Bad news A lot of free software is rubbish. Many paid-for programs are rubbish as well. Loads of it is pre-loaded by manufacturers 1 and starts of its own accord serving to clutter up your system, use resources, open up security holes and many worse things. The next post in this series will cover how to slim your system

Good news You can do just about everything for free. Paying for programs should be an absolute last resort. Read more

Your free daily drip-feed of thought provocation is now available.

New readers start here

A Cognolog is five small suggestive paragraphs drip-fed one per day. The purpose is to encourage imaginative and critical thinking and also to provide topics for conversation and exploration.
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Basic usability that has stood the test of time

One of the first Delphi programs I wrote way back in 1996 was a general purpose menu that didn’t close when you’d picked an item. Some people would call this a program launcher but because it was always available I used mine for a lot more. Every computer I’ve had since has used this as my main start point.

Looking at the screen shots below you’ll see the basic tree structure … but then it gets a bit fancy. As just described clicking on a heading opens or closes it: Very simple and obvious. Now programs or documents can be dragged from say Windows explorer onto the heading for permanency or run with a double click. Then it gets interesting…

Screenshot

• Coloured shapes are used for immediate recognition. This is used all day every day so they become familiar landmarks – even if they are abstract.
• Special blobs are used for special purposes
  • Keyhole password protected and encrypted tree. Under this heading are my passwords etc.
  • Spark is a URL
  • Hand is a local directory
  • Play button is a timer. I work freelance and charge by the minute so this is essential
  • Bell Alarm Not shown
• Various textures are available to relieve the monotony of looking at the same thing month after month. Just for the sake of it I implemented a transparent window. (In the illustration the parrots are the wallpaper.) Coupled with this is the 3-d effects of different border shading.
• If the menu is 90% overlaid by other windows it appears on the taskbar for convenience of getting it back.

So not only does the Sticky menu have cool features but it is one of those tools that is indispensable once you’ve tried it. So if it is so brilliant, why doesn’t everyone use it? Because most people will put up with an awful user experience because they don’t know any better.

Nowadays when a lot more is done on the web there’s a related issue. I collect bookmarks all the time but find difficulty organising them. I suspect that what a lot of people would like is a home page that can be edited with ‘bookmarks’ on the fly. As it is I have to jump into my editor hack some HTML then test. OK for me but beyond the ordinary person.

1. Ask if you’d like to try it out. It only works on Windows and because it has grown from small beginnings when I was first getting to grips with Delphi it isn’t really designed for general release. On the other hand if you think it might be worth rewriting from scratch in whatever system you like then that sounds like a good idea to me.

There’s a new version of my Firefox add-on that makes the BBC radio schedules readable. On the 1st October the BBC changed their format to add in even more confusion. This broke some of the functionality in my adapter.

To upgrade you have to uninstall the add-in via the tools menu, then reinstall from here. It takes longer to describe than do.

Is your computer little more than an electronic heap of documents? has anyone ever shown you how to organise your files properly? This article explains essential file system organisation and how to make it happen.

The basic theory is simple you have four different types of file on the computer

Programs – Archive – Current – Temporary

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A lot of the power of the internet comes from using a web browser. The trouble is that the content providers have their own agenda and want to direct you to their own sites, skip over important but profitable opt-outs, serve endless advertisements and capture all your private information for more marketing. What this post is all about is using a browser to do what you want to do with it.

There are two sections here: Firstly getting rid of the avalanche of clutter that obstructs your daily browse. Secondly getting new tools to make what you want to do a lot easier.

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Now works with Firefox version 3.5.

New readers start here: The BBC radio schedules are a horrible mess. So I have redesigned them. Use this Firefox add-on to

• Give a much easier to read display
• Much easier other dates
• Much easier other stations
• Much easier listen again

PLUS your personal bookmarks on programs for once, a week or a series

Problem Accented characters are a pain to type even with a dedicated keyboard. You can remember numeric codes! Or you can peck at a list somewhere and paste in.

Solution I have written a small program that allows you to use a single function key for all accents in any language of your choice. It will also do special characters.

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