Roman Menyhart

How to remove Acrobat from Outlook

Roman — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:00:38 +0000

I’ve been very frustrated trying to disable Acrobat’s Outlook plugin (toolbars, additional menu) and since google found no solution I’m posting what worked for me.

Find the location of your PDFMOutlook.dll library. This will be presumably “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\PDFMaker\Mail\Outlook\”.
Unregister the DLL from the system–run the following command:
regsvr32 /u "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\ PDFMaker\Mail\Outlook\PDFMOutlook.dll"
Rename the file to “PDFMOutlook.dll.old” for instance
Restart your now clean Outlook.

Keywords: howto, how to, disable, remove, uninstall, get rid of, disable, PDFMaker, Acrobat, Adobe, Outlook 2003, toolbar, PDFMOutlook.dll

Verify MD5 Checksums in Windows

Roman — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 11:35:34 +0000

MD5 checksum is a number used to verify integrity of files. Let’s say you download a file from the internet and want to make sure it is the same as the one you intended to download (i.e. there was no man-in-the-middle attack or integrity corruption during data transfer).

Easy way to check this number in Windows:

download Nero MD5 Verifier from http://www.nero.com/enu/tools-utilities.html
copy paste the number from the issuer,
browse for the file to be checked.

If the number in ‘Step 1′ appears green the MD5 checksum of the two files is identical. In other words, the downloaded file was probably not tampered with and you’re good to go.

Keywords: md5 checksum, checksums, check sum, md5sum how to, verifier, verification, verify, nero, software, windows, application, utility, cryptographic hash function

Bocian

Roman — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 09:06:40 +0000

Ink sketch of a stork.

jEdit Font Settings

Roman — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:45:12 +0000

Courier may not be the easiest on the eyes when staring into code all day long. The default font setting in jEdit can be found in global options > text area > text font. I suggest a mono spaced font like Bitstream Vera Mono, or better yet, Monaco, my favorite.

After the font is installed, tweak the font smoothing in jEdit to antialiased smoothed text subpixel and fractional font metrics as shown below:

Plugins: I recommend installing BufferTabs plugin and deactivating the default BufferSwitcher in the preferences. Also, if you’re going to use jEdit for writing HTML, XHTML, PHP and/or working directly with your server, try the XML, the PHPParserPlugin, and the FTP plugins.

Keywords: cleartype, clear type, font smoothing, smooth fonts, font display, jedit options, jedit plugins

jEdit: maybe the best and free PHP editor

Roman — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 20:13:41 +0000

Many people still ask me what I use for website design on the coding side with a thought that “Dreamweaver is better than Frontpage” on the tip of their tongue. Since they are usually quite new to the world of Web from the developers’ perspective they end up baffled, because I argue that they invested unwisely: into tools, rather than skills.

I’m not going to waste time laying down the pros and cons of using this or that. I will rather just put down my recommendation. First, use a simple text editor, rather than the all-knowing tools. It may appear slower and harder at the beginning, but will pay off in the end. Secondly, the best such editor is, in my opinion, Slava Pestov’s open source jEdit. You can download it on their page and once installed head on to selecting the plugins you’ll need. Here is a screenshot of the ones I recommend for PHP and HTML.

If you do give jEdit a try, then read the jEdit 4.3 User’s Guide first. It’s in PDF and can be printed out for handy reference.

Removing “SeaMonkey” from window title bar

Roman — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:28:10 +0000

Let’s continue our polishing of SeaMonkey, the best browser the Windows platform has ever seen.

Intro
When installed the SeaMonkey browser, like many others, shows the word SeaMonkey on each browser window. This may be a good practice for some apps, but for a browser, where the title bar can be quite useful and very often read, it just means you’ll be xeroxing that word onto your brain day after day.

Also, instead of using Gmail notifiers and other memory baggage to inform you of new email, you might just keep a minimised browser window in your taskbar and watch out when the message count changes.

How to remove the word “SeaMonkey” from the browser window
Now let’s get down to business and remove that last unnecessary piece of UI in this nice and fast little app.

First navigate to the directory “C:\Program Files\mozilla.org\SeaMonkey\chrome” and find the file en-US.jar. This is a .jar file and its structure is virtually that of a .zip file, so go ahead an open it in 7-zip or similar. (If you’re having trouble opening the .jar file with your ZIP file manager, you can rename it to .zip, go through the procedure below, then back to .jar when finished).

Once inside the “en-US.jar” go down the directory structure to “\locale\en-US\navigator\” where you’ll find navigator.dtd. This is your file. If you’re using 7-zip (recommended) and a reasonable editor (like jEdit or PSPad) just hit F4 and edit this file.

Just remove “&brandShortName;” twice, then remove the dash below in the line marked “…separator”, save and you’re done.

That’s it. You can now restart your browser and enjoy.

Screenshot above shows the title bar showing gmail and the number of unread messages without the additional and unhelpful ” – SeaMonkey” text.

Browser cookies – improving privacy with SeaMonkey

Roman — Fri, 25 May 2007 11:39:51 +0000

SeaMonkey browser offers users a cookie management system. Whywould you want to ‘manage’ your cookies?

For sites requiring cookies use “session cookies”. After your browsing session is over, these cookies are removed.
For sites working without cookies, use the default setting ‘block cookies’.
For sites you need cookies for (see below), use ‘accept cookies for this site’ and do so individually on a site by site basis.

I block all cookies by default. Then when a web site needs one, I switch my preference that site through Tools :: Cookie Manager. Once in a while I then view my stored cookies, click the checkmark next to “prevent removed site to set a cookie in future” and delete.

And then there was doubleclick owned by google powering your gmail running google analytics in the background and our privacy efforts went down the drain. But that’s another story.

Keywords: mozilla, seamonkey, cookies, privacy, blocking, browser

MacGourmet

Roman — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 12:00:17 +0000

MacGourmet, my favorite for managing recipes.

iPhoto 6 White Balance

Roman — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:24:07 +0000

By mistake I held Command Key (the key with an Apple on it) while in edit mode in iphoto 6 and this automatically brought up the edit controls and adjusted the white point to match the point where I clicked. Whoa! Another undocumented, hidden feature in iPhoto. And this one is extremely powerful and so much missing!! Try it. Hold the Ctrl key (another one of my finds among the hidden functions, but already known I believe) after you do so to see the original image. Let’s see how long it takes till my post gets into Macworld jar of tips.

Keywords: AWB, white point, white point compensation, white balance, setting white balance, iPhoto 2006, iPhoto ’06, Apple, Mac, manipulation, adjustment

Linn Records

Roman — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 11:52:52 +0000

Surely I’m a big fan of iTunes and was among the first to support it by purchases. As an audiophile I’m not buying everything there, since it does use compression after all and it does have DRM applied.

Check out Linn Records. They offer lossless and DRM free music. I’ll be returning there frequently it seems.