Tag: hack
When a web browser (IE 8 or Firefox for example) connects to a website it establishes connections. Each connection downloads one thing whether it is the html of the page, an image, or ad. Connections are used as a throttle that’s being held back to keep web servers and the internet from getting overloaded.
By default IE 8 only establishes two simultaneous connections at a time to download a web page. The two simultaneous connections limit is specified in the HTTP standard. The two connections limit can be changed on your computer through a registry edit.
Increasing the maximum allowed simultaneous connects from 2 to 16 can increase the speed of some web sites because the sites are downloaded in larger chunks at a time. Keep in mind that this won’t work on all web sites because the number of connections limit can be controlled by the web server. Read More»
Posted in Internet, Software | 4 Comments »
December 28, 2007 by
Jason This next group of hacks all relate to the network.http group in about:config. Basically these various options open up your network connection to Firefox, permitting it to access information online as quickly as your connection will permit you. Since the majority of my readers utilize broadband connections, this will benefit you, 56k you are tough out of luck, sorry. To implement these hacks, perform the following steps. Read More»
Posted in Firefox | 2 Comments »
Hack network connections
The very first batch of Firefox hacks I learned about was how to override its network defaults. Some of Firefox’s out-of-the-box settings for how it deals with network connections are fairly conservative, probably because Firefox has no way of knowing what kind of network it’s using (dial-up vs. broadband, etc.). If you have a network that readily supports multiple simultaneous connections, you can make a number of changes to Firefox to take advantage of that.
But proceed with caution. If Firefox’s network settings are set too aggressively, they can lead you to being blacklisted for a short time by a given remote server. Read More»
Posted in Firefox | 4 Comments »
Make the user interface behave
Another big reason people hack Firefox’s settings is to modify the user interface either to make it a little easier to do something, or to revert to a behavior that was prevalent in Version 1.x but changed in 2.0.
Get case-sensitive, in-page searches
The integer preference accessibility.typeaheadfind.casesensitive controls how Firefox’s “Find as You Type” feature behaves. The default is 0 for case-insensitive searches; set it to 1 for case-sensitive matching. Read More»
Posted in Firefox | 4 Comments »
Deep inside the bowels of Windows Vista, there’s a secret Administrator account, and it’s different from the normal administrator account you most likely have set up on your PC. This Administrator account is not part of the Administrator group. (Confused yet? You should be.) It’s a kind of superadministrator, akin to the root account in Unix, and by default it’s turned off and hidden. (In describing this hack, we’ll always use the capital “A” for the secret Administrator account, and a lowercase “a” for a normal administrator account.)
In versions of Windows before Windows Vista, the Administrator account wasn’t hidden, and many people used it as their main or only account. This Administrator account had full rights over the computer. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | 13 Comments »
The borders around system windows, such as dialog boxes and the Control Panel, are transparent in Windows Vista’s Aero interface. These borders are hackable; you can shrink them, make them larger, and change their colors and transparency levels.
To make the borders larger or smaller:
1. Right-click the desktop and select Personalize. Read More»
Posted in Windows Vista | No Comments »
February 06, 2007 by
Jason The ability to geocode, or translate into latitude and longitude, postal codes is a fairly useful hack to have in your programming toolbox. Quick and dirty zip geocoding allows you to do some neat things fairly efficiently and with a minimal amount of code. Though it’s U.S. centric, it allows you to add location-based functionality to your apps without requiring any real personal information to be transfered or stored.
If your application only needs to convert a zip code (or any address) into a lat/lon coordinate, say for simple mapping purposes, the easiest solution is to use the Google Maps Geocoding API. In addition to the client-side javascript functionality, you can directly query the geocoding system from php using an http request like this: Read More»
Posted in Internet | 10 Comments »
February 06, 2007 by
Jason The borders around system windows, such as dialog boxes and the Control Panel, are transparent in Windows Vista’s Aero interface. If you’d like, you can make those transparent borders larger or smaller:
- Right-click the Desktop and select Personalize.
- Click Windows Color and Appearance.
- Click "Open classic appearance properties" for more color options.
- From the dialog box that appears, make sure that Windows Aero is selected as the color scheme. Click the Advanced button on the right side of the dialog box.
- Select "Border Padding" in the Item drop-down box. To change the size of the border, type a new size for the border. (The default is 4.) Click OK, then OK again. The sizes of the borders will now change.
Posted in Windows Vista | 2 Comments »
January 31, 2007 by
Jason
Settle down now, pardner. If Windows XP finally has you mad enough to buy a MacBook, this is the story for you. We’ve got 11 hacks here that can get your computer running faster, increase your productivity, and make Windows XP just a little less annoying than it was before you read this story.
Read More»
Posted in Windows XP | 2 Comments »
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