ajgraham.com » General IT

Adjusting Google Chromes default search to English

alex — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:02:46 +0000

Go to google.com, click on “Google in English”. Only after doing this will your cookie be saved. Google Chrome will respect the homepage setting, and should use whatever base URL for Google you get when you visit google.com. After doing the above change, restart the browser and wait ten seconds. At that point, the {google:baseURL} entry should point to google.com.

Hurrah! No more google.xx which you didn’t want

Checking Java version and installing via batch file/command line

alex — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:07:39 +0000

Unusual situation the other day. I got asked to add an Intranet page with a guide to explain how end users can check the version (or versions) of Java they have installed. I thought to myself there has to be a better and more efficient way of doing this, and making it easier for the end user at the same time.

First I had the idea of pointing them to the official Java install test page at Sun Micro, or the more detailed and thorough page over at http://www.javatester.org/version.html. I thought this was a decent solution, until I found out that if a user has more than 1 version of Java installed then a users Web browser can be set to use a different version of Java than the one that might be getting used for other applications.

Second solution was to use a batch file that would show all versions of Java that were installed on a machine:

java -version
pause

This worked fine I thought. Just create a batch file, put it on an accessible network source and fire round an email with a link to it.

Third solution. I spoke to a friend who is great with Desktop Support/Windows/etc. He managed to write a script that checks the specific version of Java that was needed (in this case jre-1_5_0_18-windows-i586-p.exe) and if its not installed, installs it from a network resource.

@Echo off
cls
Echo Installing Java 1.5.0_18, Please be patient

set temp_file_a=c:\temp_a.txt
set net2=0
if exist %temp_file_a% del %temp_file_a% echo clear temp file

rem get java installations
regedit /e %temp_file_a% “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Plug-in\1.5.0_18″
if exist %temp_file_a% set net2=1
echo checked registry

if %net2% == 0 echo Java 1.5.0_18 Not Installed if %net2% == 1 echo Java 1.5.0_18 Already Installed if %net2% == 1 goto ta05 echo.
echo Installing Java 1.5.0_18. Please be patient \\”jre-1_5_0_18-windows-i586-p.exe” /passive
:ta05

if exist %temp_file_a% del %temp_file_a% cls Echo Java 1.5.0_18 Installed.
pause

This got rolled out via a run once group policy for the 400 users required. From Web Developer to Desktop Support in 3 easy steps

The Facebook Problem

alex — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:53:01 +0000

Facebook is a really useful service which I use a lot to keep up with friends that have moved away, I even have my dad added on it. There is a huge privacy conundrum in its current state due to the way applications are given free reign with data.

If one of your Friends installs/uses an application, that application is given the same access rights to all of their Friends data (one of them being you!) as they have. This gives the application the opportunity to copy and store very personal information such as date of birth, address, telephone number(s), employment and/or education history (assuming you’ve added it and not limited the access to it). So for every silly, pointless quiz/game that one of your Friends installs/uses it opens all of the data on your profile up for it to misuse.

There is a very simple fix to this though. Delete your profile, all your friends or wait until next year sometime when Facebook implements more stringent controls on data access for applications…

How to waste time and money, when trying to save both

alex — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:34:01 +0000

I’m a Web Developer, if you didn’t know (what? You knew that already? Ahh, that’ll be because it’s written on most pages…) and as part of that lucky role I have to make square pegs fit round holes. Most of that task is focused on making sure that new web pages are backwards compatible (or my preferred term – degrade gracefully) for Internet Explorer 6.

IE6 is now over 8 years old, thats historic in IT terms. Unfortunately there are many (un-named) organisations that persist in using it due to a fear of upgrading to IE7. This would be understandable, except that so much time has now passed it now requires more work to support IE6 than it would ever take to upgrade. I have recently found myself spending hours extra to ensure that a site would look okay just for IE6 with every other browser working seamlessly. I enjoy being tested and my skills pushed to the limit, but not if its unnecessary and the lessons learnt are only applicable to an out-of-date web browser. I have much better things to do with my time, like count pixels on my screen….

[IE6 is] Compatible with IT departments that fear change

For a sarcastic view on the issue see: http://saveie6.com/