When I have a number of similar windows opens, for example, multiple explorer windows, they are all grouped into the same icon on the taskbar. When I hover over this I get a thumbnail of the window, and a piece of truncated text which is supposed to help me work out what that window is.
However I also like to have the full path shown in explorer windows, so the truncated text is usually C:\CommonPathToEveryWind...
I have noticed that if I have over 14 explorer windows open, then Windows gives up trying to display these useless thumbnails, and instead gives me a nicely formatted list of paths.
My question is how can I customise this behaviour, to either disable thumbnails all together for a subset of applications where a thumbnail is inappropriate (explorer, 'Everything'); or to lower the max number of thumbnails per grouped taskbar icon to 2; or just to disable thumbnails all together, (without loosing the entire windows theme)
Edit: Just to make it clear what I currently get, and what I actually want. I do still want to keep the grouping behaviour, so that multiple instances of the same program, Explorer for example, only take one slot on the taskbar. What I want is to alter what is displayed when I hover over the grouped icon:
What I actually see - useless thumbnails:-
The style I want for any number of instances:-
Found the answer I was looking for here:
This can be done.
open regedit
navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Taskband
right-click on the empty space in the right-hand pane and create new DWORD value
set the name to NumThumbnails
double-click the value and set it to the maximum number of thumbnails you want to see
close regedit, log off and log on again
That should do it. Note that you cannot completely disable thumbnails - setting the value to 0 is the same as setting it to 1.
-Indrek
right click task bar. select properties.
The option you are looking for is labeled taskbar buttons (see picture) and has a drop down box to the right of it. The options are:
always combine, hide labels
combine when taskbar is full
never combine
Note: some PCs don't have aero-supporting graphics cards, so that may hinder your ability to make changes...
Re:
My question is how can I customise this behaviour, to either disable thumbnails all together for a subset of applications where a thumbnail is inappropriate (explorer, 'Everything'); or to lower the max number of thumbnails per grouped taskbar icon to 2;
You can edit this via the Start Menu customize button or through regedit. Instructions with screenshots are found here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/win7/archive/2011/05/10/change-the-number-of-recent-items-displayed-in-windows-7-jump-list.aspx.
Re:
or just to disable thumbnails all together, (without loosing the entire windows theme)
You can edit this via the Advanced Settings menu found in System in the Control Panel or via regedit (as stated in a previous post). Info with screenshots here: http://www.guidingtech.com/12253/turn-off-windows-7-taskbar-thumbnail-previews/.
Related
when selecting large swaths of text from webpage I have to keep left mouse button pressed while searching for the selection's end. It would be nice if the browser would "remember" selection's start point and let me search for the ending point, e.g. by dragging the scrollbar downwards, without pressing the mouse button.
Does a plugin or other implementation of this sort already exist?
The answer to this is OS/Windowing system specific. In most/all systems there is a normal way to have the system perform what you are desiring. An add-on for Firefox is not required.
Windows:
If you click (button down and up, not button down and hold) at the start, or the end of the selection you desire then move the mouse to the other end of the desired selection (scrolling the page as needed to get the the other end) you can then hold the shift key down and click again. This will select the entire region from the first point you clicked to the second point you clicked while holding the shift key. You can adjust the selection by continuing to hold the shift key while doing any of: clicking on a different location, performing a click-drag movement, or using the keyboard cursor keys. This adjustment does not change the point at which you first clicked, just the second, end point.
It is also possible to use the control key to select individual items. This is possible in combination with clicks, double-clicks, and triple-clicks. An example would be to move your mouse around in this paragraph holding the ctrl key down while double-clicking on various words. Your selection will include just the words on which you double-clicked. In some instances, when using only a single ctrl-click to select from a discrete list (e.g. a Windows Explorer folder display), a second ctrl-click on the same item will de-select it. You can also combine the use of ctrl-click and shift-click to create more complex selections with the beginning of the shift-click selection starting at the most recent ctrl-click location.
The Mouse and Pointers page in the Windows Dev Center provides some fairly technical descriptions as guidelines for Windows developers.
Linux (using GNOME):
The interactions are similar to What was described for Windows, but a bit different. Section 10.1.2. Selecting Objects of the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 2.2.3 provides a good description.
Apple/OSX:
The Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines describes how selections can be made on Apple machines.
I'm a NotePad++ user, new to TextMate.
There are some features that I really like in NP++ but couldn't figure out if TextMate support them.
Double click on a variable and have all instances highlighted
View 2 text windows side by side
Drag a file onto another opened Window
For this one, I don't know how to generate a screenshot ;-p. Basically, you can drag a file from Windows Explorer and drop it into NP++ to have it opened.
A lot of long time TextMate users are leaving TextMate land, actually. So, I'm not sure it's the right time to move to TextMate.
Emacs and Vim both do what you want and more. If you can afford the learning curve it's definitely worth it.
As for your question:
View 2 text windows side by side
You can have two or more windows for the same document. Assuming you are in a "project" right-click your file in the drawer and choose Open "foo.ext" in New Window. The two "views" contents are more or less in sync but doing cool things like columnar editing tends to break the syncing.
Due to how Mac OS X manages windows, the new window will probably be too large/too small and/or placed in a less than useful place. I use ShiftIt system wide to manage my windows and in such a case have them the same size side by side.
Double click on a variable and have all instances highlighted
What do you use this for? Is this visual highlight or non-contiguous selection?
Type ctrlw to select the word, then ⌘e to make the word your search term, then ⇧⌘f or Edit > Find > Find in Project… It will show all instances of the search term in another window. You can then "jump" to any occurence and do whatever you want.
If you only want to jump from occurence to occurence, select the word then type ⌘e then ⌘g to jump to the next occurence.
Another way is to type ctrls, a little text field appears at the bottom of your window where you can type a word and see its first occurence selected in real time. Repeatly typing ctrls will cycle through the occurences.
Drag a file onto another opened Window
You can drag & drop a file on TextMate's icon in the Dock. You can also right-click the file and choose Open with TextMate *or Open with…*. If you are in a "project" you can right-click and choose Add Existing Files…. Opening multiple files in TextMate will automatically create a "project" for you.
View 2 text windows side by side
I just tried this and it doesn't seem to recognize this functionality. the only time any sort of "add" icon came up was when I dragged the file into an open document and then released, but that resulted in adding the contents of the file into the document.
I just did a quick google search for "textmate split view" and it still doesn't seem to be supported according to some of the answers i found (one from macromates wiki).
Double click on a variable and have all instances highlighted
This also doesn't seem to be supported. This post suggests using the command + f (find), put the word into find, then command + g to jump to the next instance of that word.
There are definitely some things that can be added to textmate to make it more robust. If you are looking for something similar and are on a windows machine, you should check out e text editor. I loved that editor when I was working on a windows machine - split view is supported, but not sure about the highlighting. One thing that e also beats out textmate is the real time regular expression highlighting.
I am on windows xp,
Is there any way to maximize my cmd.exe window?
I am doing some mysql and it is so difficult to read results of my queries in such a small window.
Why maximize does not really maximizes it?
Is there a way for maximizing?
Or maybe an alternative command prompt I can use?
thanks
Click on the top left icon in the window (the "C:\" one) and select "Properties".
Then select the "Layout" tab and change the window size to what you want it to be (I have 128x50 for the screen and 128x999 for the scroll buffer). You can also optionally set the top left position (I always have it at 1,1) if you don't want Windows itself deciding where the window goes.
When you click on OK, make sure you tell it to modify the shortcut that started the window.
Then it will remember.
This is for XP, other MS operating systems may vary slightly but the general idea should be the same.
Try this:
In the Command window, right click the Title
bar and select Properties from the
popup menu. The property sheet
appears.
In the property sheet, select 'Full
Screen' in the 'Display Options'
box.
Close the property sheet by clicking
OK and select 'Save proeprties for
future windows with same title'.
I would recommand that you use powershell
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/management/powershell/download.mspx
It also support full screen mode, and some other nice feature.
Command Window Default Properties
Click on the sytem menu, or with focus set on the Command Windows, press Alt+Space, and select Properties. Change your Font, Window Size, and so on. I always change my Window Size (on the Layout tab) to Width 80 by Height 65 and Screen Buffer Size to 80 by 300.
Check out Console2, it seems to be about the most promising window enhancement for cmd.exe.
I have to say, cmd.exe is probably the worst part of windows! Especially the copy pasting support, etc.
Personally, I use putty to ssh into a Linux box when I really need to do command line work, you can't go past Bash.
Even though you could install that on windows using Cygwin, which will allow you to use another console, although this doesn't have the ability to override the windows cmd.exe, it might be worth a shot given that you are trying to use a command line application, and not windows :).
Access Properties by right clicking on top of the CMD window, go back to the Font tab, select either 10 x 18 or 12 x 16, and then click OK. You'll then need to go back to the Layout tab and reset the Screen Buffer Size Width to the appropriate value. For example, I selected the 10 x 18 font size and then changed the Screen Buffer Size Width to 160X300 and window size width to 134X37.
Okay, I'll bite.
I've got really pleasant code/window colors set up in Xcode. Ordinarily, my selection color is very visible.
When I am doing a project search and iterating through the results, however, the results list stays in focus and the found text remains out of focus, using a different background color. This color is extremely hard to detect, especially when the text is embedded in a larger code block and the view is shifting around as it scrolls to the results.
Here's an example:
Left side is in focus (just normal selection), right side is out of focus (during project find)
Often it takes a few seconds to find where the heck the selected text is.
Unless I'm just missing it, Xcode seems to offer no way to change this particular selection color. Interestingly, it also doesn't seem to follow the selection color from the Appearance panel.
Does anyone know a way to change this color or force it to be more visible, short of changing my entire color scheme around?
Use this Xcode plugin:
http://github.com/tjw/XcodeSelectionColorFix
Instructions for using it are here: http://github.com/tjw/XcodeSelectionColorFix/blob/master/README.markdown
You can manually edit the theme file, which might allow a different selection color. If I recall (not on my dev machine), personal themes are in ~/Library/Application Support/Xcode/(should be intuitive from here/can't remember)
You can edit them in Property List Editor, if I remember right. The Xcode preferences don't expose all of the options available in the theme file.
In pretty much all applications that have a menu bar, some of the items have an ellipsis (...) after them, and some don't. Is there a well known convention on when to put that ellipsis there and when not to? When do you do it? Do you do it?
I have looked at various windows applications, and this is what I have come to:
Ellipsis
Menu items which opens a form that require user input to do something (Replace, Go to, Font)
No ellipsis
Menu items which just does something (Cut, Paste, Exit, Save)
Menu items which opens a form that does not require user input (About, Check for Updates)
But then there always seems to be menu items that doesn't follow this rule. For example the Help items (How do I, Search, Index) and the Find and Replace (Quick Find, Find in Files, Find Symbol) in Visual Studio.
So after thinking about it a bit more I now think this might be the thing:
Ellipsis
Menu items that will definitely open a modal window.
No Ellipsis
Menu items that opens a non-modal window.
Menu items that doesn't open any window.
Menu items that most likely won't open a modal window (Like Save, which does open a modal window if you haven't saved before or something like that, but otherwise don't)
What do you guys think?
The crucial factor is whether the menu option requires additional information (input or a selection) before it carries out the operation. So Help-About doesn't require an ellipsis, but File-Open does. That's what the Microsoft, Apple and KDE guidelines say anyway.
Microsoft Windows applications are supposed to follow Microsoft's "User Experience Guidelines". Here's what they say about ellipses on menu items.
While menu commands are used for
immediate actions, more information
might be needed to perform the action.
Indicate a command that needs
additional information (including a
confirmation) by adding an ellipsis at
the end of the label.
This doesn't mean you should use an
ellipsis whenever an action displays
another window—only when additional
information is required to perform the
action. For example, the commands
About, Advanced, Help, Options,
Properties, and Settings must display
another window when clicked, but don't
require additional information from
the user. Therefore they don't need
ellipses.
David's answer cites the KDE 3 user interface guidelines,
Notice that every item in a menu that
first opens a dialog requiring
additional information must be
labelled with a trailing ellipsis
(...) (e.g. Save As..., Open...).
There's no space between the menu item
and the "...". A simple confirmation
dialog is not considered a dialog that
requires additional information.
The Apple Human Interface Guidelines say:
Append an ellipsis to a menu item’s label when people need to provide additional information before the action can complete. The ellipsis character (…) signals that another view will open in which people can input information or make choices.
Old versions of the HIG went into greater detail, and gave examples:
When it appears in the name of a
button or a menu item, an ellipsis
character (…) indicates to the user
that additional information is
required before the associated
operation can be performed.
Specifically, it prepares the user to
expect the appearance of a window or
dialog in which to make selections or
enter information before the command
executes. Because users expect instant
action from buttons and menu items (as
described in “Buttons” and “Menu
Behavior”), it's especially important
to prepare them for this alternate
behavior by appropriately displaying
the ellipsis character.
As far as I understand this, (...) a the end usually means that user will be asked for some input. And no (...) means that no input is needed.
You're right, that about sums it up. If you want to know more, you can find a list of User Style Guides here: http://www.experiencedynamics.com/science-usability/ui-style-guides
I'd agree, that matches my own perception of when to include the ellipsis fairly well.
I guess the point of the ellipsis is to "warn" the user, so that she can understand that a certain choice is safe to explore, it won't immediately do something without asking for more information through a dialog.
In some programs, like (at least older version of) Autodesk's Maya (a high-end 3D modelling package), the ellipsis was actually a small dialog-icon. You could click the icon, in the menu, to get the icon, or click the rest of the menu item (the text) to repeat the command with the same settings as last time, or something like that. It seems that idea didn't catch on and become mainstream.
This is a very tricky question indeed. At first had it might seem obvious but there are many actions that fall between the categories. It is interesting to see that Microsoft themselves violate this practice.
Example from Vista
In Computer Management menu File - Options... has ellipsis
In Computer Management / Users and Groups / Users. Right-click a user. The New user... action has ellipsis but Rename does not although it requires extra actions to actually rename the account.
In Micrsoft SQL Server Management Studio menu File - Print has Properties... button with Ellipsis.
This is just after 5 minutes of investigating. There are plenty more examples.
You can argue for both conventions for both these actions. You can't actually change any properties or options without doing some extra actions in the dialog that is displayed which assumes that ellipsis should be used. However you might just be interested in viewing what options or properties that are defined and that would assume that no ellipsis is used. Microsoft also acknowledge that there are instances when there is ambiguity
"In case of ambiguity (for example, the command label lacks a verb), decide based on the most likely user action. If simply viewing the window is a common action, don't use an ellipsis." However based on this it would make more sense to have ellipsis for Options and Properties as it is probably more likely that you want to change a property that just view it.