.

I have found a few posts online indicating that this problem also occurs in Windows Media Player when using the same set up. I’m not sure if it applies to Windows Media Center or not.

Last night, I decided to head to Google to see if could find an answer to this problem. I found a lot of people experiencing the same problem, but it took me a while to find anyone offering a valid solution. Finally, I came across a post on the VirtualBox community forums that, in turn, linked to a post in the Ubuntu community forums explaining how to setup and use a Samba share from your Linux host to your Windows VirtualBox guest.

Because I do not have a static IP configured on my machine, I used the instructions that explain how to use the Samba share with WINS disabled in your XP guest. It is important to note that, when the tutorial says to “Type \\\MyFiles”, the ip-address indicated in that statement is the IP address of your machine on your local network. To find that in Linux, you will most likely need to type “ifconfig” in the terminal and look for your “inet addr.” This will most likely not be the IP address provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP).

When you mount the folder as a mapped network drive in your Windows guest (this might just be applicable if you do not use WINS), you should click the link that says “Connect using a different username.” Then, when the user dialog appears, enter the username and password from your Linux host.

Once I followed all of the instructions in the post, I fired up the Zune software, clicked the “Settings” link in the top-right corner of the program and clicked “Add Folder” next to “Music” under “Monitored Folders.” I added the music directory from my newly mapped drive and clicked OK. The Zune software started finding all of my media immediately. I then started playing some of the files (as, even when it was not working properly, it still added the media, it just told me the files couldn’t be played) and everything seems to work perfectly.

Then, to test further, I closed out the Zune software and re-opened it. I played some more files and they still worked great. Finally, to ensure that everything was set up correctly, I restarted my Windows guest to make certain that the mapped drive would be remapped on restart. The drive was remapped properly, but for some reason the Zune software didn’t see my files again. I opened My Computer and then opened the mapped drive and found that it prompted me for my password again. Once I entered my password, I was able to get the Zune software working again. It seems that each time I restart my Windows guest, I will need to open the mapped drive and enter my password in order to use the Zune software, but that’s still a lot better than it was before.

My next step is to attempt to sync my Zune using the VirtualBox setup, but I’m not holding out much hope right now. In the past when I’ve done that, it’s been extremely unreliable. If I do get it working and figured out, I’ll try to share it here.

Seesmic Desktop Adds Support for Twitter Lists

Curtiss — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:41:17 +0000

Among the Twitter clients I occasionally use, Seesmic Desktop is the first to add support for Twitter lists. At this time, the lists feature is only available to those that are subscribed the Seesmic mailing list, but the are available and appear to be working. I suspect it won’t be long before we see the public release of this version of Seesmic.

Hopefully we’ll start seeing some of the other popular Twitter clients for desktops and mobile phones begin to release versions that support Twitter lists. On the other hand, I have to admit that I don’t yet understand all of the hype over Twitter lists.

Wordpress MU 2.8.5 Released

Curtiss — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:23:20 +0000

For those of you that may not have noticed, yet, Wordpress MU has updated to version 2.8.5. Recently, Wordpress MU has been making great progress in following closely behind Wordpress in its release schedule. If you are running Wordpress MU on your site, please make sure to upgrade to the new version.

With Wordpress MU, you can easily login to your administrative control panel and update all of your blogs with a few simple clicks of the mouse. Once you login, you’ll see a notification at the top of the screen informing you that Wordpress MU 2.8.5.2 is available, along with a link to update your installation.

Once you have backed up your WPMU database and all of your WPMU files, you can simply click “Upgrade Automatically” button to quickly and easily update your WPMU installation.

Wordpress Launches Plugin Compatibility Checker

Allen — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:54:54 +0000

Everytime blog software provider Wordpress launches a new version, there’s always talk that people are afraid to upgrade because of compatibility issues with the plugins they use. Most worry that their Wordpress installation will break after the upgrade.

Wordpress security guru Mark Jaquith has posted on the Wordpress blog about a new “plugin compatibility tester”. Mark notes, “As part of our continuing efforts to make WordPress core, plugin, and theme upgrades as painless as possible, Michael Adams developed and launched a beta of a new “Compatibility” feature in the plugin directory, powered by your votes. When viewing a plugin in the directory, select a WordPress version and a plugin version from the drop-downs. If there has been feedback about this WordPress / plugin version combination, we’ll show you what percentage of responses marked that combination as compatible vs how many marked it as incompatible.”

The information from the voting is also included in the Wordpress API. Now the key is getting enough people to vote to make the responses accurate. Perhaps if they add the voting mechanism into the plugin page inside of the Wordpress install, that might help get more people to vote.

Brizzly Gets Facebook Integration

Curtiss — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 02:08:46 +0000

Brizzly, a really nice Web-based Twitter client, integrated Facebook into its interface today. Now, in addition to being able to manage multiple Twitter accounts (I currently have three), you can add your Facebook account to the application.

Within Brizzly, you can watch your news feed and your wall. What’s really nice, though, is that Brizzly also allows you to keep track of your recent activity on Facebook. I don’t know about you, but a lot of times, when I comment on someone’s wall post or status update on Facebook, by the time they see it and reply, it’s disappeared from my news feed so I have trouble finding it again. With Brizzly’s new interface, finding that conversation is just a click away.

If you haven’t tried Brizzly yet, I do have a handful of invitations available for those that are interested. Just leave a comment here and I’ll send the invitation to the e-mail address you use with your comment.

Friendfeed Fail

Curtiss — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:25:17 +0000

Amid much conversation about whether or not Friendfeed has a future and how it’s supposedly being abandoned in droves, I’ve experienced the first major failure of the service since I started using it (thanks to @holdenpage) a few months ago. The service has been down for at least 30 minutes at the time of writing this post. Despite Paul Buchheit (one of the creators of Friendfeed) posting about server upgrades and potential updates over the last few weeks, attempting to load Friendfeed results in a standard timeout error.

I can’t help but wonder if this outage has anything to do with the fact that some Friendfeed features were unveiled on Facebook earlier this week (the new “Live Feed”). I’m hoping it’s just a random outage, but am not holding my breath. I have come to love and appreciate the community over at Friendfeed, and would hate to see the service die such an unceremonious death.

Here’s to Friendfeed, and hoping it comes back soon. Until then, I guess I’ll have to find something in real life to keep me occupied.

A Fond Farewell to Geocities

Curtiss — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 02:10:58 +0000

Today marked the end of an era, as Yahoo! finally put the classic free host Geocities out of its misery. Although Geocities has become the butt of many an Internet-related joke over the years, I guarantee that the world would be a very different place today had Geocities never existed. First of all, many Web developers and designers got their start with one of the free sites offered by Geocities. In addition, I’m almost certain that sites like MySpace (and, as a result, Facebook) would have never been conceived had the idea not begun with Geocities.

I hopped on the Geocities bandwagon shortly after it began back in 1994 (I might have joined in 95, but I know it was still the early days of the service). They offered a great jumping off point for anyone interested in learning HTML. For the time, they offered fantastic free hosting (complete with the ability to run certain CGI scripts) and had some amazing tutorials and tools available to help put together your own Web site.

It has been many years since I used the service (I actually left around the time they were acquired by Yahoo! – mainly because I had begun using space from some paid accounts I was managing). However, I will always be grateful to Geocities for giving me an avenue to begin learning the trade that now pays my bills.

Now, without further ado, you can view parts of my original Geocities Web site (I stopped maintaining it about ten years ago), complete with a scrolling marquee, big ugly gif bullets and frames by checking it out on the Internet Wayback Machine. You can also check out the terribly inaccessible online literary magazine I maintained for a short time with another Geocities account.

The “good” news for everyone is that, for some reason, Tripod and AngelFire (two of Geocities biggest competitors back in the day) are apparently still up and running; though they’re both provided by Lycos.

SQL Buddy Offers an Ajax-y PhpMyAdmin

Allen — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 17:43:47 +0000

A new way to connect to your databased launched late last year. Named SQL Buddy, the software was downloaded over 20,000 times when the developer reported on the stats back in January. While PhpMyAdmin works well, it does feel a lot like 1985. SQL Buddy appears to be a more Web 2.0, Ajax-friendly version.

I use Navicat which is super powerful but runs as a local client only. SQL Buddy runs on your server which means it can be accessed from anywhere. SQL Buddy is free and is distributed under an open source MIT-style license.

eduCheckup – Grading Higher Ed Web Sites

Curtiss — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 02:59:31 +0000

I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight a Web site I’ve been enjoying for the last few months. Nick DeNardis recently celebrated the one year anniversary of his video blog series “eduCheckup.” A few times a week, Nick visits a site that’s either been suggested by his users or that he’s found on eduStyle, and then reviews that site with a unique outside perspective. He evaluates the visual appeal, the quality and accessibility of information and the quality of the source code. He then averages the scores he’s given in each category and provides a letter grade (like you’d get in school) for the overall presentation.

In addition to grading the site, he offers small tips throughout his videos explaining how the site could be improved and then offers a “tip of the day” to help other Web designers and developers in the future. Sometimes his “tip of the day” is a kudos to something the site has done well and other times his tip is a reaction to something that’s been done poorly.

Although the eduCheckup series focuses on higher education Web sites, there are valuable lessons to be learned for all Web developers and designers. I hope you will take the time to visit eduCheckup and check out some of the archive episodes. I think you’ll find something really special. At the very least, you should enjoy the fast-talking, energetic host.