To fix this you have to get adventurous and make edits to the registry. I found a solution to the slow process that is normally a standard part of finding and editing these entries. The program is called Registry Replace by Absolute Impulse. It allows you to do search and destroy string replacements similar to those you can perform with a standard text editor.

trueSpace may be daunting for those who are not familiar with it’s user interface, but once you get used to how tools and tool bars are arranged, it becomes much more intuitive than you may originally think. Since I haven’t used a new version since trueSpace 5.5, looks like I’ve got some catching up to do. They’ve added tabbed interfaces for views so that you can switch between workspaces and multi-angled model views and a panel with library browser and settings tabs. One of the reasons I’ve stuck with version 5.5 for so long has been that it can import stl, igs and other industrial modeling files. I use these at work to render products that are in concept phases of production or that we can’t get samples of in time for photos we may need. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be supported under the new version. Guess I’ll have to keep digging to see if I can find out anything more about this.

SAHANA runs on a LAMP/WAMP server and enables fast setup and web based management of disaster recovery networks. Features include a missing person registry, organization registry, request management system, camp registry, volunteer management, inventory management, and situation awareness. SAHANA has been used in several recent disasters for various applications. More can be found on its website.

Link
UNESCO Free & Open Source Software Portal

Xara Xtreme

A while back, Xara released their vector graphics program Xara Xtreme into the wilds of the WWW as open source software. While the Windows version is still payware, the Linux version is completely free (as in speech!) and makes a great addition to any Linux graphics suite. While Xara Xtreme is comparable to InkScape, they don’t share all of the same functions, and they are a good complement to one another. GNU/Linux only.
Link

Artweaver

Artweaver is a freeware program for use with tablet PCs and pen tablets. It can simulate paint brushes of various types, includes layering, standard image formats and plug-in support, and has standard editing features like croping, area selecting and some built-in image effects. Not bad for around 8 Mb. Windows only.
Link

ArtRage 2

Along the same lines as Artweaver, but more focused on the painting aspects of pen input, ArtRage 2 is a free, limited feature download with a payware, full feature version available. The main advantage of ArtRage 2 is that it really does feel like an honest to goodness drawing pad right there on your PC. The free version, includes pencil, paint brush and a few other tools that allow you to really have a lot of fun with your tablet. Windows only.
Link

FastStone MaxView

FastStone offers several freeware and shareware programs for manipulating and viewing images. FastStone MaxView is a great freeware replacement for Windows XP’s Photo and Fax Viewer. MaxView is faster and has more options and features than Photo and Fax Viewer, and has a borderless window as well as auto-hiding controls and hotkey support. Windows only.
Link

Photoscape

Photoscape is a freeware photo editing program which includes features that allow you to do general photo editing and enhancements. You can also use it as a batch editing tool and it also allows you to make animated GIFs. Windows only.
Link

BONUS!! Imageditor

I’ve recently come across a handy tool for editing the Windows registry to change which programs open image files by default. Windows automatically associates certain right-click actions (chiefly open and edit) with built-in programs. I’ve been using Paint.net as a replacement for MS Paint for a while, but I wanted to associate it with all the same image formats that Paint was. This way, Paint.net would use the built-in “Edit” context menu item.

Imageditor allows you to do just that, with no manual editing of the registry or going through the hassle of changing multiple items in the Folder Settings dialog. There are instructions on the Imageditor page on how to use it. Windows only.
Link

Any-who, one of our labs has us using mount and umount (did I mention that RHA030 is a basic GNU/Linux skills class with a RedHat flavor?) with a floppy drive. There are a couple of problems with this, however. One, there’s no virtual floppy disk on the virtual machine that’s been configured for class. Two, VMware Workstation 6 has this weird quirk (at least the version we have) that won’t allow you to create floppy images in the img format. It adds flp to the end of whatever you put want to name your file, and then gives this error that the file already exists, which doesn’t make a lot of sense since the Workstation just created the file and should know that.

So, here’s a (mostly) graphical tutorial that allows you to create your own floppy image and use it with VMware Workstation 6.

Step 1. Open VMware Workstation and select the virtual machine you want to add a virtual floppy drive to.

Step 2. Select “Edit Virtual Machine Settings” from that virtual machine’s “Commands” menu.

Step 3. From the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog’s “Hardware” tab, click the “Add…” button

Step 4. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, select the “Floppy Drive” hardware type and then click the “Next” button.

Step 5. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, choose the “Create a blank floppy image” radio button and then click the “Next” button.

Step 6. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, click the “Bowse” button to choose a location for your floppy image.

Step 7. Type in the name of the image file you want to create. Notice I tried to input an “.img” extension which is one of the types listed in the file type select box. Don’t bother trying that because Workstation will automatically tack on a “.flp” extension regardless of what you input.

Step 8. Check your file’s path and then click “Finish”. What’s supposed to happen is, Workstation creates an image file with the name in the text box.

Step 9. What happens is Workstation adds the “.flp” extension, creates the image file, then gives you this Alert box stating: “Unable to create floppy image. File exists.” Idiotic really. Just click the “OK” button and proceed as follows.

Step 10. You’ll now see that your file name has been appended with the “.flp” extension and that and further “Finish” clicking will merely give you to opportunity to view the Alert box again. But don’t worry, because even though you’re getting error a strange and magical thing has happened. Click “Cancel” to proceed to the next step.

Step 11. Click “OK” on the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog.

Step 12. Ok, this is less of a step than just a view of the results. Remember that “strange and magical” thing I mentioned? Well, as it turns out Workstation has added the floppy drive to your virtual hardware and created and added the floppy image to your floppy drive just fine even with those errors. Weird, weird, weird, but I’m not really complaining, now I can do my lab!

Hope this helps anyone still having problems with this.

Update!!
Had to add a comment to the replacement code below in order for this to work.

080404 Update!!
Yet again, code changes for new versions and what not.

Looks like Mozilla has added WebRunner to it’s Mozilla Labs line up and changed the name to Prism. From what they say, it’s going to be a cross between an open version of Adobe Air and Microsoft Silverlight and a localized lancher for web applications. Which, by my definition, is what utility computing is supposed to be like. Prism is currently for Windows only (they’d better hurry up with a Linux version), but it runs the same webapp files and also has added style sheet support – among other things – so you can style your webapps your way.

Anyway, I’ve been kind of discouraged by the lack of extension availability for WebRunner (and XulRunner for that matter). You’ll find in another of my posts a webapp for accessing the WebRunner extensions panel. Using this webapp, you can add new extensions (by installing or dropping them onto the panel), but at this point, adding extensions will fail because the version checking mechanism for WebRunner/XulRunner. To get around that, you need to change the extension’s compatibility information. These instructions will not work for every extension and your results will vary…

I recommend you find a smaller extension, download it and make the following changes:

1. Open the extension package (you can open it with 7-zip, ALzip, Winzip or any other archive program that works with zip files.
2. Extract and open the install.rdf with a text editor, I’d recommend Wordpad if your using windows.
3. Locate and change the following or something that looks like the following (this will vary by extension, but look for the Firefox description section – and you may find that you have to remove all references to all other Mozilla programs that the extension is compatible with for this to work):

<!--Firefox-->
<RDF:Description RDF:about="rdf:#$djS7s"
  em:id="{ec8030f7-c20a-464f-9b0e-13a3a9e97384}"
  em:minVersion="0.8"
  em:maxVersion="2.0.0.*" />

To:

<!--Webrunner-->
  <RDF:Description RDF:about="webrunner"
    em:id="webrunner@webapps.org"
    em:minVersion="0.1"
    em:maxVersion="10.0" />

or (again it will depend on which way the developer implemented the Firefox description):

<em:targetApplication>
  <!--Webrunner-->
  <Description>
    <em:id>webrunner@webapps.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.1</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>10.0</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

If you’re using Prism, change to the following:

<RDF:Description RDF:about="prism"
  em:id="prism@developer.mozilla.org"
  em:minVersion="0.1"
  em:maxVersion="10.0" />

or

<em:targetApplication>
  <Description>
    <!--Prism-->
    <em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.1</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>10.0</em:maxVersion>
  </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

4. Then save the rdf file and add it back into the xpi archive.
5. You should be ready to install the extension using the Extensions.webapp

I found this parts of this bit of magic on Alex Sirota’s website along with the tip to check in the applicaiton.ini file for any XulRunner application’s ID. If you run into errors, then something is probably malformed in the rdf file so check that first. I won’t be much help in trouble shooting, and I’m not about to offer support for other peoples extensions on an unsupported application, but if you have problems, post a comment and I’ll give editing the rdf a go myself.

I’m no real programmer, I mean, I know enough to be dangerous. I’ve got a good handle on html, css, javascript, asp etc. In the past I’ve played with the source code for Portable Firefox from PortableApps.com trying to get XulRunner portable. I didn’t have much luck. Ran into too many code errors to resolve myself. What I needed was a way to make the program portable without programming anything new.

X-Launcher

What I was able to find was X-Launcher. X-Launcher is a nifty little app that allows you to launch just about any application portably – that is, without leaving much of a trace on the host computer. I’ve been able to use X-Launcher without too much effort (hey, just my style :).

You can get X-Launcher from winPenPack.com (downloads section) along with a host of other open source software all made portable using X-Launcher or other means. WinPenPack is an Italian website, but you can get English on most pages by choosing it from the language menu. Nice site and a lot of good software!
X-Launcher itself is an easy to use program, you simply configure the X-launcher.ini file for it and you’re ready to use it. One of the things that really sets X-Launcher apart is the fact that you can have multiple launchers in the same directory. Just rename the X-launcher.ini file and the X-launcher.exe to any name you wish (just as long as both have the same file name) and you can put a second set of exe/ini files with a different set of names in the same directory together. Why would you do this? Well, for one, this allows you to run multiple versions of a program with wildly different configurations. Another thing this buys you (and more relevant to this discussion) is the ability to launch different WebRunner apps portably.

Normally if you launch a program you can pass it options through command line switches. If you’re using another program to launch the application you want to run, then you don’t usually have the option of passing switches to the second program from the first. With X-Launcher, these switches are built into the configuration file.

The default configuration file that comes with X-Launcher is loaded with information on feature settings, but it’s also a bit overwhelming. Fortunately, if you run X-launcher.exe with no like-named ini file, it will create it’s own, scaled down X-launcher.ini. This configuration file is a heck of a lot easier to read!

There are several application variables that can be defined, the most important one being the application name. This will eventually point to folder names and the application itself. Here’s the contents of a X-launcher.ini for a webapp with included explanations for most settings:

wikipedia.ini

[Setup]
AppName=WebRunner
;Application name, this will also be used below as the
;name of some of the folders.

[FileToRun]
PathToExe=$AppName$\$AppName$.exe
;This is the name and path to the file you're trying to
;launch.
WorkingDir=%HOME%
;This is the name of the directory which will be used
;by the program as it's working directory.
Parameters= -webapp wikipedia@luckydisasters.com
;List of any parameters to pass to the application, in
;this case we're telling WebRunner to load the webapp
;"wikipedia@luckydisasters.com"

[Environment]
HOME=$HOME$\$AppName$
;This folder will be used to save any user specific file
;information - like the Mozilla profiles folder.
USERPROFILE=%HOME%
;As you can see I've used the same folders for all the
;programs files, this will make it a lot easier later if we
;want to see what the program is doing or make
;changes.
PATH=%PATH%;@ScriptDir@
;This adds the @ScriptDir@ variable to the system
;path used by the application

[Functions]
DirCreate=%HOME%
;if this folder doesn't exist when you start the
;program, it will created. You can place other
;functions here as well if you need them.

[Options]
;These settings are other X-launcher application
;options, such as showing a splash screen and
;what not, feel free to make changes, but these
;should be fine as is
DeleteTemp=true
MultipleIstances=true
FixAppData=false
RunWait=true
ShowSplash=true
WriteLog=false

[SplashScreen]
;This section allows you to add a custom splash
;screen and sets the length of time the splash
;screen is shown. Leave the Image and Title blank
;for X-launcher defaults. The image path (as well
;as all paths in this ini file) are relative to the
;current location of the ini/exe files for the
;X-launcher app.
Image=
Title=
TimeOut=1500

Download the Wikipiedia X-launcher files here:
Wikipedia X-launcher

7-Steps

What I’ve done to use the above webapp portably is as follows (assume that the USB drive/portable device is drive letter “X”):

1. Make sure you have WebRunner and the Wikipedia.webapp installed.
2. Create a folder under “X:\PortableApps\” (or where ever you store your portable applicaitons) called “X-WebRunner” (“X:\PortableApps\X-WebRunner”)
3. Copy the “C:\Program Files\WebRunner” folder to “X:\PortableApps\X-WebRunner” (“X:\PortableApps\X-WebRunner\WebRunner”)
4. Copy the wikipedia.exe and the wikipedia.ini files into “X:\PortableApps\X-Webrunner”
5. Run the Webrunner.exe, this will create the user profile you’ll need to copy your webapp into
6. Now copy your webapp folder from your profile folder on your hard drive usually located about here:
   “C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\WebRunner\Profiles\RANDOMSTRING.default\webapps\WEBAPPNAME”
   to your new profile folder on your portable device:
   “X:\PortableApps\Application Data\WebRunner\Profiles\NEWRANDOMSTRING.default\webapps\WEBAPPNAME“
7. Last step, start the wikipedia.exe file again, this will start the webapp that you’ve copied.

My “X-WebRunner” install:

Now you can start moving your webapps over and making X-launcher.exe and X-launcher.ini files for each one, the only line in the ini file that needs to be changed for each is “Parameters“, which gets changed to the webapp folder name for each webapp. So basically all you have to do is copy the original wikipedia.ini file, rename it and change the Parameters setting.

Next I’ll have to configure Plain Old Webserver USB (POWUSB) to run with X-launcher. Then I can carry around a nice little XUL Webserver!

Links:

winPenPack
X-Launcher download
My Wikipedia X-launcher configuration
My Wikipedia.webapp Bundle

About:Config.Webapp

This webapp is for displaying the chrome about:config URI. This makes it a hell of a lot easier to modify the configuration (especially when adding a proxy for those of us trying to use this stuck behind a proxy).

Use this webapp to edit important settings such as:

• Cookies Rules
• Proxy Settings
• Pipelining Rules
• Password Rules

For more information on directly editing the about:config click here. For more on individual settings (for instance, figuring out which settings to add back in – like the afore mentioned proxy settings), click here.

Extensions.Webapp

This is the second webapp which gives access to WebRunner’s extensions panel. The thing about either one of these webapps (and WebRunner in general) is that you access each one separately – that is to say each gets launched as it’s own application – but any changes in either one affects any other webapp you might be running with WebRunner.

Now the only thing we need is for extensions to be modified and made available for WebRunner (like Lifehacker’s Better Gmail). There are ways to hack extensions to allow them to run in WebRunner, but that’s for another post.

Links:

Webapps:

• About:Config.Webapp
• Extensions.Webapp

Offsite References:

• Firefox Help: Editing Configuration Files
• mozillaZine: About:config entries

Other:

• Lifehacker
• Better Gmail

Disclaimer

Keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

Over at Lifehacker they’ve posted about the standalone Mozilla based WebRunner. WebRunner is, well I’ve pretty much been over that already. The point is, you can launch a webapp from a standalone program, allowing you to do things without getting distracted by all that… extra web. I really like this concept, I now have links for Gmail, Google Reader, and all those other nifty web 2.0 apps I like.

I wanted to give this a try myself, so I’ve made a standalone Wikipedia launcher. Get it here. It’s a launcher for the Wikipedia’s English main page.

Make your own! It’s dead simple! All you do is install the WebRunner software, create an ini file for your app, create icons and zip these files together. Rename the zip file to your.webapp and your good to go!

There’s a couple of worrying things about the webapp files – from a security standpoint. The biggest of these is that you can include a js file with javascript that runs at an application level. In other words it has access to everything that the application has access to, like – oh I don’t know – the file system?! (in my best Church Lady voice – oh crap am I revealing my age!). Another is the fact that you’re using a zip format to distribute the rest of your files. Which of course can have it’s own security problems when used with other programs. You also don’t really have the ability to get at a lot of the standard Mozilla settings that WebRunner shares. So you can’t make adjustments to settings for cookies, passwords and the like.

At any rate, it’s still a relatively young application, so I’m sure they’ll get the security issues addressed, but for now, make sure you inspect those files before you run them!

Links:
WebRunner
Lifehacker post
My Wikipedia launcher

Disclaimer

Keep in mind while running these webapps with WebRunner, that WebRunner itself is still a in pre-release/beta stages. Which means that the webapps found on this site, while working to view sites and what not, are not intended to be a replacement for your standard browser. The websites you’ll be viewing were not designed to be used with WebRunner, and therefore not all features on these sites may be compatible with it. I claim no responsibility for any malfunctions related to WebRunner. I’m providing files that allow you to access some websites, nothing more. Feel free to use the webapp files found on this site, but keep in mind you’re using them at your own risk – and without warranty!

link

Quick First Impressions:

System requirements are quite hefty (compared to Firefox):

For instance, while it automatically imports your Favorites and Bookmarks, you can’t automatically get to them without going into a kind of bookmarks manager (again, comparing to Firefox) page, clicking on a link here will take you to a new website, but I have to right click and choose “Open in new tab” to get a fresh tab view of the link as opposed to using the middle click or scroll wheel click open a new tab. Just small stuff like that really…

I like the RSS icon (see screen shot) in the address bar and the ability to view the feed directly in the browser.

It automatically loaded the network settings (maybe pulled in from IE? or is using windows settings?), which is useful if you’re on a corporate network or behind a proxy service.

Quick Conclusions

All in all, just another browser for Windows. It doesn’t cover any new ground, and I really doubt it’ll set the web on fire any time soon, but nice to play with something new every once in a while…

Plenty of GNU/Linux resources from people all over the world on the internet. And that’s where this post comes in! IBM is dedicated to GNU/Linux, and not just by pouring millions into development and patenting! They have this huge database of how-tos, articles, download links and so forth available from their Linux developerWorks website. Like this nice little walk-through on how to use linux scripts to build your own wireless ISP. Now, you’d expect IBM to promote IBM Linux products (do they have those?), well, they don’t. This site’s instructions, recommendations and walk-throughs are all based around software that can be downloaded freely from other sources on the internet (checkout their downloads page if you don’t believe me!).

Links:
IBM developerWorks – Linux
IBM developerWorks – New to Linux
IBM developerWorks – Technical Library (be sure to checkout their LPI certification prep series!)

Fitz, MuPDF and Apparition

Now, before you get your hopes up too far, this a reader only. It will open PDF documents in Firefox, but that’s about it. You can’t use it to print, zoom in/out, select text or any of the other things you normally do with Adobe’s Acrobat. So if I were using this (hey wait, I am using this!) I’d disable Adobe Acrobat’s open PDF in browser option, (edit>preferences – general tab, I think, hell if you dislike Acrobat that much, just uninstall it…), install MuPDF, then restart Firefox. Next install (if you don’t already have it installed) PDF Download, and your choice of PDF viewing software (I recommend Sumatra or Foxit Reader). Now you can use MuPDF to open PDFs in Firefox or use PDF Download to download it to your hard drive, OR use PDF Download to open the document in your favorite alternate PDF viewer.

Overall, this seems to be a good “quick-and-dirty” analyzer. I’ll have to dig into it a little further (like to try and find out what that “frame buffer manager” is), but filtering seems to be simple enough and it does a nice job of breaking out the packet information and you’re able to display individual packets in a separate window. I also like the multi-tabbed approach (something MS doesn’t always seem to do well) to displaying captures.

Pluses:

Check box selection of capture interfaces (including loopback)
Tabbed navigation
Plug-in compatible
Easy colorization filters
Clean and efficient overall appearance

Minuses:

As I mentioned, you can quickly become overwhelmed when looking at all that data and it doesn’t seem to have the greatest default layout
No automatic lookup of protocols (as in Wireshark)
Good program documentation, but it seems to be missing any protocol/traffic information of any kind
The first load is always a bit long, I has to load all the parsers into memory, subsequent loads are faster, however

Overall, a good addition to any network monitoring toolkit.