Yannick's Corner » Software

PNG files can contain more than graphics

Yannick Lefebvre — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 01:35:27 +0000

When I changed my website’s theme a few weeks ago, I read an intriguing set of instructions in the template’s source files which suggested that I should download Abobe Fireworks to edit the site’s logo (top-left corner), which was stored in a PNG file.

I’ve worked with PNG graphic files for some time and was thinking that the author of the theme must have missed something since PNG only contain graphics, like JPG or BMP files. I still gave it a chance and downloaded a trial version of Adobe Fireworks, then proceeded to open the file. Instead of only finding a static image, I was quite surprised to find an entire design file with layers and editable text. It turns out that Fireworks uses the PNG format to store visual AND design information. If you open up the file in any other application, you will only see the visual information, but with the right tool, you can make any changes that you want to the file. Quite clever.

I guess that you learn something new every day. For more information on the Fireworks PNG format, you can read an article on Adobe’s site here.

Trying out Windows 7 and enjoying it so far

Yannick Lefebvre — Sat, 16 May 2009 23:52:26 +0000

If you haven’t heard yet, the new version of Windows is right around the corner. After having a ton of issues plague the Windows Vista operating system to the point that most people did not want to use it even if they had never seen it in their life, Windows 7 is trying to be a much more stable, more faster, more efficient operating system.

To create a buzz around the new OS and gather feedback, Microsoft decided to completely open up the download of their Release Candidate. You can download it for free from their web site (around 2.5 GB), burn it on a DVD-ROM and install it on as many computers as you want. Once this is done, you will be able to run the new OS until March 2010, at which point it will start shutting down after 2 hours of use. It will then completely stop working in July 2010. Still, from May to March is still a good 9-10 months of use!

After running the new OS for a few days, I can honestly say that I like it. It has not crashed on me once. Most applications that I have tried installing have worked without any hassle. Finally, the new user interface concepts that Windows 7 introduces are really enjoyable. For example, instead of having large buttons on the task bar for applications that are running, the new OS only shows the icons. Even more, if you have an application pinned to the task bar for quick access, starting it up will only change the color of the icon, not create a separate element on the task bar. Here is a quick snapshot of my desktop with a few windows up.

At this pace, I am going to really be considering getting an upgrade to the new OS when it’s released before the year is out. I just hope that they keep the upgrade price reasonable (CAD $100-130) as it currently is with Vista.

Smart Bookmarks: Simple yet very useful Firefox plugin

Yannick Lefebvre — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:00:37 +0000

I love using the Firefox Bookmarks toolbar. However, one thing that I found is that it tends to get crowded once you start having a lot of regular sites that you visit on there. A colleague of mine recently showed me a plugin that solves that issue called Smart Bookmarks Bar. What it does is quite simple, it just hides the text descriptions of the bookmarks on the toolbar, leaving only their icons. Since most sites have their own icons today, you can still easily tell sites apart using their icons.

Sync your contacts with Google

Yannick Lefebvre — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:31:27 +0000

If you own a Smartphone, especially one running Windows Mobile, you have probably been frustrated by the fact that Windows Mobile can only sync contact information with a full licensed copy of Microsoft Outlook. Besides the fact that Outlook is a pretty expensive application, it is overkill if all you are looking to do is to sync a few measly contacts so that you don’t lose them if your phone dies.

Google has seen this gaping hole and recently started offering Google Sync, an application that enables uses of Blackberry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Nokia phones to sync their contacts between their Google accounts and their phones. My wife was quite happy to learn about this one.

Environment variable editing made easy

Yannick Lefebvre — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 02:26:50 +0000

Anyone who has ever had to edit the Windows Environment variables on their computer, specially the path, has probably cursed at the small window that Microsoft has built in their operating system to handle that task. While visiting a customer recently, I was shown a great little tool called the Rapid Environment Editor.

This free utility allows you to see all of your user and system environment variables in a large window. It also breaks down long variables such as include directory or the ever-growing path. Finally, it even checks that directories listed in your variables exist, letting you do some cleanup.

Another new browser on the scene

Yannick Lefebvre — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:39:14 +0000

After Firefox managed to create itself a nice niche amongst web browser, there is now a new kid on the block: Google Chrome. I think that it was inevitable to see Google release their own browser after seeing all of the great online applications that they have developed over the years.

I installed Chrome myself this afternoon and have been quite impressed with the fast page load times, the nice user interface thougths (my favorite so far is the bookmark toolbar that integrates itself to your start page and then disappears when you start navigating) and other little tidbits (loading messages appearing and disappearing in the corner of the browser, etc…).

Here is a quick snapshot so you can get an idea of what it looks like:

Jumped to Linux and not looking back

Yannick Lefebvre — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 14:17:57 +0000

I’ve been thinking about making my home computer completely use open source or free software for a long time now. After finding open source alternatives for the majority of the desktop applications that I am using on Windows, I have made the final leap and converted my machine to use Ubuntu Linux.

Before starting down on this path, the first thing that I did was to download the Ubuntu Live 6.10 CD. After downloading and burning this CD image, you can boot your computer in Linux straight off the CD-ROM without making any modifications to your system. This virtual computer automatically recognizes your internet connection, contains a ton of applications like a web browser, office suite, image editor and hard disk partition manager.

Once I was satisfied with what I saw, I made some space on my hard drive and performed the Ubuntu installation. This went very smoothly and I was up and running very quickly. All of the applications that I mentioned in the previous paragraph were automatically installed (OpenOffice.org, Firefox, GIMP and many others) so I did not have to worry about setting all of these up like I would have to on a Windows system.

Once I was up and running, the next step was to install other tools that I need that don’t come as part of the base installation. Ubuntu is great for this since it contains a tool called the Synaptic Package Manager. This tools connects to the internet and gives you a list of applications available for download and installation. You find the tool you are looking for, select it and the operating system takes care of installing and configuring the tool for you. It even keeps track of updates to all of your installed software and tells you when new versions are out! Windows and Mac OS should follow in these steps.

Of course, Linux is still not for everyone. I had to struggle to get my TV output activated on my video card where such an operation would have been trivial under Windows. A few other tools also had their quirks to install and run. But overall, I’ve been able to get everything running smoothly.

Here is a picture of my desktop so you can see a few application that I would typically use and what it looks like.

HotKeyBind: A very useful small utilityHotKeyBind: Un petit utilitaire bien pratique

Yannick Lefebvre — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 18:47:11 +0000

A few weeks ago, a colleague mentioned how annoyed he was at always making typos when typing e-mail addresses of employees within our company (@engenuitytech.com). After doing a quick web search on my favorite site (sourceforge.net), I found a wonderful utility that solved his problem and also hads many interesting feature. HotKeyBind can be used to assign special functionality to any key or key combination on the keyboard.

These functionalities include typing text, starting an application and many other tasks. Of course, you want to be careful not to assign functionlity to keys commonly used by other applications, such as the F1 key that usually bring up help, but there are only a few of these exceptions to be careful about.

To make things even better, this is open source freeware! You will find a link to this and many other useful free application here.
Il y a quelques semaines, un collègue m’a mentionné à quel point il était tanné de faire des fautes de frappe en écrivant les addresses courriel des employés de la compagnie (@engenuitytech.com). En faisant une courte recherche internet sur mon site favori (sourceforge.net), j’ai trouvé un petit utilitaire qui a réglé son problème et qui offre beaucoup de fonctionnalitées intéressantes. HotKeyBind permet d’assigner des fonctionnalitées spéciale à n’importe quelle touche ou combinaison de touche sur le clavier.

Les fonctions qui peuvent être assignées peuvent être d’écrire du texte, de démarrer une application ou plusieurs autres opérations. Bien sûr, il faut faire attention de ne pas assigner de nouvelle fonctionalité à une touche déjà utilisée par une autre application comme F1 qui ouvre habituellement l’aide, mais il n’y a pas beaucoup d’autres exceptions.

Pour rendre les choses encore meilleures, ce logiciel est un gratuitiel Open Source! Vous trouverez un lien pour télécharger cette application et d’autres utilitaires gratuits ici.

Standardizing the RSS IconStandardiser l’icône RSS

Yannick Lefebvre — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:35:51 +0000

I often talk about RSS since I find that it is the most helpful creation on the web in the past few years. I recently stumbled on a site that is starting a movement to standardize the RSS feed icon to put on web sites. Currently, there are a ton of different icons that are used to designate an RSS feed so it is difficult for people to quickly identify an icon as a feed. Here is the icon in question:

As you can see, I added that icon to the sidebar on the left side of the site. For more information on the standard or to download the icon in different sizes and formats, take a look at feedicons.com.
Je parle souvent de fil de nouvelles RSS puisque je trouve que c’est une des inventions les plus pratiques sur le web depuis quelques années. Je suis récemment tombé sur un site qui tente de standardizer l’icône utilisé pour indiquer qu’un fil de nouvelles est disponible. Il existe présentement une tonne d’icônes différents qui rendent la tâche d’identifier rapidement un fil de nouvelles RSS un peu ardue. Voici le nouvel icône en question.

Comme vous pouvez le voir, j’ai ajouté cet icône dans la section de navigation du site sur la gauche. Pour plus d’information sur le standard et pouvoir télécharger les îcones en différentes dimensions et formats, visitez feedicons.com.

Reading multiple web site using BloglinesLire plusieurs sites web en utilisant Bloglines

Yannick Lefebvre — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 01:59:42 +0000

If you’re like me, you like to keep up-to-date with many different topics on many different web site and you find that it takes a long time to go from site to site to read all the news as they get posted. As well, you might always be on different computers so you don’t always have access to bookmarks to remember all of the sites that you like to read.

A great solution to this problem has emerged in the past few years in the form of RSS or Atom feeds. These are small text files that many web sites make available for people to download. They contain a list of the most recent news, usually accompanied with the first few lines of the news item. Many news and information sites publish data in RSS form including CNN, the BBC, Slashdot and tons of others around the net. To find them, look for the words RSS, News Feed or XML on the front page.

RSS feeds can be read in a multitide of ways, including browsers like Firefox. However, a really nice way that I have found recently is using a web site called Bloglines.com. On this site, you can register all of the RSS feeds that you are interested in. The site will then regularly get the latest news from your sites of choice. When you go and read your page on bloglines, you get all the new pieces of information from all of the sites that you read on a single page. No need to run around, no need to remember addresses, no need to remember which news you read and which ones you did not. Here is a small preview of the interface:

If you give it a shot, let me know what you think.
Si vous êtes comme moi, vous aimez être informé sur une multitude de sujets provevant de plusieurs sites web et vous trouvez qu’il est bien long de visiter tous ces siites pour lire les dernières nouvelles. De plus, vous utilisez plusieurs ordinateurs différents et n,avez donc pas toujours accès à vos favoris pour vous rappeler de toutes les addresses qui vous intéressent.

Une superbe solution qui est apparue dans les dernières années est l’apparition des fichiers RSS et Atom. Ces petits fichiers textes sont disponibles sur plusieurs sites web pour être téléchargés. Ils contiennent les nouvelles les plus récentes du site qui sont habituellement accompagnées des premières lignes de l’article. Plusieurs sites de nouvelles et d’informations publient des fichiers RSS incluant CNN, Radio-Canada et Slashdot et une tonnes d’autres site web. Pour les trouvez, recherchez les mots RSS, Fil de nouvelle ou XML sur la page principale de vos sites préférés.

Des fichiers RSS peuvent être lus de plusieurs façons, incluant directement dans des navigateurs webs tels Firefox. Cependant, une meilleure façon est d’utiliser un site s’appelant Bloglines . Sur ce site, vous pouvez enregistrer tous les fils de nouvelles RSS qui vous intéressent. Ce site ira alors régulièrement chercher toutes les nouvelles de ces sites. Lorsque vous allez sur Bloglines, vous avez alors accès à toutes les nouvelles qui vous intéressent sur une seule page. Aucun besoin de courir d’un site à l’autre, de vous souvenir des addresses ou de vous demander quelles nouvelles vous avez le temps de lire. Voici un aperçu de ce merveilleux site:

Si vous l’essayez, laissez-moi savoir ce que vous en pensez.