Change your shortcuts in Firefox "Save As" dialog box

When you are saving a file that you found on the internet, Firefox default choice is to save it on the desktop. This parameter can be changed in Edition>Preferences, then in the General tab change the bottom option to "always ask me".

Now that Firefox is always going to ask you where you want to put it, a first dialog box shows up asking if you want to see the file, or if you want to save it. If you decide to see it, it will open the file in the corresponding software and save the file in a temp folder.

If you decide to save it, a "Save As" dialog box shows up, with on the left part of it a tree with some of your folders. Your shortcuts. You can add and remove these shortcuts, except the first 5 ones. To add a folder as a new shortcut, go to it in the Save As dialog box, and then the Add button under the left menu will be accessible. If you click on it, you will see the new folder appear under your list. This is pretty easy and so much time saving !

CMS: joomla

CMS: [Web] Content Management System (definition on Wikipedia)


Joomla! is an open-source software which is going to help you build your website to your image.

They advertise saying that Joomla! is "easy to use" and very "intuitive", but I must disagree with this. Easy to use, probably, but intuitive, not always... Being a computer nerd, I thought it was going to be easier. I was a bit lost the first week, didn't really know where to look and how it really works.

But the good news about Joomla! is that you can find a lot of templates ready to use if you are not a CSS/pHp expert, and the back-end seems difficult at first, but gets easy pretty quick, the first steps are big at first.

Another good news: Salyris Studios made a website of tutorial in Flash ! You see all the process by yourself, step by step !

Just another thing. If you are looking in the user manual, page 71, about the menu manager and the frontpage manager.
To decide what the home page really looks like, for example you want your three (or more) articles to be displayed, with no navbar, or no back button, you must go to Menu> Main Menu> Home.
The Home (frontpage) parameters can then be changed on the right side of your screen.

The # intro is the number of articles you want to see displayed at any time. And you can decide to hide or show pretty much everything :)

So, if you want to create a website by yourself, but are not a pHp/CSS freak (or you don't want to re-invent the wheel), joomla! is a good choice. Just check before that your FAI/Provider has a mysql database on his server and accept php.

For Canadians, joomlawebhosting.ca is doing a fine job (and proudly Canadian!) for not too expensive (75$ tax included a year for the space and the domain name .ca). They install joomla! if you say yes, the only thing is you are responsible for the backups (in case).

jUploader

Friends of flickr, Welcome !

If you have a flickr account (or a Zoomr account) and you are using Linux, your best bet to upload your pictures faster than using the website and the 6 upload fields is jUploader.

Do use the software, it's pretty easy: download the .tar.gz on your computer. Then unzip it (tar -zxvf jUploader-version.tar.gz). This extraction will create a folder. Go into this folder (cd jUploader-number-of-version) and run the script using ./jUploader. No need to be in root for any of these actions.

The bas thing about this is that you won't have any icon in your menu. You will always have to launch jUploader like this from the folder, in a console.

The second step is to link jUploader to your flickr account, so that jUploader sends the pictures under your name :) For this, go to Edition>Accounts (ou Comptes en français) and click on flickr or zoomr depending on the one you want to create.

jUploader then opens a windows saying that it is going to ask for the authorisation from flickr, and you need to be connected to the Internet to do it. You must put in your login account and your password. flickr is going to open in your web browser and say that a request has been sent, and that you must accept it. This is done in the web browser, on the flickr website.

When this is done, you can come back to jUploader, and add the pictures you wish to upload in mass. For this, you just drag and drop your files or folders in the jUploader window. Be careful, jUploader doesn't work recursively, which means that if your folder contains another folder, the pictures in the sub-folder won't be added.

jUploader checks every picture one by one (it takes 1 sec or less for each picture) to see if the extension of the file is accepted. If not, a pop-up will tell you so and wait for your approval. Don't start uploading your pictures before jUploader is done checking, because trying to upload a non-accepted file will crash jUploader.

You can change everything about any picture before you upload it. You can also make some change on several pictures. All you have to do is select them, right-click and choose to modify! Easy isn"t it?

I'm using version 1.1.2 right now, and I'm very happy with it !! Tip: Click and hold on the folder you want to add, and then [Alt+Tab] will make you switch from your photos folders to any other application. Keep on pressing the tab button to navigate through the different windows until you reach jUploader. It's very useful when your exploration window is maximised and your jUploader window disappears behind it.

Oh, and of course, jUploader is open source, so you can use it, but don't hesitate to help the project if you really like the product !!

Create a tag cloud

As you maybe noticed, blogger can give you the opportunity to tell what every post is about, and then you can, with the new interface, create a list of the categories you used, and class these categories by number or alphabetically. But rather than a boring list with mixing numbers, I think that a tag cloud is more fun.

So here I am, looking for a way to create tag cloud in this blOg.

Technacular lists all the way to do it, from programming your own code to get help from another website.
As I'm a bit lazy, and mostly because blogger doesn't give me the categories database that I need, I decided to go for the second solution and I found a few:
Tag Cloud Builder from OCLC Research. But you can only save your tag cloud as a file, no way to keep it "alive".
Tag Cloud Generator. Whatever the way I do it (via the links or via the 30 most used words), the tags chosen are never the one I really want...And I need to re-run the process everyday if I want a cloud up-to-date!
ToCloud.com. Results are better than with the TagCloud Generator, but idem, the HTML code is generated at a time X, and no automatic update at the time Y in the future. You have to run the process again. But the good thing is, the tag cloud is very easy to edit !! You can delete all the tags you don't like.

For any of the sites above you need to create an account. Which is also why you can't update your tagcloud :)

ZoomGroups I endedup signing in ZoomGroups because they were telling that yes, I could create a tagcloud with ZoomGroups. But now that I am logged in, no sign of any way to create a tagcloud. And of course, they propose to create a blog, but if you want it free of ads, it's not free for you (55$/year!) Guess I'll be signing out of this one pretty quick !!

ZoomClouds. Héhé. The first time the server seemed to have lost my request somewhere, but a little refresh in my browser, and POUF, I have a tagcloud! I can edit everything, the style, the colors, and I know that the tagcloud will be updated, because it has been created via my atom feed. Bad point: the only way to get a tag in or out of the tagcloud is to add it in the filters. And even when you put them in the no-no filter, they stil show up. Maybe after a couple of refreshings it'll change. Second bad point: when you click on the tag, you end up on the ZoomCloud site, where you can see all the latest articles with this tag. But all my tags were empty of articles...

So, ok, a long way just for this, but if you want a tagcloud directly in your blOg without trouble, you'd better log directly in
ZoomClouds.!! But just don't click on the tags!!

Daily Dilbert

Daily Dilbert Mozilla Firefox Add-On.

I'm a Dilbert fan. Yes, and I'm proud of it :) After all, I can be compared to Alice: the only engineer girl in the team of computer engineers ;)

If you are like me, there is a nice add-on for Mozilla Firefox, called Daily Dilbert. Tools>Add-Ons and click on the link on the bottom righthand-side. Search for Daily Dilbert, and there you go! A small picture of Dilbert in the middle of your bottom bar in Firefox will appear, and when you click on it, a pop-up with the daily Dilbert will appear.

The languages are English, Spanish, Czech, Polish. And I know that you can find a Swedish version on another website. But no French version. I just sent an e-mail to unitedmedia to see why there is no French daily comic. Let's wait and see !

You also have the daily version of Peanuts, GetFuzzy, AndyCapp and Phdcomics in the Daily Dilbert add-on.

RSSOwl

urpmi rssowl: v.1.2.3. But the version 1.2.4 is available on the official site. The version 2.0 is on its way.

I used to have my RSS links in my Firefox bookmarks toolbar, but if you put too many in the toolbar, you end up not having enough space for your other bookmarks. And I already created some folders to sort my bookmarks, but I still have a nice collection of bookmarks in my bookmarks toolbar.

So I decided to look for a RSS reader. And I picked up RSS Owl, euh, I don't remember why. Maybe because of their slogan: May the owl be with you.

The install via urpmi went easy. But it's the first time I have that many supplementary packages to add. In the end, 93 packages to install.Be sure you have a bit of time when you launch the install.

When you start RSSOwl, your screen looks like your web browser, open on an empty page (white). You can see the address bar, like in a web browser, and a toolbar at the top. RSSOwl is compiled with a whole database of rss feeds, already set up in the favorites. If you press [F11], or Display>Favorites, a left frame will appear, with this database.

If you want to gain time, there is a search engine, that you can call with [CTRL+G] or Tools>Search. It will look for the RSS on the internet, and tell you if the RSS link you're looking for is already in the database, or if you need to add it: if the bow next to the result is ticked, it means that the RSS is not in your favorites, and you can add it by clicking on "import" at the bottom of the search dialog box.

When you click on one of the favorite, it will open as a tab in the frame on the right. A list of all the news will appear, leading you to be aware of everything that is going on in the world in only one quick glance. If you double-click on any of the title in the right frame, your favorite web browser will open the page with the full article.

Of course, you can edit your list of favorites, by creating new categories, deleting the existing favorites,...
No more reason not to know what's going on in the world :)

Welcome in geekette country !

Hi there! I'm happy that you came to see me !
Geek world is mostly a boys' world, a few girls are really computer wiz. I think I can call me a geekette without too much pretention. Oh oh oh I'm not saying I'm a computer genius, no no.

I'm just a normal girl, fond of computers, and ready to tell the world what I have been learning today working on mine.

About me:
I'm a french engineer, so if I make any english mistakes, please post a comment, I'm always ready to learn ! I'm a process engineer, but my last year specialisation is Information Systems.
This means that I have been quickly trained on ERPs, J2EE, Perl, HTML,CSS, UML and Management Project in school.

I know more or less the basis, and now I'm going to improve by myself, a bit more everyday. I'm not a crazy programmer, my formation is more about conception and project management.

My actual computer: Laptop MSI M645. Yes, MSI makes some laptops, and I'm happy with this one.

My OS: Mandriva 2008.0 Free. It's a french linux distribution. I tried to install Ubuntu 7.10 last month but the DVD could never start, after 3 tries. So I decided to stick with Mandriva. I've been using Mandriva for 4 years now, and the installation of the 2008 went smooth at the first start, so...

My interface: KDE 3.5
My browser: Mozilla Firefox

What else? Well, let's get started ;)