November 11, 2008

Maxthon Keyboard Shortcuts

Here is a list with all Maxthon shortcuts

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General:
ESC Stop
Shift+ESC Stop all tabs
Ctrl+F Find on this page
Ctrl+P Print
F11 Full screen
Edit:
Ctrl+X Cut
Ctrl+C Copy
Ctrl+V Paste
Ctrl+A Select all
Save:
Ctrl+S Save as…
Alt+S Save HTML
Ctrl+Alt+S Auto save
Open:
Ctrl+L Open a URL
Ctrl+O Open a URL
Ctrl+N Open a new window
F1 Open a new blank window
Ctrl+Shift+H Open the home page in a new tab
Ctrl+Shift+N Open a URL from clipboard in a new tab
Close:
Ctrl+W Close the current tab
Ctrl+F4 Close the current tab
Ctrl+Shift+W Close all tabs
Ctrl+K Close all tabs except the current one
Go To:
Alt+Left Back
Alt+Right Forward
Alt+Home Home
Refresh:
F5 Refresh
Ctrl+R Refresh
Ctrl+F5 Refresh
Shift+F5 Refresh all tabs
Zoom:
Ctrl+"*" Zoom Page / 100%
Ctrl+"+" Zoom Page / +20%
Ctrl+"-" Zoom Page / -20%
Switch tabs:
F2 Previous tab
F3 Next tab
Ctrl+Left Previous tab (*)
Ctrl+Right Next tab (*)
Ctrl+Tab Switch tabs
Ctrl+Shift+Tab Switch tabs in the reverse order
Ctrl+1…0 Display pages 1-10
(*) Can be turned off in the "Tab" section of Maxthon Options
Sidebar / Explorer Bar:
Ctrl+E Toggle the Search sidebar
Ctrl+I Toggle the Favorites sidebar
Ctrl+H Toggle the History sidebar
Forms:
Alt+1 Save the current form data
Alt+2 Save the current form data as default
Alt+Q Fill in the current form
Ad Hunter:
Ctrl+Q Send to the filter list
Alt+I Toggle the popup filter
Alt+P Toggle the auto popup filter
Alt+C Toggle the content filter
Search Bar
Ctrl+Shift+F Move focus to the Search bar and highlight keywords
Shift+Enter Search keywords using multiple engines
Ctrl+Enter Toggle highlighting of search keywords on the active page
Others:
Ctrl+G Open the Collector
Ctrl+D Add to Favorites
Ctrl+T Tile windows vertically
Ctrl+F11 Toggle the main Menu bar
Alt+D Move focus to the Address bar & select the current url
F4 Move focus to the Address bar & open the URL list
Alt+` Hide/Show Maxthon
Alt+L View the links list of the current page
Alt+X Lock the current tab
Alt+Z Reopen the last closed tab
F1-F12 URL keys (*)
(*) Make sure you have "Use URL Key" enabled under the Options menu
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November 9, 2008

Track a user’s Internet Explorer History with IEHistoryView

  • Date: July 23rd, 2008
  • Author: Wally Bahny

IEHistoryView can allow an administrator to quickly see a user’s browsing history without extensive preparation and configuration.

——————————————————————————————

Tracking a user’s browsing history can be both an expensive and a daunting task, especially if you’re a one-man shop in a small company. For those that are blessed with users that behave while they’re online at work, you are lucky indeed. For the rest of us, there is IEHistoryView.

Created by Nir Sofer, owner and operator of NirSoft, IEHV is a simple, yet powerful, tool with a fairly small footprint (37 KB). Downloading and installing IEHV is as simple as getting the zip file from the Web site and extracting the three included files into the folder of your choice.

Included are the executable (with both GUI and command-line functionality), a compiled HTML (.CHM) help file, and a ReadMe file that contains version history and some quick-start instructions.

This blog post is also available in the PDF format in a TechRepublic Download, which includes all the code in a separate file for easy copying.

Initial look

The first thing you see when opening IEHV is a grid interface of the current user’s Internet Explorer history (Figure A). As we look around, there are several toolbar buttons and a few standard menus as well.

Figure A

Current user’s Internet Explorer history

As in most well-designed Windows programs, all the toolbar functions can be found in one of the standard menus. In these menus (Figure B) we see several familiar options as well as many more that we will either have to guess at or try out. (I edited the opened four menus together in the same image. The actual application does not function in this manner.)

Figure B

All the menu screens at the same time

Delving right in, scroll through the grid to get a nice reverse-order history of the user’s browser activity (Figure C, which is edited together from several screen shots).

Figure C

Scrolling through the history

Looking at this user, after they went through the Microsoft RunOnce wizard they first fired up XKCD.com (important things first) then went to TechRepublic and read several articles and blogs as well as viewed a photo gallery or two. After leaving TechRepublic, the user Googles the Google Headquarters and then checks out the headlines on MSN.com. Finally, this person Googles “crack WEP encryption” (must have gotten the idea from “Video: How to Spoof a MAC Address” viewed earlier) and then spent some time browsing a few sites on the topic before logging off.

Viewing other users, other folders, and subfolders

So, now we know what the logged-in user has done on the Internet. But, what if you wanted to look at another user’s history on the same machine, a different machine, or just wanted to look at a particular date or range of dates? IEHV has the ability to browse the list of user accounts on the local machine as well as give the user the ability to specify a history folder (useful for networked computers) or a history subfolder (to look at a shorter period of time), which can be seen in Figure D.

Figure D

Viewing different folders

Choosing either another user from the user accounts chooser or specifying a history folder will give the same type of information as we saw in the initial view. The main difference is in the history subfolder. As you can see in Figure E, the Hit counts are much smaller than in the main view. I was unable to find anything in the documentation to explain this, so I simply chalked it up to a functionality of Internet Explorer (perhaps the main view shows image hits as their own hit under the page they are loaded from).

Figure E

History subfolder of another user

Saving, deleting, exporting, and printing

By checking the boxes next to one or more of the entries in the grid, several of the menu options become usable.

  • Save: export a formatted list of checked history records to a plain text, HTML, or XML file for further review
  • Delete: delete checked items from the IE history index file
  • Copy: copy checked items to the clipboard so they can be pasted into another application such as Microsoft Excel
  • HTML Report: create a table-based HTML report for further review
  • Create Links: create Favorites in Internet Explorer for easy review of a site’s content. Also useful if you forgot to bookmark a site you really liked.

Other functionality

So, what else can we do with it? Well, there are a couple of different Search functions. The first, “Find History Item,” is your traditional search dialog. Also available is “Select by URL,” which allows the user to input several carriage-return-delimited strings that are searched for and automatically selected in the grid.

One feature in the menus that stood out was “Show All Google Searches” (Figure F). This does exactly what it says: it shows all Google searches that haven’t been cleared from the browser.

Figure F

Showing all Google Searches

After pretty much exhausting the menus, the next thing to try is right-clicking on one of the records. Some of the same functionality that is in the menus and toolbars is also available via a right-click context menu (Figure G).

Figure G

Right-click context menu

Let’s look into the properties screen (Figure H). The properties screen shows the same information that is in the grid, just laid out in a traditional data form format.

Figure H

Properties screen

Command-line functionality

The command-line functionality is a little more difficult to jump right into, and a simple “iehv /?” just launched the GUI.

Here is the command-line syntax:

iehv [/Action] ["Destination File"] {-Source Type} {"Source"}

  • Action: tells IEHV what type of file you would like to export to. Options are similar to the GUI Save function.
  • Destination File: absolute or relative path and file name to store the exported data
  • Source Type and Source: optional parameters used to redirect IEHV away from the currently logged-on user (similar to the functions above in Figure D)

Figure I shows the failed attempts at discovering command-line options as well as a simple implementation of the command line that exports all History for User “TRTest” to a tab-delimited text file named “export.tab.” While not as easy to use for simply viewing, the command line would be very useful for reporting and archiving.

Figure I

Command line

Aggregating cialis effectiveness and archiving

The following section is simply a “proof of concept” that should not be taken as a complete solution. I have used VB.NET 2005 to demonstrate these ideas.

The core to this concept is executing the command line, writing the data to a temporary file, and then reading that data into a VB.NET application for aggregation and archival. The challenge is to build the command line for each computer/user/folder you want to aggregate.

Executing a command line from Visual Basic is limited to a few options. I could use the Shell() command, but the outputs of that are very limited and Shell can be temperamental. The .NET Framework also has a Process class within the System.Diagnostics namespace that seems a bit more robust, so we’ll use that.

NOTE: Please refer to the documentation on System.Diagnostics.Process for more detail.

Among other things, the Process class has options for a File Name as well as Arguments. The File Name is the full path to the IEHV executable and the Arguments will be filled in dynamically with the custom-built string we’ll create later. The command line we will use is:

iehv /stab "%temp%iehv.tab" -folder "pathtoIEHistoryFolder"

What this command does is create an output of a specified History folder to a temporary tab-delimited text file in the user’s temp folder. So, we first break off the “iehv” because that is being handled in the Process class’ File Name property. Next, we need to use the .NET Framework to get the user’s temp folder path and substitute that in for “%temp%”. Finally we need to ask the user to specify the path to import into our application.

Prompting the user for this information can be done in one of many ways, depending on how sophisticated you want the application to be and how many folders you want to import in a batch. For the purposes of this proof, we will assume that you want to gather usage for all users on one specified machine and load that information into a DataTable, which can be tied to a backend database.

Code Listing A shows a snippet of how to get the user’s temp folder as well as loop through the user directories gathering the Internet Explorer History and loading it into the DataTable.

Listing A

Dim strTempDir As String = _ Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("temp", _ EnvironmentVariableTarget.User) For Each strProfileDir As String In _ IO.Directory.GetDirectories("\" & Me.txtComputerName.Text & _ "c$documents and settings") Dim strProfileDirParts As String() = strProfileDir.Split("\"c) Dim strProfileName As String = _ strProfileDirParts(strProfileDirParts.Length – 1) Me.psIEHV.StartInfo.Arguments = "/stab """ & strTempDir & _ "iehv.txt"" -folder ""\" & _ Me.txtComputerName.Text & _ "c$Documents and Settings\" & _ strProfileName & "Local SettingsHistory\""" Me.psIEHV.Start() Do While Me.psIEHV.HasExited = False Loop If Me.psIEHV.HasExited = True Then Dim fs As New FileStream(strTempDir & "iehv.txt", _ FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read) Dim sr As New StreamReader(fs) Dim strImport As String = sr.ReadToEnd() For Each strEntry As String In _ strImport.Split(New String() {ControlChars.CrLf}, _ StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries) strEntry = strEntry.Substring(0, strEntry.Length – 1) Dim strEntryParts As New List(Of String) strEntryParts.Add(strComputer) strEntryParts.AddRange(strEntry. _ Split(ControlChars.Tab)) Me.DsHistory.dtHistory.Rows.Add(strEntryParts. _ ToArray()) Next sr.Close() fs.Close() sr = Nothing fs = Nothing End If Next

Considerations

IEHistoryView can allow an administrator to quickly see a user’s browsing history without extensive configuration and preparation. For more advanced archival needs, the command line can be used alongside some custom programming to create a simple, low-cost (time is money) Internet usage monitor.

Using IEHV to monitor Internet usage is dependent on users not deleting their browsing history through Internet Explorer. Fortunately, those rights can be controlled via Group Policy as discussed in this IT Dojo blog post.

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10 Firefox extensions you can’t live without

  • Date: August 18th, 2008
  • Author: Jack Wallen

Whether you want to speed access to the Web sites you regularly visit, keep better tabs on your tabs, or protect your system from potentially dangerous active content, there’s a Firefox extension ready to help you out. Jack Wallen shares his list of favorite time-saving, browser-enhancing add-ons.


One of the nicest aspects of Firefox is the ability to add extensions. And there are plenty to choose from. Some do little more than alter the aesthetics. But you’ll find others out there that you can’t browse without. No matter what your purpose in browsing, there is a killer-app extension just waiting for you. Let’s take a look at my top 10 extensions.

Note: This information is also available as a PDF download.

#1: Morning Coffee

This extension allows you to set a group of Web sites that will open (each in its own tab) with the click of a button. This will save you from having to roam through your bookmarks (while drinking that first cup of wake-me-up in the morning) to view your favorite sites. And you don’t have to limit yourself to personal browsing, either. I also use this extension to open up all the Web-based admin tools for sites I administer. You can even set sites up to open only on certain days (or every day). So news junkies or overworked administrators rejoice: This extension will make your browsing life a little easier.

#2: NoScript

This is one of the best tools for making sure your browsing experience is secure. With NoScript, you can disable active content from any site you don’t trust. Unless you configure it to allow JaveaScript, Java, and other executable scripting to run from a site, NoScript will completely block the script, keeping you browser safe from known and unknown exploits. And don’t think because you are using FireFox in Linux that you’re perfectly safe! Use this extension regardless of platform.

#3: ColorfulTabs

If you’re like me, you generally have a LOT of tabs open in Firefox. Sometimes this isn’t a problem. But there are times when the tabs can get a bit overwhelming and need a bit of organization. To help with this, ColorfulTabs gives each open tab a different color, making it easier to distinguish between them. With this simple extension, you can color-code tabs either randomly or according to URL. You can also set tabs to fade. Another fun feature is that you can set a background image for tabs.

#4: BBCode

This helpful extension adds BBCode, HTML, and XHTML symbols and formatting to the context menu. BBCode also allows you to add up to 10 custom tags to your menu. This extension shows itself when you’re in a forum and you right-click a text area where you can select the tag you want to add from the menu. This extension will make your forum work quite a bit easier, as well as faster.

#5: Buggybar

This extension is invaluable to Bugzilla power users. With this extension, you will have a Bugzilla Chrome sidebar available which will readily show all bugs that relate to a bug list you have created. As of version 0.2, Buggybar works with all instances of Bugzilla.

#6: Clear Cache Button

I don’t know about you, but I always set up my browsers to clear their cache at exit. But what about those times you want to clear the cache but not exit the browser? Instead of navigating through the menu structure, you can add this simple extension. It provides a button that gives you complete cache clearing with a single click.

#7: cialis da 5 mg target=”_blank”>TimeTracker

Okay, this is not really a tool that will aid or better your browsing experience. In fact, this little extension will remind you how much time you spend browsing. I have found this little gem useful in a number of circumstances. Whether you are in need of a quick five-minute break from number crunching or you just need to know how much time you spend on a specific Web site, TimeTracker will keep track of how long you browse. What is nice about this is that the tool times across sessions. So when you close the browser, the timer stops, and when you open the browser back up, the timer starts again. You can reset the timer by right-clicking the status bar timer and selecting Reset.

#8: iMacros

This extension automates pretty much anything you do in Firefox. From opening up sites to filling out forms and even administration work — you can automate it with iMacros. The iMacros extension has a sidebar that shows favorite macros. It also has a record feature that allows you to create macros by simply clicking Record, going through the motions of the macro to be created, and clicking Save. These macros can be as complex as you need them to be. When you want to run them, you simply navigate to the macro in the iMacros sidebar and click the Play button. The only downfall I have found with this tool is that you can’t assign key combinations to run macros. Other than that, this extension is a must-have for power browsers.

#9: Fasterfox

This extension does one thing: It makes Firefox load pages faster. Speed of page loading can be increased by allowing simultaneous connections and prefetching. This extension is currently in the experimental stage because of the release of Firefox 3. To install it, you have to log into a Firefox account to download. The extension is worth the hassle. The speed increase is noticeable.

#10: BlogRovR

We all read blogs. From my TechRepublic Linux and Open Source blog to the countless other blogs available, we all read them daily. And this takes time. Instead of wasting time going to the blogs, let this handy extension fetch them for you. You do have to sign up for an account using this extension (they promise they won’t spam you.) and you will be asked to install another sidebar (Stickies), which is not necessary. Once you have this installed, you just enter the blog URL, and BlogRovR will begin fetching the information for you. Warning: If you have NoScript installed, you have to allow the BlogRovR page to run scripts or it won’t be able to fetch pages for you.

So that’s my list of 10 extensions, from various categories, that will make your Firefox experience better. Some of these extensions are for power users and some are for everyone. What extensions have you found that make your daily browsing better?

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November 8, 2008

Hyperlink Mystery

Have you ever had trouble opening a new link from your e-mail or even on a Web site? When you click on the link, just basically, nothing happens? Well, I'm here today to help you with that!

I've gotten several e-mails recently about this very problem, so I'm glad you asked. This seems to be a somewhat common problem, so I did a little research on it, in hopes of finding a quick fix for you all! Fortunately, I found a few things that could be causing this to happen.

To refresh, basically the problem is that whenever you're using your e-mail program or an instant messenger type program (or any other application) and a link is included, you click on it, but nothing happens. Your computer may freeze up for just a second, but when it's done, you're left right where you started from. Your browser will not open and you cannot, for the life of you, get a new window to come up from the link. How annoying is that?!

Like I said before, there are a few things you can try to resolve this problem. cialis buy on line Before we go any deeper, the first thing to check is your popup blocker. If you have a pop up stopper installed on your computer, it could be interfering with the links you are trying to open. If this happens to be the case, you can always hit the Ctrl button and click on the link again. Ctrl + a click allows the link to open. If that was your problem, you are very lucky.

Another simple cause could be that you don't have the correct browser set as the default for your computer. If you use Internet Explorer, you have to make sure it is set as your default browser. To check this, open IE and go to Tools, Internet Options. Click on the Programs tab and make sure the box clear down at the bottom that says "Internet Explorer should check to see whether it is the default browser" is checked. This will allow IE to open any links you click on. If you use Firefox, go to Tools, Options and choose the General tab. Make sure the box that says "Firefox should check to see if it is the default browser when starting" is checked.

If those two things still don't fix the link problem, there are a couple more options you can try. We need to check and make sure your folder options are set to your specific browser. Go to Start, Control Panel and make sure it is in the classic view. Once there, click on the Folder Options icon and choose the File Types tab. Now, you're going to look for the item "(NONE) URL: HyperText Transfer Protocol." Highlight that and click on the Advanced button, then the Edit button. This will bring up some information on your browser. You're mainly going to be looking at the Application line. If you use Internet Explorer, make sure it says IExplore and so on (for whichever browser you use). If you've recently switched browsers, you may still have your old settings in there and that could be causing the problem with the links. You just have to make sure you have the right browser selected so the links will open in the correct way.

Okay, there's one more tip for you in case nothing has worked thus far. Go to Start, Run and type in "regsvr32 urlmon.dll" (without the quotes). Click OK when done and if a message pops up that says "DllRegisterServer in urlmom.dll succeeded," the problem should be fixed. If that still doesn't work, try typing in the following commands in the Run box:

– Shdocvw.dll
– Msjava.dll
– Actxprxy.dll
– Oleaut32.dll
– Mshtml.dll
– Browseui.dll
– Shell32.dll

One of these options should solve the link problem you are experiencing and you can enjoy link freedom once again!

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November 5, 2008

Ten reasons to switch to Opera

Jack Wallen

Published: 24 Sep 2008 17:22 BST

I have gone through many browsers in my IT lifetime, from Lynx to Mosaic to Mozilla to Netscape to Firefox to Internet Explorer to Safari to Flock.

But there's another browser that peeks its head in and out of that cycle: Opera.

Opera is a browser that gets little press in accounts of the battle for internet supremacy. Yet it is a browser that is making huge waves in certain arenas (for example, mobile) and is always a steady player in the browser market.

Here are 10 reasons why you might want to use a browser that is often overlooked in the market.

1. Speed
It seems no matter how many leaps and bounds Firefox and Internet Explorer make, Opera is always able to render pages faster.

In both cold and warm starts, Opera beats Firefox and Internet explorer. I'm not talking about a difference the naked eye is incapable of seeing either. The speed difference is actually noticeable. So, if you are a speed junky, you may want to use Opera for this reason alone.

2. Speed Dial
Speed Dial is one of those features that generally steals the show with browsers. It's basically a set of visual bookmarks on one page.

To add a page to Speed Dial, you simply click on an empty slot in the Speed Dial page and enter the information.When you have a full page of Speed Dial bookmarks, you can quickly go to the page you want by clicking the related image.

For even faster browsing, you can click the Ctrl + * key combination (where * is the number 1-9 associated with your page, as assigned in Speed Dial).

3. Widgets
Opera Widgets are like Firefox extensions on steroids.

Widgets are what the evolution of the web is all about: little web-based applications you can run from inside — or, in some cases, outside — your browser. Some of the widgets are useful (such as the Touch The Sky international weather applet) and some are just fun (such as the SimAquarium.) They are just as easy to install as Firefox extensions.

4. Wand
You can save form information and/or passwords with this useful tool.

Every time you fill out a form or a password, the Wand will buy cialis generic ask you if you want to save the information. When you save information — in a form, for example — a yellow border will appear around the form. The next time you need to fill out that form, click on the Wand button or click Ctrl + Enter, and the information will automatically be filled out for you.

5. Notes
When browsing, have you ever wanted to take notes about a page or site (or something totally unrelated to your web browsing)?

Opera comes complete with a small Notes application that allows you to jot down whatever you need to jot down.

To access Note, click on the Tools menu and then click on Notes. The tool itself is incredibly simple to use and equally as handy.

6. BitTorrent
Yes it is true, Opera has a built-in BitTorrent protocol.

The built-in BitTorrent client is simple to use: Click on a torrent link, and a dialogue box will open asking you where you want to download the file.

The torrent client is enabled by default, so, if your company doesn't allow torrenting, you should probably disable this feature.

When downloading torrents, you will continue to share content until you either stop the download or close the browser.

7. Display modes
Another unique-to-Opera feature is its display modes, which allows you to quickly switch between Fit To Width and Full Screen mode.

Fit To Width mode adjusts the page size to the available screen space while using flexible reformatting.

Full Screen mode gives over the entire screen space to browsing. In this mode, you drop all menus and toolbars, leaving only context menus, mouse gestures and keyboard shortcuts.

Full Screen mode is especially good for smaller screens.

8. Quick Preferences
The Quick Preferences menu is one of those features the power user will really appreciate.

I use it quite often to enable or disable various features, and not having to open up the Preferences window makes for a much quicker experience.

From the Quick Preferences menu, you can alter preferences for pop-ups, images, Java/JavaScript, plug-ins, cookies and proxies. This is perfect when you are one of those users who block cookies all the time, until a site comes along where you want to enable cookies.

9. Mouse Gestures
Mouse Gestures is a built-in feature that applies certain actions to specific mouse movements or actions. For example, you can go back a page by holding down the right mouse button and clicking the left mouse button.

This is pretty handy on a laptop, where using the track pad can take more time than you probably want to spend on navigation. Even for those who prefer to keep their hands on the keys and not the mouse, the feature can still save time.

Instead of having to get to the mouse, move the mouse to the toolbar and click a button, you simply have to get your hands to the mouse and make the gesture for the action to take place. Of course, this does require learning the gestures.

10. Session saving
I am a big fan of this feature. All too many times, I have needed to close a browser window but didn't want to lose a page. To keep from losing the page, I would keep a temporary bookmark file where I could house these bookmarks.

With Opera, that's unnecessary. If you have a page or a number of pages you want to save, you just go to the File menu and then the Sessions submenu and click Save This Session. The next time you open Opera, the same tabs will open.

You can also manage your saved sessions so that you can save multiple sessions and delete selected sessions.

The upshot
From the above list alone, you can see how easily Opera separates itself from the rest of the crowd. It's a different beast in the web-browsing arena. Opera is fast, stable and cross-platform, and contains many features that other browsers can't touch.

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