SimplyGold

Whenever I do a squeaky-clean install of Windows XP (which seems to be at least once a month grr), there are always applications/additions/extensions/what have you that I add right away. I was recently contemplating yet another reinstall and, in making the list, thought it might be a good idea to put them down here so I don't have to go chasing after these links when I need them in case people don't know about (some of) them.

10. Alt-Tab Replacement

A Power-Toy from Microsoft, it shows you a thumbnail preview of the running applications when you press ALT+TAB (normally, you just get a small icon). This is especially useful if you're one of those people who have twenty applications running at the same time. ;-)

9. ColorPic

Probably useful only for Graphics Designers and Web Designers. It allows you to pick colors from anywhere on the screen. It gives you the color values in RGB, HSV, and hexadecimal (used for web); it even tells you what web-safe color is nearest to the color that you picked (all though I typically don't use this option all that much). Here's a link.

8. iTunes

I doubt I'm going to have to do any explaining, so I won't. ;-)

7. FileZilla or SmartFTP

FTP Clients. I used both of them, and both are good, fast, and realiable, but I have a slight preference for FileZilla over Smart FTP Client. Also, FileZilla is free whereas Smart FTP Client is a shareware. Which one you use ultimately depends on your personal tastes. Link to FileZilla. Link to Smart FTP Client.

6. ClamWin and WindowsDefender

Both are free virus-scanner for Windows; the latter is from Microsoft and still in beta. Link to ClamWin. Link to Windows Defender. While you're at it, grab Spybot – Search & Destroy too.

5. Cropper

Screenshot utility. Before Cropper, making a screenshot meant going through the tedious task of hitting Print Screen (which grabs the whole screen), and cropping it in Photoshop (which doesn't exactly have the fastest startup time). Trust me, Cropper is way better.

4. Firefox or Flock (or both)

There isn't much to say about Firefox other than it rocks (most of the time). However, I've grown very fond of Flock, despite the fact that I rarely ever use its features (built-in photo management and blog-posting among others). It definitely has a better default UI/theme than Firefox.

3. Process Explorer

This is possibly (probably?) of interest only to more technically-inclined people, but all the same, Process Explorer from Sysinternals is an indespensible tool when it comes to digging up information about all the processes running on your computer, and oh so much better than Windows Task Manager.

2. WindowsBlinds or StyleXP

The default themes you get with Windows are ugly. (Fortunately, Microsoft seems to be going in the right direction with Vista.) WindowsBlinds and StyleXP allow you to install themes and turn your atrocious environment into something you just might like looking at every morning.

(StudioTwentyEight's Tiger 2 Visual Style is quite excellent for all Mac-look enthusiasts out there.)

1. ClearType Tuner

Power-Toy from Microsoft. I found this little gem six months ago, installed it, turned it on, and never looked back.

Windows XP Only.

Creating thumbnails out of screenshots is possibly my most mind-numbingly boring and time-consuming task when writing a blog post. I recently found a neat trick to make this mostly painless: 1. Open the folder where you saved your image. 2. Right-click on the image and select Resize Pictures from the context menu.

1. Choose the size (you can specify a "custom size" as well) you want and click OK.

The clarity of the resized picture is surprisingly clear.

**Update: ** Actually, to be able to do this, you need the ImageResizer PowerToy from Microsoft.

Download the icons

One of these days, I'm going to figure out how to transform a Windows icon file into a Mac and a Linux icon file, but until that time...

Enjoy! :-D

I’m a converted iTunes junkie. The last time I’ve opened Windows Media Player was, like, in the Dark Ages. Nothing wrong with the player, but its user interface is horrendous, especially when compared to the simple elegance of iTunes.

But I just might get converted back to Windows Media Player. Microsoft finally released the Windows Media Player 11 Beta, and I have to say, I’m impressed. :-)

Source: Microsoft

Here’s a link to the Windows Media Player 11 Beta download for those of you who want to play with it.

Today, we’re going to learn such vitally important things as changing the folder icons in Windows XP. And no, you don’t actually need to install 3rd party applications to tweak your icons. You just need to know where to go to change most of the icons; changing the default folder icon, however, is a bit more complicated, but not much.

Let’s start with the easy part:

Changing Desktop Icons

Right click on your My Computer icon and select Properties. Go to the Desktop tab and click the Customize Desktop button (below the list of wallpapers you can choose for your background). As might be self-evident from the screen, you basically click on each unhappy icon in the middle, click the Change Icon button and point the file browser to the proper location of your new happy icon.

Changing Other Icons

What if you want to change the Microsoft Word Document icon or your mp3 icon or maybe even your open folder icon? It’s very easy. Double click on your My Computer folder (or practically any other folder, for that matter). Go to Tools » Folder Options » File Types. Once again what you need to do is rather obvious. If you scroll down the list of the registered files, you find that there’s practically everything in there, including the open folder one and the normal folder one. To change the icon, you basically do the same thing you do above: click the icon that you want to change, click the Advanced button, click the Change Icon button in the dialog that pops up and point to your new icon.

Changing the Default Folder Icon

If you tried to follow the method mentioned just above this paragraph to change the default folder icon, you might have noticed that the method…err, failed. For some odd reason, Windows doesn’t give you an easy way to change the default folder icon, which kind of sucks, because I rather dislike the default folder icon. It looks particularly ugly when compared to all my new icons. So, after some researching and much head-banging, I found out that there was a pretty easy way to change the default folder icon.

Open up your registry editor(Start » Type in "regedit" in the textbox of the dialog that pops up). Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Windows / Current Version / Explorer / Shell Icons. Find the registry file called 3. Right-click on it and select Modify in the menu. Type in the path to the location of your new icon, click OK, and restart the computer. That’s it! You have a new default folder icon. (Sometimes, though, you might need to refresh the icon cache for your new icon to turn up.)

Repairing Corrupted Registry File (If It Gets Corrupted, That Is)

As I was doing this, however, I encountered a strange problem — whenever I double-clicked on a folder, instead of opening the folder, Windows opened the search page instead?? Bizarre. I thought I had unrepairably screwed my operating system until I found out that sometimes the responsible registry gets corrupted. The site provides a fix [.vbs file] and how to go about using said file, but in case you don’t want to run the file, you can also repair your registry file manually:

Open up your registry editor (Start » Type in "regedit" in the textbox of the dialog that pops up). Navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/Directory/shell. Now right-click on the Default registry file you can see in the right panel and select Modify from the menu. For the Value Data, set the value to be none. This worked for me.

Now, if this tutorial means that you’ve run out of excuses to not go icon-hunting…