One of the biggest annoyances for those going straight from XP to Windows 7 is that the backspace key no longer moves you Up a folder like it used to—now it moves you Back in the folder browsing history.

If you’ve used the key a couple of times, you might think I’m wrong—but you can easily test it out by going into one subfolder, then hitting Back, then going into another subfolder and hitting Back, then going into a third subfolder and hitting Back twice. You’ll end up in the previous subfolder.

If you want to go Up a folder in either Windows 7 or Vista, you can use the Alt+Up shortcut key, which will always go to the parent folder.

The Awesome AutoHotkey Fix

Now that we know the shortcut key that actually works in Windows 7, we can use a small script to make it work the way we really want it to. With AutoHotkey installed, create a new script with New –> AutoHotkey Script, and then paste in the following:

#IfWinActive, ahk_class CabinetWClass
Backspace::
?? ControlGet renamestatus,Visible,,Edit1,A
?? ControlGetFocus focussed, A
?? if(renamestatus!=1&&(focussed=”DirectUIHWND3″||focussed=SysTreeView321))
?? {
??? SendInput {Alt Down}{Up}{Alt Up}
? }else{
????? Send {Backspace}
? }
#IfWinActive

Thanks for finding this method goes to joeshmoo from the Productive Geek Forums, who tracked it down buried in an AutoHotkey forum thread. We modified the script slightly to make it work for Windows 7.

How Does This Work?

Ordinarily you can simply re-map the key with a Backspace::!{Up} type of deal, but since the backspace key is useful in the search box, location bar, and when you’re renaming files, you can’t just do a simple mapping—instead you have to check to see which control is active before sending the alternate Alt+Up key combination.

The first line with the #IfWinActive tells AHK to only activate this shortcut key override if Windows Explorer is the active window, which helps fix any possible conflicts in other applications.

The ControlGet and ControlGetFocus lines do the actual work of checking the status of the controls, and then depending on whether they are focused or you are in the process of renaming a file, it either sends the alternate Alt+Up or just sends the regular Backspace key.

Download a Pre-Made Application to Make Backspace Work like XP

Since the majority of you probably aren’t familiar with AutoHotkey, and don’t have any interest in how the scripts work, I’ve put together a customized version of the script as a tiny little executable that will run in the background.

It doesn’t take a ton of memory, as you can see in the screenshot.

To install HTGBack, just download, extract, and then create a shortcut in the shell:startup folder:

Double-click on the executable, and your Backspace key should start working like it used to in XP. Note that we only tested this on Windows 7, but assume it will work for Vista as well.

Download HTGBack XP-Style Backspace Key

This utility is licensed under the don’t-be-stupid license, which says that you can use it, distribute it, and pretty much do whatever you feel like with it—just give us credit by linking back to this post.

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Have you been waiting for IE Tab integration in Google Chrome? Now you can easily add it in with the IE Tab Classic extension.

Installation & Settings

Installation is quick and easy… All that you will need to do is click “Install” when the confirmation window appears.

Once the extension has finished installing you will see the following post-installation message dropping down from your address bar. Notice the top part of the message concerning access to IE Tab Classic.

While you could start using IE Tab Classic immediately you will probably want to take a quick look through the settings before-hand. You will need to use the “Chrome Extensions Page” to access the options at first…

The settings for IE Tab Classic are divided into three categories. You should leave the “Enable IE auto loading” setting enabled but it is recommended to change the “Address bar Icon behaviour” setting to “Popup Menu” for better functionality (“Address Bar Icon” drop-down menus).

Note: If you leave the “Address bar Icon behaviour” setting unchanged, then the “Address Bar Icon” acts as a simple on/off switch for IE Tab Classic.

While you are looking through the settings you may already have some websites or a specific page in mind that you would like to have automatically load in IE Tab Classic. Now is a nice time to go ahead and add them in…

The second tab allows you to add websites to an “Auto Load” list. Click on “Add” to open the information entry window. Notice the small message at the bottom…this is where that little “Popup Menu” setting from the first tab is going to be so useful to you.

The information form for website URLs…

Perhaps you are only wanting a specific webpage (instead of all the webpages for a whole website) to be “Auto Loaded” when you browse there. You can add these addresses in the third tab. Click on “Add” to open the information entry window.

The information form for specific webpages…

IE Tab Classic in Action

Time to see IE Tab Classic at work. Here you can see one of the pages at How-To Geek rendered with Webkit at the moment. You can see the “IE Icon” in the “Address Bar”…clicking on it will display the following drop-down menu where you can switch to IE in the current tab or have the webpage switch to IE in a new tab. With the drop-down menu you can access the options much more easily now. Notice how the outlined text in the webpage looks before switching…

For our example we decided to switch to IE in a new tab and you can see a definite difference in how the page has been rendered. Clicking on the “Address Bar Icon” shows a different drop-down menu this time where you can switch back to Chrome (same or new tab) and/or add the current webpage (or website) to the “Auto Load” lists…

Here is a better look at the IE Bar itself…

The buttons left-to-right are for “Pinning the IE Bar”, “Settings”, “Refreshing the Webpage”, “Minimizing the IE Bar”, and “Closing the Entire Chrome/IE Tab”.

If you have “minimized” the “IE Bar” this is what it will look like…light blue in color with only a “Black Arrow Button” to return it to regular view.

If you decide to add a specific webpage to the “Auto Load” list you will see this message asking you for confirmation…

The confirmation message for adding a website to the “Auto Load” list….

Conclusion

If you have been looking for IE Tab integration for your Chrome Browser, then this is definitely an extension worth taking a good look at.

Links

Download the IE Tab Classic extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

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Our goal in 2010 is to get a little more in tune with our readers, and we’ve setup a new way you can send in your ideas and feedback. Also, we’ve got interesting links and details about the How-To Geek server hardware upgrades.

Sending in Your Ideas

The next time you come across something new and interesting, whether it’s a tip about how to hack the registry, tweak something on your PC, or just a cool new application, you can drop us an email on our new Tips Line.

tips@howtogeek.com

Simply send us an email with your tip, and we’ll definitely read it. Note: due to the expected overwhelming response, we’re not going to be able to return everybody’s email—but if we use your tip we’ll give you credit for it in the article.

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The Time Has Come, the Walrus Said, to Talk of Many Things… Like Upgrading (again)

We’ve come a long way since the How-To Geek website was originally hosted on DreamHost more than 3 years ago. Here’s a quick rundown of the evolution of the geek site’s web server:

• October 2006:? Domain registered and put on DreamHost shared hosting to start off with.
• December 2006: Moved the domain to Pair Networks shared hosting.
• March 2007: After realizing Pair shared hosting couldn’t handle a lot of traffic, switched to a Dedicated Virtual from MediaTemple with 1GB RAM.
• April 2008: Quad Core Xeon, 4GB RAM, 2×250GB HDD dedicated server from The Planet
• May 2008: The Planet exploded. Literally. Thankfully we had off-site backups already, and we moved to a new server: a Quad Core Xeon, 4GB RAM, 4?250 HDD in RAID 10 server from SoftLayer.

And now, it’s just about that time again to start the upgrade process so we can handle the increased load from all the growth we expect from this year. Except this time, we’re going to build in a little more redundancy and make it more scalable.

The Plan

We’re going to switch from a single server to use 3 servers instead. The quick specs:

• Web Server: Quad 2.8ghz Xeon, 8 GB RAM, 4?500 GB drives in RAID 10.
• Database Server: 8 Core 2.66 ghz Xeon (2 CPUs), 8 GB RAM, 4?74 GB Raptor 10k drives in RAID 10.
• Redundant Web/Database: Quad 2.4ghz, 4GB RAM, 4?250 GB RAID 10.

So the third server in the mix will be used as a replicated copy of the primary database, should anything happen, we’ll be able to switch to the redundant database server instead. We’re going to also use it as a cold standby for the web server—the primary web server should be able to handle a very large load, since we’re mostly doing fairly static content.

This new setup should get us through 2010 easily, and hopefully by 2011 we’ll have a good excuse for a 24-core server.

Productive Geek has Tips for “Real” Life (What’s That?)

Over at the Productive Geek site that you should really be a part of, the forum members have been discussing some interesting topics, including these questions:

• How do you spend your day?
• Do multiple monitors really make you more productive?
• What Todo List Software Do You Use?
• Best time management tips?
• The best ways to annoy, pain and otherwise persecute users
• Best Android Apps or Tips for Productivity?

One of the forum members has been writing such great articles on the forum that we’ve started running them in the main Productive Geek feed—so if you have an itch to contribute an interesting tip, random set of thoughts, or even a full article, you should consider posting them over at the Productive Geek Forums since we’ll be running the best tips over here in our weekly roundup. In fact, anything great on Productive Geek will be linked on every single How-To Geek page below the articles.

	Tips and Advice on Saving Money Today
	Arguing Productively Leads to a Lasting Relationship
	Tips and Advice on Car Buying
	8 Ways to Get Over the Work Slump

TinyHacker

Over at TinyHacker, the randomness continues. Here’s the more geeky stuff that was written up in the last week:

• Easily convert m4a files to mp3 files using iTunes
• Superb Twitter Icons
• Animate your Windows 7/Vista Start Menu
• Run Windows Apps on Mac OS X using WineBottler
• Repair Windows Media Player 12 with Fix WMP Utility
• Check PageRank and Alexa Ranking of a Page Easily in Chrome

Super User

Here’s the best questions and answers for the week:

• if we do not use any wallpaper on desktop will it increase performance of windows?
• Can I use more than one internet provider at the same time?
• What are the disadvantages (if any) of doing a Quick Format when repartitioning a drive?
• My Computer is using 6GB out of 8GB of Ram without proof
• How to know the IP address of a Mac when it is in network
• What are the differences between free and paid gmail?
• Uninstall on Mac OS X?
• Easiest way to backup data occasionally?

The Geek Note

We’ve also made a change to the comments moderation system—now anybody who has been previously approved will have their comment automatically approved, as long as it there’s no link in it (which requires manual moderation). We’re going to continue to tweak the system to encourage more feedback and discussion.

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The release candidate of Firefox 3.6 is finally out, but if you install it, any extension that still hasn’t been updated to support the latest release is going to error out or just not work.

What you’ll need to do is use the new compatibility hack to get it working. And before you start talking about nightly tester tools and other extensions to force compatibility, some of us don’t want to bloat up Firefox with yet another extension, and prefer the about:config hack instead.

How To Force Extension Compatibility with Firefox 3.6+

You can click the link to read the full description, or just create a new boolean key with this name, and value set to false:

extensions.checkCompatibility.3.6

The new version of Firefox adds a bunch of features like Personas themes that can switch without restarting the browser, notifications for ancient, insecure versions of Flash, and a bunch of extra stuff that will speed up the browser.

Download Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate 1 from mozilla.com

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Are you looking for an application launcher with built-in extra functionality for your computer and the web? Then join us as we take a look at Blaze.

What Blaze Looks Like

Blaze is simple to set up on your computer and once started, this is what it looks like. To access Blaze, use the hotkey sequence…the default is “Alt+Ctrl+Space” but can be easily changed to better suit your needs in the settings.

Here is a look at the “Right Click Menu” for the “System Tray Icon”…

And the “Right Click Menu” available from the “Main Window” itself.

Blaze in Action

Time for a quick look at some of Blaze’s many functions in action. You can easily launch your favorite programs (Blaze is very tolerant of misspelled entries).

Or search for a term using your preferred search service. Just type in the search service that you wish to use, leave a blank space, and then enter your search term.

Do quick mathematical calculations with the ability to copy them to the clipboard. Notice how nicely the answer of “17,210,368” is displayed. Blaze does much more (i.e. creating e-mails, inserting “quick texts”, performing CMD commands, etc.) but this gives you a good peek at what this program is capable of.

Settings to Check Out

In the “General Settings Area” you can set up the hotkey sequence that you wish to use with Blaze, the assistant hotkey, number of suggestions to show, how often Blaze updates the index, disable activity monitoring, and disable automatic updates. Notice that certain activities can be automatically stopped if you are using your laptop on battery power.

Make any changes or modifications desired on what is added to the index in the “Indexer Area”. In the lower right corner you can choose to have extra “items” indexed for each category in the main part of the window.

You can view, deactivate, and/or modify individual plugins in the “Plugins Area”.

Conclusion

Even though it is still in beta, Blaze’s frequent updates and multi-function capability make it a nice addition to any computer. This is definitely one program worth taking a closer look at.

Note: Blaze generates a “false positive” with “McAfee-GW-Edition – 6.8.5”.

Links

Download Blaze Beta

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Sometimes you may find it necessary to copy existing worksheets in Excel into another workbook. Today we show you how easy it is to copy a worksheet to another workbook in Excel 2007 & 2010 Beta.

Copy Worksheet in Excel 2007 & 2010

First open the workbook with the sheet you want to copy, right-click on the sheet tab and select Move or Copy.

Make sure you have the workbook(s) that you want to copy the sheet into open for them to show up in the “To book” dropdown list, then choose the one to copy to. If the workbook that you want to copy to isn’t open, it won’t show up in the dropdown list.

In the Move or Copy dialog box check the box next to Create a copy. You can also choose to have it before the existing sheet or at the end… then click Ok.

That is all there is to it! Now you can go into the workbook you copied it to and send it off or work on it.

You can also copy and move the worksheet into the same workbook or into a new workbook as well.

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This is much easier than sending multiple workbooks to your coworkers and can make building workbooks much easier.

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Sometimes you may find it necessary to copy existing worksheets in Excel into another workbook. Today we show you how easy it is to copy a worksheet to another workbook in Excel 2007 & 2010 Beta.

Copy Worksheet in Excel 2007 & 2010

First open the workbook with the sheet you want to copy, right-click on the sheet tab and select Move or Copy.

Make sure you have the workbook(s) that you want to copy the sheet into open for them to show up in the “To book” dropdown list, then choose the one to copy to. If the workbook that you want to copy to isn’t open, it won’t show up in the dropdown list.

In the Move or Copy dialog box check the box next to Create a copy. You can also choose to have it before the existing sheet or at the end… then click Ok.

That is all there is to it! Now you can go into the workbook you copied it to and send it off or work on it.

You can also copy and move the worksheet into the same workbook or into a new workbook as well.

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This is much easier than sending multiple workbooks to your coworkers and can make building workbooks much easier.

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Is your computer in an odd place where you sometimes find yourself accidentally hitting the power button and it shuts down in the middle of using it? Here we take a look at how to remedy the problem by instructing the power button what to do when it’s pressed.

Open Control Panel and select Power Options, then on the left side click on Choose what the power button does.

Then click on the dropdown box and select Do Nothing from the menu and click on Save changes.

From the dropdown list you can also select Shutdown, Sleep or Hibernate. But, if you are annoyed when you accidently hit the button and it shuts down, choosing Do Nothing will keep it running.

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Another Friday is here and today it’s time to play a flash game on the boss’s time. Today we take a look at Right 2 Point, which is a free flash game where you need to click and point to kill the baddies before they get you.

Right 2 Point

At the main page you can start a game right away or read the story behind it.

When you begin a new game it goes through a short story that explains your character and a bit of the story. Luckily you can skip the intro so you don’t have to watch it every time you play.

The Tazering Goons start walking toward you and “taze” you with their fingers. You need to control the mouse and left-click to kill them before they get to you.

As you continue on you advance levels. The meters at the top show your Finger Skills and there is a radar at the upper right corner that shows Goons approaching.

Some of the Goons can be killed with body shots and others need to be hit in the head. You can also slow them down when the clock icon is in front of them.

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If the Tazering Goons get the best of you, you can play again or invite some friends to play as well.

This game is a lot of fun and as a funny story, with a cool rock music sound track. Start off the new year right and waste time at work with this fun first person pointer until the bell rings.

Play Right 2 Point

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Are you tired of the default New Tab Page in Chrome and wanting something different? Then join us as we take a look at getting an iGoogle-styled New Tab Page in Google Chrome.

Before

Here is the current default “New Tab Page” in Chrome… Sure, you have thumbnails of recently visited sites and a listing of recently closed tabs but it is not very exciting or customizable. What if you could replace it with a little bit of iGoogle-styled functionality?

Installation

Installation is quick and simple. During the installation process you will need to click on “Install” to finish adding “New Tab Extension | Dashboard” to Chrome.

After the installation has been completed there will be no “Toolbar Button” displayed…only a short extension management message.

At the moment there are no options for “New Tab Extension | Dashboard” but that could change soon…

New Tab Extension Dashboard in Action

As soon as you open a new tab in Chrome this is what you will see. At the moment there are five gadgets available:

• To-Do List
• Random Images Viewer
• Chat Window
• Weather Gadget (does not work with International zip codes)
• Clock/Date/Calendar Gadget

You will be able to settle into it easily and start enjoying a New Tab Page that is not the same old thing that you have been looking at forever.

At the moment there are still one or two “rough spots” but this definitely has potential for later releases. Hopefully everyone will soon be able choose the particular gadgets that they would like to use, where they are placed within the window, and choose a custom background.

Here is a closer look at each of the individual gadgets currently available…

The To-Do List…

The Random Images Viewer…

The Chat Window.

The Weather Gadget (currently the only non-Google powered gadget in the New Tab Page)…

And the Clock/Date/Calendar gadget.

Conclusion

If you are looking for something new and different for your New Tab Page in Chrome, then you just might want to give this extension a try. While it still has one or two “rough spots” this one is definitely showing a lot of potential for the future.

Links

Download the “New Tab Extension | Dashboard” extension (Google Chrome Extensions)

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