Keyboard shortcut of the week: Windows 7 Taskbar

After a long hiatus, keyboard shortcut of the week returns to 'Bloody Computer!' This week, we will look at new features of the Windows 7 taskbar.

You can open any program on the taskbar by holding the Windows key [shown right] and pressing the item number on the taskbar. For example, to open Internet Explorer on the following taskbar you would press Windows Key + 1. The calculator is Windows Key + 2, and so on.


If Internet Explorer is already running, pressing Windows Key + 1 will open that session. To start a new instance of the web browser press Shift + Windows Key + 1.

You can also shift focus to the taskbar using Windows Key + T. You can then use the left and right cursor keys to cycle through the items and press Enter to open them.

You can pin new programs to the taskbar by right-clicking on the icon and selecting 'Pin this program to the taskbar'. Once the icon is pinned, you can drag and drop it anywhere you like on the taskbar.

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How to print two pages per sheet

Cutting down on the amount of paper used in printing not only saves money, but is also more environmentally friendly. Some applications offer the option of printing multiple pages per sheet of paper. In this post I will show you how to print two pages per sheet in MS Word and Adobe Acrobat Reader.

MS Word
Open the print dialogue from the 'File' menu in older versions of Word, or by clicking the Office Button in newer versions (as shown below).


Simply set 'Pages per sheet' to '2 pages' and click 'OK'.



Adobe Acrobat
Open the print dialogue from the 'File' menu.
Change 'Page Scaling' to 'Multiple pages per sheet' and 'Pages per sheet' to '2'.



OpenOffice
I found no easy way to print two pages per sheet in OpenOffice, but you can save the file as a pdf using the 'Export as PDF' tool in the 'File' menu and then open it in Adobe Acrobat and follow the above instructions.

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Tips for searching using Google

The Google search engine syntax offers a number of options for getting better results. You can search for a specific phrase, search only on a particular site, or exclude pages with certain words. You can use the advanced search page to make use of these or you can use these simple rules of syntax in the normal search field or on Google Toolbar.

To search for a specific phrase
Simply put the words in quotation marks. For example, "Lady Gaga"

To search on a particular site
Type in the keywords that you wish to sort with 'site:' followed by the address of the web pages that you wish to search. For example, if you wished to search this blog for the word Firefox you would enter firefox site:bloodycomputer.blogspot.com

You can also search particular classes of site. If you enter site:.co.uk football, Google will return only pages on sites that end .co.uk that contain the word football.

To omit pages containing certain words
If you preface a word with - then Google will not list pages that contain that word. For example, if you enter the terms linux -ubuntu, you will get a list of pages that contain the word 'linux' but not the word 'ubuntu'

You can use all of these options in a single search. If you wanted to search the BBC news site for all pages that contain the phrase 'Barrack Obama' but not 'Clinton' then you would enter site:bbc.co.uk/news "barack obama" -clinton

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Link to Bloody Computer!

Even though I redesigned this blog some time ago, I still only offered my old link image rather than use the nice new one that my brother designed for me. I have decided that I should make available some new code for anyone who wished to link to this blog.

Simply paste the following code onto your blog or other website. If you need any help, or advice with this then please leave a comment.

<a href="http://bloodycomputer.blogspot.com"><img src="http://i255.photobucket.com/albums/hh148/stepterix/bcsign.png" border="0" /></a>

The link will look like this:

If you wish to use the old 'ransom note' style image click here.

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Where have all my desktop icons gone?

Windows offers the facility to hide all the icons on your desktop. The default option is to show all desktop icons, but this may be switched off either by accident or on purpose. To change this setting simply right-click on the desktop and a menu will appear.

On Windows XP you need to open up the 'Arrange icons by' sub-menu and then either tick or untick 'Show Desktop Icons'.
On Windows Vista and 7 the option is available in the 'View' menu.

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Dropbox: Internet File Storage

There are a number of sites that offer you storage space to back up or share your files over the Internet. Many of them have a limit on the size of file that can be stored, but this is not the case with Dropbox. Dropbox offers 2gb of storage space for free. This capacity can be increased if you upgrade to one of the payment options.

Dropbox provide software that enables you to access your storage space as if it were a drive on your computer. This software is available for Windows, OSX, Linux and a variety of mobile devices. Alternatively you can use the Dropbox web site to upload and download files.

Files can be placed in a 'Public' folder so that other Dropbox users may access them, or they can be stored in your private area, in which you can create new folders. Dropbox also records any activity on your account. Just follow the simple registration procedure and you will have enough space to back up your essential files.

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Google Chrome for Linux

Back in February I posted a list of Linux web browsers. I mentioned that a stable version of Chromium (the open-source basis for Google Chrome) would soon be available for Linux. I see that Chromium is now available in the Ubuntu repositories and a rpm package is also available for Fedora based distributions as far as I can tell.

Alternatively, you can now download installation packages for a stable version of Google Chrome for Linux. Packages are available in 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE. Chrome is also available in the Ubuntu canonical repository.


I installed the 64-bit version of Chrome on Xubuntu and it certainly appears to be very fast. I have yet to attempt all my usual web-based tasks on Chrome, but what I have tried has worked well. The growing collection of extensions for Chrome mean that I may be in a position to use it as my main browser rather than Firefox, although I may wait and see what the upcoming version 4 of Firefox has to offer.

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