Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

The popularity of the internet browser Firefox continues to grow by the day, but it still has a few annoying quirks. One of these is that it can be difficult to watch Windows Media Player videos within Firefox.

Luckily, thanks to Port 25, who are the team at Microsoft who look after interoperability, there’s a new Windows Media Player Plugin for Firefox. Once installed this plugin will improve support for embedded Windows Media Player videos.

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Tags: software, web

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Sometimes playing videos on your PC isn’t easy, particularly when they have been downloaded off the internet. This is normally because your PC doesn’t have the necessary codecs installed to play the video file in question. Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding (playing) audio and video formats.

The quickest way to ensure that your PC can play all video files is to install the K-Lite Codec Pack. The K-Lite Code Pack is a collection of almost every codec under the sun, that will allow you to play all your video and audio files.

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Tags: computer, software, windows

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Every time technology advances to create new business capabilities, opportunities arise for that technology to be used to harm your business. Case in point: intranets and extranets. Networks are invaluable, keeping your employees connected whether they’re in the office or across the country. But networks are also a prime target for hackers, malware, and other threats. So a fundamental item in your security arsenal needs to be a bulletproof, centralized firewall.

The idea, essentially, is that there are bad guys out there, and you need to put something between them and your network. A firewall controls your network traffic, allowing or blocking activities and access based on security policies you set.

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Tags: internet, software, windows

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Mozilla on Thursday launched Thunderbird 2, the latest version of its free, open-source e-mail client featuring message tagging and customization.

Thunderbird 2, with its enhanced features, is intended to ease the organization of e-mail via message tags, advanced folder viewing, and speedier inbox and message searching. Under its message tagging feature, users can assign single or multiple custom tags to their e-mail, such as “from mom” or “weekend projects.” Users would also be able to assign default tags, as well.

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Tags: internet, software, web

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

I love fonts. I have a fantastic collection of them, ranging from delicate script fonts to ones that look as if they’ve been stenciled. The most wonderful of all, however, are the fonts I made myself. The process is simpler than you might imagine; all you need is a bit of free time, some software (such as High-Logic’s FontCreator, Home edition, $79 direct; www.high-logic.com), and a scanner.

You’ll have to do some fairly tedious writing: all the uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation marks and other symbols you typically use. (Alternatively, depending on what kind of font you want, you could draw the characters in your graphics software.) Then you’ll scan the page into your PC, tweak the characters, and in less time than it would take to chisel the alphabet into granite, you’ll have your very own font. — next: Step By Step

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Tags: computer, internet, software

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

The Windows Media Player team put a lot of work into evolving media playback on Windows Vista through the new Media Foundation pipeline, and has also been actively monitoring feedback on WMP and playback in general. While commentary has been mainly positive for Web playback through IE, we’ve noticed that there’s still work to be done to make Firefox users able to enjoy their media content on Windows.

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Tags: software, vista, windows, xp

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

It was a sad day last Friday when I uninstalled Firefox from our terminal servers. At the same time, I upgraded from Internet Explorer 6 to IE 7, which fortunately has most of the spiffy features that we’ve all grown to love about Firefox (especially tabbed browsing).

I had previously been happy to give students the choice of browsers and had even set the default to Firefox, since so many students and staff had adopted the IE alternative (often at my urging). However, our business applications teacher brought a significant problem with Firefox to my attention.

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Tags: internet, software

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Firefox is a great browser which allows almost anyone with minimal coding experience to create plugins and addons to make Firefox even better.

However, sometimes letting someone with basic coding skills near your browser isn’t a good thing, and adding certain firefox addons can actually make the greatest browser worse.

Luckily Computer World have named and shamed some of the worst extensions,

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Tags: internet, software, web

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Microsoft Corp. is taking tough measures to find out who leaked a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of Windows Home Server to The Hotfix.net blog after the software preview was posted on the site by a user named “Richard” soon after it was released to a small group of testers.

In an e-mail to testers obtained by the IDG News Service, Kevin Beares, the Windows Home Server community lead at Microsoft, wrote to Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) whose name contain “Richard” that they will not have access to the beta until he finds out who leaked the software to The Hotfix.net site.

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Tags: software, vista, windows, xp

Originally published at PC Tips Box. Please leave any comments there.

Throughout the beta process Microsoft received a lot of feedback on how the taskbar and the window border changes to black when you maximize a window. Before the final release they altered the behavior slightly so the window and taskbar would still turn opaque and black, but with a very slight tint of color that matches the color of your glass. This change satisfied some users but left others still in the dark. Many users wanted a maximized window to remain transparent as well as the taskbar. Once the final build of Windows Vista shipped, all hope was gone that we would have transparent maximized windows, until today.

Using a very cool and free utility called VistaGlazz by CodeGazer.com you can easily make your maximized windows and taskbar transparent. Additionally, this utility allows you to easily patch your uxtheme system files so that you can use hacked visual styles with just the click of a button, instead of the multiple step manual procedure

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Tags: software, vista, windows, xp