Archive for December 26th, 2006

Windows Key Magic

Following my previous post on what you can do with keystrokes I began playing around with the windows key. And I discovered some rather new keystrokes that many may not have known about.

the windows key on your keyboard

Windows Key + Tab: Cycle through the buttons in the Task Bar.
Windows Key + D: Minimize or restore all windows
Windows Key + E: Launch Windows Explorer
Windows Key + F: Launch Search for Files
Windows Key + Ctrl + F: Launch Search for Computers
Windows Key + F1: Launch the Help and Support Center
Windows Key + R: Launch the Run dialog box
Windows Key + Pause/Break: Launch System Properties dialog box
Windows Key + M: Minimizes all open windows.
Windows Key + Shift + M: Undo minimize all windows
Windows Key + L: Locks the workstation
Windows Key + U: Launch the Utility Manager

Blog Editors for Linux

One thing that I’m not too happy about with linux is the dearth of desktop blog editors for linux. Seasoned bloggers won’t be caught unawares when I through words like ecto or qumana or w.bloggar or thingamablog. I’ve tried every and I mean EVERY(maybe not the mac ones) desktop blog editor out there. The most innovative and a personal favorite was for me, Windows Live Writer, the only Microsoft software I liked apart from VCExpress. The most feature loaded was post2blog, a rather unheard of. But this is about linux blog editors. There is a little bit of choice so you don’t have to fire up firefox everytime you need to write away (unless you’re using performancing. but then again)

BloGTK Main WindowThe First editor I tried came with a default gnome install for me. It was bloGTK, a rather full featured editor with no frills, but with all the basics. It looks like a decent gnome application, with the standard gnome icons and the smooth and easy gtk feel. I posted successfully and this is a great light editor for everyone.

BloGTK is written using Python and PyGTK, and is designed to be fast and simple to use.

BloGTK is open-source software released under the BSD license, which means that it is completely free for use.

previewThere’s another application, the kde alternative but it’s a rather simple one lacking even the simpler features. It’s called kblogger and it’s nothing but a kicker applet, and I wouldn’t recommend it.

There’s one newer one available that I happened to see today, this one client called bleezer, that seems to be extremely promising and offers linux support and I can’t wait to try it out when I get back to kgp. It’s right now in version 0.9.7 as detailed in this post with more features being added

And then we have the all great performancing. This is what I use sometimes and am using it right now. This comes in very handy for tech blog writers, and rebloggers as there’s a very easy drag and drop feature from right within firefox. I hardly need to write something about performancing. I like it and it’s loaded with features but a small quirk is that I found the image alignment is a little annoying, but I like the notes thing, and the image alignment can be fixed by editing the html but I prefer livewriter’s image editing features.

I’ll write more about windows desktop editors, and a couple of neat links
Mark Evans’ Blog publishing tool round up
The qumana chaps write about wlw vs qumana

Easily add special characters

Ever wanted to add certain cool characters like ç in the middle of your text it’s easy. Windows users, go to console or run charmap, and check the bottom left corner. Quite a few characters will have a keystroke. Holding alt down while entering the number in during the keystroke will put the character in any text box with a font that supports that character. I haven’t tried this in linux, and I’ve been seperated from debian for quite a while, but there’s gcharmap for all you gnome users out there. (kubuntu/kde-debian users, apt-get install gcharmap should do the trick)

If someone’s using linux, please let me know if this works. Thanks. Windows people, enjoy away.

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