Wednesday, 8 May 2013

by saransh kataria on 13:27 6 comments

Google Chrome Tips

Hola people! Most of the internet population uses Google Chrome as their default web browser these days, and in this post I am going to tell you about some of the tips which you would not have tried out till now but will ease out your browsing experience. So buckle up to get to know about a wealth of hidden features and functions that are present in the browser, here we go ;)

1. Pin Tabs

Whenever you pin a tab, it moves across to the left side of your browser and takes lesser room as compared to normal tabs and also in some scenarios. And what's more cool is that they keep their places whenever you startup your browser in the future.

As you can see above, I have my Facebook, Gmail, and Twitter pinned to the left. And how did I do it? Well, just right click on the tab and click "Pin Tab" from the menu option!

2. Get to Know when you first visited a site

Click on the icon next to a website URL and select the connections tab to view when you first opened the current webpage (It uses the cache, so a browser re-install or clear the cache operation will refresh this information). See the above pic to get to know more. ( I reinstalled Chrome on 28th March).

3. Listen to music, watch videos

Instead of using a media player, you can directly open it with Chrome! Right click a file and select open with Chrome.

4. Experiments

Type in about:flags or chrome://flags in your URL bar to have a look at some of the experimental features present in chrome. Google Now is also available inside the browser and there's lot more. I won't spoil the fun, explore them out yourselves but be careful ;)

5. Paste without formatting

When you need only the text from a webpage what you usually do is first you copy it to Notepad and then paste it to the required destination but Chrome has a special keyboard combination to do this and thus it saves one extra step of opening the notepad and putting there and copying it. Just press Ctrl+Shift+V inside anywhere in Chrome and you'd have pasted your text without any formatting included.

6. File Explorer

Instead of browsing files in the normal explorer, type C:\ in your URL bar and you will see a directory listing inside your browser!

7. Keyboard Shortcuts

There's a wealth of shortcuts that make your navigation easy. You can find these over here.

8. Task Manager

Chrome has a built in task manager of its own! The key combination Shift+Esc opens it up and you can see all the background stuff that Chrome has opened (extensions, caches and stuff) and the tabs opened up and how much computer memory are they consuming, process ID etc. and if you wish to go into more details, type in chrome://memory in your URL bar to get a full fledged detailed view!

9. More Shortcuts

Type in chrome://chrome-urls/ in your URL bar to get a peek of all the diagnostic shortcuts that you can use in Chrom to access more hidden stuff. My advice- be careful with messing this around.

10. Modify your Bookmarks

You can make your bookmarks more visual by removing the names of bookmarks in the bookmark manager and this leaves you with a row of icons (favicon shortcuts).

11. Enlarge Text

You can either zoom in or zoom out on web pages using Ctrl and + key to zoom in and Ctrl and - key to zoom out, or you can use the mouse wheel while pressing down the Ctrl key or there is another way! If you have a huge monitor or you have a poor eyesight, you can increase the default size of text that the browser loads. Go to Settings -> Web Content -> Font Size ( Or straight away search for font size in your settings search box) and then set the size according to need.

12. Themify your browser

Just like Gmail, Chrome also has themes which can be installed to it (both official and unofficial). Go on to the Settings tab and select Settings -> Appearance -> Get Themes (a search for Get Themese in settings pane would return the same) and then select the one which you like the most.

13. Go back more than one page

Okay, I agree this is a common one but some people might not no this. Holding the back button shows you a history of previously visited web pages in history.

14. Navigate across tabs

You can move amongst your open tabs by pressing the Ctrl key plus a number to go to that tab from the left, for eg Ctrl+3 takes you to the third tab from the left.

15. Inspect Webpages

Okay geeky people, you can move to the next one if you know about Inspect Element but if you don't and you like web designing/development this is an awesome tool for you. Right click any section on a webpage and select Inspect Element to view all the HTML, Javascript, CSS involved in building the page as it is currently.

16. Reopen accidentally closed tabs

Click on an empty space on the tab bar and select Reopen closed tab or use the shortcut combination Ctrl+Shift+T. The great thing about this is that it restores your history associated with that tab as well i.e. the back button takes you to the previous webpages visited on that tab.

17. Google Sync

By opting in to sync your browser with your Google account, you can then sync in all or few of your Chrome apps, extensions, bookmarks, cache data, auto-fill options, passwords, history, open tabs, themes, settings etc. amongst the cloud and then you can sign in to other devices in chrome with your Google account to get all of the synced stuff on that device as well.

18. Switch between Google accounts

You can go the Add new User section of your settings pane and sign in to multiple Google accounts on to your browser and then you have the option to quickly switch between them by clicking the user icon on the top left of the browser.

19. Send to phone

You can install an application on your android device and install a Chrome extension, Send to Phone, which is developed by Google and after this you can straight away send links and other information to your device.

20. Continue where I left off

In the settings menu, in the on start-up section, you can opt to relaunch a few pre defined webpages every time you launh Chrome or you have the option to open up the same tabs that were open when Chrome was shut down.

21. More suggestions when you type in the URL bar

To have the number of suggestions present in your Chrome when you type a query in the URL bar, create a shortcut to your chrome.exe file with '-omnibox-popup-count=' appended to it along with the number of options you wish to see in your list.

Cheers!! ;)

Sunday, 21 April 2013

by saransh kataria on 20:31 2 comments

Why are Google Search Results Faster Than Hard Drive Searches

Recently a friend of mine asked me this question and although the answer to the question is pretty basic but many people are not generally aware of this fact or in fact many don't even wonder why is it so! But if you are one of those who came here to know the answer to this mystery, I'll talk no further and give you a straight away reason :)

Yes, Google returns your search results in a matter of milliseconds whereas your hard drive takes minutes for searching although both are performing a search. This is in spite of the fact that the Internet is a hell lot larger than your own hard disk and if you are a geek reading this post (if you are not, ignore the following line) , no this has nothing to do very high with very high computational powers of web servers or highly optimized algorithms.

The actual reason behind it is that Google doesn't search the internet, it searches indexes. The crawlers of the search engine keep on scanning and searching the internet and update them on the company's servers whereas in our hard drive searches, it is the Operating System searching and not an index based search. Hence search engine queries are instantaneous and quick.

PS In Windows7/8 there are options to put indexes in your hard drive to fasten your search results but remember everything comes at a cost, indexes take memory on your hard drive.

Cheers!! ;)

Sunday, 7 April 2013

by saransh kataria on 12:13 Leave a Comment

Is Linux really virus free?

Many people think of making the switch from Windows to Mac OS or Linux just because of the fact that it is virus-proof but is it really so? No, this statement is completely wrong! Linux too can suffer from malwares and viruses. Yes, it is true that Linux is more secure an Operating System than Windows but it also is not free of rootkits and other malicious stuff. Infact people using Linux don't feel the need to install any anti-virus software on their system and thus whenever any malware does hit the OS, it spreads at a very large scale, for eg. Flashback virus which came into existence in the year 2012, made an impact of over 600,000 infected Apple machines.

But the fact remains why is Linux more secure?

Linux Users are more towards the Tech Front

If you are running Linux on your device, you know a bit more about the functioning of the PC, than a normal Windows or Mac user. Linux users in other words are tech savvy and prefer working more on the system and enjoy more freedom and hence they have the know how's of how malicious stuff can attack their system and hence more aware of prevention methods. This is not a huge reason but yes it also does count as one of the reasons.

Permissions to files

In Windows and Linux, the difference lies in user privileges when it comes to executing a file.

In order for a file to get executed in Linux, you need to set its permissions to make it executable. This has to be done explicitly by the user to make it run. So this doesn't allow any file to get downloaded on to the system and start executing straight away and spread and infect the machine.

Super User Vs Normal User in Linux

Another reason is that when a general Linux user runs his computer, he/she does it in normal user mode and not as root user. And the major changes can be done only when you log into the system at root level. Windows also has an administrator account which is similar to this but Windows users are always generally logged in as the administrator only.

Large Number of distributions

Also the number of distributions of Linux available are so large that creating a malware that targets them all is literally impossible and hence the huge number of forms of OS make it difficult to write a virus for the Linux users that will target all the distro's.

So Linux is not virus free and if some day everyone does start making the switch to Linux, hackers can do stuff to create malwares on the OS too, no OS is virus-proof!

Sunday, 31 March 2013

by saransh kataria on 11:37 Leave a Comment

Comparing two word documents to find differences

Microsoft Office is really powerful and it has an inbuilt feature to compare two word documents (should say versions of a document) and tell the differences amongst them and also it gives a a full fledged detail of what all was deleted, inserted, font changes etc etc.

Here's a step by step:

Open a doc file in your Microsoft Word
Go to Review->Compare

Give the directory path to the two versions of the document, the original and the revised one.

Select the features you wish to compare in the two documents and then when you click OK you are presented with a new document which tells you the minute differences in the two documents

You will be presented with 3 panes, the 2 panes in the right will be the original documents and the left one is the compared document.

For eg:

So next time you create a document at one place and edit it over some other place and need to see what are the differences in the two documents, no need to do it manually or install a software for it, word is there for you ;)

Cheers!!

Tuesday, 26 March 2013

by saransh kataria on 11:18 2 comments

Windows 9 leaked review

All the people out there who're using Windows 7 or earlier Windows XP, are not yet fully aware of Microsoft's latest Windows 8, whereas MS is coming up with another surprise called Windows Blue (codename for Windows 9). And guess what it got leaked! Nothing new since it always gets leaked before launch to create a hype. I got a hands on and here's what's new:

Applications now snap to half of the screen, hence providing a better multitasking approach to the OS and more usability to the applications. So no more of 25% is to 75% application snapping in Windows Blue. The traditional snap is still available if you wish to use it though but by default the applications snap is in 50-50 mode.

Here's the 50-50 snapped view:

And here is the traditional snap view in the same OS:

Internet Explorer 11

It looks very similar to what was delivered in Windows 8 Internet Explorer 10 and no significant changes have been seen atleast by me. Although there is a new Show Synced Tabs option in the more options menu but it doesn't do much as of now.

Next in the line is new applications

The mail people etc. applications still exist but along with these what has been brought in are alarm, calculator, movie moments and a sound recorder as well! Strangely their tiles are black and white in colour with nothing live about them. Here's a look:

More personalisation options:

The new build has more options to personalize your start screen as can be seen in the pictures that follow:

More customization to live tiles:

In Windows 8 you had only two tile sizes, whereas in Windows 9 you have 4 sizes available, the two new options being one a quarter of the medium sized and the other a double of the medium one.

No more accidental tile shifting:

In windows 8, a lot of tiles got moved unintentionally but in Windows Blue, it is not the case. You need to right click a tile and hit customize button to move tiles from one position to another.

Simple Screenshot sharing:

Although Windows 8 brought a brand new feature which I personally liked the most, that was the WinKey + Printscreen saved your screenshot automatically to pictures but Windows 9 takes it even further by providing an option in the share charm to share a screenshot of your current screen and I simply loved this one!

Better SkyDrive Integration:

The skydrive application in Windows 8 allowed you to share only a specific kinds of files. But in Windows 9, the app itself is having deeper integration with the OS and device backup, file syncing being available in the app itself and also allowing to share multiple kinds of files.

So all in all Windows 9 is a kind of an upgrade to Windows 8 removing the bugs present and integrating the personalisation and customization to enhance the user's experience and give a more personalized system to the user. It has been optimized for power efficiency. So lets wait for a final build by the end of this year and then everyone can enjoy some new features ;)

Oh and last not the least, a special thank you to my friend +Nishant Kakar who helped me get a copy of Windows 9 without me having to download it :D

Saturday, 23 March 2013

by saransh kataria on 21:02 Leave a Comment

Why Linux does not need Defragmentation?

Regular defragmentation in a Windows PC speeds it up but if anyone of the Linux users have noted that there is no need of a defragmentation utility which come pre installed on your machine when you install a fresh copy and also you really don't need to install one on your machine while using Linux. Ever thought of why is it required in Windows and not in Linux?

To understand this first you need to understand what is fragmentation and why it occurs and how the two operating systems handle it differently.

What is fragmentation?

A hard disk is divided into various different sectors which contain small files and large files are spread over various different sectors which contain parts of the file. No person has a single file on hi system, heck even the Operating System is spread over a vast number of files. So when you update a file, say increase its size, the file system installed on the system tries to store this file next to the previous file's initial sectors but consider a scenario that the next sector is filled up, so the new part is stored in a sector which is not stored in a contiguous memory location. Hence when any software asks to read this file, the header of the hard disk must skip sectors while reading your file and hence reading chunks of file at a time slows down stuff.

So, now you can very well understand what defragmentation is, that is the process of moving around chunks of files to avoid the fragmentation as much as possible.

So because of the way the files are arranged in Windows (known as the file system, specifically NTFS or FAT in previous versions), they get fragmented over a time period and they need to be defragmented after some time to increase efficiency and speed.

Why not Linux?

ext2 and ext3 (file systems of Linux) allocates files to the hard disk in an intelligent way. Instead of placing files next to each other on the hard disk, they allocate them over largely scattered locations and hence there is a large amount of space in between them which can be leveraged when you edit your file. Even if fragmentation does occur, the file system manages it at run time itself and hence there is no need of any utility specifically for the purpose. Hence only when you fill the Linux system with huge amount of data, about 80%, you will start seeing some fragmentation.

Sunday, 10 March 2013

by saransh kataria on 21:15 Leave a Comment

Microsoft Word Prank

Here I am posting a painful prank for the person whom it is played on but it would be pure fun to see your friend banging his head on seeing this happen and I am just sharing it with you guys for some fun.

This can frustrate your friends a lot and they won't have a clue as to why it is happening. The trick simply being that whenever they type a specific word, a different word appears in Microsoft Word instead. Do try it out with your classmates and peers for some fun ;)

Here's what you have to do:

Go to the Options menu in Microsoft Word ( Press Alt+F Key and from there select word options).
From there select Proofing and then Auto Correct Options.
(If you are using previous versions of Office, go to tools->Auto Correct Options)
In the tab where it says Replace, type some really common words such as I, and, you etc. and in the with tab, type some random stuff and then hit the Add button.

And that is it, now wait for your friends to start typing in his/her document and then have fun seeing him banging his head :D

Cheers!! ;)

Tech4every1