Bit-cycling : Things I do on every new PC

Stupid Outlook Tricks: The back button

justsean — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:01:00 GMT

A long time ago, someone decided that Outlook should be able to browse web pages inside its frame*. Among other things, the “Web” toolbar was created, with a full complement of browser controls, including an address bar.

Shortly afterwards, people came to their senses and this kind of functionality is, at the very least, deprecated. But the Web toolbar is still something I turn on every time I install a new system. Why, I hear you ask with despair…?

Because of the back button.

Outlook treats each folder or module like a “page.” So if you’re in the Inbox and you switch to another folder, and then to the calendar, a quick tap on the back button takes you back to that mail folder, and another takes you back to the Inbox. Outlook even remembers the which message you had selected before you switched away. Perfect for navigating around Outlook.

Note: the back/forward buttons on mice also work just as well, and backspace (and alt-left/right arrow) work as well, too. You don’t need to have the web toolbar showing in order to use these keys.

Here’s how I customize the toolbar to show only what I need it to. I turn on the toolbar (right click on the existing toolbar, and select “Web”), and then I customize it (right-click and select “Customize”). Using drag-and-drop, I remove every button from the toolbar except the back and forward buttons. Then I rearrange the toolbars so the Web toolbar is at the top right (more or less where the back button is in every other app).

The end-result looks something like this:

Note: This post is now part of an ongoing “Things I do on every new PC” series.

* In fact, I worked for a time on a project while I was in Exchange that would allow web applications built using Exchange’s application development platform to run locally in Outlook using a subset of Exchange’s platform known as the “Exchange Localstore” (a long story, but the principal designers of that “make a large server application work on the client” project went on to work on a project to make SQL Server work on a client, codenamed “Mighty Mouse”. That work eventually became a little thing called WinFS)

Taskbar Shuffle

justsean — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 19:50:12 GMT

I install and uninstall dozens of pieces of software weekly. I also (perhaps as a result of the first statement), rebuild my laptop from scratch about once every three of four months. So, it's a rare piece of software that lasts on my PC time after time. I thought I would highlight one of those today.

Taskbar Shuffle is a great little tool that lets you get drag-and-drop buttons on your taskbar. Simple and efficient. For that alone, it gets the honor of being re-installed everytime I rebuild my PC.

As an additional bonus, it supports a grouping feature that fixes something that I hate about the XP and Vista taskbar: grouping taskbar buttons from the same application together without ever collapsing them into the annoying "group menu."

It has a number of other features, including system tray reshuffling (but, I like to make everything on my system tray hidden, so this doesn't matter so much to me).

Go check it out. It's free. :)

My Favorite (hidden) IE feature

justsean — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 14:24:27 GMT

Whenever I install Windows on a new PC (which in my daily work happens fair more frequently than I care to admit), there's one* setting that I always tweak before doing anything else:

Internet Options, Advanced tab, "Use inline AutoComplete"

What this does is enables autocomplete of URLs (and other commands) in the address bar, instead of just as a drop-down.

Here is an example. Let's say I visit both the IEblog (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie) and the RSS team blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam) regularly.

The next time I go to the address bar, I type "blo". IE shows me this:

Then I hit the right arrow (essentially to accept the text it's given me), and I type "r":

Press enter, and I'm at my favorite blog!

Bonus feature: this works in every address bar: explorer, the run dialog, and system-supplied open/save dialogs, and any app that uses the system edit control (and enables URL autocomplete).
Double bonus: this works in IE6 as well (but upgrade to IE7 now!).

Downside, you probably should be a touch typist before turning this on. If you're not paying attention to the screen while you type, you may inadvertently navigate to something you didn't want to. Windows developer guru and part-time Windows historian has blogged about this, so I dont have to (note: you should read the comments to see the correction to how he describes the feature -- it doesn't change the basic point, however).

* Truth in advertising: there were two settings I always changed. The second was to turn off "reuse windows for launching shortcuts" -- a a highly annoying feature of IE6 that picked one of my open windows and changed the page being viewed whenever I clicked on a link in Outlook or elsewhere. It was designed to help users keep the number of windows being opened under control. But IE7's tabs make that unncessary, because now the default is to open a new tab in the same window. Both problems solved!