The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Derek Hazell
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The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Derek Hazell »

This is a topic where we ask our resident computer expert, Matt Morrison if he can help us with any of our problems or questions.

However large or small, don't be frightened to ask. Matt is THE man.


1) Matt, why is it so difficult to highlight things properly with a standard computer mouse? This seems to be one of the most basic things to need to do, but often, especially when words are joined together, it just refuses to highlight the exact bit you need.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon Corby »

Dear MWM,

Why do tabs go completely dead on Google Chrome if they get left untouched for a few minutes? They take ages to come back to life, and It really doesn't help at all when you need to change tabs quickly as your boss approaches.

Yours,

Jon, Farnborough.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Ian Dent »

Don't you think he's got enough on his plate, running his own business in this tough economic time without dealing with your inane questions?
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon Corby »

Dear MWM,

Have you got enough on your plate, running your own business in this tough economic time without dealing with our inane questions?

Thanks,

Jon, Farnborough.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Sue Sanders »

Jon Corby wrote:Dear MWM,

Have you got enough on your plate, running your own business in this tough economic time without dealing with our inane questions?

Thanks,

Jon, Farnborough.
Well, assuming it won't be considered to be too annoying to mention....this made me A-lol
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Derek Hazell wrote:Matt, why is it so difficult to highlight things properly with a standard computer mouse? This seems to be one of the most basic things to need to do, but often, especially when words are joined together, it just refuses to highlight the exact bit you need.
I know. But apparently I'm not allowed to answer. :(
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Charlie Reams »

Jon Corby wrote:Dear MWM,

Why do tabs go completely dead on Google Chrome if they get left untouched for a few minutes? They take ages to come back to life, and It really doesn't help at all when you need to change tabs quickly as your boss approaches.

Yours,

Jon, Farnborough.
They're being paged out to disk. You need more memory.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon Corby »

Sue Sanders wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:Dear MWM,

Have you got enough on your plate, running your own business in this tough economic time without dealing with our inane questions?

Thanks,

Jon, Farnborough.
Well, assuming it won't be considered to be too annoying to mention....this made me A-lol
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Kirk Bevins »

Jon Corby wrote:Dear MWM,

Have you got enough on your plate, running your own business in this tough economic time without dealing with our inane questions?

Thanks,

Jon, Farnborough.
As much as I hate you Corby, this made me laugh so much out loud.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Matt Morrison »

Haha you guys are excellent. You love me. Don't you? Please.

Someone should have put the Legendary Corby ClearType Solution Post of 2009 into this thread as that might have been my finest moment yet.

Corby's Chrome Computer Calorie Consumption
yes definitely a memory issue as Charlie already stated. I'm not going to shout "use Firefox" at you, as I reserve that for Internet Explorer knobbers. But look here. As you can see from the memory test, both browsers start up about the same but once you've got ten tabs Chrome is more memory-hungry to the tune of 230MB compared to Firefox's 132MB. That said, Firefox does take longer to release memory again once you close tabs, but the smaller amount of memory used with tabs open, combined with the improved page caching, might make it worth you while to check out http://www.firefox.com if you don't want to upgrade your RAM.

Hazell's Hazardous Highlighting
sounded like some sort of trick question Derek? Anyway, I really don't know the answer. Shock horror. I'm not sure what Phil's answer is either, but he so rigidly sticks to the titles of threads I fear he won't share it :cry: Anyway, the issue here is that the highlighting system is actually built into the program you are using as opposed to your operating system overall. For example, if I'm highlighting text in Firefox, I can start by dragging from the middle of one word, and end at the middle of another word and it'll be bang on where the mouse was. But in many other programs, including the Microsoft Office suite, once you leave the current word, the whole of it will become highlighted. So with the block of text "hello to you sir", I won't be able to use the mouse to select just "lo to y", whereas in Firefox this would be no problem at all.

Also don't forget that many programs allow you to highlight using the keyboard, by holding down shift and using the left and right arrows to increase or decrease the highlighted text. You can hold down SHIFT along with CTRL to make each tap of left or right cover a whole word rather than individual characters. You can also use the up and down keys (for a whole line) or the page up and page down keys (for a whole page) or the home and end keys (to go to the start or end of a line) to select much larger blocks of text. More combinations include CTRL+Home or CTRL+End (to get to the start or end of the whole document) or CTRL+down and CTRL+up (to do a paragraph at a time; though this might be MS Office only) - and remember this is of course while SHIFT is held down the whole time. To select a word quickly with the mouse, double click it, and triple-clicking will select the whole paragraph instantly.

People often don't realise they can use the keys to highlight text in a browser like Firefox (though no idea if Chrome supports it, and IE didn't in version 7...), as it doesn't have a text caret (the flashing icon that lets you know where you are typing) like you'd see in a word processor such as Microsoft Word. Good thing about Firefox is that you can use the keyboard to fine tune your highlighted text after initially using the mouse to select a block. Some programs also let you select one line out of a paragraph with one-click in the column to the left of the line (see Microsoft Word), and you can select everything in an active document easily by using CTRL+A on your keyboard.

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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Richard Brittain »

Kirk Bevins shares sense of humour with Sue Sanders shocker.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Michael Wallace »

I misread the title of this thread as "The Matt Morrison Computer Game". I was sorely disappointed when I saw what it really was.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Ian Volante »

Matt Morrison wrote:
Hazell's Hazardous Highlighting
sounded like some sort of trick question Derek? Anyway, I really don't know the answer. Shock horror. I'm not sure what Phil's answer is either, but he so rigidly sticks to the titles of threads I fear he won't share it :cry: Anyway, the issue here is that the highlighting system is actually built into the program you are using as opposed to your operating system overall. For example, if I'm highlighting text in Firefox, I can start by dragging from the middle of one word, and end at the middle of another word and it'll be bang on where the mouse was. But in many other programs, including the Microsoft Office suite, once you leave the current word, the whole of it will become highlighted. So with the block of text "hello to you sir", I won't be able to use the mouse to select just "lo to y", whereas in Firefox this would be no problem at all.
Microsoft products such as word (and probably therefore IE etc) have an option that stops them jumping to highlight the whole word/paragraph. This is good, because without it, I would probably have a lot of broken knuckles/monitors.

In Word, look at Tools --> Options --> Edit, and look at the options in there. Find the equivalent in IE.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Matt Morrison »

Ian Volante wrote:Microsoft products such as word (and probably therefore IE etc) have an option that stops them jumping to highlight the whole word/paragraph. This is good, because without it, I would probably have a lot of broken knuckles/monitors.

In Word, look at Tools --> Options --> Edit, and look at the options in there. Find the equivalent in IE.
I did wonder if that was the case nearly the whole time I was writing that bit. Thanks for clearing that up Ian, happreciated. Still don't know exactly what Derek meant tho, or what Phil's answer might be.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Ben Hunter »

Michael Wallace wrote:I misread the title of this thread as "The Matt Morrison Computer Game". I was sorely disappointed when I saw what it really was.
lol

(Permission granted for this post by Jon Corby)
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Philip Jarvis »

Jon Corby wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:Dear MWM,

Have you got enough on your plate, running your own business in this tough economic time without dealing with our inane questions?

Thanks,

Jon, Farnborough.
Well, assuming it won't be considered to be too annoying to mention....this made me A-lol
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Matt

I can't get Jon's hyperlink from the word "ever" to work!! ;)

Can you help?
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Gavin Chipper »

Ian Volante wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:
Hazell's Hazardous Highlighting
sounded like some sort of trick question Derek? Anyway, I really don't know the answer. Shock horror. I'm not sure what Phil's answer is either, but he so rigidly sticks to the titles of threads I fear he won't share it :cry: Anyway, the issue here is that the highlighting system is actually built into the program you are using as opposed to your operating system overall. For example, if I'm highlighting text in Firefox, I can start by dragging from the middle of one word, and end at the middle of another word and it'll be bang on where the mouse was. But in many other programs, including the Microsoft Office suite, once you leave the current word, the whole of it will become highlighted. So with the block of text "hello to you sir", I won't be able to use the mouse to select just "lo to y", whereas in Firefox this would be no problem at all.
Microsoft products such as word (and probably therefore IE etc) have an option that stops them jumping to highlight the whole word/paragraph. This is good, because without it, I would probably have a lot of broken knuckles/monitors.

In Word, look at Tools --> Options --> Edit, and look at the options in there. Find the equivalent in IE.
I've never understood why anyone would make a program that assumes you don't know what you want to highlight. The whole thing is fucking annoying!
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon Corby »

Matt Morrison wrote:Haha you guys are excellent. You love me. Don't you? Please.

Someone should have put the Legendary Corby ClearType Solution Post of 2009 into this thread as that might have been my finest moment yet.

Corby's Chrome Computer Calorie Consumption
yes definitely a memory issue as Charlie already stated. I'm not going to shout "use Firefox" at you, as I reserve that for Internet Explorer knobbers. But look here. As you can see from the memory test, both browsers start up about the same but once you've got ten tabs Chrome is more memory-hungry to the tune of 230MB compared to Firefox's 132MB. That said, Firefox does take longer to release memory again once you close tabs, but the smaller amount of memory used with tabs open, combined with the improved page caching, might make it worth you while to check out http://www.firefox.com if you don't want to upgrade your RAM.

Hazell's Hazardous Highlighting
sounded like some sort of trick question Derek? Anyway, I really don't know the answer. Shock horror. I'm not sure what Phil's answer is either, but he so rigidly sticks to the titles of threads I fear he won't share it :cry: Anyway, the issue here is that the highlighting system is actually built into the program you are using as opposed to your operating system overall. For example, if I'm highlighting text in Firefox, I can start by dragging from the middle of one word, and end at the middle of another word and it'll be bang on where the mouse was. But in many other programs, including the Microsoft Office suite, once you leave the current word, the whole of it will become highlighted. So with the block of text "hello to you sir", I won't be able to use the mouse to select just "lo to y", whereas in Firefox this would be no problem at all.

Also don't forget that many programs allow you to highlight using the keyboard, by holding down shift and using the left and right arrows to increase or decrease the highlighted text. You can hold down SHIFT along with CTRL to make each tap of left or right cover a whole word rather than individual characters. You can also use the up and down keys (for a whole line) or the page up and page down keys (for a whole page) or the home and end keys (to go to the start or end of a line) to select much larger blocks of text. More combinations include CTRL+Home or CTRL+End (to get to the start or end of the whole document) or CTRL+down and CTRL+up (to do a paragraph at a time; though this might be MS Office only) - and remember this is of course while SHIFT is held down the whole time. To select a word quickly with the mouse, double click it, and triple-clicking will select the whole paragraph instantly.

People often don't realise they can use the keys to highlight text in a browser like Firefox (though no idea if Chrome supports it, and IE didn't in version 7...), as it doesn't have a text caret (the flashing icon that lets you know where you are typing) like you'd see in a word processor such as Microsoft Word. Good thing about Firefox is that you can use the keyboard to fine tune your highlighted text after initially using the mouse to select a block. Some programs also let you select one line out of a paragraph with one-click in the column to the left of the line (see Microsoft Word), and you can select everything in an active document easily by using CTRL+A on your keyboard.

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tl;dr
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Matt Morrison »

Jon Corby wrote:tl;dr
Yawn! That's pretty weak from you Corby, I expect better. The TLDR is a bit played out unless you wait at least a month since the last one came up.
Unless you genuinely didn't read it because it was too long, and then you're just a knobbin.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Charlie Reams »

Matt Morrison wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:tl;dr
Yawn! That's pretty weak from you Corby, I expect better. The TLDR is a bit played out unless you wait at least a month since the last one came up.
Unless you genuinely didn't read it because it was too long, and then you're just a knobbin.
tl;dr
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon Corby »

Charlie Reams wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:
Jon Corby wrote:tl;dr
Yawn! That's pretty weak from you Corby, I expect better. The TLDR is a bit played out unless you wait at least a month since the last one came up.
Unless you genuinely didn't read it because it was too long, and then you're just a knobbin.
tl;dr
Now that was obvious.

Also Matt: you need to lower your expectations.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon O'Neill »

Ian Volante wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:
Hazell's Hazardous Highlighting
sounded like some sort of trick question Derek? Anyway, I really don't know the answer. Shock horror. I'm not sure what Phil's answer is either, but he so rigidly sticks to the titles of threads I fear he won't share it :cry: Anyway, the issue here is that the highlighting system is actually built into the program you are using as opposed to your operating system overall. For example, if I'm highlighting text in Firefox, I can start by dragging from the middle of one word, and end at the middle of another word and it'll be bang on where the mouse was. But in many other programs, including the Microsoft Office suite, once you leave the current word, the whole of it will become highlighted. So with the block of text "hello to you sir", I won't be able to use the mouse to select just "lo to y", whereas in Firefox this would be no problem at all.
Microsoft products such as word (and probably therefore IE etc) have an option that stops them jumping to highlight the whole word/paragraph. This is good, because without it, I would probably have a lot of broken knuckles/monitors.

In Word, look at Tools --> Options --> Edit, and look at the options in there. Find the equivalent in IE.
Actually, it's quite easy to highlight from specific characters in Word or whatever. Just start highlighting, hover off the word (it will now select the whole word), hover back over the word, and finally hover to wherever you want the highlighting to finish. In IE it appears to want to do the same thing to the word you finish on as well. In this instance, just change the direction you're hovering in for a specific character.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Matt Morrison »

Jon O'Neill wrote:Actually, it's quite easy to highlight from specific characters in Word or whatever. Just start highlighting, hover off the word (it will now select the whole word), hover back over the word, and finally hover to wherever you want the highlighting to finish. In IE it appears to want to do the same thing to the word you finish on as well. In this instance, just change the direction you're hovering in for a specific character.
Interesting. Good tip to know, although if you compare it to Firefox's highlighting I'm not sure it passes as "quite easy".
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Jon O'Neill »

Matt Morrison wrote:
Jon O'Neill wrote:Actually, it's quite easy to highlight from specific characters in Word or whatever. Just start highlighting, hover off the word (it will now select the whole word), hover back over the word, and finally hover to wherever you want the highlighting to finish. In IE it appears to want to do the same thing to the word you finish on as well. In this instance, just change the direction you're hovering in for a specific character.
Interesting. Good tip to know, although if you compare it to Firefox's highlighting I'm not sure it passes as "quite easy".
Sure. I can see what they were going for in Office. It was clearly a conscious decision to make it that way, but I happen to agree with you that Firefox's way is more useful.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Sue Sanders »

Plebby question I know, but, when should I put my computer into stand-by and when hibernation? I've been in the habit of leaving it on morning til night even when I'm out and only turning it off at night. But that's a bit eco-unfriendly. Can I leave it on stand-by or hibination all night?
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Sue Sanders wrote:Plebby question I know, but, when should I put my computer into stand-by and when hibernation? I've been in the habit of leaving it on morning til night even when I'm out and only turning it off at night. But that's a bit eco-unfriendly. Can I leave it on stand-by or hibination all night?
Stand-by uses a (relatively) small amount of power, but the computer is still on. Hibernation turns the computer off completely, it just saves the current state to the disk and then restores it when you turn back on (so your programs are in the same state as they were before, more or less). If you want to improve your eco-fu then use hibernate.

More important than that is not to leave printers switched on when you're not using them, especially laser printers. They're real power hogs and it's really no bother to switch one on if you do need it.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Sue Sanders »

Charlie Reams wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:Plebby question I know, but, when should I put my computer into stand-by and when hibernation? I've been in the habit of leaving it on morning til night even when I'm out and only turning it off at night. But that's a bit eco-unfriendly. Can I leave it on stand-by or hibination all night?
Stand-by uses a (relatively) small amount of power, but the computer is still on. Hibernation turns the computer off completely, it just saves the current state to the disk and then restores it when you turn back on (so your programs are in the same state as they were before, more or less). If you want to improve your eco-fu then use hibernate.

More important than that is not to leave printers switched on when you're not using them, especially laser printers. They're real power hogs and it's really no bother to switch one on if you do need it.
Ta. You might have just single-handedly saved the planet with the 'turn off your printer' reminder.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Derek Hazell »

Sue Sanders wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:[solution]
Ta. You might have just single-handedly saved the planet with the 'turn off your printer' reminder.
Seems Phil could be right about this new Matt Reams being useful!
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Sue Sanders »

Derek Hazell wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:[solution]
Ta. You might have just single-handedly saved the planet with the 'turn off your printer' reminder.
Seems Phil could be right about this new Matt Reams being useful!
Yeah, but Charlie Morrison might be a c**t! :D
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Chris Corby »

Derek Hazell wrote:
1).... why is it so difficult to highlight things properly with a standard computer mouse? This seems to be one of the most basic things to need to do, but often, especially when words are joined together, it just refuses to highlight the exact bit you need.

I am old, so a bit late. Position the cursor, using the mouse, at the start of text to highlight, then hold down SHIFT and use the right arrow on keyboard to highlight one character at a time if you prefer, to highlight a block, press DOWN arrow on keyboard.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Charlie Reams »

Chris Corby wrote:
I am old, so a bit late. Position the cursor, using the mouse, at the start of text to highlight, then hold down SHIFT and use the right arrow on keyboard to highlight one character at a time if you prefer, to highlight a block, press DOWN arrow on keyboard.
And if you use Ctrl+Shift then you can highlight whole words at a time, which is quite useful.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Julie T »

Charlie Reams wrote:
Chris Corby wrote:
I am old, so a bit late. Position the cursor, using the mouse, at the start of text to highlight, then hold down SHIFT and use the right arrow on keyboard to highlight one character at a time if you prefer, to highlight a block, press DOWN arrow on keyboard.
And if you use Ctrl+Shift then you can highlight whole words at a time, which is quite useful.
Thanks, Chris and Charlie! excellent info!
My laptop touchpad is even more awkward to use than a mouse, so I can see that being very useful. :)

Probably a 'grandmother sucking eggs situation', but a useful tip my son, Philip, told me TOD, if, like me, you're daft enough to close the wrong tab sometimes. You can click on the bar at the top, and click on 're-open (or undo) closed tab', and it opens it again, exact page, still logged in, etc. rather than having to find your bookmark again and start over. Very similar operations for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Charlie Reams »

By far the most underappreciated feature in Windows is to hold the Windows key and hit D. This minimises all windows (even ones that don't want to be minimised) and takes you straight back to the desktop. Very handy for getting to obscured desktop shortcuts immediately. Hitting it again brings the windows back up.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by JimBentley »

Charlie Reams wrote:By far the most underappreciated feature in Windows is to hold the Windows key and hit D. This minimises all windows (even ones that don't want to be minimised) and takes you straight back to the desktop. Very handy for getting to obscured desktop shortcuts immediately. Hitting it again brings the windows back up.
I agree and weirdly I've only just found out about it. I've got a "show desktop" button on the taskbar anyway, but Windows-D is still cool for keyboard sexiness. Funnily enough, the "show desktop" button seems to be a default in Windows 98 (but not 95), then also in ME (or whatever the 2000 one was called), then gone again in XP, but back again in Vista. But then again it was was probably the idea of some random bird in the back of a fucking taxi so it's not surprising that there's no consistency.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Matt Morrison »

Julie T wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:
Chris Corby wrote:I am old, so a bit late. Position the cursor, using the mouse, at the start of text to highlight, then hold down SHIFT and use the right arrow on keyboard to highlight one character at a time if you prefer, to highlight a block, press DOWN arrow on keyboard.
And if you use Ctrl+Shift then you can highlight whole words at a time, which is quite useful.
Thanks, Chris and Charlie! excellent info!
You're a cheeky bunch you lot! I'm not into blowing my own trumpet but this has all already been mentioned just above - it's worth pointing out as there's a load more about highlighting, pretty much everything I know, ha.
Julie T wrote:like me, you're daft enough to close the wrong tab sometimes. You can click on the bar at the top, and click on 're-open (or undo) closed tab', and it opens it again, exact page, still logged in, etc. rather than having to find your bookmark again and start over. Very similar operations for both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
The Tab Mix Plus addon for Firefox goes one (well, actually more like twenty) steps further. Using it, you can re-open any of the last 10 closed tabs, along with full functionality so all the re-opened tabs still have full back/forward history and so on. You can also reload one or all tabs, protect tabs, lock tabs, etc. as well as plenty of other useful features such as incrementally auto-reloading tabs and so on.
JimBentley wrote:
Charlie Reams wrote:By far the most underappreciated feature in Windows is to hold the Windows key and hit D. This minimises all windows (even ones that don't want to be minimised) and takes you straight back to the desktop.
Funnily enough, the "show desktop" button seems to be a default in Windows 98 (but not 95), then also in ME (or whatever the 2000 one was called), then gone again in XP, but back again in Vista.
Haha (about the bitch in the back of the cab) (even though I didn't quote that bit).
But yeah, it's still default in XP installations. I can only imagine you didn't have your Quick Launch bar showing, which is where the equivalent icon resides. Right click the taskbar and check out Toolbars to toggle the Quick Launch, amongst other special toolbars.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Charlie Reams wrote:Hibernation turns the computer off completely, it just saves the current state to the disk and then restores it when you turn back on (so your programs are in the same state as they were before, more or less). If you want to improve your eco-fu then use hibernate.
But don't over-use. Your computer should be properly closed down - using "Shut Down" - and restarted again at regular intervals. At least once a week, but ideally once a day. This is because resources aren't cleaned up properly, and various poorly designed bits and bobs can get their knickers into a right old twist, particularly if you're on a network. If your computer is grinding to a halt, this may be partly why. I've severely disabled a PC before by over-using the hibernate function.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Matt Morrison wrote:The Tab Mix Plus addon for Firefox goes one (well, actually more like twenty) steps further. Using it, you can re-open any of the last 10 closed tabs, along with full functionality so all the re-opened tabs still have full back/forward history and so on.
I don't have that addon (or at least, I haven't selected it - maybe it comes by default?) but I still have that functionality in Firefox; Ctrl-Shift-T reopens the most recently closed tab, with full history as you describe, and remembers stacks of tabs even across restarts.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Julie T wrote:You can click on the bar at the top, and click on 're-open (or undo) closed tab'
I find the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+T useful for that feature on Firefox. (Don't know if IE does it, though.)
EDIT: Phil beat me to this one while I was putting my post together! :|
Charlie Reams wrote:By far the most underappreciated feature in Windows is to hold the Windows key and hit D.
A useful feature indeed, another being Windows Key + E which opens a new Explorer window.
JimBentley wrote:But then again it was was probably the idea of some random bird in the back of a fucking taxi so it's not surprising that there's no consistency.
PMSL! Image
Alice Moore wrote:But don't over-use [hibernation]. Your computer should be properly closed down - using "Shut Down" - and restarted again at regular intervals. At least once a week, but ideally once a day. This is because resources aren't cleaned up properly, and various poorly designed bits and bobs can get their knickers into a right old twist, particularly if you're on a network.
Very true. ;)
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Phil Reynolds wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:The Tab Mix Plus addon for Firefox goes one (well, actually more like twenty) steps further. Using it, you can re-open any of the last 10 closed tabs, along with full functionality so all the re-opened tabs still have full back/forward history and so on.
I don't have that addon (or at least, I haven't selected it - maybe it comes by default?) but I still have that functionality in Firefox; Ctrl-Shift-T reopens the most recently closed tab, with full history as you describe, and remembers stacks of tabs even across restarts.
Yes but you have to open them one by one. Tab Mix Plus (no it doesn't come by default - install from the link) lets you open any of the last 10 whenever you want, it's a lifesaver for me.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Matt Morrison wrote:Yes but you have to open them one by one. Tab Mix Plus (no it doesn't come by default - install from the link) lets you open any of the last 10 whenever you want, it's a lifesaver for me.
This is built into IE 8 as standard. At the top of the browser it says Tools, and in there is Reopen Last Browsing Session. This reopens all of your tabs at once, even after the computer has been shut down.

I haven't got around to downloading Firefox on this laptop yet.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Derek Hazell wrote:I haven't got around to downloading Firefox on this laptop yet.
That's always the first thing I do ... and it's the only time I use IE, if I can help it.

The latest Firefox add-on I've, erm, added on is CyberSearch, which turns the address bar into a search engine. Brilliant.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Derek Hazell wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:Yes but you have to open them one by one. Tab Mix Plus (no it doesn't come by default - install from the link) lets you open any of the last 10 whenever you want, it's a lifesaver for me.
This is built into IE 8 as standard. At the top of the browser it says Tools, and in there is Reopen Last Browsing Session. This reopens all of your tabs at once, even after the computer has been shut down.
For the sake of clarity - yes Dez this is known as 'session managing' or something similar and has been built into Firefox forever as well.
With Tab Mix Plus, I'm talking about individually closed tabs being individually reopened as opposed to the state of the whole browser being restored.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Charlie Reams wrote:By far the most underappreciated feature in Windows is to hold the Windows key and hit D. This minimises all windows (even ones that don't want to be minimised) and takes you straight back to the desktop. Very handy for getting to obscured desktop shortcuts immediately. Hitting it again brings the windows back up.

Whoo-ho, I was just thinking I would have to post asking what the Windows key is when I realised, by looking at my keyboard, I could recognise which key it probably was..and then I made everything disappear and then it all came back again and that's brilliant!!!! I'll use that!
aND TO DO THAT BOLD BIT, i USED cHRIS' HIGHLIGHTING TECHNIQUE. nOW, CAN ANYONE TELL ME A WAY TO CHANGE MY TEXT BACK TO LOWERCASE WHEN i'VE SELECTED caps BY MISTAKE???
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Sue Sanders wrote:nOW, CAN ANYONE TELL ME A WAY TO CHANGE MY TEXT BACK TO LOWERCASE WHEN i'VE SELECTED caps BY MISTAKE???
Do you mean change the text you've already written?
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Alec Rivers wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:nOW, CAN ANYONE TELL ME A WAY TO CHANGE MY TEXT BACK TO LOWERCASE WHEN i'VE SELECTED caps BY MISTAKE???
Do you mean change the text you've already written?
Yes. I don't touch type so often type loads before looking up and realising I hit the caps lock somewhere along the line.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Sue Sanders wrote:
Alec Rivers wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:nOW, CAN ANYONE TELL ME A WAY TO CHANGE MY TEXT BACK TO LOWERCASE WHEN i'VE SELECTED caps BY MISTAKE???
Do you mean change the text you've already written?
Yes. I don't touch type so often type loads before looking up and realising I hit the caps lock somewhere along the line.
I've investigated this, but it doesn't look like there is a way in normal text editors. In MS Word I think it's Shift+F3 but that's no use here. Sorry.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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JimBentley wrote:But then again it was was probably the idea of some random bird in the back of a fucking taxi so it's not surprising that there's no consistency.
Or was it?
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Alec Rivers wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:nOW, CAN ANYONE TELL ME A WAY TO CHANGE MY TEXT BACK TO LOWERCASE WHEN i'VE SELECTED caps BY MISTAKE???
I've investigated this, but it doesn't look like there is a way in normal text editors. In MS Word I think it's Shift+F3 but that's no use here. Sorry.
Yeah, unlikely to find a better way of doing this in your browser than sorting it out at this page right here.
  • Select, and copy the dirty text: nOW, CAN ANYONE TELL ME A WAY TO CHANGE MY TEXT BACK TO LOWERCASE WHEN i'VE SELECTED caps BY MISTAKE???
  • Paste it into the Enter Your Text Here box, select Capitalize first letter of each sentence and click the Change Your Text button.
  • Copy the result from the box, and paste it back over the original text which should still be selected.
EDIT: Wow. In fact this site sucks, perhaps because it seems to be the only tool like this on the net and it's got no competition? Anyway, in Firefox it doesn't always change the text when you click the button (seemingly depending on what the text you've entered is), and in IE it works fine apart from it returns escape character slashes in front of apostrophes, like so:
"Now, can anyone tell me a way to change my text back to lowercase when i\'ve selected caps by mistake???"
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Matt Morrison wrote:... and in IE it works fine apart from it returns escape character slashes in front of apostrophes, like so:
"Now, can anyone tell me a way to change my text back to lowercase when i\'ve selected caps by mistake???"
You'd think, by now, with Unicode standards having been around for some time, that this kind of inconsistency would be a thing of the past. :|

EDIT: Or is it just poor scripting on that site?
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Matt Morrison wrote:Yeah, unlikely to find a better way of doing this in your browser than sorting it out at this page right here.

EDIT: Wow. In fact this site sucks, perhaps because it seems to be the only tool like this on the net and it's got no competition?
And also it doesn't have an option to do what Sue wants, which is to swap upper for lower case and vice versa. MS Word has the "toggle case" command in the Change Case menu, but annoyingly there doesn't seem to be a keyboard shortcut for it (Shift+F3 seems to cycle through all the other case-change options except that one).

In vi/vim of course it's just a one character command, namely ~. :ugeek:
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Phil Reynolds wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:Yeah, unlikely to find a better way of doing this in your browser than sorting it out at this page right here.

EDIT: Wow. In fact this site sucks, perhaps because it seems to be the only tool like this on the net and it's got no competition?
And also it doesn't have an option to do what Sue wants, which is to swap upper for lower case and vice versa. MS Word has the "toggle case" command in the Change Case menu, but annoyingly there doesn't seem to be a keyboard shortcut for it (Shift+F3 seems to cycle through all the other case-change options except that one).

In vi/vim of course it's just a one character command, namely ~. :ugeek:
Yes, that's what I wanted. Ho hum. Maybe a voice coming out my laptop - that says 'Look.....at your screen'.. doo.doo.doo.doo.doo -
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Alec Rivers wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:... and in IE it works fine apart from it returns escape character slashes in front of apostrophes, like so:
"Now, can anyone tell me a way to change my text back to lowercase when i\'ve selected caps by mistake???"
is it just poor scripting on that site?
Yeah, totally unnecessary. Just lazy coding. Needs to put them in for the JavaScript to process it successfully, but then forgets to take them out again before displaying on screen.
Phil Reynolds wrote:
Matt Morrison wrote:Yeah, unlikely to find a better way of doing this in your browser than sorting it out at this page right here.
And also it doesn't have an option to do what Sue wants, which is to swap upper for lower case and vice versa.
Hence "unlikely to find a better way" rather than "this will sort everything out for you, Sue".
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Matt Morrison wrote:Hence "unlikely to find a better way" rather than "this will sort everything out for you, Sue".
Thanks anyway, Matt - and it was worth asking the question cos at least I know I'm not missing a trick.
Last edited by Sue Sanders on Wed Nov 04, 2009 12:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Even without a keyboard shortcut, the "toggle case" feature in Word is probably worth knowing about - for a sentence of that length it'll take you about the same about of time as typing it all in again but be somewhat less soul-destroying. If you've just started up Word, you should see a button marked Aa on the toolbar which, you hover the mouse over it, looks like this:

Image

Paste your text into Word, select it and then click the button to reveal the drop-down menu:

Image

Click tOGGLE cASE and Bob's your uncle. Now you can paste the text back into your browser.

(NB The above assumes you're using Word 2007. The feature is available in other versions of Word, but you'll need to find it - try pressing F1 for help and then searching for "change case".)
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

Post by Matt Morrison »

If we're introducing separate programs, you're much better off with Lower Case Switcher, which is a free download.
There is no visible window or anything, so you don't need to load a program like Word to copy and paste things around.

Just select your text and press [ ctrl + ' ] to instantly switch the text case, so perfect for Sue's caps lock problem.
I've just downloaded it and tried it for you; it works fine, and is super quick and easy.
If you make this sort of typing error often, you can have the program load itself every time Windows starts if you so wish (it's only tiny).

It does all four popular text conversions:

uppercase -> UPPERCASE (Ctrl+[) convert to upper case
lOWERCASE -> lowercase (Ctrl+]) convert to lower case
sErGe -> Serge (Ctrl+/) capitalize first letter
dENNIS -> Dennis (Ctrl+') invert text case


Problem solved.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Ahh, I thought I'd once stumbled across such a thing but do you know what?....today, my toolbar had decided to not display the icons that I use the most. I'm trying to type a newsletter in Word and all the usual things...bold, underline, font, print colour etc, along with that AA thing have all just disappeared. I've tried clicking on a down arrow that's at the end of the tool bar (though the tool bar is now half its normal length) but that hasn't offered anything useful. Help (again) please????? :cry:

I've just downloaded the dENNIS thing. Bloody marvellous. I'm setting off now, Matt to give you a big tonguey kiss. Laters!!!
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Sue Sanders wrote:Ahh, I thought I'd once stumbled across such a thing but do you know what?....today, my toolbar had decided to not display the icons that I use the most. I'm trying to type a newsletter in Word and all the usual things...bold, underline, font, print colour etc, along with that AA thing have all just disappeared. I've tried clicking on a down arrow that's at the end of the tool bar (though the tool bar is now half its normal length) but that hasn't offered anything useful. Help (again) please????? :cry:
You've probably switched to a different tab. Assuming you're using Word 2007, click the Home tab near the top left of the screen and all those commonly used commands will be on there.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Phil Reynolds wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:Ahh, I thought I'd once stumbled across such a thing but do you know what?....today, my toolbar had decided to not display the icons that I use the most. I'm trying to type a newsletter in Word and all the usual things...bold, underline, font, print colour etc, along with that AA thing have all just disappeared. I've tried clicking on a down arrow that's at the end of the tool bar (though the tool bar is now half its normal length) but that hasn't offered anything useful. Help (again) please????? :cry:
You've probably switched to a different tab. Assuming you're using Word 2007, click the Home tab near the top left of the screen and all those commonly used commands will be on there.

Ah ha - there wasn't a 'home' but I clicked around and found toolbars in 'view' and it was on 'standard'; it seems 'formatting' is what I want. The reason I would have changed it is because when I'm typing the weekly newsletter I do, there normally comes a point where it decides to put in paragragh indents spacing and a double line that I don't want....and that gets me mad so I click about a bit trying to turn off whatever it is that thinks it knows better than me how I want my typing set out. Anyway - ful tool bar back now. Ta muchly
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Sue Sanders wrote:Ah ha - there wasn't a 'home' but I clicked around and found toolbars in 'view' and it was on 'standard'; it seems 'formatting' is what I want.
Ah, so you're not using Word 2007 then. I'll stop giving advice based on the assumption that you are.
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Re: The Matt Morrison Computer Corner

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Phil Reynolds wrote:
Sue Sanders wrote:Ah ha - there wasn't a 'home' but I clicked around and found toolbars in 'view' and it was on 'standard'; it seems 'formatting' is what I want.
Ah, so you're not using Word 2007 then. I'll stop giving advice based on the assumption that you are.
Wonder what I've got then. A friend uploaded word for me a few weeks ago. I don't know how I get through my day-to-day laptop life.
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