Why Can't I Report Scam & Phishing Emails On Outlook.com Beta?
A new beta version rolled out a few months ago with a new look and feel, together with some interface changes. Overall, it's an improvement with a few quirks, but there's one thing that really bothers me. They've removed the option to mark and report an email as "Phishing scam" if the email is in your inbox folder. This is annoying because I do get sketchy emails sometimes that get passed their spam detection. Especially the ones that look like it's from Apple or PayPal, which look pretty authentic at first glance. In the old outlook.com, you could mark it as such by going to "Junk > Phishing scam".Read more
Finding old AMD ATI Graphics Drivers
My laptop motherboard/graphics card was broken a few months back, so I had to ship it to the ASUS repair center to have it fixed. When I got my laptop back, the graphics card drivers for my ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5730 were reverted back to the factory's drivers. It tried updating it to the latest drivers through the AMD ATI website, but every time I rebooted my computer after the installation, my screen wouldn't turn on anymore after the initial boot-up. The display works on an external monitor, but the laptop screen remains black no matter what I tried.
I wanted to install the older AMD Catalyst drivers, but I couldn't find them anywhere on the AMD website! Guru3D has a huge list of old drivers, but all the download links redirected me to dead or broken links. After looking through numerous websites, I finally found one with working download links on MorderHQ. Now everything is working again with the older graphics drivers.
Annoying Razer Synapse Updates
Ever since I installed Razer Synapse (Cloud-Based Mouse Driver) for my DeathAdder mouse I get very annoyed by the software updates. First of all, 99% of the time the update will require you to reboot your system which no ones likes. Especially when you just booted up your computer. Second, the windows where you confirm the update installation is pretty stupid as well.
The image below is the default state in which the notification was presented. The "Update Now"(OK) option comes before the "No Thanks"(Cancel) option. Now there's always the debate whether the button arrangement should be "OK-Cancel" or "Cancel-OK". Both button orders are legitimate as the Nielsen Norman Group article points out, but what confused me was the button highlight. While updating the driver would be considered a "dangerous" action. I was immediately drawn to pressing the highlighted button, because in most UI cases they will highlight the option that they want you to press. So combined with the "I-just-want-to-get-this-over-with" mentality, I pressed the highlighted "No Thanks" option thinking it was updating when the window minimized to the system tray. Little did I know the update notification popped up again the next day when I turned on the computer... confused and enraged why Razer Synapse asked me to update again, I then discovered I was pressing the wrong button when I saw the update window for the second time. Am I raging about nothing? Or maybe I should just learn to read next time :(
YouTube's Player Size Button is Back!
Hooray!! The YouTube player size button is back! A couple a days ago YouTube got a major update (Google+ comment integration) and it seems like they moved the player size button back to the video menu bar. In their previous update the player size button was moved and nested inside the cogwheel button. This was a huge pain in the ass since it required an extra step to perform an option that was very frequently used (you can read about the design and interaction analysis in my previous blog post).
Luckily, YouTube decided to put the player size button back on the video menu bar. Did they get too many complaints or did they just realize it was a horrible UI design choice? Anyway, hopefully they will put back the video quality button back is well haha.. To close this post, I would like to include the sound clip from Super Smash Bros below to celebrate the return of the video size button :)
YouTube's New Video Player UI
You've probably noticed the subtle change in the YouTube video player UI implemented a few days ago. They moved the "Player Size" and "Video Quality" buttons and incorporated them into the Cogwheel button. Their goal was to make the video player UI more compact and they've achieved that doing so.
Personally, I hate the new UI... not because I hate change, but because they moved the 2 of my most used buttons and nested them within another one. From an interaction standpoint the previous UI was simple:
- Set to Player Size: (1) Press Player Size button
- Change quality: (1) Press Video Quality button, (2) Set desired quality
Now with the new video player UI I have to perform an extra interaction in order to change the screen size and video quality:
- Set to Player Size: (1) Press Cogwheel button, (2) press Player Size button
- Change quality: (1) Press Cogwheel button, (2) Press Video Quality button, (2) Set desired quality
One extra interaction doesn't seem much, but for me and I think for a lot of other users it's an annoyance. Also, visually the new Player Size button is a bit weird. It looks like a toggle switch but it acts as a slider. I get confused sometimes thinking the "darker" side is the active one.. it's actually the other way around. To make it more intuitive and clear, there's a simple fix simply by adding a more distinctive rounded corner and by adding a drop shadow to the activated side.
Chrome's New Tab Button UI
Have you noticed the small change in the Chrome UI? The "+" is gone in the "New Tab"-button! It's been bugging the shit out of me since I saw it a few days ago. Something doesn't feel right without the "+" :(
Unable to open Word Files (Error)
I was going through some old documents when suddenly every single Word file threw in an error causing Word not even to launch and even using the Word Safe Mode launcher didn't help.
I got scared when not 1... not 2... but almost all my Word files started being listed as corrupted!! All my work! OH NO!!! :@
The internet suggested using the Font Restore option under "Control Panel > Appearance & Personalization > Fonts > Font Settings > Restore default font settings", but that didn't fix the problem.... I tried system restore.... NOTHING!! Until I realized that I installed some fonts about a week back.
I opened the Fonts folder and looked up the fonts that I recently installed and I noticed that the icons of those fonts had "$#@" on them instead of "ABC". I tried deleting them, but again error! Saying that the font is currently in use!! Closed all application, but still no luck...
Finally, I booted Windows in Safe Mode and it allowed me to delete those corrupted fonts. Restarted it and BAM! Everything worked again (after 2 hours or rage)! :D *phew*
In short: If you're unable to open your Word files and Word starts throwing in errors, check if you installed any fonts recently. Look them up and see if they are corrupted and delete them if they are. If you're unable to delete them, go in Safe Mode and delete it :)
Premiere CS5 Blue Lines
I rarely use Adobe Premiere. A week ago, I made some animation clips in Flash and wanted to stitch them together in Premiere. Editing the video went all well, but when I tried exporting the movie it created these blinking blue lines in my video :S
I tried exporting it as .mov, .wmv, H.264, .avi, etc. but nothing worked! :@
What did remove the blue lines was was exporting my video as MPEG-2. But then the interlacing was screwing up my video. Turning off the interlacing lowered the quality so much that it really looked like crap....
Finally, I figured out that the problem was the discrepancy of the FPS between my source videos and the exported video file. My Flash animations were in 30fps while the video exported in Premiere was 25fps.
I changed it in Flash, exported the final video with Premiere and there no more blue lines and the interlacing wasn't a problem :D :D The video is done and will be posted really soon!!
Another solution is to put a title over the flashing video and set the opacity to 0, it forces Premiere to re-render the area.
Hope this post will help and save someone some headaches :)
Flash AS3 TextField buttonMode
It got so frustrated when the mouse cursor didn't change into a hand-icon when I do a MOUSE_OVER event over the MovieClip containing that TextField with "buttonMode = true;"
Apparently, the TextField class in AS3 doesn't contain the buttonMode property. The cursor does change into a hand whenever I scroll over the MovieClip, but turns back to the default cursor if I'm moving over the TextField :@
Luckily Google saved me some headaches!
To get round this simply use the "mouseChildren = false" property on your Sprite/Movieclip button.
mc.buttonMode = true; mc.mouseChildren = false;
Source: http://www.adenforshaw.co.uk/?p=168
Re-enable Clickable Links In MSN Messenger 2009
Ever noticed that the hyperlinks posted in your msn chatbox stopped working? Apparently they turned off active links on MSN 2009 to stop a worm from spreading. I got sick and tired of copy/pasting every single one of the links in your browser, so I went to do some super detective work and found the solution.
1. Download Freeware Hex Editor XVI32: http://www.handshake.de/user/chmaas/delphi/download/xvi32.zip
2. Close Windows Live Messenger (don't forget to check the task manager)
3. Use XVI32 to open msnmgr.exe which is probably in C:\Program Files\Windows Lives\Messenger
4. Press Ctrl + F, choose Text string
5. Type in hotlinks in the search box and press OK
6. When it finds hotlinks, click on the h and change it to a t, it should now read totlinks
7. Press Ctrl + S to save
source:
http://www.forumvancouver.com/threads/clickable-links-not-working-on-windows-live-messenger-2009.577/
http://www.generationmediagroup.com/blog/re-enable-links-in-messenger-09/
