Google Chrome Tab Stacking

I’m not really sure when Google introduced the tab stacking feature in the Google Chrome browser, only that it is available at least in the Windows Chrome Canary builds right now. Tab stacking basically allows you to stack tabs on top of each other to save screen estate when the tab count reaches a level where the browser would originally resort to scrolling.

If I’m not mistaken, it was Opera that introduced tab stacks in version 11 before any other browser. I personally think that all major browsers will eventually introduce a tab stacking feature eventually as it offers a great way of saving screen estate in the tab bar if multiple pages on the same domain name are open in the Internet browser.

Back to Google Chrome and the browser’s tab stacking implementation. The feature is currently only available via the chrome://flags list of experimental features. Just load chrome://flags/ in the browser’s address bar, hit F3 and enter stacked tabs in the on-page search form to find the parameter immediately on the page.

It reads: Stacked Tabs. Tabs never shrink, instead they stack on top of each other when there is not enough space.

Click on the Enable link and restart the browser to enable tab stacking in Google Chrome. If you have tried Opera’s tab stacking functionality before, you will notice that Chrome’s differs in core aspects.

In Opera, you simply drag and drop tabs on each other to create a stack. This stack is then visualized with an arrow on the right side of the stack that is pointing away from it. A click on the arrow or a double-click on the active tab displays all tabs of that stack in the tabbar.

In Google Chrome, the tab stacking feature is automatic. When there is not enough room, pages are stacked on top of each other. The method is confusing at first, as the original tab and the newly opened tab are displayed next to each other first, and only added to the stack once you click on an unrelated tab.

Another difference is that you can’t drag and drop tabs on top of each other in Chrome.

To paraphrase: Opera supports manual tab stacking while Google Chrome only the automatic creation of tab stacks. It needs to be noted at this point that the Chrome implementation is experimental right now, and that the Chrome devs may make changes to the feature in the future.

Office 15 with PDF Support

Microsoft is not only working on a new version of its Windows operating system, but also on Office 15, the next installment of the popular Office suite of programs. Back in January of 2012, the Office team reached an important development milestone, releasing a technical preview version of Office 15 to a select group of customers, and the promise that a public beta will be released in the summer of 2012. The final version of Office 15 is expected to be released in the beginning of 2013.

Office 15 will be available as a PC productivity suite, but also as Office 365 as a (paid) online service,  with limited functionality as Office Web Apps on SkyDrive or SharePoint, on Windows 8 ARM systems natively, and as an Office server version.

Office 15 may not be the official name of the new Office version when it is released.  If the past is anything to go by, the new Office suite will be named Office 2013 if released in that year, or Office 2012 if Microsoft manages to release the product this year.

Paul Thurott has posted some of his findings in regards to the new Office installment, and while some do not really sound that exciting, others could really improve things further.

Probably one of the biggest addition is pdf support in Word. This basically means that pdf documents can be loaded into Word to be read in the program. This feature should not be as controversial as the native Flash support for Microsoft’s upcoming browser Internet Explorer 10. It is too early though to comment on the rendering quality and loading time of pdf documents in Microsoft Word.

Microsoft Office 15 will also support the Open Document Format ODF 1.2 standard that was approved back in October of 2011.

According to Paul, light changes are coming to other Office products as well. PowerPoint will for instance default to the 16:9 format with options to fall back to 4:3, and offer better multi-monitor support, while Outlook will come with a new Peeks feature to quickly view information without leaving the current view, better Hotmail email integration and integration of the Social Connector plugin for Outlook 2010.

Will it be enough to get Office 2010 users to upgrade to Office 15 when it comes out? Paul does not think so, as there are not enough changes to justify it just yet. Office 2003 or 2007 users on the other hand may benefit from the upgrade.

Test if your system is infected with Flamer, The latest threat on the Internet

You have probably already heard about Flamer, Flame or Flamy, as some antivirus companies call the malware. Flamer was only recently discovered, despite indicators that it has been spread on targeted systems at least since 2010. This alone highlights the danger of the tool, but that is not the only reason why some security companies call it the most sophisticated threat encountered on the Internet up to day.

Even if some experts disagree, it is definitely one of the most complex ones. If you compare the size of Flamer with Stuxnet, a related threat, you will notice that all of Flamer’s modules have a size of about 20 Megabytes, while Stuxnet, which tool experts months to analyze, had only 500K of code. Not all of the 20 Megabytes are malware code on the other hand.

Kaspersky’s Questions and Answers offers information about Flame, including how the malware spreads and infects computer systems. According to Kaspersky, Flame has two modules for infecting systems via USB sticks, but also the ability to replicate through local networks.

Flame has also only been identified on PC systems in several middle-eastern states including Iran, Israel, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. While it does not mean that PC systems in other countries are safe, it is highly probably that the malware has been designed for specific targets in the geographic region.

BitDefender has create a removal tool for the trojan that is detecting and removing Trojan.Flamer.A/B (that is how Bitdefender calls the malware). All you need to do is download the 32-bit or 64-bit version of the program from the BitDefender website, and run it afterwards on your system.

Just click the start scan button and wait for the scan to finish. The program is portable, and seems to automatically switch the interface language based on computer settings (excuse the German in the screenshot). It is definitely a good idea to run the tool once to make sure your computer is not infected by the malware. While unlikely, it is better to be safe than sorry. This is especially true if you are living in the middle eastern region.

Turn the Internet connection on or off

By Martin Brinkmann on June 18, 2012 - Tags:internet connection, Windows software

Sometimes you may want to turn off your Internet connection in an instant, for instance if you have noticed that malware is running on a system to avoid it leaking information or data. A switch to turn off the Internet can be useful in other situations as well, like during software installations to block applications from phoning home, or cutting off all network traffic to have those resources available for other more important tasks on the system. Lastly, you could also use it to avoid distractions during work by turning of the connection.

While you could use a firewall for most of those tasks, depending on what you want to achieve, it may not be the easiest thing to configure.

Turn Internet Off is a free application for the Windows operating system that you can use to quickly turn the Internet off or on again. All you need to do is install the application on your system and start it up afterwards. It automatically starts minimized in the system tray area, from where you can turn off the Internet with two clicks of the mouse button.

The application furthermore displays the current status of the Internet connection in the window that pops up after you click on the program’s system tray icon. If you click on the button you will notice that all Internet traffic is automatically blocked, and that all applications that try to interact with resources on the Internet will not be able to do so. You may see error messages or other behavior as a result.

When you are ready to turn on the Internet connection again, you have the option to turn it on permanently, or for a limited amount of time ranging from 5 minutes to an hour.

Closing Words

InternetOff can be useful in a variety of situations, of which a few have been mentioned in the opening paragraph. If you are looking for a tool that allows you to quickly cut off the Internet connection, then this one is offering exactly what you are looking for.

Get a listing of all Internet cookies with CookieSpy

Nearly every site on the Internet makes use of cookies. Some use those little files to store session information in  and others for customizations the user has made on the site. Besides first party cookies, which more often than not serve a purpose directly linked to the user visiting the site, there are third party cookies which are mostly used for tracking purposes. And those have been in the news lately with browser manufacturers implementing do not track features and all that kind of stuff.

CookieSpy is a free program for the Windows operating system that displays the cookies of each browser that it detects on the system. Supported by the program are installed and portable versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and various Firefox and Chrome variants.

When you start the program after installation you will notice that it has already picked up all installed browsers automatically that it supports. Each browser is displayed in its own line in the interface.

For Firefox, it needs to be mentioned that it is only picking up cookies saved in the default profile, and not in other profiles that may be used on the system. Portable browser versions can be added with a click on the settings button in the upper right corner of the screen, and the selection ofBrowsers > Add portable browser from the context menu. You can alternatively click on the plus icon in the main window to do the same thing.

Cookies are displayed with the domain they originated on, their path, name, value, expiration date and a handful of other parameters. A click on a column sorts the cookies automatically based on the selected parameter.

A right-click lets you copy the cookie’s contents, or delete the selection right away. You can furthermore enable a search to find specific cookies, or refresh the listing to pick up newer cookies that have been created since the start of the program.

Closing Words

A listing of all cookies is a good start for a program, but there are things that I’d like to see implemented to increase the usefulness of it. I’d first love to see an option to display all cookies of all browsers in a single tab. I’d furthermore like to be able to search all browser cookies automatically, copy cookies from one browser to the other, and create detailed reports that I can save as HTML or csv documents.

For now, CookieSpy may have its used for developers who design and create web projects, and users who are curious about the cookies stored on their systems. It can be used to quickly check if the cleanup of cookies on the system was successful.

Please note that CookieSpy requires the Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0.

How to move installed programs in Windows

Moving an installed program from one partition or hard drive to another in Windows is actually a straightforward process if you have the right tools for the job. You may have different reasons for this, from running out of disk space on the partition the software is installed on, to moving the folder into a folder that is synchronized with the cloud, to pure cosmetic reasons for moving a program folder.

The application I’m going to demonstrate the process with is SymMover, an easy to use program for the Windows operating system – Vista and up only – that you can use for that purpose. You can even use it to move a set of folders to another hard drive if you prefer that over moving folders individually.

Take note that it will move the files to the new folder before it creates symbolic links from the old to the new.

1. Download and install SymMover

First thing that you need to do is download and install the SymMover application on your system. The developer website links to a download on download.com, so make sure you click on the direct download link option on the page to avoid the download wrapper. Installation should not pose any troubles. You can start the program afterwards from the start menu, which will trigger an UAC prompt.

2. Moving installed programs

Before you start moving folders around, you need to make sure that you have everything planned out correctly. I suggest you check the size of the program folder by right-clicking on the folder and selecting properties in Windows Explorer, and the available size on the partition you want to move the folder to.  Once you have verified that click on the plus icon to start the process. It may take a few seconds before the window that you see on the screenshot below opens.

Sne of the great features of SymMover is that it taps right into the listing of installed programs on the system, making it super easy to move any of those applications to a new drive. If the software that you want to move is listed here, select it, and then change the destination folder to the folder you want to move the program to. If it is not in that list, click on the Folders on your computer tab instead, and select a folder here. Usually though, you should find all programs listed here that are installed on the computer.

SymMover will display the selected program or folder in its main interface. Since you can only select one application or folder at a time, you may need to repeat the process until you have added all folders and programs to the queue.

The program displays the storage space needed in the interface as well, which you can use for verification purposes to make sure you have got enough free disk space available on the target drive. A click on the green right pointing arrow in the program window moves the selected folders and programs to the new destination. You will see a prompt that you need to confirm before the folders and files are moved. You can at any time move select folders or programs back to their original location, for instance when you encounter errors using them after the move.  The programs should however work just like before after you have moved them.

Closing Words

SymMover is pretty handy for the purpose of moving programs to another drive or partition which can mainly be attributed to it displaying all installed programs in a list for easy selection. If you do not need that, you can also make use of previously reviewed programs like Application Mover,Steammover or Dopboxifier, with the latter two primarily designed for very specific purposes.

Repair Microsoft .Net Framework installation, update issues

All recent versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system come with a version of the Microsoft .Net Framework preinstalled. Updates have been released for the .Net Framework that Windows users can install on their systems, and while those updates complete without issues on most systems, it can happen that they do not complete correctly on some.

The best way to deal with .Net Framework related issues up until now was to use verification and cleanup tools for that purpose. The cleanup tool for instance is a third party program that removes all traces of the .Net framework that have been installed on top of the version that the operating system shipped with. The idea here was to remove all user-installed traces of the Net Framework, before retrying the installation or update anew.

Microsoft yesterday has released the Microsoft .NET Framework repair tool which is compatible with all versions of the Windows operating system from Windows XP to the latest release versions. The program analyzes the state of the .Net Framework installation on the system before it tries fixes for known issues that could have corrupted the installation or update of the framework on the system.

The Microsoft .NET Framework repair tool detects and tries to fix some frequently occurring issues with the setup of or with updates to the Microsoft .NET Framework.

The troubleshooting steps are the following:

• Scan for issues related to the .Net Framework
• Try fixes for issues that have been discovered during troubleshooting (with user consent)
• Try repairs for the .Net Framework 4
• Log collecting (with user consent)

The program scans the system and displays its findings in a recommended changes window afterwards. Here you see the issues that it has discovered, and the suggestions to fix those issues. It is still up to you to go ahead and apply those changes to the system, or click on the cancel button to stop the troubleshooting and repair process at this point.

If you go ahead, you are then presented with another screen where the data can be submitted to Microsoft. If you click finish here, the information will be submitted to Microsoft for further analysis. If you do not want that, click on cancel instead.

The Microsoft .NET Framework Repair Tool is an official Microsoft application, and I would recommend