In no particular order

• Access to the only search engine I use
• Their results return very quickly
• Their results are pretty accurate
• Filters like site: are very easy to use
• Page caching...you can get your results even if the site itself no longer has the page
• Memory of my last 20 searches
• Drag and drop searching - just drop a word or phrase into the search box...you don't even have to hit enter or click Go
• Display of a page's Google PageRank
• One click to see who links to this page (Info Button | Backward links)
• Toggle-able highlighter for all search terms

There are others, but these are the biggest for me.

Back in '99, I settled on the position of my toolbars in IE.  I've changed a little since then, but only slightly.  Whenever I first use IE, I do these things -

1. Right click, Customize...
2. Text Options: No text labels
3. Icon options: Small icons
4. Remove all separators
5. Leave only forward, back, stop, refresh, home, and history.
6. Close
7. Unlock toolbars (of running on Windows XP)
8. Move the icon bar next to the menu bar (overlapping it)
9. Move the address bar next to the icon bar (overlapping it)
10. Remove the GO button
11. Lock the toolbars

Once the toolbars are locked, the toolbars learn that they weren't really overlapped and they make room for each other.  It usually takes a time or two to get just enough (but not too much) overlap.  My goal - maximize screen real estate and let the address bar have enough space to display the URL.

The additions I've made to this configuration are for Fiddler (goes next to History) and for the Google toolbar.  Google toolbar is not an option.  I only do Fiddler, if I'm going to be doing web dev on the box.  The Google toolbar goes just below the Menu | Icons | Address bar.  It is so important to me, that I'm OK with giving it its own row.  That's probably the largest compliment I could give to the programmers who wrote it.

My issue with Mozilla and Firefox, as stupid as it sounds, is that I can't get exactly what I've had with IE for the last five years with either of them.  I can get pretty close, but not an exact match.  Part of this is that the Google toolbar isn't made for Gecko based browsers.  (I'm less than satisfied with the search bar that is included with them...my Google bar on IE is worth the real estate, the search bar on Moz and FF isn't.)  The other part is that Moz's/FF's Menu | Icons | Address bar is too big.  Just too big.  IE's is nice and compact.  This coupled with not having the many functionalities of the Google toolbar (I use it more than any other IE feature except forward and back), is a large handicap.  I'd rather have this than 10,000 tabs and mouse gestures (just an Opera thing?).

I was reading something last week (I think it was on a class newsgroup) how Windows was incapable of hardcore and secure computing.  Such things as online banking and financial processing were far beyond its reach.  Hmm.

I was quite delighted to catch a link to this from Scott Hanselman today.  The article is a case study of Corillian - a company that writes Windows based financial software.  Also of note is the use of SQL Server and the .NET Framework.  Just perhaps, my classmate (assuming that post came from class) was a tad mistaken.

From the article..

Currently, more than 19 million end users—or about 25 percent of U.S. online banking customers—use Corillian technology when they use their institution's online services for transactions such as checking balances, paying bills, and transferring funds between accounts.

These include brand-name institutions such as JP Morgan Chase & Co., BankOne, SunTrust, and Commerce Bank, as well as large credit unions such as the State Employees' Credit Union and the Boeing Employees Credit Union.

Thought I'd take a peak at the site of those who claim the moral high ground on web standards compliancy.  Yep, I'm talking about the Mozilla group.  Kudos to them for validating on HTML 4.01 Strict.  For shame for invalid CSS.  I trust this was just a typo of sorts, for I'm sure they'd never condone bucking a standard. 

It's also interesting to note that spreadfirefox.com's home page has problems.  It is invalid XHTML 1.0 Strict.  The XML document is invalid, so I'll have to wait to validate the CSS.

On a more positive note, these validations were performed via a few mouse clicks on a Firefox toolbar.  Visit here for more info.

"Strange, but absolutely true! Just go ahead and try it!

Robert has a great entry on security pitfalls in ASP.NET applications.

Will has some additional security thoughts on web applications.

Steve Muench (via odetocode.com) has the low down on Virtual PC 2004 Service Pack 1 and the performance enhancements it'll have for Windows XP Service Pack 2.

K. Scott Allen on sorting with IComparer.

Last but not least, a recent brand loyalty study shows Microsoft with good marks.  Who'da thunk?

Thanks to n4cer, I was reminded to listen to .NET Rocks! live show tonight.  A few minutes later (I was very late in joining), I won an FM Transmitter.  Minus the car, I'm guessing my usage will look something like this.  Glad to see other folks using a Nomad and not an iPod.

I know I'm one of the last people on earth to do this...I setup my Gmail account today.  Now, I have 1 GB of mail storage.  This is rather funny, because I just received an “over the limit” notice on my first hotmail account today (it's my very first email account, opened in '98 just before returning from my mission).  Not sure exactly what I'll use my new account for, but at least now I can be cool like everyone else.

Windows XP Service Pack 2 has given Internet Explorer the ability to block installed ActiveX controls.  You can access this functionality by opening IE, and selecting Manage Add-ons... from the Tools menu.  In the last few weeks, I've enabled and disabled Flash several times.  A few sites that I visit actually need it, while most of them only use it to annoy me (ads that make noise, ads that expand and contract, etc.).  Unless the site needs flash (like the games on the zone), I disable Flash.

The problem is that I'm quite tired of going to the menu, selecting Shockwave Flash Object, selecting disable/enable, clicking OK on the message box, then clicking OK to close the Manage Add-ons form.  I Google'd for a bit and found out where the block list lives in the registry.  (Thanks MVPs.)  It lives in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings.  There is a key for each blocked control.  Rather than using IE's dialog, I now click one of two .reg files to either enable or disable Flash.  I'll probably write a little app to do this, so that I can avoid the message box that comes up when importing into the registry.

To create the enableFlash file, copy the following into a file called enableFlash.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}]
"Flags"=dword:00000001
"Version"="*"

To create the disableFlash file, copy the following into a file called disableFlash.reg:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Settings\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}]
"Flags"=dword:00000000
"Version"="*"

To import them into the registry, simply double click on them.

Obligatory Registry Disclaimer:  Editing the registry can harm your computer.  Do so at your own risk.

Norton Internet Security 2004 has a great many components - Anti-Virus, Ad blocking, firewall, anti-spam, etc.  Why does the custom installer not give the user the option of only installing the components he wants?

Second question - why is it that when LiveUpdate fails to update a component, about the only fix available is to uninstall NIS and reinstall it?  (If that doesn't work, I suppose it means you wasted a fair amount of money.)

If I could ever manage to convince NIS to install and get fully updated, I'd see how much I like to compared to McAfee.  For the time being, it seems I'm out of luck.

Now there's a whole collection of penguin games.  My current top score is 1987.76.  Thanks FurryGoat.

Yet again, my IM contact list policy has been misunderstood.  Since I'm not really into offending people, I think I'll explain myself here.  It's pretty simple - if I add a person due to a specific relationship (fellow co-worker, student, etc.), then that person stays on my contact list for as long as that relationship exists.  If one of us gets a new job or class ends or whatever, I'll more than likely delete the contact.  If during that relationship a personal relationship develops, then that contact moves from the “co-worker” or “school” list into the “friends” list.  No offense intended.  Nothing personal.

I've taken one major step to resolving this issue in the future.  When I started at Flying J, I created a new passport.  I only use it for work, and specifically for work as a Flying J employee.  Only co-workers are on it.  It's just like my Flying J email account or domain login.  Nothing personal.

Ever wonder why IE remembers all the invalid URLs you type in?  Me too.  I typed in http://www.lpark.com/blog (which gives the equivalent of a 404) yesterday, and for some annoying reason, IE remembers it.  What's up with that?

I just renewed my complimentary eWeek subscription.  I can't say that I'm extremely impressed with them.  One of their author's bugs me so much that I punch his picture whenever it makes the front cover (don't remember his name offhand).  That said, I decided that there was some value in it (especially at no cost to me), so I thought I'd renew.  I was pleasantly surprised with their use of DHTML on the renewal page - http://renew.eweek.com/ ...when you mouse to the text box for customer ID, an image appears showing you where to find it on the mailing label of the magazine.  This is far more elegant than having a static image or a “click here to to find out where this number is” link.

n4cer of ActiveWin fame has alerted me to a work around for the “buy, Buy, BUY!” of Windows Media Player 10.

My basic problem is this - I like album art, but I don't like the constant links to buy music that I already legally own.

The workaround -

1. From the Now Playing screen, right click on the album in the lower right hand corner and uncheck “Show Media Information”.  The album cover and buy music link should disappear.
2. Download the Energy Bliss visualization here.
3. Install it.
4. On the Now Playing screen, right click and select “Windows Media Player 10”, then Energy Bliss.
5. Notice that the album art is back (with some dancing blue squares) and that there are no buy links to bug you.

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040905

I've been using the RTW of Windows Media Player 10 for a few days now.  Generally speaking, I'm happy with it.  The “I'll keep appearing when you mouse near me“ menu bar bug (or was that a feature?) is now dead.  You can now open an AV file from the Internet and still resume what you were listening to before (big kudos on this!).  Here are a few gripes..

At last count, I had 1460 wma files and 1621 mp3 files.  The files were ripped from CDs I legally own or were legally downloaded (mostly audio books in mp3).  So, all my stuff is legal, yet WMP10 prompts me at every available opportunity to buy the CD of the currently playing song.  Is there any reason I should buy something I already own?  Does WMP10 think that I have illegal songs?  I'm all for helping people to be legal and I'm all for letting people know they can buy music directly via WMP10, but I'm not for the implication (or waste of screen real estate) that my stuff is not legit.

I don't really like the embedded IE in WMP.  OK, I don't know for sure that it's IE, but I'm pretty dang sure.  IE or not, I'm annoyed that I have to use WMP's menus to navigate stuff.  No forward/back via my mouse (IntelliMouse Explorer 4.0).  No alt+right arrow/alt+left arrow.  No right clicking.  Grr.  You know it's a browser.  I know it's a browser.  Let's stop playing games and let me use it as a browser.

I wonder why Play Count is still not in the standard set of displayed columns.  I care far more about it than I do about genre or whether it is DRM'ed.  What I'd like is a “make all views look like this one” so I can set the columns I want to see in the order I want to see them.

I like the new color schemes, but I think they need a bit of polishing.  First, altering colors still requires too much menu navigation (View | Enhancements | Color Chooser).  What happened to that paint brush icon in the lower right corner that WMP9 had?  Second, the colors are a bit too, well, I'm not a graphic design guy, so I don't know what to call it.  I know, though, that white text on a shiny gold-ish background is really hard to read though.  I know that the mini player looks a bit too much like over zealous use of lens flairs.  Third, why is there no option for the player's color to match that of the currently selected Windows XP visual style?  Fourth, in mini player mode, why does the volume control background color not reflect the color of the rest of the player?  My color is currently gold-ish (I'm trying to match the Olive visual style), but the volume control is light blue.

I really don't like the popup “This is what's playing“ that happens when you mouse near the player in mini mode.  I'd like to disable that.  I don't need to know what's playing (I can hear it), and I don't need to see a mini visualization window.

All in all, I prefer it to WMP9 (and all other players I've used).  Still, there are some issues that I hope are resolved in the next release.

Take a look at this HTML document.

<html>
 <head>
  <script type="text/javascript">
   function process(isIE)
   {
    var element = null;
    if(isIE)
    {
     element = document.getElementById("txtStuff");
    }
    else
    {
     element = document.bob.txtStuff;
    }
    alert(element.value);
   }
  </script>
 </head>
 <body>
  <form name="bob" onsubmit="process()">
   <input type="text" name="txtStuff">
   <input type="button" value="Submit IE" onclick="process(true)">
   <input type="button" value="Submit Firefox" onclick="process(false)">
  </form>
 </body>
</html>

Why is it that if an <input> is in a form, Firefox (0.9.2 / Win) can't use getElementById to find it?  Either method works just fine in IE.

This time (OK, I'm ignoring the time zone offset) six years ago, I was about to board Moscow's metro for the last time.  I was about to learn that the price for a zheton (boarding token) had increased that very day from 2 to 3 rubles.  I had perfectly budgeted my whole mission until the very last night, when I lacked a ruble to get back home.  Happily (walking home would have been less than desirable), my companion, Elder Browning, kicked in a ruble, so we could get home.  Thanks, Dave!