While there isn’t a native Ad Blocker in Safari 4, I was able to clean up most websites by using Fanboy’s Element Hider stylesheet¹ to collapse the advertisement elements.

Here are the steps to setting up the Advertisement Hider in Safari 4:

Step 1: Download Fanboy’s Element Hider CSS file and save it to the Safari profile (or any folder of your choosing).

Step 2: Launch Safari4, go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Style Sheet -> Other… and select the fanboy-adblocklist-elements.css file you just saved.

Note: I am aware of 3rd party tools like Proximity to block ads but I prefer using a browser-specific solution. If you have a better way of handling ads in Safari, please share your ideas in the comments.

1. The Element Hider is part of an excellent, lightweight Adblock List maintained by Fanboy and available for Opera (my primary browser).  It is made up of two parts: (1) a urlfilter.ini replacement file that catches the ads before they are loaded and (2) an element hider .css file that colapses the ad space so that the webpage looks cleaner. [↩]

View Comments Tags: optimization, software, tweaks

Update: This has been tested in Outlook 2010, 2007 & 2003

I find that Outlook’s Personal Folder (.pst) files have a haphazard way of getting corrupted – which obviously impacts daily performance as well as reliability of my email achieve. Microsoft’s Inbox Repair Tool (ScanPST) diagnoses and repairs corrupt .pst/.ost files to make sure the file structure is intact, but the process requires more manual intervention than I care for. So, here’s how I made Outlook’s Inbox Repair process completely automated:

Step 1: Download some 3rd party utilities!

1. Download NirCmd.zip.
   In order to run the ScanPST utility against your .pst/.ost files, Outlook must be shutdown. While there isn’t a way to do what we need natively in Windows, NirCmd (free) allows us to accomplish the task gracefully – meaning Outlook will not shut down when unsaved content exists (in which case the Repair will be skipped for this instance).
   (Note: If you prefer to forcefully end Outlook, you can do so using process.exe ¹ . Of course, doing this could cause corruption – which is what we’re trying to avoid/fix!)
2. Extract nircmdc.exe² to ‘C:\\Windows\System32′.
   (Note: I don’t usually like to install 3rd party executables to WindowsSystem32. In this case, however, I feel these simple cli utilities don’t justify additions to my Path entry. If you wish to install somewhere else, you can add the location to your Path³ or add the full path into the script file.)
3. Download cmdscan.zip.
   Quester’s cmdscan (free) allows us to run ScanPST without any user interaction.
4. Extract cmdscan.exe to ‘C:\\Windows\System32′
5. Download autopst.bat – my batch file template.

The next Steps will outline what is happening in the batch file:

Step 2: Make sure Outlook is not running/Close Outlook if it is.

1. (informational) To gracefully close outlook, the script executes:
   nircmdc closeprocess outlook.exe.
   To test your nircmd install, open Outlook and execute this command from the command prompt.
2. (informational) We want to wait for Outlook to close because the Repair Tool will not analyze/fix an open .pst file. To do this, the script executes:
   nircmdc waitprocess outlook.exe.

Step 3: Run ScanPST from the Command Line.

1. Find the path to scanpst.exe on your computer:
   1. in Outlook 2003 – C:\\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\
   2. in Outlook 2007 – C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\
2. Edit autopst.bat in notepad and verify ScanPST-location=”<your path>”
3. If your .pst/.ost files are in the default location, the command in the script – cmdscan %ScanPST-location% *.pst *.ost – will work just fine. (Otherwise, follow the instructions in readme.txt, found in the cmdscan.zip file. It will show all your file selection options).

Step 4: (optional) Open Outlook so it’s ready to go when you access your computer again.

1. If you prefer to automatically restart Outlook after the scan, remove “REM” from the front of the “REM start outlook.exe” line.

Step 5: Create a Scheduled Task ⁴

1. Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks.
2. Next -> Browse… -> select the autopst.bat file -> Next
3. Select task frequency (i.e., Daily/Weekly) -> Next
4. Set run time (when are you least likely to need Outlook open?
5. …you get the idea…

Step 6: Test

1. Double-click on the autopst.bat file or execute the newly created task to make sure things go as expected.

1. Command Line Process Viewer/Killer/Suspender – This method first tried to gracefully shut down Outlook. If Outlook remains open after 60 seconds, the process is forced to terminate. [↩]
2. nircmdc is a command line only version of nircmd – this makes popup dialogs print to cmd window instead; thus, allowing us to automate processes more reliably [↩]
3. How to set the path in: Windows XP / Vista [↩]
4. How To Schedule Tasks in Windows XP [↩]

View Comments Tags: email, optimization, Outlook, performance, repair, software, tweaks

Like many, I much prefer the (free) FeedDemon RSS Reader over the one built into Opera.  And, one thing that has long annoyed me in Opera is the inability to send feeds to my default RSS Reader (something FF3 and IE do very well).

Nick Bradbury, the creator of FeedDemon, wrote a blog post in 2004 outlining how to add a “Send to FeedDemon” context menu option in Opera¹.  Still, I didn’t find it to be the complete solution I was looking for

So, here’s how I send RSS feeds from Opera to FeedDemon:

Step 1: Add the Send to FeedDemon Button
Since FeedDemon is intelligent enough to pick up the default feed, this works fine for 98% of my cases.

However, if a site has numerous feeds and you don’t want to pick the default, then the Button isn’t the ideal choice.  So, here’s a few alternative ways to accomplish the task.

Step 2: (optional) Disable Mail (and, thus, Opera Feeds)
This will prevent the annoying ‘Do you want to subscribe to this feed in Opera’ popup.²  However, it will also disable the RSS icon that is displayed in the address bar when a feed is found.

1. Uncheck opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowE-mailClient.
2. Save Settings & Restart Opera.

Step 3: Add the feed:http protocol.

1. Go to Preferences (Alt+P) -> Advanced Tab –> Programs.
2. Select “Add…”.
3. Under Protocol, type feed:http .
4. Select “Open with other application” then Choose the FeedDemon.exe path (note: if FeedDemon is your default feed reader, this step isn’t absolutely necessary.  Still, I like setting this so that even if another broswer/app steals the feed protocol, FeedDemon will always be used.)

Step 4: Add the ‘Send to FeedDemon’ context menu.

1. Open Windows Explorer and browse to ‘C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\menu’.
2. Save Opera-FeedDemon-Menu.ini in the menu folder.
3. Go to Opera Preferences (Alt+P) –> Advanced Tab –> Toolbars and select ‘Opera 9.5 + FeedDemon’ from the Menu Setup.

Step 5: How to Use.

1. Click the ‘Send to FeedDemon’ button while on the website. Or…
   
2. Right-click in the whitespace of this webpage and select “Send to FeedDemon” from the menu.  Or…
3. If the link uses the feed protocol, clicking on the link directly will open the feed in FeedDemon.  Or…
   
4. In some cases (like with FeedBurner, for example), you will be redirected from the main website to a page where you can select the RSS reader of your choice.

Example/Test Feeds³:

• http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=245333
• feed:http://www.opindian.com/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/NickBradbury

1. Nick Bradbury’s ‘Adding FeedDemon to Opera’ blog post [↩]
2. Opera Forums – disabling and/or managing feeds… [↩]
3. Tested with Opera 9.5 Weekly & FeedDemon 2.7 [↩]

View Comments Tags: Opera, optimization, software, tweaks