For frustration... there's Microsoft!

So all of a sudden it was gone!

When I press Ctrl + A in MS Word or Outlook compose email, all of the text did not get highlighted. I opened a few other applications to find out whether the "Select All" and "Ctrl + A" had been broken in other places too? Like Wordpad, Notepad, Excel, IE, Firefox and what not. All the places were fine. It was just this one stupid place - Word docs and the Compose more of Outlook. I knew before that they’re both related. So 2+ hours of frustration and frantic search on google and what do I find? Nothing, practically nothing. There’s some dude out there who has spent like weeks finding out that the installation of Rich Text Controls do this. I didn’t have any of that installed. Just an application that used MS Word components. Later on, I asked like a dozen other people whether their "Select All" option had a shortcut changed to something strange like "Ctrl + CLEAR (Num 5)" and they all said no. Btw, if you're wondering that Num 5 means the key 5 on the right hand side of the keyboard where you have the Numbers pad and Num Lock key.

I googled once again only to find nothing about it, even on Microsoft website, nothing turned up for MS Office 2003. They did have something about shortcut changes in Word 2007, but it wasn't 2003. I had 2003. Also found that as usual, they admitted having broken functionality for Select All in Word and Outlook but that too didn't resolve my issue. Where was my Control A, man!? I was super pissed at Microsoft and Bill Gates as usual for hours. Only if I could strangle them. *grrr*

I come back to my Word document after a couple of hours, still very annoyed. I start playing around the Options and Customize menu only to find out that the other application I was using had somehow modified my Normal.dot file so the Ctrl + A shortcut got deleted from it. How? I don't know.

Solution: Under the Tools menu -> Customize -> Commands tab -> Keyboard button -> went to Edit - EditSelectAll and clicked on "Reset All" button to restore the Ctrl + A shortcut under the Current Keys list.

As you can imagine, I felt utterly stupid and silly when I found the solution. But what can I say, that's Microsoft for you.

We can hate it but we can't live without it. *sigh*

What if Gmail had been Designed by Microsoft?

My first reaction would be "OH NO!" but then again this one was a fun read! ;)

Source: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

And some very helpful tips and lessons for good UI for folks whose creativity actually affects the UI designs.

General Motors Reply to Bill Gates

Got this in a forwarded email. It was a fun read!

---

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated,

"If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating:

"If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part, esp 7th point and 10th point):"

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
   
2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.
   
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.
   
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
   
5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would ! run on only five percent of the roads.
   
6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed an Illegal Operation" warning light.
   
7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.
   
8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.
   
9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
   
10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.
    

List of Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

I personally get very annoyed with the mouse sometimes while using the computer. Keyboard comes in the picture as a blessing at that time. Over the past few years, I have collected all different shortcuts that I came across. Thought of sharing these with fellow keyboard lovers. If you think I missed any or you know more, please do share. I'd appreciate it.

Happy keyboarding!


General

Alt + Esc - Shuffles through the open windows

Alt + F4 - Close the working window

Alt + G - Google Toolbar (if you have it installed)

Alt + Print Screen - Copies just the active window/dialog box

Alt + Space + N - Minimize the selected window

Alt + Space + X - Maximize the selected window

Alt + Space - Upper left corner System menu displays (in any window)

Alt + Tab - Shuffle open windows on desktop

Alt + Enter - When done this on an icon, it displays the ShortCut tab of Properties window

Ctrl + A - Select all items on page

Ctrl + Alt + Del - Opens the Windows Security dialog box

Ctrl + C - Copy items to clipboard

Ctrl + End - Go to bottom end of file

Ctrl + Esc - Same as a click on Start button

Ctrl + F4 - Close the top most file in working window

Ctrl + Home - Go to top of file

Ctrl + Mouse wheel spin - Increases or decreases the zoom of the text

Ctrl + O - Opens the Open File dialog box

Ctrl + S - Saves page

Ctrl + Tab - Shuffle files open in the same window

Ctrl + V - Paste items from clipboard

Ctrl + W - Closes the active file in the current window

Ctrl + X - Cut and copy items to clipboard

Ctrl + Y - Redo last action

Ctrl + Z - Undo last action

Ctrl + Print Screen - Copies entire screen, then you can do Ctrl + V in Paint of MS Word to create a screen shot.

F1 - Display Help file

Tab - Toggle forward through page items

Down Arrow - Scroll down

Up Arrow - Scroll up

Print Screen - Copies entire screen

Shift + Delete - Deletes a file/an object permanently without it appearing in the Recycle Bin

Shift + Tab - Reverse Tab

Win - Same as a click on Start button

Win + D - Show desktop (Minimize All/Undo Minimize All)

Win + E - Opens My Computer/Windows Explorer

Win + M - Minimizes all open windows

Win + Pause - Brings up the Systems Properties window

Win + R + Calc - Opens the Calculator

Win + R + cmd - Opens the MS-DOS prompt window

Win + R + Excel - Opens MS Excel application

Win + R + http://www .com - Typed URL Website in IE

Win + R + Mspaint - Opens the MS Paint application

Win + R + Notepad - Opens the notepad

Win + R + view-source:http://www .com - Typed URL source code in notepad

Win + R + WinWord - Opens MS Word application

Win + R + WordPad - Opens the WordPad application

Win + R + www. - Launches the IE window with www. in the address bar

Win + R - Opens the Run dialog box same as Start -> Run

Win + Tab - Shuffle through taskbar windows without opening them


Internet Explorer & Mozilla Firefox, My Computer, Windows Explorer

Alt + D - Jumps to the address bar and selects the text

Alt + Home - Return to your homepage

Alt + Left Arrow - Move backward to a previous page

Alt + Right Arrow - Move forward to a previous page

Backspace - Back button on IE/FireFox, or View the folder one level up (used for My Computer and Windows Explorer)

Ctrl + F5 - Refresh from the server and bypass the local cache

Ctrl + F6 - Brings cursor to the Address Bar

Ctrl + B - Open and organize favorites list

Ctrl + D - Add current page to favorites list

Ctrl + F - performs a find on the current page

Ctrl + H - Opens the History

Ctrl + I - Shows the favorites

Ctrl + L - Brings cursor to the Address Bar or displays Open dialog box

Ctrl + N - Opens a new window

Ctrl + P - Opens the Print dialog box

Ctrl + R - Refresh a web page

Ctrl + T - Opens a new tab

Ctrl + Tab - Move forward between frames

F6 - Highlights the address bar

Shift + F10 - Displays the pop-up menu (Right click pop-up menu). The third button to the right from Space key between the Windows and ctrl button.

Shift + Left mouse click - Opens the link in new window

Shift + Mouse wheel spin - Forward and backward through the pages you have visited

Ctrl + Enter - Puts http://www. and .com around the word in address bar. If your OS and/or IE are another language other than English, then it will add the appropriate extension. E.g. for Japanese version it will add .co.jp at the end instead of .com.

Esc - Stop downloading/loading current page

F4 - Pull down the Address Bar site list

F5 - Refresh page


Mozilla Firefox Only

Ctrl + Shift + Enter - Puts http://www. and .org around the word in address bar

Shift + Enter - Puts http://www. and .net around the word in address bar


MS Word Only

Alt + F5 - Resizes the MS Word window(makes it smaller)

Shift + F3 - Toggles between Lower Case, Capitalize, Upper Case in MS Word and other selected applications


KVM Switch Only

Scroll Lock + Scroll Lock + 2 - Switches to computer connected on port 2 of your switch. This is when you have one set of monitor, keyboard, mouse and multiple CPUs connected to it via a KVM switch. Here the third numeric value entered is the port number of the switch.

MS SQL Server error on changing Date types

Error: The conversion from datetime data type to smalldatetime data type resulted in a smalldatetime overflow error.

This happens because the default value of the date field is set to something like '12/29/1899' or '12/30/1899'. This strange looking date has been included by MSFT in SQL Server as well as in Excel (also 1900 is included as leapyear as I found).

As I found on a website, 29 February 1900 does not exist in most countries. From 1 March 1900 both Excel and the Enterprise Manager are the same.

After changing these dates to valid dates, and running an update query such as

ALTER TABLE dbo.TableName ALTER COLUMN ColumnName smalldatetime
GO

works fine.

Emails in MS Outlook have Gray Background!!

Emails in my MS Outlook have turned gray all of a sudden and I am pulling my hair out because it's very hard to read them now. Finally, after banging my head on wall for some time, I figure it out. It appears that Microsoft came up with this! *jeez* Why do they have to make people's lives harder than they are?

This appears to be happening when the email is formatted as HTML, and not text.

Any message that has any sort of formatting applied to it (fonts, colors, etc.) now appears with the gray background.

Guess why?

I have "Use Windows colors" option unchecked in Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0, and the background color default is gray on there. And that is also affecting e-mail display in Outlook. LOL

Only these guys can be so great to do such thing. OK fine I agree that they made this ridiculous option, but why in the world is default background color set to gray instead of white? Don't you guys ask potential users or real users before implementing new features? *sheesh*

No scroll in VB 6

Unbelievably enough MSFT forgot to put this feature in Visual Studio 6.0 VB6 IDE. Kind of funny when you think about it but it was getting so annoying to not being able to scroll using mouse wheel. Finally... found out they have fix for it! :D

Mouse wheel events do not work in the Visual Basic 6.0 IDE