Computer Problems on yozy//NET

Zoom out any page on mobile Safari

Fri, 26 Jan 2018 10:20:00 +0100

Just now I wanted to publish a new version of my app to testers. This is to be done on the iTunes connect website. I only had my phone, but according to Steve “iOS has full web experience” so this should not be a problem.

However, iTunes connect does not work exactly well on mobile. This is because the zoom level of the page is fixed on the “background” while the dialogs are in front. The result is that the button Submit is inaccessible.

After some amount of looking for a solution I have found several bookmarklets that should unlock the zoom. None of them worked. So I made my own solution.

Bookmark this page in Safari and change its URL to this:

javascript:(function(){document.getElementsByTagName("body")[0].style.zoom =0.5;})()

Then, on a page which has elements outside of the viewport, launch the bookmark from the bookmark menu. The page will be twice as small, but more of it will fit!

Parallels 12 and Windows 7 Slow Cursor

Wed, 22 Nov 2017 11:41:09 +0100

After updating my macOS, Parallels 12 has broken loading a VM from the Bootcamp partition. This has forced me to use my Windows 7 virtual machine and I have discovered a weird problem:

The mouse cursor inside the virtual machine is really slow if an application is loading something or doing some activity.

At first I thought this was because the machine was hogged, but the problem is actually simpler than that: Windows 7, in Parallels 12, is really slow when rendering an animated cursor. I have changed my cursor theme to an old non-aero one and everything is fine now.

MiKTeX 2.9 and Windows 10 package installation woes

Wed, 02 Aug 2017 15:42:08 +0000

Today my MiKTeX installation stopped installing packages on the fly. After trying to install packages through Package Manager I found out that this did not work either. The error that I have obtained is this:

The executed process did not succeed.
fileName="C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9\MiKTeX\bin\initexmf.exe", arguments=" --mklinks --mkmaps", exitCode="1"

I googled around and found out that this might be a problem with the installation folder not being accessible and the suggested solution was to install MiKTeX somewhere else (or just for the local user). This was not an option for me as a toolchain that does not depend only on me requires the latex binary to be in the default folder.

My solution was to go to the C:\Program Files (x86)\MiKTeX 2.9 folder properties and changing the Users permissions to Full Control. Not extremely secure but at least now I can build my documentation.

A bookmarklet to make a stretched article readable

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 11:21:33 +0000

There are many tools like Readability or Evernote Clearly to make any arbitrary article readable and they are very good at their job.

Sometimes however you do not want to get rid of all of the formatting and sometimes they simply just do not work, e.g., on web forums.

One thing you can find all over the Internet is pages stretched from side to side, and they are all but readable on larger screens. Of course with responsive design you can just resize your browser but that is not what you want to do all of the time.

Here is a handy bookmarklet that will ‘columnize’ any webpage:

javascript:d=document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0];d.style.width="11in";d.style.margin="0 auto";void(0);

Enjoy

US Extended layout for Mac with switched `/~ and §/± keys

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:02:03 +0000

The Mac keyboard layout is weird. Some choices Apple made when designing it are good but some of them really come from outer space. Why would anybody need a ± symbol on his keyboard is beyond me. Luckily Ukelele software provides an acceptable solution.

Personally I use U.S. Extended layout for almost everything. The only time I switch is when I have a very lengthy french text to write. (Speaking of which, why does french layout have a  character directly on the keyboard? Just how often would anybody use that?). So, in order to keep the layout consistent with other keyboards I have made a U.S. Extended+ version which changes flips the §± and `~ keys around.

Download it here:

USExtended+

Fix the home and end keys in Firefox with Keyconfig and Vimperator

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:12:58 +0000

Somme funny man thought that it would be good to screw up the behavior of home and end keys in firefox on Mac. Nobody knows why and everybody is complaining. Also, the same genius have made the ⌘→ and ⌘← commands navigate in history instead of doing what they do in every other application which is “move to the end or beginning of the line”.

Oh well.. Luckily there IS a solution for this. The extension keyconfig will fix half of the problem. Get the keyconfing extension here and disable the incriminating keys. Many thanks to the author. Now you have working command keys. As for the home and end key, I fixed my problem in vimperator, since it is an extension I use on all of my firefoxes. Basically the idea is to remap home and end (along with +shift variants)) so they fire off the command+arrow commands. Here is the code, enjoy :

imap <Home> <M-Left>
imap <End> <M-Right>
imap <S-End> <M-S-Right>
imap <S-Home> <M-S-Left>

Either run it in the vimperator command line and do a :mkvimperatorrc! or put it directly into your configuration file.

Global keyboard actions in Snow Leopard without third-party software

Wed, 04 May 2011 08:00:15 +0000

When I first got to use Mac OS X I have wondered whether it is possible to do stuff which I was used to do (more or less) easily on Linux. Among others there is the possibility to assign keyboard shortcuts to arbitrary actions (and especially shell scripts). I found several tutorials on how to do this, but they often include third party software like Quicksilver. Since I want to keep my system as vanilla as possible I was searching for a way to do it otherwise, and found it.

Introducing Services

Snow Leopard has this great thing called Services, which is a very simple to use way of creating very powerful actions in no time. Now, usually these are bound to a specific application or context, but they can be global. Since it is much easier to explain something on an example, let us use a simple example. Following this article on how to pause iTunes for a short period of time.

Step 1

Open up the Automator.
Create a New Service.
In the ‘service receives selected’ drop-down box select no input in any application.
In the left sidebar find Run AppleScript and drag it into the workflow
Paste the code below on the place where it says ( Your script goes here )
Save the service as “Pause iTunes for 5 minutes”

The script in question follows:

tell application "iTunes"
    pause
    delay 300
    play
end tell

In the end the whole Automator window should look like this.

If you go to the current application’s menu now you should see your service in the Services sub-menu.

Step 2

Now the only thing that remains is to add a keyboard shortcut for this service. Open up System Preferences → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts. In the left panel click on Services and then click on the + button under the right panel. In the following dialog choose:

Application : All Applications
Menu Title : Pause iTunes for 5 minutes
Keyboard Shortcut : F10

Following shortcut illustrates the result. Note that it is vital that the Menu Title chosen is exactly the same as the name under which you have saved the service.

[Update] New services will be added to the list automatically. The only remaining thing is to add a shortcut key. This might be a feature of Lion or Mountain Lion as I do not recall it while using 10.6.

All done, you can now enjoy launching your script anywhere, anytime by pressing F10.