With webapps beginning to replace desktop applications as internet access becomes increasingly available, three of the most popular browsers used today have added new application shortcut features, allowing you to pin a website to the taskbar or start menu while modifying  UI elements of the browser so it looks and feels like a desktop application that’s just rendered via the browser. IE and Chrome have a pin to taskbar feature built in, and Firefox requires the use of a plugin or application called Prism. All of the browsers do this in a different way – which one does it the best?

Internet Explorer 9

IE9 comes with the simplest and easiest way to pin a site to your taskbar and turn it into a webapp – open the site you want in a new tab, and drag the tab down to the taskbar. IE9 will try and look for a 64×64 icon to place on your taskbar – if it doesn’t find one, it gets the default 32×32 icon and puts a white box around it. It’s rather ugly when this happens, though a site that uses a 64×64 icon works beautifully (like this one!). As a webapp, IE9 will pick a color from the site and theme the UI that way without removing any components like the address bar.

A unique feature with sites pinned to the taskbar using IE9 is that they could have built-in jump lists, just like a desktop application. Each website will have to manually code them in, so while you won’t find them everywhere, websites like Hulu will have jump list items and just about any Windows Live site as well. Unfortunately, IE9 doesn’t seem to have a pin to the start menu feature – so you’re stuck with webapps being just on the taskbar.

Firefox (using Prism)

There’s no native support for putting webapps on the start menu or taskbar, and instead for Firefox users you need to either download or install a plugin named Prism. Using the Firefox rendering engine, Prism will display the website in a window with the options to show the navigation bar if you wish. Type in the URL, provide a name, maybe even a custom icon, and Prism will generate a webapp for you and provide shortcuts on your desktop, start menu, or quick launch bar.

Unfortunately, the ‘quick launch bar’ doesn’t mean taskbar in Windows 7. So if you choose to pin to quick launch, it won’t appear at all – you’ll have to manually right click the icon when the webapp launches and select “pin to taskbar”. Other than that, Prism does an excellent job, doing little things like remembering the size of the window for each webapp every time you close it and properly identifying and using a 64×64 icon. If no 64×64 icon is available, Prism will stretch the 32×32 icon so that it fits.

Google Chrome

Chrome’s way of pinning to the taskbar or start menu is built in just like IE9, though it’s not as simple and takes a few more clicks. We’ve gone over how to do this, so follow this guide for specific instructions. Chrome can properly add a webapp to your desktop, start menu, or taskbar, allowing you to pick and choose where you want it. Unlike IE9 and Firefox (Prism), Chrome fails to recognize the 64×64 icon on website and will instead stretch out the 32×32 version. It also appears that Chrome will open each webapp with a set window size every time, so you’ll end up resizing the window every time you open one.

That said, Chrome seems to be the best in terms of compatibility – who knows what engine Prism is running since the application version is still 1.0 (while Firefox has reached 10.0 at the time of writing this), and despite IE9′s jumps above any previous Internet Explorer, its rendering engine isn’t nearly as good as Chrome’s. Prism has worked with everything as well, though Chrome gets updated more often.

Conclusion

IE9 is the only browser of the three to truly offer a unique feature – jump lists for webapps. The lack of customization and poor compatibility will steer users away however, as the address bar along with tabs will show up, having little difference to just opening the browser to whatever webpage you want to go to. Firefox is the most customizable, allowing you to choose a custom icon or modify the interface, adding or removing elements, with a small, though annoying flaw – the inability to directly pin to the Windows 7 taskbar. Chrome will support just about anything and does a great job making webapps, though it falls short in aesthetics – no 64×64 icon support and remembering your window size.

Firefox’s Prism, despite its single flaw, seems to be the best out of the three.  IE9′s jump lists just aren’t popular enough to warrant the use of IE9 exclusively, and Chrome isn’t as customizable or as attractive as Prism’s webapps. Regardless, feel free to mix and match what you want – jump list enabled sites work great with IE9, some sites only work well with Chrome, and sometimes you want to theme things the way you want them using Firefox.

By dividing up your hard drive into multiple partitions, you can effectively create multiple ‘virtual’ drives to store your files in. With the introduction of Libraries in Windows 7, the location of your personal files no longer has to sit in Windows’ predefined folders for convenience – now it’s possible to separate system files and personal data onto two separate partitions while being able to access them easily so you don’t get them mixed up. Windows doesn’t have a partition manager built in (or I don’t know of one), so thankfully there’s  Paragon Partition Manager 11 Free: a tool that can edit, create, and delete partitions on your hard drive.

A little backstory – I do a lot of gaming, and those games take up a lot of space on my main drive, which is 500GB. I originally cut the hard drive into two equal partitions – 250GB each, and I had Windows (and all of my programs) installed onto C:\ while my personal files would lie on the D:\ drive. I do this with all my other computers as well – making two separate partitions, one for you data and the other for system files, can ensure they don’t get mixed up. In any case, I was running out of room, so I decided to cut out space from my D:\ partition and give Windows some more room to breathe.

I had originally planned to download EaseUS’ Partition Manager Home (free), only to find that it did not have 64-bit Windows support in the Home edition. I didn’t need more advanced features, so I wasn’t willing to pay money. Instead, I decided to give Paragon Partition Manager Free a shot.

Upon installing, I was presented with Partition Manager’s “Express Partitioning” screen. The dialogue lets you quickly access partitioning wizards, such as resizing or deleting a partition step by step for basic users who want no hassle when partitioning. If you want a better look at what’s really going on in your system though, you’ll have to open up the real program by clicking on “Partition Manager 11″ on the left side.

Now in the main screen (which you can see at the top of this post for the entire window), Partition Manager now displays information about all the drives you have, dividing them up physically and then showing the partitions inside each drive. You can still access the easy to use wizards at the top, and the manual controls are down in the context menus where the hard drives and partitions are displayed. I chose to move/resize my partition, and then I was presented with a dialogue that allowed me to choose how I want things changed.

You can set the volume’s new size, or pick how much free space you wanted before or after the partition. It’s important to choose where you want your free space (unallocated) to go – put it on the wrong side and you won’t be able to expand a partition on the other side into that free space. When you’re done, pressing “Yes” will take you back to the main screen, in which you can do something else like expand or create another partition in any space you’ve freed up. Note that Partition Manager will only apply any changes when you click “Apply”, so it’s possible to make multiple changes in one run and leave Partition Manager to work until you get the desired results.

It can take around half an hour to a few hours depending on the type of job you’re doing, since Partition Manager may have to move all your files around a bit. In any case, I’ve used Partition Manager multiple times and it always seems to have gotten the job done, sometimes requiring a restart. While this won’t count as a formal review (since I haven’t tested the software for all its features) I can certainly recommend it for those who need to modify their partitions a bit.

[Partition Manager 11 Free Edition - Paragon Software]

About a week or two ago, there were some problems with our comment system. Normally, we keep the spambots at bay with a combination of Math Comment Spam Protection, an extra field in which you solve a simple math problem to confirm your human-ness, and Akismet, our automatic spam filter that catches spambots that know math. While having a math problem as a comment field drastically reduced the amount of spam we got, the plugin had a problem – sometimes even when you solved the problem correctly, it would tell you that you were incorrect and unfortunately, refuse to post your comment.

Now we’ll be switching into a new anti-spam system to replace Math Comment Spam Protection – a simple captcha that only shows up if Akismet thinks you’re a spambot. That means you will no longer have to fill out an extra field to prevent spambots every time you post a comment, unless our spam filter thinks you’re not human – in which you solve a simple captcha as shown above to get through. False positives are fairly rare, and using this captcha system can prevent that from happening. You do get multiple tries if you mess up by hitting the back button on your browser.

We hope you can now better enjoy and comment on the content that flows through Netbook Network!

For website owners who want to install this on their own site, look for the WordPress plugin “Conditional CAPTCHA”. 

Renaming individual files is pretty simple – right click, select “Rename”, and type in what you want the new name to be – and even modify the file extension if you wish. Dealing with a list of multiple files will take much longer – Windows doesn’t allow you to rename multiple files at once, just one at a time. Bulk Rename Utility is a free tool that allows you to rename a long list of files at once – and modify them by adding or removing strings at virtually any location in the file name, such as applying a numbering system to the prefix of all names.

The interface may seem confusing the first time you use it, so you may want to make the window a larger size to give your eyes some more breathing room. Bulk Rename Utility is quite powerful for its wide set of features in file renaming, divided up in boxes on the interface. At the top you can select the files you want to rename, see the original file names, and then see what the new names would be after any changes made. Users will be most likely using these following features Bulk Rename Utility provides:

• Replace any given string with another. If your files all have a certain string that you want to make something else, the replace function can do that for you.
• Remove part of the filename. This is handy for cutting off any prefixes that your file names may come with that you find unnecessary.
• Add a string anywhere in the filename. Here you can define a string to place in any location of the filename, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end. Useful for applying a custom prefix.
• Automatic numbering. Bulk Rename Utility can add numerical prefixes to all of your filenames, including roman numeral support.

Bulk Rename Utility can be used for any filetype, and works great for music albums or photographs. When satisfied with the changes, hit “Rename” and your files will be renamed to what you want them to be. If you’re cautious of any mistakes, you can choose to copy all the files into a new location before they’re renamed – so you have a backup available. The free program works for all versions of Windows and is ad-free (with the exception of the ViceVersa PRO ad at the bottom which isn’t intrusive at all).

[Bulk Rename Utility Homepage & Download]

As we transcend into a world filled with mobile touchscreen devices everywhere we go, placing them next to hard sharp objects such as keys or dropping them is inevitable and will scratch up even a Gorilla Glass screen. Fortunately, screen protectors are pretty cheap and are available for just about any device with a screen, costing at most a few dollars when ordered online. While they’re not completely scratch proof either, screen protectors provide a temporary layer between the screen itself and the outside world. Applying them is the hardest part – nobody wants bubbles and dust under a screen protector, and today we’ll be showing you our method of getting the best results.

Image courtesy of Flickr.

Note that this guide is meant for dry-apply screen protectors (most screen protectors). Some will require a wet-apply, and that will be indicated on the package or in the product details. If you are planning on using a wet-apply screen protector, visit the manufacturer’s website for detailed instructions on application.

1. Begin with wiping the screen down using a microfiber cloth (usually provided with screen protectors). If there are fingerprints on the screen, use something like lens cleaner to wipe those off. You want to make sure the screen is free of dust and particles and completely dry.
2. All screen protectors will have a plastic protective layer over the adhesive part of the screen protector. Careful not to attract more dust, align the screen protector next to the screen the way it would be placed and begin to peel back the plastic layer while at the same time applying the adhesive part to the screen. Do not completely peel off the plastic layer, or dust in the air will stick onto the adhesive side.
3. Grab a soft card (usually provided with screen protectors as well) or a credit card and press down on part that has been applied. Push out bubbles while doing so, and when you’ve completely flattened any applied area, continue to remove the plastic layer and press down as you go.
4. When you’ve reached the end, you can fully remove the plastic layer and then press the screen protector onto your device. You’re done!

If you’re confused on what’s going on between steps 2-4, a video example of this process can be found here. This method is better than fully removing the plastic layer and putting the protector on in one go, since it exposes the adhesive side of the screen protector to outside air (and dust) the least.

Chances are, you didn’t do the steps above perfectly, and now that the plastic cover is removed, you can’t try again without using another screen protector. If there are a few bubbles to deal with, lift up the protector to where the bubbles are and press them out while reapplying the screen protector. Unfortunately, if you failed to wipe down the screen well enough and dust is now stuck onto the screen protector, you may be out of luck – you can try washing it off with water, though that may ruin the protector.

Hopefully by this point your screen will be properly covered. Remember, screen protectors are cheap, so if you feel like you didn’t do a very good job, trying to apply a new one won’t cost you too much.

LAME is a fairly popular MP3 encoder, backing MP3 exporting in Audacity and even having some of its code found (accidentally?) in paid-for Sony products. LAME is only distributed in source code form, so there’s no official LAME application. Instead, we have LAME frontends, which are GUI interfaces for LAME so the user doesn’t have to learn any command line. Today we’ll be covering winLAME – a free audio encoder, designed to create optimized and high quality MP3 files Windows. It’s incredibly lightweight and supports a solid set of formats and encoding options for basic and advanced users alike including batch processing for larger tasks. 

In the file selection screen, you can drag and drop files into the list via Windows Explorer or use an Explorer window to find your files manually. Details will be displayed on the right after the names of each file. Pressing Next will lead you to the output settings, which also provide a few basic, though useful options.

While you’ll see the basic features of a media encoder in winLAME, you may be surprised by its limited codec support. That’s due to the fact that LAME itself was designed for the MP3 format and not much else – however, winLAME does support a wide variety of other codecs through other, third party libraries as seen on its website. If you want, you can opt to create a playlist of the output files in .M3U format. Moving on into the next set of options, you can make more specific decisions as to what you want your output files to be like.

winLAME comes with a set of presets that more basic users should pay attention to – instead of forcing you to tweak every little detail in the way you want your files to be encoded, you can choose between a variety of preset options. Each preset is explained in the description below where you can choose what seems to fit your needs best. Advanced users will want to pick the “Custom settings” preset so you’ll be able to modify all of winLAME’s options to your liking.

In the custom winLAME settings, you can choose an “encoding quality” (doesn’t hurt to always use High), set the bitrate or use a set quality from a scale of 1-10, and choose other options like Nogap encoding – designed to prevent gaps between files for gapless playback. While you won’t find all the options in the world here, the ability to choose a custom bitrate is usually enough for most users.

Finally, on the encoding screen! The controls are simple enough: Press the play button to start encoding, and press the stop button to stop. The little broken arrow next to the controls will minimize winLAME down to the taskbar tray so it runs in the background. The amount of time it takes to encode really depends on your processor and the amount of files – expect no more than a few minutes for a single album, since you’re just encoding audio files and that’s generally pretty quick.

While winLAME hasn’t received an update in a while now, it remains a reliable program for encoding media files into the popular MP3 audio format. It’s great for encoding ripped CD’s that are large files with no quality loss into MP3 files compatible with a portable media player. winLAME’s simple and lightweight interface make it an excellent free application that performs exactly as advertised, and performs it well. Unfortunately for Linux users, winLAME is Windows only (you can pick up the installer here), however there are many other applications that use the LAME for Linux – you just may have to do a little digging.

We haven’t had a wallpaper pack in a while, so I thought I would add another netbook wallpaper pack to our growing collection!  Pack 5 provides yet another set of 8 stunning wallpapers all sized to standard netbook resolution: 1024×600, so you can simply drag and drop them into your wallpaper slideshow or pick one to use manually along with any of the other netbook wallpaper packs we’ve provided. The wallpapers are compatible with all operating systems, all in .JPG format, so it works on tablet devices as well. A download link of Netbook Wallpaper Pack 5 can be found after the break!

[Download Here] – .ZIP format, use an archive manager like 7-zip to open. When prompted for a password, use “netbooknetwork.net” (without the ” “). Enjoy, and be sure to watch for other netbook wallpaper packs in the future!