Help Systems and Hyperlinks
Software help systems are either pretty good or utterly useless.
Microsoft help system usually is a pretty good place to look for assistance when you’re using one of the products. If you know what you are looking for and it isn’t too in depth then it’s pretty straight forward.
Today, however, I found myself looking for instructions on how to delete all hyperlinks in a spreadsheet. When you copy/paste with formating Excel also keep the hyperlinks. The help system was pretty unhelpful, but maybe I was asking for the wrong thing.
Anyway, I soon gave up and headed to the Internet. If you need to delete all your hyperlinks on a sheet in Excel visit http://www.techonthenet.com/excel/macros/delete_hl.php. A simple, step by step guide and I was done in less than a minute.
So MS help didn’t help this time. Ah well. At least it’s better than the Adobe system. I rarely bother with that at all.
Internet Explorer 8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser
I'm not saying it's the best browser out there but it's certainly not the worst.
What the stats are saying though, is that IE8 has become the World's most used browser.
It is a good sign that there has been widespread take up of the lastest IE browser. I'm hoping this means that users of older browsers such as IE6 are upgrading.
Microsoft supports the recommendation to move off Internet Explorer 6.
"Modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 bring benefits for customers and developers alike."
As both a internet user and developer I say "Here, here!"
Internet Explorer 8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser
A Brief History of the Internet
A Brief History of the Internet from Microsoft (who has a sense on humour)
Holding off on IE 8
I’ve been holding off installing Internet Explorer 8
Why? Well firstly I like to give new software a chance to grow before rushing in. There are enough high tech takers out there who will go through a little pain to make sure they have the latest and greatest as quickly as possible. They will be the first users that will identify the problems that I might face and highlight strengths and weaknesses before I go through a process that will inevitably interrupt my work flow.
As a web designer I need to ensure that I can test websites on the previous versions of IE. My current testing environment uses IE 7 on Vista with Virtual Machine offering IE 7 XP and IE 6. I can also test IE 5.5 when I’m flush with time (I stopped testing for IE 5 last year). Before removing IE7 as my main IE browser I must upgrade my testing environment. Only then can I install IE 8. And before you ask why aren’t I testing IE 8 already – I am. @dazzaontheroad has been on IE 8 since RC1 (you can read his thoughts on IE 8 here).
So with the launch of IE 8 I have at least one more item to add to the to-do list
Where, Oh Where, Has My Icon Gone?
How heavily I rely
on that one small icon
minimise/maximise
minimise/maximise
Through the ebb and flow of my day
I pay no heed
give no thought
to that little icon
But today I realise,
today I know
it keeps my day moving
it takes me there
(where? Here, there, everywhere)
where I want to be
To re-create the Show desktop icon, follow these steps:
- Click Start, click Run, type notepad in the Open box, and then click OK.
- Carefully copy and then paste the following text into the Notepad window:
[Shell]
Command=2
IconFile=explorer.exe,3
[Taskbar]
Command=ToggleDesktop - On the File menu, click Save As, and then save the file to your desktop as "Show desktop.scf". The Show desktop icon is created on your desktop.
- Click and then drag the Show desktop icon to your Quick Launch toolbar.
for more info see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190355
Snipping Vista
PrtScn didn’t work today, the pesky thing! So I went on the hunt for a solution, and WOW! did I find one.
It seems that Vista has a snipping tool in most versions, located in the accessories program folder. PC World has an article on how to activate the Vista Snipping tool if it's not available.
IE7 Double Padding
I spent a few days in November with an issue of IE7 doubling my top padding. I gave up the job as just one of those things until I had a similar issue today. FF and Safari were working perfectly but IE7 just wouldn’t play nice.
After a destructive nuke session I was no closer to a solution when I remembered that I was using a Dreamweaver CSS layout which adds code for IE conditional comments. At this point the penny dropped and I could see where the extra padding was coming from.
So I know now that when I have IE padding working in strange ways I should check the IE conditional statement to see if there’s anything hidden there.
I can now happily sign off now and look forward to a very happy new year.