Trapped In A Dialog
As you may know, I sometimes use Jing to take screenshots. Usually, this is when Snipping Tool stops working, and my kill the process trick doesn’t revive it.
Lately, when I booted my machine, I saw this dialog appear:
Learn Jing Now? No thanks, I already know how to use Jing. So… what other options do I have?
- “Replay”
- “Sign Up Now”
That’s it. The usual Minimize-Maximize-Close buttons from Windows aren’t there, and I don’t see a Close button. Replay just starts the tutorial video again, and Sign Up Now sounds like I have to register for something . I already created a Screencast account – I remember doing that specifically to satisfy Jing. So, as far as I know, I don’t need to sign up. Yet, the text above the Sign Up Now button seems to suggest that I should click it… but I know I already signed up, why would I do it again? Because of the resulting confusion, I see the dialog as having a poor user interface. While it is visually appealing, I’m really not sure what I’m supposed to click. I’ve also been trained to avoid registration forms – I only use them when I absolutely have to. After all, each time I register somewhere – it takes time, and the information I provide could be exposed in one more location.
If I decide I want to close the window, I have to get creative… I can either:
- Right-click the window in the taskbar, and select Close Window.
- Press ALT+F4.
- Open Task Manager, and kill the process from there.
It could have been easily averted with a Close button, or at least clearer instructions. If I have to sign up again to use Jing, then tell me why. If I have to click that button to get to the login page, then that’s terrible – just put a Login button alongside Sign Up Now. Either way, make it clear.
Accessing the Menu Bar in Windows Vista and Windows 7
Before the introduction of Vista, Windows always featured a menu bar in Windows Explorer. It offered the following menu options: File, Edit, View, Favorites, Tools, and Help. Below is a screenshot of the bar in Windows Server 2003:
Since Vista, Microsoft has decided to hide the bar, by default. In Windows 7, here’s what Windows Explorer looks like:
While the menu bar is no longer visible, it hasn’t been completely removed from the operating system. You can simply press ALT to make it appear. Once visible, it is designed to disappear whenever you left-click the Windows Explorer window. If you actually click the menu, you can execute one action, and then the bar will disappear again. In this manner, Windows ensures that the menu bar is never left to waste window space. Here’s a video illustrating this behavior:
I really like this approach, and actually found that other applications feature the same logic. For example, Internet Explorer 8, Windows Live Messenger, and Firefox 4 Beta 1 also show/hide the menu bar whenever ALT is pressed. I’m hoping it becomes a global standard for applications.
You also have the option of permanently showing menus… an option I don’t personally like. If you want to try that option, follow these steps:
- Click Organize > Folder and search options in Windows Explorer.
- In the Folder Options dialog, click the View tab.
- In the Advanced Settings section, you’ll find an option titled Always show menus. Enable the checkbox.
- Click OK.
The Road To Nowhere
Due to my choice of profession, I tend to spend a lot of time using computers. Consequently, I work with a lot of applications – that means I see lots of different user interfaces. Some are good, some are bad – but every now and then, I find something in between. Sometimes, it perfectly showcases the developer’s sense of humor.
For example, here’s what the “Go To” dialog looks like in Notepad++. You can access it by pressing CTRL+G.
The dialog features an "I'm going nowhere" button, which closes the dialog.
Not sure that’s the best design for the dialog – but I appreciated the humor. :)
How to Temporarily Disable System Beeps
Computers have a means of communicating without external speakers – they do so via hardware beeps. These are the main scenarios I’ve seen where a computer beeps:
- There is a problem when the system tries to boot, so it attempts to communicate what went wrong – via a sequence of beeps.
- Too many keys were pressed at once on the keyboard.
- The system is configured to beep whenever an alert dialog appears.
The last one I found particularly annoying when I was developing Visual Basic 6 applications at my day job. For some reason, Visual Studio 6 likes to communicate with you via alert dialogs. Visual Studio .NET corrected this – instead of a typical alert box, they list the errors and warnings in another pane. Despite this, some of our code was still in VB6, so I had to use it. Thankfully, there is an easy way to disable the beeps.
In Windows Server 2003:
1) Click Start > Run.
2) When the Run dialog appears, type “cmd” and press ENTER.
3) When the command prompt appears, type “net stop beep”, and press ENTER.
If you want to disable the beep permanently, here are some instructions.
Changing Drive Letters In Windows
At home, I use multiple external hard drives; however, I don’t always leave them on. I usually have just one of them running at a time. Today, when my turned on my main external hard drive, it was assigned the drive letter I by Windows, whereas it usually used F. This caused some problems – some of my shortcuts expect it to be the F drive.
When I look at my drives in Windows, here is what I see:
My drives. Notice how "F" is actually free?
Looking at the drives, I don’t quite understand why Windows thought I would be a good idea. I’m guessing it remembers another drive that had F, and wants to reserve it. Why it didn’t do that before, is beyond me.
To correct the shortcuts, I had to change the drive letter of the drive – which would make the paths valid again. I only had to do this once before, so I thought I’d offer the steps here, in case someone else would find it useful. The change is made using the Disk Management tool that comes with Windows.
In Windows 7, either:
- Search for “Disk Management” in the Start menu, and select the “Create and format hard disk partitions” option.
or
- In a “Run Command” window, enter “diskmgmt.msc”.
You’ll be presented with the Disk Management screen:
Once there, simply right-click the disk you wish to change, and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.
You’ll be presented with the following dialog:
Select the drive letter, and press “Change”.
When the dialog opens, select the letter you want to use. In my case, I changed the “Assign the following drive letter:” field value from I to F.
After that, press OK. You’re get a warning saying:
Some programs that rely on drive letters might not run correctly. Do you want to continue?
Copying the Contents of Windows Dialogs
As a developer, I very often see error messages – some of those originate from the products I develop, and I have to report them as bugs. Whenever I get an error message in a dialog, I typically take a screenshot, and add that to the bug base issue. That’s fine, but it means people can’t search for that error message in the bug base – in order to enable that, I’d usually just manually type out the error message, rather than take a screenshot. That was before. Today, I’d just press CTRL+C to copy the error dialog contents.
That’s right, whenever you see a dialog in Windows, like this:
A typical Windows error message dialog.
You can press CTRL+C to copy, and then open up Notepad, and press CTRL+V to paste:
The dialog title, contents, and even the button text are saved to the clipboard.
I had no idea this was possible until I read a Lifehacker article explaining it. Since I’ve started using it, I’ve found it very useful in my every day work. Maybe you will too!
Just a note, though – it doesn’t seem to work everywhere. For example, JavaScript alert dialogs can’t be copied in Firefox, but they can in Internet Explorer.
Enabling Theme Support in Windows Server 2003
Microsoft’s Server operating systems are specifically aligned to offer, above all, top reliability and performance. It is therefore no surprise that Windows Server 2003, at first glance, seems to lack the standard Luna desktop theme that XP users have been accustomed to. Here’s the thing: The feature isn’t missing, it’s just “hidden” by default.
Solution
Here’s how to enable it:
1) Open the Services Management Console by entering “services.msc” in the Run dialog.
To open the Run dialog, click Start > Run, or press Windows Key + R.
2) Locate the Themes service, right-click it, and select Properties.
3) On the General tab, select the Startup Type dropdown, and choose Automatic.
4) Click Apply.
5) Click OK.
6) Right-click the Themes service again, and select Start.
7) Close the Service Management Console.
Right-click on the desktop, and select Properties.
9) On the Themes tab, select the Theme dropdown, and choose Windows XP.
10) Click Apply.
11) Click OK.
The Windows XP option, by default, is not listed as an available theme in the Display Properties dialog. When we started the Themes service, the option was added… and there you have it. You can now use the XP theme (Luna), in a Windows Server 2003 environment.
The default XP theme, codenamed Luna, will appear in the "Display Settings" dialog as the "Windows XP" theme.
File Locking: Access Is Denied? Not Anymore.
I’m sure most of you have encountered this type of error, at one time or another, while using Windows:
Cannot delete file: Access is denied.
It appears when you try to delete a file or folder that is currently in use by an application. To be completely accurate, the file needs to be in use and locked by the application to prevent external edits – the lock is likely the reason we see the error message. Sometimes it is really obvious which application has a locked handle on the file – for example, if it is complaining about a Word document – perhaps the document is still open in Word. Personally, I consider scenarios like that acceptable because they can be solved easily; unfortunately, all too often I get into trickier situations where I can’t figure out which application is holding onto my file. In those cases, I used to just reboot, and that would usually solve the problem. Yet, there were still cases where rebooting didn’t even do the trick.
Eventually, I was tired of struggling in those moments, and began searching for an application that could help – that’s when I found Unlocker. It allows you to remove locks from individual files via an “Unlocker” option within the Windows context menu. Definitely a nice feature… but listen to this – they took it a step further via a system tray program called Unlocker Assistant. If you encounter the “Access is denied” error while Assistant is loaded, Unlocker will automatically pop up a few seconds after you click “OK”, and it will show you the culprits:
From their interface, you have the option of either killing the process, or unlocking the files themselves – effectively breaking the hold the application has on the file without having to terminate it. Very handy. You can download Unlocker here.
If you’re more inclined to trust Microsoft-sanctioned applications, grab Process Explorer – a Sysinternals app. I didn’t try it for this purpose specifically, but from what I’ve read, it isn’t as simple as Unlocker when it comes to removing the “Access is Denied” error specifically. It serves multiple purposes, whereas Unlocker is specialized.
Applying a Custom Filter in an Open File Dialog
What I’m going to cover now is a pretty minor feature of Windows. I would of skipped this article, but I encountered a few people that never heard of this trick. I’ve personally found it useful in scenarios where I was working with custom file extensions… for example, I knew that a particular file with the uncommon extension “.def” could be opened in Microsoft Access. The file extension “.def” is not typically associated with Microsoft Access, but I knew it was a valid file.
To explain how the feature works, consider your typical, everyday “Open File” dialog:
An example of a typical "Open File" dialog - from uTorrent
In this example, the dialog wants you to select a “.torrent” file by default. Because this is the active filter, you only see files that have a “.torrent” extension in the folders you view. What if you had a file with a “.abc” extension – and you knew it was a valid torrent file, just with a different extension? If you wanted to select it, you’d have to change the filter dropdown to “All Files”, and then find it that way. If you had a lot of files in the same folder as the “.abc” file, you’d have to look through the list to find the one you want.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could simply filter for “.abc” files, even though the dropdown doesn’t have it as an option? Guess what… you can.
Simply type:
*.abc
in the “File name” textbox, and click press Enter.
This is the result:
Notice how the “.torrent” file is no longer visible? This is because we just applied a custom filter, one that told the dialog to only display the files having an extension of “.abc”. This little trick can be useful when you’re dealing with lots of a files - it can reduce the clutter and make it easy to find something specific.
Here’s an interesting detail: if you take another look at the filter dropdown, as show in the screenshots, you’ll notice that the filter itself is shown in the name of the dropdown choice. Consider the “Torrents” filter from the above screenshot:
Torrents (*.torrent)
The portion within the parentheses (green font) is the filter that Windows is internally applying when you select the dropdown. All we’re really doing by typing the filter directly in the “File name” textbox is bypassing the limited options in the user interface, likely using the same approach as Windows would had the option been available as a dropdown.
Web-based vs Offline Help Systems
As you probably know, I work for a software development company – and during a routine lunch hour, I began wondering why our software still shipped with offline help files (CHM), rather than offering the help files online. You see, every now and then, our company discovers that the help files are missing some information; however, we can’t do anything about it until the next release. Sure, we can temporarily alleviate the problem by creating external knowledge base articles, but it doesn’t fix the fact that clients have the same help files, without the new information. This situation brought an interesting question to the table:
Why don’t our products have web-based help?
Example of web-based help
I came up with numerous advantages and disadvantages:
Advantages:
- Help content can be updated at any time, regardless of product and version.
- Help articles can be easily referenced via URL.
- Whenever I’m doing support, it often occurs that the solution to the customer’s problem is found in the help system – they either missed it, or they didn’t look. Rather than just tell them to read the help, I usually include the help content as an attachment. I figure it is more convenient for the client, and that improves the support experience. I also make sure to mention that it can be found in the help, and I tell them what to search for. This is all well and good; except that copying help content from a CHM (my company’s typical help format) isn’t perfect. When I paste it into Wordpad, the images are not preserved – so I often have to copy them myself, one by one, to the Wordpad document. This requires manual work on my end, and that’s not ideal. If we had an online help system – I could simply link them to the article, and they’d be a click away. Plus, if that help content needs to be updated, I’m sure they will have access to the latest version. On the other hand, if they were to re-visit the attachment months after I originally provided it, it may be out of date.
- URLs are lightweight, unlike attachments – they are easy to share.
- Search engines will see much more related content
- Not only will the ranking improve, but other message boards and sites may link to the help content, which should also help.
- Could potentially increase the number of web site visitors
- Better features, potentially. Some widely-used offline help formats are now considered obsolete.
- Some help files are no longer supported, like WinHelp:
- The CHM format is old – it was originally created for Windows 98. Though they updated it through the years, I would not be surprised if Microsoft eventually started discouraging it as well, in favor of the newer Help 2 format (HXS extension).
Ever since Windows 3.1, Microsoft included the Windows Help program (WinHlp32.exe) with new releases. WinHlp32.exe is used to view 32-bit Help files that have the .hlp file name extension. Starting with the release of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008, Microsoft has decided to no longer include in WinHlp32.exe as a component of the Windows operating system. Microsoft made this decision because WinHlp32.exe has not had a major update for many years, and it does not meet our standards for all new Microsoft programs. Microsoft realizes that this may cause some problems for customers who want to upgrade to Windows Vista or to Windows Server 2008 but still rely on 32-bit .hlp files. Therefore, Microsoft is making WinHlp32.exe available as a download from the Microsoft Download Center.
Vista's Help starts off with offline data, and is updated in the background, via the web
- Possibility of embedding rich content.
- A good example would be demo videos. Personally, I usually prefer watching how a feature works, rather than reading about it.
Disadvantages:
- Internet connection required
- A local copy may be a necessity. Personally, I like a flavor of that idea – start them off with an offline cache, and enhance that with the ability to update the help content on the fly. I really like Vista’s help – they offer that mechanism.
- Both offline and online help systems have be maintained
- If applicable. see previous point.
- Some users are annoyed when they are thrown to a web help system
- I’ve felt this personally, and it usually occurs when I am within the context of a Windows application – say, Paint.NET. When I click “Help Topics” in the Help menu, it launches a browser window. It is definitely not what I would expect to happen when I’m using a Windows application. I don’t expect to need a browser; therefore, the behavior usually frustrates me. It’s not very quick, either – the browser needs to initialize, and then load the webpage. Not all browsers are very good at loading quickly, so this is normally a pain. Eventually, I get over the initial frustration, and realize that the online help system proves to be pretty good. The funny thing is – I’ll get frustrated all over again if I temporarily forget that the applicaiton will launch a web browser, which is common the first few times.
Paint.NET will throw you to an online help system when you click this menu option.
- I’ve felt this personally, and it usually occurs when I am within the context of a Windows application – say, Paint.NET. When I click “Help Topics” in the Help menu, it launches a browser window. It is definitely not what I would expect to happen when I’m using a Windows application. I don’t expect to need a browser; therefore, the behavior usually frustrates me. It’s not very quick, either – the browser needs to initialize, and then load the webpage. Not all browsers are very good at loading quickly, so this is normally a pain. Eventually, I get over the initial frustration, and realize that the online help system proves to be pretty good. The funny thing is – I’ll get frustrated all over again if I temporarily forget that the applicaiton will launch a web browser, which is common the first few times.
- Competitors have access to detailed help content
- If your product is available for evaluation, then your help files are already out there; however, if it is of limited availability, and security is a concern, then maybe this point is valid.