Pazdziernik II

Facebook with HTTPS

I recently learned that Facebook added the option of using HTTPS. HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP, the dominant and near-universal protocol for internet data transfer. Basically by using HTTPS, all messages will be encrypted when enabled.

To help make Facebook more secure, the site is introducing a new encryption option that uses the same security technology that shopping sites employ to keep hackers from seeing credit card numbers.

To turn on secure Facebook browsing, log in to Facebook and click on Account in the upper right corner. Select Account Settings. On that page near the bottom, click on Account Security. If the new option has been made available to your account, the first option at the top will be Secure Browsing (https). Click that, then hit the blue Save button just below it. You’re done.

HTTPS is not unbreakable, but cracking it is far more work than anyone is likely to do.

Source: N.Y. Times Blog

Microsoft Security Essentials

Recently, Microsoft released Microsoft Security Essentials a free anti-virus package for Windows XP, Vista and 7. Any computer should have a good anti-virus package installed. Here is the download link. It is free. It is from Microsoft. Give it a try! 

Tags: Microsoft Security Essentials, Microsoft

Lynda: Online training

Lynda.com is an online training library resource that I have been using for about a month now ($25/month is one of their plans.) They offer very good tutorials on software applications and operating systems like Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and so forth), Windows XP, Windows Vista, Photoshop and many others. The tutorials vary in length. Windows XP is 4 hours. Windows Vista is 12 hours. Fortunately, once you sign-up you can view them in bite-sized chunks like 8 or 10 minutes. (And the site records which ones you have viewed.)

Learning a new software program or operating system can be intimidating and surely time consuming. Reading a large book to come up to speed on Windows Vista, for example, can be discouraging to the point of calling off the pursuit alltogether until one is forced to use it. So, I will be viewing the Lynda tutorial on Windows Vista in the near future and taking notes. When my company transitions to Windows Vista I will already have a leg-up!

My present company refused to reinburse me for the $25 fee to take one of these online tutorials from Lynda.com. It was software that I needed to use for work! Well, I finished the original tutorial and am continuing to take advantage of others.

Lynda appears to have a good niche in education and training. I have no personal gain by promoting Lynda.com. (Disclosure: I do not work for them and I do not know anyone who works for them on a personal level. I am unaware if I have a mutual fund with Lynda included.) However, I do recommend that you give Lynda.com a look. Some sample tutorials are available for free as well. These come in the form of partial lessons of the full-length course.

Silverlight

Microsoft’s WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) technology was recently re-named to Silverlight. Re-branding usually causes confusion and Microsoft seems to be really good at it. Silverlight is an RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology that is run in the browser. Browser plug-ins for Explorer, Safari and others are available here. Be sure to check the system requirements before you download the plug-in (Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista, Mac OS X).

It appears that WPF for the desktop (non-browser) will still be called WPF. After you load the browser plug-in you can sample some demonstrations from Microsoft’s Silverlight Community Page. Silverlight looks like it has a good future since, in part, it will be promoted and supported by Microsoft.

Tags: Silverlight, WPF, WPF/E, Microsoft, RIA

ClearType

Technology “advances” but technology does not always improve. Some technology like the Edison light bulb —about 125 years old — has not greatly improved. As we all know these are still in use, although we now have compact fluorescents that supposedly will someday almost completely replace Thomas Edison’s successful invention.

Telephone technology has “advanced” as well. However, cell telephones are notoriously less reliable than the tethered landline predecessors. Computer displays, likewise, have “advanced” from the big honkin’ CRT tubes to flat LCD panels on the desktop and in nearly all notebook computers. However their quality of displaying text, especially, is surely not an improvement. I have been disappointed and “frustrated” with their text quality. But no more….

ClearType is a sub-pixel rendering technology that helps with the quality of text on LCD displays. It will not benefit CRT displays. I recently discovered ClearType —where have I been all this time?— and am pleased with the results.

ClearType will be automatically enabled in Windows Vista, although it was an option available in Windows XP.

To maximize the benefits of ClearType, Windows Vista features new typefaces specifically designed to take advantage of the way ClearType works. The resulting six fonts — Constantia, Cambria, Corbel, Calibri, Candara, and Consolas — all ship with Windows Vista and take screen readability to a new level.
(Windows Vista Product Guide 2007)

The LCD display must be set to its “native resolution” for ClearType’s effects to manifest themselves.

Here’s how to enable ClearType in Windows XP:

Start->Settings->Control Panel->Display->Appearance->Effects
Select “standard" or "ClearType"

To enable a similar technology on an Apple Mac OS X computer:

Apple menu-> System Preferences->Appearance
You'll see "Font smoothing style:" in the window.
Choose "Medium - Best for Flat Panel" from the dropdown menu.

Give ClearType or "Font Smoothing" (if your have MAC OS X) a try. Things "easy on the eyes" are a good idea, no?

Photo: © Djordje Korovljevic
Tags: ClearType, Windows XP, Windows Vista

WPF/E

Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) is the new Rich Internet Application (RIA) technology from Microsoft. RIA is the current “future” of the internet whereby more applications will be run directly within your browser rather than a browser constantly having to fetch and load web pages for updating. Current RIA technology like Flash and Java has been around for a while for the browser. Other RIA and related technologies like Flex, AJAX and others are quickly gaining in popularity for new development.

RIA technology is not limited to the browser. Desktop applications will be built with these technologies as well. However, browsers like Internet Explorer or Safari require particular plug-in modules for their use. The WPF plug-in, WPF/E, is no exception. WPF/E began to be offered this month offered as a Community Technology Preview (CTP) from Microsoft.

I’m certainly not an evangelist for a particular technology. (Those who are experts in a particular technology and "hawk" them are indeed called evangelists in the software industry.) But if you want to view what WPF/E has to offer you can check out some of the demos listed below —and have some fun — after you have installed your WPF/E browser plug-in. (You will have to re-start your browser after the install and have administrator privileges.) WPF is pretty cool and looks like it has a promising future since it will be sure to be aggressively supported and promoted by Microsoft: "better web experience", "consistent architecture" and the like.

Download WPF/E Versions

Safari 2.0+ and Firefox 1.5.0.8+ on MAC OSX 10.4.8

Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 1.5.0.8+ and 2.0+ on Windows Vista

Internet Explorer 6 and 7 and Firefox 1.5.0.8+ and 2.0+ on Windows XP/SP2

The WPF/E download will expire on June 1, 2007 after which you will probably be directed to download a new version. There may be plug-ins available for other browsers not listed above. You'll have to search for yourself.

WPF/E Demos

Page Turn
Video Library
Sprawl (An interesting game)
Sleek Video Player
Filmstrip

Maybe I'll try my hand at a WPF/E banner for this blog...

Update April 26,2007: Microsoft recently re-named WPF/E (Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere) to Silverlight.

Image: From WPF/E "Page Turn" demo
Tags: WPF/E, Windows Presentation Foundation, Rich Internet Applications, RIA , Silverlight

Office 2007

Microsoft’s new version of Windows, called Vista and a new version of Office, Office 2007, will debut on January 30th. I’m a “Mac guy”, so I’m not too excited about Vista —although I will eventually have to use it at the workplace, I suppose. However, I am interested in the re-design of Office which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. (A “Mac version” of Office 2007 should be available later this year.)

Walter S. Mossberg offered a preview of Office 2007 in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal : Bold Redesign Improves Office 2007 (January 7, 2007). Mossberg describes the Office 2007 re-design as “radical” and one that “requires a steep learning curve that many people might rather avoid”.

The entire user interface, the way you do things in these familiar old programs, has been thrown out and replaces with something new. In Word, Excel and PowerPoint, all of the menus are gone —every one. None of the familiar toolbars have survived, either. In their place is a wide, tabbed band of icons at the top of the screen called the Ribbon. And there is no option to go back to the classic interface.

Not all who use Office products are computer professionals or savvy technical-types. For such a widely-used product that requires a “steep learning curve”, an option to revert to a “classic” presentation would surely have been welcome.

Nevertheless, Mossberg sees this re-design as an “improvement”:

After months of working with the Ribbon and other new features of Office, I believe they are an improvement. They replace years of confusing accretions with a logical layout of commands and functions. They add easy and elegant new options for making documents look good. And they make it much simpler to find many of the 1,500 commands,. That Office offers, but had buried in the past.

Fortunately, Microsoft’s office 2007 will maintain same commands for “power users”.

For people who mostly control Office via keyboard commands, and rarely use menus and toolbars, all of the basic keyboard commands are the same.

A “learning curve”, steep or not, is expected with any re-design, but more “radical” will be Microsoft’s change in file format.

Microsoft has also changed the standard file format for Office files. Older versions of Office, on both Windows and Macintosh computers, won’t be able to read these new file types without special conversion software. The new version can, however, read files created in the older versions, on both Windows and Mac, without any conversion software.

Wow, a file format change. Supposedly, these format changes will result in smaller file sizes. With abundant memory these days I’m not so sure this is a significant benefit. Without an upgrade to Office 2007, expect eventual “headaches” and frustration.

Luckily, you can set up Office 2007 to ignore the new formats and save your files in the old formats to be read without any conversion software. But some new formatting features may not be usable in the old formats.

Free conversion software is available at office.Microsoft.com . Click on the Downloads tab and select Microsoft Office File Formats Compatibility Pack.

Brace yourself. Significant changes are ahead for Microsoft users.

Photo: “Working at home” © Lise Gagne
Tags: Microsoft, Office 2007, Walter Mossberg