Archive for year 2008
Windows 7 Beta & Nokia N79
Dec 29th
What better way to start new year then to buy a Nokia N79 & trying Windows 7 beta 1
My newest toy…
Windows XP – Tangofied
Dec 23rd
Windows Vista is all the rage these days & with cheap Windows Vista capable hardware available these days, you can very well make your Vista certified PC within Rs 20k. However there are many users out there who are still running old or low end hardware configuration for today’s standards & the herald of Netbooks have sparked another interest in Windows XP as Windows Vista is heavy on the GMA 950 available on most Netbooks out there. This is soon to change with nVidia Ion platform but till then, those using a Netbooks or low end configuration are either stuck with Windows XP or can install Linux.
In my office, I got a workstation running Windows XP SP3, so I decided to make the look & feel a bit more consistence, new & something black…like Vista. Now, instead of going with numerous Vista Shell Packs available, I decided to try something new & decided to go with the Tango Icon theme & something matching to it for Visual Style & Icons because Tango theme is simple on the eyes & easy to work with. They are not 3d Icons, they are all 2D Icons but still they do the work just fine & look good. I found some resources & made some of my own icons etc to make my Office’s Windows XP look like this.
This is how some applications look on my setup
When it comes to Casual Home use, Netbooks or Cyber Café or Office or even schools, users do not need much application to be installed. They just need some application as neither Netbooks are supposed to be uber powerful nor they are supposed to replace a desktop. So for place like this who are still using Windows XP, I decided to make this guide which can give their Computers running Windows XP a new & refreshing look. Keep in mind that I m making this guide strictly for the usage scenario’s I mentioned above. This isn’t some performance or tweaking guide; this is a guide to enhance the look & feel, as well as User Experience of the old & arcane operating system for today’s standards. All the applications mentioned below are free & there is no piracy. The icons are at a maximum size of 48X48 only.
Requirements.
1) A Clean unmodified installation of Windows XP. If you have any previous Shell pack or skin or theme installed, it will be removed. I am assuming that you have a newly installed Windows XP PC.
2) The following downloads…
a. Uxtheme Multipatcher & Luna Elements Black Visual Style for Windows XP
f. Abiword (In case you don’t want to use Microsoft Office or OpenOffice)
h. XNView & Gnome theme
j. CCleaner
k. 7Zip & Tango 7Zip theme, also Tango WinRAR theme if you want to use WinRAR which in my point of view is useless for our use here. You just need to zip & unzip files so for that 7Zip is enough
m. IcoFX. A free software to make your own icons from PNG files
Customization
1) Start by installing Uxtheme Multipatcher & restart Windows. After this, extract the Lune Elements Black zip file & copy the “LE Black” folder to c:\windows\resources\themes. Extract the Segoe UI font & copy it to the Fonts folder. Now apply this skin by simply going to Display properties ->Appearance tab. Now click on advance & set the following fonts to Segoe UI.
a. Active/Inactive Titlebar
b. Icon
c. Menu
2) Now install the Tango Shell Patch for Windows & Install the Tango theme. There are other themes too which you can try. Let it patch the whole system & reboot windows.
For a PC like this, you don’t need many applications if it is a netbook or a cyber café or casual PC. So I will only install some simple & generic Application which are enough for a new or novice user but might help power users too.
1) For torrent client, nothing beats uTorrent for Windows. I prefer to use a portable uTorrent. To do this, just make a folder with any name, anywhere on your Hard disk. Copy uTorrent.exe to this folder, & then copy the content of the following folder to this new Folder.
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\uTorrent
After this, extract the content of the uTorrent theme given above & copy them to this new folder. Now your uTorrent is running in Portable mode with Tango theme & doesn’t need to be installed. You can simply zip it & take it with you anywhere you want.
2) Free download Manager is what it says it is. Install FDM, then extract the content of the FDM theme I gave above in the following folder
C:\Program Files\Download Manager\Skins
Now start FDM, configure it the way you want for speed, default download location etc & go to Tools -> General Settings -> Skins & select Tango from the Combo Box.
3) You can either install Abiword or Openoffice.org suite as you like or Microsoft Office.
4) Download the Tango Firefox theme mentioned above & extract it. Copy the folder to the “extension” folder of your firefox profile folder. After this select to use this theme from tools -> Add ons -> Themes
5) XNView is a free Image browser with some basic editing capability which should be sufficient for any casual user. Install XNView, then copy the XNView theme given above to the “skins” folder Inside the XNView installation folder. After this select this theme from Tools -> options -> Toolbar section -> Skins.
6) I prefer WMP11 but many might prefer something else. For a generic scenario I recommend VLC player as the new version is using Tango Icons. Install VLC Player & associate it with the file types you want. Since it is not your home PC (unless it is a netbook, in which case WMP11 is the way to go), a Library management is not required in most cases but still VLC should be able to do it just fine.
7) For CD Burning try InfraRecorder which already uses Tango Icons.
This does for the application customization for tango theme. You can search for or download many other icons all over the net for various applications as you require.
Is it time for Optical Media to die?
Dec 15th
Since the last few years, I have been buying a new Optical drive almost every year as the tray soon starts to give problem which is the most common problem & the drive isn’t being used much either.
I was thinking, do we really need an optical drive now anymore? Other then Installing Windows on a new computer, I seriously see no use of my Optical drive today at the end of the year 2008. The availability of cheap bandwidth & Torrents has changed the way I get my digital media.
I have a 512kbps BSNL Dataone connection which I m soon upgrading to 1mbps cos I can easily pay the cost of it & the bill will just continue to reduce. Sure it feels good to have a physical movie DVD but I can easily get the same movie or documentary or T.V Show from Torrents or legally through online movie rental stores & save the clutter of multiple physical DVDs.
We can already see how successful Steam has been in selling games online, you download the game to your computer, login using your steam account & you can play the game on any computer. No Anti-Piracy measure required & no need to buy a DVD from store either.
iTunes has been extremely successful in selling music & T.V shows, as well as rented movies through there distribution system with or without DRM. There are other Music stores which are now going DRM free way so you can use your digital media content anywhere. No need to buy a Movie DVD or Audio CD when you can get DRM/DRM free DVD rip/480p H.264 movie under 2.5 GB or Lossless FLAC/Mp3 for Audio off the internet which isn’t that big in Megabytes considering today’s fast Internet Speed.
We can already see how successful Linux Package Managers have been in distributing Software online. Synaptic & Click n Run has been quite successful in just searching for the application & installing it along with all the dependencies automatically.
Microsoft has followed suit & even they are now providing Microsoft Store from where you can buy all Microsoft Products & download them or have them shipped to your doorsteps in Physical form. It won’t be long before they start an iPhone App Store like Application Distribution service for Windows Mobile & the next XBOX may come without an Optical Drive at all.
We are aware of the Virtual harddisk (.vhd) & Disk Image (.dmg) format of Windows & Mac OS, which could meen, digitally secure hard disk images, which can be compressed & distributed off the internet & there is no need to extract the content. Just mount & run the software from it. NFS Undercover can very well be distributed as a Digitally secure VHD file which you can download after you purchase the game from some online Game store & simply double click on the VHD to play. It will mount it somewhre cos basically, it is just another folder with files in it.
The only use in my digital life today for an Optical Media is for backup & archival purpose but even then the Media isn’t very reliable. I can burn 5 DVD rip movies on a Rs 12 DVD or 12 episodes of some T.V show after I m done watching it, but I m still uncertain whether the Media will work after 2 months or not as it is prone to scratches etc & if it is corrupted, then all the data is destroyed.
External Hard disk are getting cheap these days. I can buy a 160 GB Western Digital External HD for as low as Rs 2,500 & store all the game VHD/ISO, movie shows on it, although DVDs are still cheaper. I can get 160 GB worth space in Optical Media under Rs 500 which in case of external hard disk will cost Rs 2,500.
If it is about installing Windows or an OS on a new PC with no OS on it, then we can still do it using Flash Media. Windows Vista can very well be installed through a 4 GB flash drive, after you extract the Vista DVD ISO to a pen drive, make it bootable & set the BIOS to boot from USB drive. Infect, even Windows Vista can be distributed using Right ones Memory Cards or Pen drives so that you can at least install Windows on a new PC. Also, using EFI/Splashtop you don’t even need a Media for installation. Start the EFI, go to your Microsoft Store Shopping cart, download the ISO/VHD to your hard disk as EFI detects the hard disk & install from that VHD after EFI automatically mounts it. Same goes with installing Linux Distribution ISO on a new PC.
Now, I want to ask you all one thing….is it time for Optical Media to die? I mean, seriously, when was the last time you used it & for what.
Help Manual
Nov 13th
Few days ago when in Bangalore, I was looking for an E-Book for Illustrator CS3. I found a CHM file after searching a lot & then only I found that the default CHM Viewer in Windows Vista is still the same one as Windows 2000. On searching online, I found only one CHM Viewer application out there, good enough for what I as a UI Designer & Windows User would want. So I decided to make my own, following the latest trends in designing for Windows Platform.
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Presenting, what I call “Help Manual”. This application is made in simply Winforms but an also be made in WPF. It is simply a CHM & HLP Viewer, nothing else with basic functions that one would want from one such application like zooming the page & still fitting it in the application Window, printing everything using the IE 7’s print view etc. The following mock up was made in Microsoft Blend & edited by Photoshop.
Windows 7 : Where is the future heading?
Sep 24th
Windows 7 is all the rage these days. With Microsoft PDC 2008 just around the corner with the eyes of all third party developers, anti-trust lawyers & fan boys set on it as Microsoft will give the first Beta 1 release to its partner companies to start developing applications & drivers for it.
When Vista was released & Windows 7 start to make noise as some people for no apparent reason declared Vista a failure without even using it, I predicted something that with Windows 7 Microsoft doesn’t need to start fresh to make an OS. What many users don’t realize that Microsoft makes Windows as a platform on which third party developers develop & sale applications. With Vista, Microsoft gave the developers & for the first time, designers a lot of power when it comes to developing & designing applications for Windows.
With .Net 3.0 & now .Net 3.5, developers & designers find it very easy to make applications for Windows. I can’t say about development side as I am a Designer but from my point of view visually designing an application with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 & Microsoft Blend is much better then what we had in past. Microsoft has given WPF, WDDM, WCF. WWF & a plethora of technologies inside Vista due to which at least I don’t call Vista a failure.
Before Vista it was hard to design an application for Windows with good native & fast look & UX but now it is very easy. WPF brings Vector based, resolution independent, GPU accelerated UI to Windows due to which that powerful GPU installed in most of the people’s computer won’t be sitting idle when using just the OS to do something & not playing games. This brings more efficiency to the computing environment when heat & electricity are becoming a growing concern rapidly.
GPGPU is the next big thing & right now the time is absolutely right to make a career in GPU programming. nVidia has already shown with CUDA what level of performance and scalability a GPU can reach if applications are coded with GPGPU support. ATI demonstrated it long back with there AVIVO Video converter which converted H.264 in fraction of time which it usually used to take with CPU based encoding. It won’t be surprising to see Microsoft supporting GPGPU in DirectX 11 or Visual Studio’s next version using which even Software vendor like Adobe can make Photoshop apply filters faster then before because as we all know, a GPU is simply a processor which can do lots of calculations like a CPU as calculation power of a GPU is more then a CPU. It is actually a good thing as right now we have CUDA API only for nVidia cards & ATI’s own Firestream API. With Support from Microsoft in Visual Studio or DirectX, developers can make one code which will run same on both AMD & nVidia hardware instead of coding for 2 APIs.
WPF & Microsoft Blend are already making lots of noise. Designing an application using WPF is easy & fast, also they look cool. I really love that for the first time since the beginning of Windows, Microsoft is paying attention to the user experience & interface making it easy for people to do things on there computer.
.Net 3.5 & soon .net 4.0 will sure be making head turn the Microsoft way. Due to the native code generation & MSIL support, the applications can be made really fast by JIT when installing. Now just imagine the flexibility of .net CLR, the speed JIT brings, the look & feel WPF brings, the secure environment of Managed code & it’s not hard to believe that the future of Windows foundation is upgrading itself to be more solid.
Some people will sure say that Microsoft is going the Linux or Apple way, well…here is the thing. There are only some ways of doing something & Linux/Apple did it before Microsoft, so is it wrong for Microsoft to copy something good? Well, it is copying for sure but to make something better & I myself say….”Redmond start your photocopiers.”
With Windows 7 Microsoft doesn’t need to make a completely new OS. They just need to optimize the code & polish the features of Vista. Even if it is like Windows Vista R2, even then it will be big because with Windows 7, Microsoft will give all those features & speed it ones promised with Vista but wasn’t able to. The foundation technologies are already there in form of WDDM, WPF, Aero, WCF, WWF, Office Technologies, Windows Live Services….they don’t need to code anything new, they just have to optimize what they already have & tweak it.
The reason for the success of Microsoft in the past was that it integrated things & made it easier for the hardware & software developers to work together. As an example, before DirectX we had many 3D API from many different GPU hardware vendors. 3DFX had glide, nVidia/ATI had OpenGL & all of them were not compatible on the same hardware. Now a developer can’t code a game in Glide for 3dfx & then again code it in OpenGL for the rest of the GPU. Microsoft solved this problem with DirectX due to which today it is the de-facto standard when making games for Windows. The developers were now able to make the game in DirectX be assurance that if it runs on Windows, it will run across a wide range of GPU. Microsoft is doing the same thing with Windows 7 & the technologies it gave in form of DirectX 10, XNA & those mentioned above.
