How To Restore The Menu Bar In Vista And Windows 7

In older versions of Windows, the menu bar was always visible in Explorer. In Vista and Windows 7 the menu bar is now hidden by default, and you must press the ALT key to see it. These simple steps will cause it to always be visible.
(The “menu bar” gives you the familiar File | Edit | View |Tools | Help ‘drop down’ menus)

1) Launch Explorer by opening Computer (or Documents, or Pictures..), then press ALT to access the menu bar.

2) Click on Tools and then on Folder options.

3) In the Folder Options window, click on the View tab, and click to place a check in Always show menus.

4) Click on Apply and then OK.

That’s it. You’re done. (Should you decide you prefer the “more screen real estate” no menu bar look, simply repeat the steps and un-check the box.)

Today’s quotable quote: “Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile.” ~ Mary Beard

Today’s free download: (an “oldie but a goodie”) It has been a while since I have mentioned one of my fave little computer protection apps – WinPatrol.

Clean up your Taskbar, ActiveX, Brower and Startup programs. WinPatrol monitors and exposes adware, keyloggers, spyware, worms, cookies, and other malicious software. This program puts you back in control of your computer with no need for constant updates.
Download WinPatrol 20.5.2011 (Window XP, Vista, Windows 7 including x64 support)

Have a great weekend everybody!

Copyright 2007-2011 © “Tech Paul” (Paul Eckstrom). All Rights Reserved.

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Vista’s Photo Gallery Feature

Quick & Easy Photo Editing Tool Also A Free Download

Do you like one-click simple? Do you like free? Are you tired of Mac fanatics smugly telling you how great iLife is? Do you ever e-mail photos, and need to do a little touching-up (cropping, maybe) first?

If you answered “yes” to one of these questions, you might find the “Media Center” program Photo Gallery to be just the ticket, and if you have a Vista machine or XP Media Center Edition, you already have this neat little app at the click of your Start button — it’s built-in.
(I use the crop, and 1-click red-eye removal the most..)

• Enhance your photos
  Enhance your photos by adjusting things like color and exposure. Improve your photos with simple crop and red-eye fixes. Create a panoramic view by combining multiple photos. Capture the moment by adding captions.
• Easily share your photos
  The “Publish” button makes it simple to share your photos and videos online. Or you can easily e-mail as many photos as you’d like to friends and family. You can also display your photos with cool screensavers and slideshows.
• Quickly find and organize your photos and videos
  Import your photos from your digital camera; the Windows Live Photo Gallery will automatically organize them based on date and time. Keep your images organized by name, date, rating, and type. Locate similar photos with tags you add.
• Download photo albums
  Photo Gallery allows you to download entire albums from Windows Live Spaces at high resolution.

If you aren’t using one of those two OS’s, you can download the program. It is one part of Microsoft’s line of “Live” services. I wrote about Microsoft “Live” previously, to read that article click here. Also, if you’re curious about what else is offered (free) as part of “Live”, please read fellow Tech blogger Rick Robinette’s vignette, Windows Live…

This screenshot shows the photo editing mode. You can see that there’s a 1-click “auto-adjust”, and a 1-click red-eye removal, as well as a 1-click Undo. There are more ‘advanced’ color and contrast adjustments as well.
The bottom controls are for the built-in slideshow feature, and rotate (useful in folder view, after an import.)

This program is one of the ‘enhancements’ in Vista that most everyone can appreciate and make use of. It’s quick. It’s basic. And, I think that it’s fairly decent of Microsoft to make it freely available for download.

Today’s free download: Windows Photo Gallery. Simplify the way you work with photos.  Windows Live Photo Gallery makes it easy to import, organize, edit, and share your digital memories.

Copyright 2007-9 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Extracting text from Web pages*

Today’s quick tip was inspired by a reader question. The gentleman used to use an old technique to “print” webpages to text files so that he could edit and incorporate the text into his documents, and he wanted to know if he could still do this, but in a more modern way.
I would like to take a moment here to remind my readers that I do answer questions sent to me; and also that if I believe the question-and-answer will benefit “everyone”, you could very well see it posted here.

Q: How do I copy the text on a webpage to my document?
A: There is actually a couple of different ways to do this, including the old “print-to-file” method that DOS users remember. The trick is to get just the text and information you want, and not all the advertising and hyperlinks and graphics/logos that most webpages incorporate.

1) If all you need is a small portion of text from a webpage, the easiest way to get it from your browser to your word processor is to ‘highlight’ the sentence (or paragraph) on the webpage, press Ctrl+C to Copy, click on the place in your document that you’d like to insert the text and hit Ctrl+V to Paste the selection into your document (you may have to change the font and text size to match the rest of your document’s format).
Sometimes, it can be a little tricky — working in the browser — getting your cursor to change from an arrow (navigation) to the vertical bar and selecting the page’s text. But rest assured that you can ‘select’ the text on a webpage. Usually you have to get the point of the arrow very close the edge of the first letter, and make small, gentle mouse movements until the cursor changes. You could also try clicking in an easier part of the text, and use your arrow keys to move the cursor to where you want it.
(As a writer, I simply must express my hope that you will pay some mind to the concept of Copyrights, and original work, and properly attribute your “borrowed” material.)

2) But if you want all the information on the webpage, and you want it to be available as a file you can reference at your leisure, the Copy>Paste method is not the best and another technique will serve you better.
Some people prefer to download the webpages in a method called “Offline webpages”, which is a whole ‘nother topic. Offline gives you the whole webpage — logos/graphics, links, ads — as if you were connected to the Internet, and this is more info than we need for today’s topic… we just want the text.

In Firefox and the older Internet Explorer 6 (Please, folks; IE 6 is quite probably the most hacked program ever written– update to IE7, or use an “alternative” browser), you can click on the “File” menu on your browser’s toolbar. IE7 users (who haven’t re-enabled the old Menu bar) should click on the “Page” button. Whichever manner you used, now click on “Save As”.

Now the Save As window will open, and here is where we will make our important decisions.

As usual, you will be presented with the ability to select the “where” the file will be Saved, and give it a name. But the primary thing is to select the “Save as type”, so that we will have a file we can use as we want to– in this case, a text file (.txt).
Once the webpage is Saved as a text file, you will be able to Open it with any word processor. And you will be able to edit it to your heart’s content.. and it will be available whenever you need it.

*If you decide to Save the webpage as one of the other options in the “file type” (or, made a mistake here) selection, and Save the page as an *.htm,*html file or even a “archive”, you will still be able to Open it with a word processor [by default, it will open with your browser] and edit it… it will just contain a whole bunch of junk-looking code, as well as the text you want.

Today’s free link: I am not a real big fan of free all-in-one “optimization” programs, but I do have one that I like and can recommend. Advanced WindowsCare Personal. From publisher: “is a comprehensive PC care utility that takes an one-click approach to help protect, repair and optimize your computer. It provides an all-in-one and super convenient solution for PC maintenance and protection.” (Vista compatible.)

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Photoshop online– use the Web to edit pictures*

“Made You Look” is the marketing catchphrase for the new online Photoshop Website, and yes– I did take a look. Adobe Photoshop Express (Beta) is a Web 2.0 application for editing and sharing your digital images, and is seen to be a replacement for a program you buy and load onto your computer. It is — at this time, anyway — a free service (and surprisingly, has no ads).

I would be very surprised if you haven’t heard of Photoshop; it has been around so long, it has become a verb in today’s language (meaning “to create a fake image”). Photoshop is the tool which allows you to put your head on someone else’s body.. or make it look like you’re standing on the moon.. or remove your Ex from your old vacation pictures. (With the right starting photos, there’s almost nothing I can’t fake in Photoshop.)

Photoshop has long been considered the premier digital image manipulation program. As I discussed in this article, “Web 2.0” is all about us regular folks being able to ‘upload’ to the Web (and “share”/collaborate) instead of simply viewing (‘downloading’) content. And frankly, Adobe is not the first to the market of online photo sharing Websites, nor sites that let you edit your pictures once you’ve loaded them.. Picassa and Photobucket have been around for a while now (to name a few).

Considering Photoshop’s reputation, I wanted to know if Adobe’s online service had superior editing capabilities. To use Express, you must “join” the club, by providing an e-mail address and creating a user account. While you do that, you create a personalized URL (like, http://yourname.photoshop.com) where you can post your pictures in “galleries”, if you want to share them (which is not required). Once you’re a member, you “upload” your pictures, and you can now edit them, and organize them into galleries, e-mail them, or use them as images on (other) Websites.

The screenshot above shows the image editing screen. Those of you who have ever used Photoshop Elements will be very familiar with this interface. The editing options (left column) provide a thumbnail range above your original so you can see, and select from, adjustments. This makes ‘tweaking’ your image quite easy and straight-forward, and allows you to experiment without ruining your original.

Is this for you? Well, as it stands, I find that there are some basic image editing features which are missing (it is possible I just couldn’t find the menu..) such as image resizing and dots-per-inch adjustment. You can crop, but not shrink.. nor adjust file type or size. I am an advanced Photoshop user, and so I find the tools in Photoshop Elements overly simplified, and these even more so– which is precisely what many people want.

While this (at least, in its current state) tool will not let you paste your head onto a super-model’s body, or pose on the moon, it will let you smoothly and easily tweak your images, remove the red-eye effect, and share your pictures with far away friends and relatives. If you are not already using a similar service.. or are not satisfied with the one you’re using.. you should give this a tryout. It is very slick and easy to use. Click the link in the second sentence, and get started.

*Original posting: 4/14/08

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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Word on your thumb drive*

One of my more popular articles discussed using a thumb drive to run applications (to read it, click here), and my two previous articles discussed Microsoft Word (click on “MS Word” in the Tag Cloud), which led to two reader questions which I think are worth posting — in the Q’s and their A’s format.

Q: Is there a version of Word I can run on my U3 thumb drive?
A: There are tremendous advantages to running programs from a thumb drive (particularly when using someone-elses’ computer), and there are many programs already developed that are designed to do this, which are called “portable”.
The answer to this question is: no… and yes. Microsoft has not released a portable version of any of the programs in the Office suite, and I have not read of any plans to do so in the future. However, that doesn’t mean you cannot find warez and hacks out there. Loyal friends and true of this blog know that I would never advocate advocate the use of this kind of software; aside from the question of legality, the security risks are simply too great.

That is not to say you cannot run a word processor from your thumb drive. If you have loaded your thumb drive with the Portable Apps suite, (wildly popular, and previously recommended here) you already have the free Open Source suite of programs called Open Office which includes a “clone” of Word called Write. This works so much like Word that there’s practically a zero learning-curve.
Users of the U3 system of thumb drives need to download Open Office to add it to the installed programs. To do this manually, visit http://software.u3.com/, which will show you all of the U3 programs available– listed by category. But the easiest way is to plug in your thumb drive and launch the U3 “Launchpad” from the System Tray, and click on the “Add programs>>” link.

You might also want to consider using MS Works, which is Word compatible. For more on that, click here.

Q: Can I use portable Write to read Word documents?
A: The two main portable word processors (and there are others, if you’re the experimental sort) — Open Office’s Write, and the platform-independent AbiWord— allow you to open, and edit MS Word documents. They also allow you to save to HTML, PDF, and Word formats (this step is taken in the Save As menu) which allows you to send your documents to anyone.

Today’s free link(s): You needn’t put these word processors on a thumb drive to use them (and get to know and love them). Click the links in the paragraph above to get free word processing power.

Copyright 2007-8 © Tech Paul. All rights reserved. post to jaanix

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