General:  SHIFT + ALT + [UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT] ARROW; ALT + Left Mouse Button

Command:  Edit.Line[Up, Down]ExtendColumn; Edit.Char[Left, Right]ExtendColumn

Versions:  2005, 2008, 2010

Code:  vstipEdit0007

General:  SHIFT + ALT + [UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT] ARROW; ALT + Left Mouse Button

Command:  Edit.Line[Up, Down]ExtendColumn; Edit.Char[Left, Right]ExtendColumn

Versions:  2010

Code:  vstipEdit0006 

That’s why I was cheered to see TechRadar’s feature at the weekend highlighting the Top 10 Windows Command Line Tips and Tricks. Hurrah, the Command Line is cool again! Well, maybe retro cool, like a Mini.

Packed choc-a-bloc with sneaky tweaks to get the most from your time with the command line, the guide gives you the lowdown on customising fonts and colours to create that old-school green-screen effect, increasing the command buffer size, enabling copy and paste, dragging and dropping filenames from Windows Explorer and a whole lot more.

Whilst I’m 99% percent sure these tips won’t be so new to you Niners, there may well be a long-forgotten cherry in there somewhere, and if not, let’s out-do TechRadar with our own set of Command Line tips from the real experts… over to you!

Unfortunately, whilst our six month old son loves to watch the screen during a gaming session, he’s a little young to join in the fun. That got me thinking – is there a minimum age for Kinect? A quick search produced a great guide for using Kinect with your kids from MSNBC.

According to the guide, the recommended minimum height for Kinect is 40 inches (roughly four and a half years upwards) due to difficulties tracking multiple people of differing heights. If you mount the sensor above the TV (up to 6 feet if possible), Kinect has an easier job tracking players as it’s looking down on the play area, rather than across.

If you want to optimise your living room for the best experience with Kinect, the guide has a swathe of hints and tips for creating the perfect setup. Make sure you check it out. 

These shortcuts let you navigate through Hotmail completely mouse-free, something which not only speeds up the time you spend in your email, but can also help those affected with carpal tunnel, a medical problem that makes using a computer mouse painful. (Trust me, I know). 

I couldn’t help myself, I had to re-share this handy list. The shortcuts are, as follows:

• Delete a message – Delete
• Create a new message- Ctrl+N
• Send a message – Ctrl+Enter
• Open a message – Ctrl+Shift+O
• Print a message – Ctrl+Shift+P
• Reply to a message – Ctrl+R
• Reply all to a message- Ctrl+Shift+R
• Forward a message – Ctrl+Shift+F
• Save a draft message – Ctrl+S
• Mark a message as junk – Ctrl+Shift+J
• Mark a message as read – Ctrl+Q
• Mark a message as unread – Ctrl+U
• Move to a folder – Ctrl+Shift+V
• Open the next message – Ctrl+.
• Open the previous message – Ctrl+,
• Close a message – Esc
• Search your e-mail messages – /
• Check spelling – F7
• Select all – S then A
• Deselect all – S then N
• Go to the inbox – F then I
• Go to your Drafts folder – F then D
• Go to your Sent folder- F then S

So how do you add your Dropbox to the Start Menu? The How-To-Geek figured out a hack for this that using the Libraries feature and renaming the “Recorded TV” library to a different name. Obviously, if you use that library for your saved TV shows, this solution is not ideal. But if you don’t, then you can definitely take advantage of this hack. The details and steps, screenshots included, are available here on the howtogeek.com blog. 

To facilitate the process, he provided a zip file containing multiple “blank shortcuts” and blank.exe files. (Don’t worry – we scanned them with Microsoft Security Essentials – they’re safe. Other forum users tested them too).

After extracting the files, you’ll have a folder called “Blank” and a ReadMe.txt. Before pinning the Shortcuts to the taskbar, you have to move the entire “Blank” folder to C:\Windows. Then grab a shortcut and drag it to the taskbar. Now, instead of seeing a blank (white) icon, you’ll just see a space! The zip file contains four different “blank” shortcuts and you can only use one of each.

What a great trick!

Although this feature is only a keyboard combo away, there are those of you out there who prefer to have access to features from icons you can click with your mouse. (You’ll know if you fall into this category if you’ve been finding yourself wondering why the “Show Desktop” button got moved in Windows 7 all the way over to the far right of the taskbar.)

For this group of users, the following tip will come in handy.

Adding Flip 3D to the Taskbar

As you already know, the new Windows taskbar lets you pin your frequently used applications to its interface for quick launching. Since Flip 3D is essentially just an application, the same can be done with it, too. Just follow these steps (courtesy of Windows7News):

1. Right-click on your desktop, select New, and then select Shortcut.

2. In the location field, type C:\Windows\System32\rundll32.exe dwmapi #105 (assuming that Windows is installed on C:)

3. Click Next, and then type Window Switcher for the shortcut name, then press Finish.

4. Right-click on the Window Switcher shortcut that you just created and then click on Properties.

5. Click on the Change Icon… button.

6. In the Look for icons in this file field type %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\imageres.dll, and then press Enter.

7. Select the first icon and then click on OK.

8. Click on OK to dismiss the properties dialog.

9. Drag the Window Switcher shortcut from your desktop onto the taskbar.

Note: Flip 3D will only work if Aero is enabled.

The expanded menu includes all of your User folders like Contacts, Desktop, Downloads, Favorites, Links, My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, Saved Games, and Searches.

Here’s an extra tip, too: to add any items to your regular “Send To” menu, type shell:sendto and then drag shortcuts to the folder which appears.

Thanks, How-to-Geek!

However, there are some people who would probably like to shut of InPrivate mode for good. Parents, for example, may not want their children to have access to this feature. Also, in an enterprise setting, I.T. administrators may want to restrict their users from going “InPrivate,” especially in companies where all internet communication has to be recorded for legal purposes.

To disable the setting, it’s as simple as making a change to the registry key located at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Privacy\EnableInPrivateMode.

When enabled (the default), the dword value is set to 00000001. To disable InPrivate mode, just change that last “1” to a “0” as in 00000000.

On some systems that key may not exist, so you’ll need to first create it. To do so, follow these instructions (courtesy of Grand Stream Dreams):

1. Logon to your machine with an account that has administrative rights.
2. Right-click on your desktop and select "New"..."Text Document".
3. Rename it to something like "IE8SafeMode.reg"  (Note: change the file extension from .txt to .reg)
4. Save the change and tell Windows you know you changed the file extension name.
5. Right-click on the file you just made and select "Edit". It should open in notepad.
6. Copy the following text (all three lines) and paste it into that Notepad file:

   Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

   [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Privacy]
   "EnableInPrivateBrowsing"=dword:00000000

7. Save the file and then close it.
8. When you double-click the file it will ask you if you want to add those changes into the Registry. Select Yes.
9. Then reopen IE8 and you should now have InPrivate mode disabled.

In follow up parts, I’ll dive into advanced breakpoints, tips for debugging multithreaded applications, using the watch windows, and more.

Thanks to a user on the DSL Reports forum, there’s now a list of the sites that the Firefox extension Adblock Plus uses which can now be imported into IE8 in order to block ads there, too. Here’s how to set it up:

1. In IE8, go to Access Tool –> InPrivate Filtering Settings from the toolbar menu.
2. Click on the “Advanced Settings” link at the bottom left of the window.
3. Click “Import” to import the XML file you first downloaded from here (That’s a zip file – you need to extract it first).
4. You’ll get a message that the import worked and you’ll just click “OK.”
5. You can close the open dialog boxes now – you’re done!

After doing this, the ads associated with the URLs you imported will be automatically blocked in IE.

Note: this applies the publicly available download of IE8, not the one pre-installed on Windows 7 Beta.

Thanks, gHacks, for the tip.

Steps

1. Go to IE8’s “Tools” menu and choose “Manage Add-ons”
2. Click on “Accelerator” in the left hand pane, then find the one you’re interested in moving. (Notice that it is currently shown as “enabled”. The choices here are “enabled” or “default”. Anything set as “default” will appear on the initial list of accelerators shown when you highlight text on a webpage and click the accelerator icon.)
3. Highlight the accelerator you want and click “set as default”.

That’s it! Doing this will move the Accelerator from appearing further down in the menu and instead moves it up to the top where the other default Accelerators live.

Great tip - thanks, Ian!

Don’t you just love things that automate tedious tasks? I sure do. Thanks Jon!

(via hack7mc) 

In case you don’t know, Federated Search is a new feature of Windows 7 that lets you search internet web sites from within an Explorer window. There are a lot of really cool Search Connectors which you can add to your computer like this Flickr connector or this Twitter one. You can make your own by following the instructions here.

Anyway, while you can’t really have true Federated Search outside of Windows 7, you can mimic the functionality by using the Search Provider feature in Internet Explorer. To do so, the forum post suggests the following steps:

1. Go to the site you want to create the Search Connector for. Example: deviantart.com
2. Now in DevArt, search for “TEST” (all caps)
3. Copy the URL to the clipboard & then head over here.
4. Paste the URL in ‘Step 3’
5. Type DevArt in ‘Step 4’
6. Install

You’ll then have a Search Connector just for that particular web site. You can do this for any site where you can do a search for the word “TEST” (without quotes) using their search box then pasting the URL in ‘Step 3.’ It’s not Federated Search, but it is a pretty good tip – and one IE users on Windows 7 can use too.