Tuesday, January 31, 2012

jQuery plugin: Validation

jQuery plugin for form validation with lots of customization options. Easier than writing your own.

bassistance.de » jQuery plugin: Validation

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Firefox - Flash unresponsive or frozen due to plugin

If you are a Firefox user, on an occasion your browser may seen unresponsive. Typically this is because of a plugin misbehaving. In my case it is typically Flash and it seems to be more when I make too many jumps, clicks etc with flash in one of my tabs. Killing Firefox helps and with my settings, I am able to recover all the tabs and contents to a large extent. I have found a better way that just kills the bad plugin. Start your task manager and look for a process called "plugin-container.exe ***". If you have multiple processes with similar name, kill the one with the highest memory usage.

Windows Task Manager - Firefox Plugin Container
You will notice that your Firefox browser is immediately available. The offending webpage will display a "plugin

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Remotely shutting / restarting Windows

Need to restart/shutdown/sleep a windows machine remotely?

Scenario 1 - Home
My main PC has a comprehensive collection of software and tools installed. To access them from various parts of the house, I frequently remote desktop in using a laptop. At the end of the day, if you wish to restart/shutdown/log off/ or place your PC in sleep mode, the typical menu options from windows "start" button are not available. Although there are various ways to do similar tasks, here is an easy one to remember:
  1. Minimize all applications
  2. Click ALT + F4 (Function Key 4)
  3. Choose your option from the drop down as shown below.
Alt + F4


Scenario 2 - Professional - Domain environment

ZoomIt - Standard part of Presentation tools




If you do presentations and have had people squinting or walk in closer to see the details (Programming code and spreadsheets are equally guilty), then ZoomIt should be part and parcel of your presentation laptop.  Windows 7 already comes in with a magnifying utility called "Magnify". You may want to play with it as well for your specific needs.


Magnify (Part of Windows 7)
ZoomIt adds on several other neat features that allows much better presentations. It works from keyboard