I consider myself a desktop fanatic when it comes to a clean desktop — I don’t like icons on my desktop and I like my windows to be neatly arranged. So when someone resizes or moves one of my windows, I wince at the thought of knowing I’m going to have to fix it later.

Sure, I can right-click on the task bar and select “Show Windows Side by Side” (in Vista) or “Tile Windows Vertically” (in XP) to restore some things like my Windows Explorer, but for other things like my Notepad or Calculator, which I like in the corner, it’s a manual process to drag it over, and yes for me, I need to be precise to 1 pixel.

Years ago, when I switched over to Linux and used Gnome, I was amazed at how your windows automatically “snapped” to the screen edge or to other windows. So for the times that I need to be in Windows, I really miss that feature. Well, thanks to a little utility called allSnap (v. 1.33), I can make Windows feel more like Linux.
allSnap is a small system tray app that makes all top level windows automatically align like they do in programs such as Winamp or Photoshop.

Here’s some more screenshots:

But another positive side-effect I found from this utility was for the GIMP. If you’ve ever used the GIMP, you know what I’m talking about — everyone has complained about it’s multi-window interface being too cluttered. Well, with allSnap, you can easily snap the windows so they’re nice and neat then in the GIMP’s Preferences, save the window positions.

It’s a small thing, but every little bit makes a difference.

If you’re as paranoid as me about your data, you’ll want to download this free program called HD Tune (v.2.55). This is a utility for your hard disk that allows you to catch potential problems before they happen.

Considering this program is only 400 KB, it’s packed with many useful features:

1. Benchmark - performs a test to determine transfer rate, access time and burst rate.
2. Info - shows the supported features of the drive including firmware version, serial number, etc.
3. Health - displays the status of various S.M.A.R.T. indicators.
4. Error Scan - checks for damaged blocks.

Although, I don’t have the fastest drive, I can breathe a little easier knowing my drive is healthy. Hopefully, your experience will be the same.

Besides the clean interface, I like how HD Tune is configurable:

It even has a temperature icon that sits in the tray area. So if the temperature rises above a certain threshold, it’ll change the font colour to red.

If you need more features, there is a Pro version that is available.

I consider myself a bit of a “cross-trainer” when it comes to operating systems — I’ll happily switch between different distros of Linux and Windows, but I’d also like to be able to switch to Mac OS X as well for its Dock feature. As a Windows user, all you have is the basic Quick Launch toolbar — boring!

Thankfully, there is a free program for Windows called RocketDock (v.1.3.5), which is a smoothly animated, alpha-blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization.

Here’s a screenshot from my system:

But unlike other launchers, RocketDock has Taskbar support so your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. I’m hoping this feature will be improved in a future version so that if I minimize a movie, it will continue playing from the dock.

This application is fairly customizable. It comes with 30 different styles (or skins). The default is something called “CrystalXP.net”, but I prefer the “VistaBlack” and “Blank” styles. Another option you might want to change (if you want to be more Mac like) is switching the “Screen Position” from the “Top” to the “Bottom”, and moving the “Edge Offset” to 35px. There’s many other settings as well like monitor, layering, icon quality, animated effects, etc.

Don’t be fooled by the term “application launcher” because you can also drag your favorite files or add URLs on it as well.

A few features that I’m hoping to see in future versions are:

• An option to allow minimized movies to keep playing from the dock.
• The ability to drag URLs on to the dock.
• A collapse button to slide the dock out of the way so I can see what’s under it.
• Also, the ability to stack icons into groups.

Despite my wish list, I think this app still deserves a 5/5 rating.

Hopefully, this application will cure some of my Mac envy until I can afford the new MacBook Air.

I got this error trying to use the PDF functions in PHP 5.2 on Windows:

PDFlib exception (fatal): [1202] PDF_set_parameter: Unknown key ‘objorient’

The problem seems to be with the bundled PDF extension (php_pdf.dll) that comes with PHP 5.2 – it’s a version 5 of the PDFlib. But upgrading to version 6 solved the problem for me.

So the following describes the steps that I took to fix it…

Download the Windows version of PDFlib 6 for “C, C++, Java, PHP”:
http://www.pdflib.com/binaries/PDFlib/604/PDFlib-6.0.4-Windows.zip

You may want to check this page for an updated version of 6 that is higher than 6.0.4:
http://www.pdflib.com/download/pdflib-family/pdflib-6/

Unzip the file and copy “bind\php5\php-520\libpdf_php.dll” to your PHP extension directory (e.g., C:\Program Files\PHP\ext).

Edit your “php.ini” file by commenting out the default PDF extension and adding the new one:

[PHP_PDF]
;extension=php_pdf.dll
extension=libpdf_php.dll

Restart Apache.

In your phpinfo() page, you should see:

pdf
PDF Support: enabled
PDFlib GmbH Binary-Version: 6.0.4
PECL Version: 2.0.5
Revision: $Revision: 1.55.2.20 $

Unfortunately, this new PDFlib is a trial version that adds a watermark to all the generated PDFs. So you’ll need to purchase a license and install your key.

A free PDFlib Lite version is available, but you’ll have to compile it yourself.

To install your PDFlib license, you can do the following:

To set the license in your PHP code at runtime, set the license parameter (with your own registration key):

$p = new PDFlib();
$p->set_parameter( “license”, “X600605-009100-45432E-D1E2B4″ );

If you’re using the dompdf library (0.5.1) with CodeIgniter like me, add your key in the “system\plugins\dompdf\dompdf_config.inc.php” file:

#define(”DOMPDF_PDFLIB_LICENSE”, “your license key here”);
define(”DOMPDF_PDFLIB_LICENSE”, “X600605-009100-45432E-D1E2B4″);

If you want to set it globally, create a “licensekeys.txt” under “C:\Program Files\PDFlib”:

PDFlib license file 1.0

# This is a license file template for PDFlib GmbH products.
# You can accumulate multiple CPU keys here (line by line).
# Replace the 0 in the third column with your actual license key.

#PDFlib 6.0.4 0
PDFlib 6.0.4 X600605-009100-45432E-D1E2B4

Set the system environment variable (under Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables):

PDFLIBLICENSEFILE=C:\Program Files\PDFlib\licensekeys.txt

You can also set it in the Registry. I didn’t try this, but this page has more instructions:
http://www.pdflib.com/pdflib-cookbook/general-programming/license-key/

That should do it. Now create a sample PDF with PHP. See these pages for examples:

http://ca.php.net/manual/en/ref.pdf.php
http://www.digitaljunkies.ca/dompdf/usage.php

I hope that helps.

If you’re a Linux fan like me and you’re living in a (mostly) Windows world then there are times when you need to run Windows. In my case, my 3 daughters prefer Windows over Edubuntu because most of the kid’s websites require the latest Flash plugin. Grrr!
So what I do is install Windows Vista on one partition and Ubuntu on another partition then I let the Grub bootloader do its job. But once in awhile, one of my girls will forget to pay attention when the boot menu appears and Ubuntu will get auto loaded. Instead of just rebooting, my girls always complain. So here’s a simple solution to make the Windows partition the default:

1. From a Terminal, open your text editor with “super user” privileges on the Grub configuration file.
   

   sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

2. Change the value on the “default” line from “0″ to the position of your Windows partition.
   

   default 0

   If you scroll down the “menu.lst”, count the “title” lines of the partitions. Remember to start counting at “0″.

3. Save the file.
4. Reboot. You should see your Windows partition selected by default. If not, go back and check your “menu.lst”

I’m one of those reluctant users of Windows Vista…and the other day it gave me something else to gripe about besides the UAC. I powered on my trusty laptop and tried to delete a bunch of files. Normally, this is a simple task of holding down they Ctrl key while you click on the files. But for some reason, it wasn’t working…I even tried Ctrl-A to “Select All” files. No luck!
After doing a bit of research, I found out this problem occurs because certain applications add a “rogue” key to the registry, which prevents you from selecting multiple items in Windows Explorer.

One solution is to use the “Reset Folders” command under Organize -> Folder and Search Options -> View, but I found that my problem had perpetuated to other folders. So a more brute force solution is to delete something called “Bags” in the registry.

1. Run “regedit”.
2. Navigate to the following key:
   

   HKCU\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags

3. Right-click on the “Bags” branch and select “Export” to make a backup.
4. Delete the “Bags” branch.
5. Logout and login again.

Apparently, “Bags” stores the user’s view state for each folder. So if you delete it, Vista will re-create it when you login again.

With the increased security in Windows Vista, installing server applications can be a pain compared to XP/2000/2003. But here’s a quick solution:

1. Click Start -> All Programs -> Accessories then right-click on the “Command Prompt” icon and select “Run as administrator”. This will open a Command Prompt window with Administrator rights.
2. Navigate to the directory where you saved the apache*.msi install file, and enter:
   

   msiexec /i apache*.msi

   where, apache*.msi is the name of the actual file. Tip: press Tab after “apache” to use the auto-complete feature. Then continue the setup as you normally would.

3. Do the same thing if you need to install PHP:
   

   msiexec /i php*.msi

If you’re running IIS on Windows XP Professional, and need to support more than 10 connections (e.g., for load testing), here’s a batch file that will increase your maximum connections to 40 from the default of 10:

@echo off
echo Increasing maximum IIS connections to 40...
echo.
c:
cd \Inetpub\AdminScripts
cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/MaxConnections 40
echo Done
echo.
pause

Sorry, I know what you’re thinking … why not make it 100 or 1000? Unfortunately, I don’t think you can go higher than 40.