Neil Merton

Keyboard Layout Shortcut

Recently my keyboard layout seemed to magically switch from UK to US without me requesting it to. Or so I thought!

Windows has a very nifty shortcut sequence built into it of ‘Left Shift + Alt’ that will switch between the two available layouts.

If you find this happening to yourself and want to disable the shortcut then follow these directions:

1. Right-click on the taskbar
2. Select ‘Toolbars’
3. Select ‘Language Bar’
   (you should now have a blue indicator on your taskbar - mine says ‘EN’ indicating English)
4. Right-click on the indicator icon and select ‘Settings…’
5. At the bottom, under ‘Preferences’ click the ‘Key Settings…’ button
6. Ensure ‘Switch between input languages’ is selected and click the ‘Change Key Sequence…’ button
7. Untick the two checkboxes (these are ‘Switch input languages’ and ‘Switch keyboard layouts’)
8. Click ‘OK’
9. Click ‘OK’
10. Click ‘OK’
11. To remove the indicator from the taskbar -right-click on it and select ‘Close the language bar’.

Done.

Luna Element Updated

My all-time favourite Windows XP Theme (visual style) gets a long awaited updated.

I’ve been using the improved variation on the default Luna Windows XP style for many years and the author has just released he latest version.

As always this theme is clean, crisp and visually appealing. With a few touches of the new Vista included - this theme will be an instant hit.

Download the theme here.

Note: in order to apply this theme you will need to have a hacked version of the Windows XP Theme Manager - this can be safely done by following the instructions on this website.

Oh, and Windows Vista was released to the public today.

Keeping track of tasks

In my new job there’s always a lot of new things to do and I decided that it was time to implement a way of tracking what is is required of me to do.

So, last night I went onto Hotscripts (a great source for web scripts) and had a look through what’s available. After trying out a few demos I decided to install one called TaskFreak.

What a great little application! It’s very simple (which is great) and presents the tasks in a neat way. It also utilises AJAX which nice. It’s created with PHP and its backend is MySQL so was easy to setup on my local PC.

So, if you need a way of tracking jobs then do investigate TaskFreak.

Fixing SYLK error in .csv file

I’ve recently had to generate a .csv file from an SQL query generated through ColdFusion. This all worked without any major problems except for an error the Excel popped up with saying that the file appear to be in SYLK format, etc.

This is caused by using ‘ID’ as the first column header. Changing this to ‘Identity’ sorted the problem out and Excel was able to open the file without any problems.

Web2.0* Wordpress Theme Updated

Well, I’ve finally managed to get my Web2.0* Wordpress theme to utilise AJAX commenting. I’ve also cleaned up alot of the code on the comments.php page.

I strongly recommend that you re-download the theme and reply it.

The theme has now had over 2,000 downloads - so a big thank you to everyone. Could I request that if you are using the theme that you rate it? That would be greatly appreciated.

Update 26 January 2007: There was a problem with displaying the links.php page when used with Wordpress 2.1 - this has now been fixed. If you don’t want to replace the whole page then download the updated page.

Update 28 January 2007: Another small update to the theme - more work done to try ensure that the theme is Wordpress 2.1 compliant and I’ve also added more option to the Admin area on the sidebar (see image below).

Update 26 March 2007: One more small update - this time to do with IE7 and the drop down menu. So if you’re experiencing problems do re-download and apply the theme.

Update 28 March 2007: Found that the comments page was a little screwy - this has been fixed in the latest version (1.2.5). Thanks to Hasan for the tip about automatically pulling the post’s author email address so that it isn’t hard-coded any more.

South African E-Commerce Awards

Most people won’t have alot of interest in South African websites but I thought I would share the following - it’s a link to a to the 2006 South African E-Commerce Awards website.

I would be curious to hear what the general public think to some of the websites on the list.

New Year New Job

Well, the end of this week will see the end of my time at the Sytner Group. After 4 years I’ve gone from a traditional table-based website designer to a full blown Accessible ColdFusion Developer and the time has come for me to move onto pastures full of more development.

On the 8th of January I will start my new job as the Senior ColdFusion Developer for a company called Hostlogic plc - based on the outskirts of Hinckley. The job will be a challenge, but one that I’m really looking forward to.

I hope you all had a wonderful and safe New Years!