Archive for July, 2010
PC Tune Up SE
Jul 20th
Does your PC run slow? Are you seriously contemplating taking it into a computer repair show where they’ll charge you $100+ to speed up your system? There are a few things you can do before you succumb to the computer “repair” shop.
PC Tuneup
Websites that claim they’ll scan your PC for free if you download their software are nothing than money mongers — seriously, it’s a rip off. Even if you have a fresh install of your operating system they’ll claim you have viruses and other malware. If you think you have malware see this lovely article on malware. There is also an article on virus removal if you know that your system is infected.
The Tools
Windows utilities don’t always have a good reputation with users (whether they are computer savvy or not). Utilities like Task Manager, Disk Cleanup, Disk Defragmenter, and Services Panel, Event Viewer, Windows Explorer, and System Restore.
These utilities can usually be found in the System Tools portion of the Accessories menu. All of the highlighted items are essential pc tools that you should be aware of.
Though this OS is Windows 7, the location of the tools is the same for Windows XP and Vista.
Step 1
The first step is something quite obvious but is commonly overlooked. You need to ask yourself, “Do I have the most recent updates for my PC?” As it was stated before, this may seem like a dumb question but it is not. Sometimes, problems due to speed or hardware not working are caused by out-of-date drivers and software patches. To see your most recent service pack, open Run by pressing Window Key + R or opening it via the start menu and typing winver.
| OS | Service Pack |
|---|---|
| Windows XP | Service pack 3 (all but XP Professional X64) |
| Windows Vista | Service Pack 2 |
| Windows 7 | None to date |
This shows you the version of Windows OS you are currently using and the Service Pack which is installed. As we can see from this example, we have Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 installed.
A Service Pack is a major OS update that updates core files of the OS. They are different than a regular OS patch. One key difference is the size of the update. Most service packs are well over 100MB in size.
To check and see if you have any updates, navigate to control panel and select Windows Updates.
For XP users it will be on the left-hand bar menu and for Vista users it will be under System as the first option. For Windows 7 users, click on System and Security and then on Windows Update.
Click on “Check for Updates” and Windows will check for any updates that you might need. If it finds any updates, be sure to install them and then restart your computer if you are prompted to do so.
Step 2
The next step is to remove unnecessary files from your system using Ccleaner which is a free and open source utility for all to use. It comes with a windows system cleaner and a registry cleaner together. This is a great utility to install and to run at least once a month.
Ccleaner will clean up various applications and various windows items that you select. Looking at the image, we can see that there are several applications and windows items that are using quite a bit of space on the hard drive.
Step 3
Next we want to defragment our hard drive. There are two utilities that are excellent and blow away the Windows Disk Defragmenter. Auslogics Disk Defrag and Piriform’s Defraggler. Personally, I prefer Auslogics over Defraggler because it comes with an optimization option and it is usually faster.
These examples are screen shots of Auslogics before defragmentation and after defragmentation.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
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But what exactly is fragmentation of the hard drive? First we need to understand how a hard drive works. Most hard drives that we have are called magnetic hard drives which consist of one or more platters and a read/write head. Data is written in these 512-byte slots on the hard drive called sectors. The amount of space on the hard drive is determined by the number or sectors in each track. A track is a full rotation around the disk platter.
Data is stored as a magnetic spot in the hard drive and the absence of data is stored as a non-magnetic spot in the hard drive. This is also known as storing data as binary (0′s and 1′s). The presence of a magnetic spot is “1″ and the absence of one is a “0″. 8 bits = 1 byte, so each sector can hold 4096 bits or 4.096 kilobits of information. Translated into the terms of bytes, each sector can hold 512 bytes of information.
When we write information to the hard drive, the information sometimes gets scattered because it is using the closest sector with free space. More notably, when we uninstall programs or delete files, that frees up the spot on the platter so data gets written to that spot where the old data used to be. This allows for data to get placed in different sectors on the hard drive and thereby increasing the access time for the read/write head to get the data we need.
The defragmentation process places data in the proper sectors and tracks there the majority of the data is for that particular file or program is found. Auslogics does a little bit more with the optimization option, however. The optimization option “compresses” the free space we have instead of merely moving data to the right spot. This places all of the data we have in a single compacted block on the hard drive to further decrease the access time. Read more about the defragmentation process here with Auslogics’ great explanation.
These images below depict the fragmentation, defragmentation, and optimization process.
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Step 4
msconfig. Though this seems somewhat daunting, fret not PC users. Run is a great tool and is the gateway to many PC features and shortcuts. We must open Run by pressing the Window key + R or by opening run manually. Type msconfig and then navigate to the Startup tab. Hide and non-windows startup services (if you have the option) and begin unckecking all non-windows startup services. Leave core services like video drivers and wifi drivers checked. Items like iTunes, Adobe, Quicktime, and other programs can be unchecked because we don’t need them to startup right when our OS loads.
All of the items that are highlighted are things we don’t need to be loading during the startup process. There is a more advanced way of going about this; however, this is the practical and easiest way of increase your systems speed during startup.
Notice that we leave the NVIDIA, touchpad, google update, and our anti-virus programs checked so they launch during the startup process. These are all items we want to loading during the startup process.
Step 5
Run a virus scan with your existing antivirus software or by using Microsoft Security Essentials or you can browse paid anti-virus programs. But if you’re running any version of Windows, AtomicPages commends and endorses the use of Microsoft Security Essentials.
Be sure to update your virus definitions daily and scan your system at least once a week and stay off of websites with bad reputations. If you want to check how reputable a website is, we recommend the WOT Plugin for Firefox/Chrome/IE/Safari. This plugin check to see how reputable a website is from community votes. This plugin will warn you if you are visiting a website with a poor reputation.
Basics of CSS – Part #10
Jul 6th
Today we’re going to talk about tables and how they can look significantly better when we add a little bit of CSS to them. If you need a quick refresher on tables, please click here.
Styling Tables
As mentioned above, styling tables is very useful and can instantly make a webpage come to life. The HTML default table is like the following:
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
Pretty boring if you ask me. Notice how the table has a background of transparent so it will take the color of any background element. The table has that border by default and it definitely could use some tweaking to make it look better.
We’re going to use some key properties:
- border-collapse
- border
The border property allows us to style all four corners of a border at once, or each side individually. There are no arbitrary shapes with borders. All elements have a clearly defined left, right, bottom, and top side to the element.
Notice how the square has an irregular shape and doesn’t appear to be a conventional square. We would call this a diamond shape or something along those lines. It’s actually a perfect square that was rotated 45° on a canvas. Notice how the diamond has a background since it is an image and that background has four sides: top, right, bottom, and left.
To see the border tutorial click here
Now that we have a firm understanding and we have refreshed our minds on the border property, we can fully style our tables!
If we add a little bit of CSS and tweak the table to our liking then it could very well look like this:
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
Although this dives into the world of pseudo-classes, which is discussed in the advanced css tutorial series, we know what our tables can potentially look like with a little bit of work.
Styling
Consider the following code:
1
table, td {border:1px solid #ff9300;}
This code would add a 1px border that is solid with the color #ff9300 (AtomicPages Orange) around the table and td (table cell) elements. The reason why we chose these elements is because the tr (table row) element does not have a border around it be default. (Usually applying a border color to a table would only mean applying it to the table element only and not the td element.)
This code will outline the table and td elements with a border that is 1px in width, that is solid and the color #ff9300. This can be useful if you want to quickly style a table quickly and easily.
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
border-collapse
The border-collapse property is a very useful property that collapses the default double border into a single border. For example:
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table {
border-collapse:collapse;
border:1px solid #ff9300;
}
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
Notice how the border collapse property instantly gives the table a sharper and less “busy” look. The default border around the table and td elements ceases to exist and we are given a sharper look.
With a little padding (for spacing) for the td elements we can easily space out the table like the following:
1 2 3
th, td {padding:3px;}
/*use as an alternative for cellpadding*/
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
Using that same principle, we can apply background images and colors to the table, tr, th, and/or the td elements.
For example:
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table {
border-collapse:collapse;
border:1px solid #ccc;
background-color:#dbdbdb;
}
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
|---|---|
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
| Item 1 | Item 2 |
We’ve seen how tables can look and we know what they look like by default — boring. Styling tables can be a great addition to any website whether it is made from tables itself or from a tableless markup using CSS.
Styling Tables
Size: 8.36 kB