Make the Power button in Vista start menu to turn off computer instead of sleep

The Power button in Windows Vista’s Start Menu, if pressed, puts your computer in Sleep mode rather than turning it off. This guide shows you how you can set it to actually turn your computer off.

1. Goto Control Panel (Start->Control Panel). Switch to Classic View for this guide. (You can do so by clicking ‘Classic View’ from left Nav Panel.)

2. Double-click Power Options.

3. The page refreshes to show you the Power Options. By default, Vista is set to use Balanced Plan. Click the ‘Change plan settings’ link below it.

4. Now click the ‘Change advanced power settings’ link.

5. In the window that opens, navigate through : Power buttons and lid->Start menu power button by clicking the ‘+ ‘

6. Click on ‘Sleep’ and pull down the drop-down box. Select ‘Shut Down’ instead.

7. Click ‘Apply’ and then ‘OK’. Now when you press the Power button in Start menu, it will directly shutdown the computer!

Create Jump Menu in Dreamweaver

Jump menu lets you arrange all the navigation links in your site in one place. This might help clean-up your layout and offer your visitors a more simpler and effective browsing experience. Here’s what it looks like:

And here’s how to create it:

1. Open Dreamweaver and browse through Insert->Form Objects->Jump Menu:

2. Now in the ‘Text’ field type the name to link as you would like it to appear in the menu and in the Go To URL field, type the address that the link should lead to. You can add any number of links by clicking the ‘+’ button.

When you’re done, press OK and see the result! Really simple, isn’t it?

Disable the annoying dotted line on links in Firefox

When you click on links or buttons on websites in Firefox, you get this dotted line around the links.
I find it ugly. Well, you can get rid of it for good. To do this,

Open a new tab in Firefox and type about:config
Scroll down till you find an entry saying browser.display.focus_ring_width
Double-click it, enter 0 in the text box and click OK.

That’s all it needs. That dotted line thingy is gone forever (ofcourse, you can re-enable it by changing the browser.display.focus_ring_width’s value to 1)

Disable flicker during UAP, without disabling UAP in Windows Vista!!

Microsoft has introduced a new feature in Windows Vista called User Account Protection. This UAP is supposed to prevent unauthorised access to system-wide settings. It does so by prompting you for confirmation if you do change any settings that Windows things can be dangerous. But, evertime it does so, the screen flickers and is kinda filled with shadow or semi-transparent black. I find this really annoying. Here’s how you can disable that flicker but still have UAP activated.

1. Press WinKey+R to open Run Command (or click Start Orb and then click Run as mentioned in the previous post). Then type secpol.msc and press ‘OK’ button

2. Arrgh! The screen flickers and you get a UAP dialog asking for confirmation. Click ‘Continue’ button.

3.  Now in the window that opens, browse through Security Settings->Local Policies->Security Options in the left navbar.

4. Scroll all the way down in the right panel until you find an entry called ‘User Account Control: Switch to the secure desktop when prompting for elevation‘ . Double-click it.

5. Now select ‘Disabled’ click Apply and OK button. Close the Local Security Settings window.

You’re done! Now whenever UAP dialog appears for your confirmation, your screen won’t flicker! Rejoice!

Change Wallpapers in Windows Vista

We all like customizing our desktop. I change themes, icons, sound schemes almost everyday! But, currently there are no ‘major’ themes available for Vista, so lets change the desktop background. Now, it’s not how you used to do it in Windows XP. Things are a little different here, but it’s really simple.

1. Right-click anywhere on desktop and click ‘Personalize’ (Yup, not Properties but Personalize)

2. Now, in the window that opens, click the link called ‘Desktop Background’

3. The page refreshes to show you the wallpapers available in current category in thumbnail view. Select any wallpaper (click on any thumbnail) to see a preview being applied on your desktop.

4. You can also click the Drop-down box to select a different category and view the wallpapers included in them. Also, you can click Browse… button to select your own wallpaper from hard-disk.

That’s it! Ciao