Zip a Directory and Subdirectories with 7zip

7zip is an open source zipping tool for Windows. Since I often do a lot of fairly intense zipping, I needed to know how to create a zip archive of a directory and its subdirectories with 7zip from the command line. Here is the syntax:



7z a -r -tzip ArchiveFileNameHere.zip DirectoryNameHere



That is it. The a adds the files and the -r recurses the subdirectories. 7zip has a number of compression options so the -t option selects the .zip format.

Convert an Unordered List into a Simple Table

Working on a page last night I decided I would like to have a different look for some lists. So I created a Thin List Table that turned out pretty good. Really easy to use and good for discussing code samples.

Symmetry Restored to How To Pages

Spent some of last nite and a lot of today fixing up the CSS on my How To pages. Check out the CSS Pages here.

CSS Rollover Menu

I added a how to on creating a rollover menu with CSS. A little bit easier than I thought given the code.



After working on this, it seems like using a div as a container for special lists seems like a really good idea. That way, you can right the list the same way every time and just swap out the div class to change is styling. The HTML ends up being really simple.

To Flash or not to Flash, That is the Question

In a past blog post, I discussed the future of the Flash plugin. Since then, I have been paying closer attention to Flash in my browsers.



Have you ever had this problem? You reading a book or something with you laptop sitting on your desk with a few browser tabs open. Suddenly, your laptop starts making sounds like a 737 getting ready to taxi for take off. You take a quick look at Task Manager or Performance Meter and you see that one of your browsers has pegged the CPU utilization at 100%. The culprit? Usually some poorly written Flash ad.



I had thought this only happened on my Mac. But since I have been setting up a Windows 7 machine, the exact same thing has happened with Windows 7. So, what to do?



If you are using Firefox, you have a great option to fix the problem, FlashBlock. This addon blocks all Flash on your web page, and replaces with a small Flash icon. If you want to see the content, like a video for example, just click on the icon and it plays. This addon has really improved the performance of Firefox and my web browsing experience greatly. Finally an easy to use solution to protect you from poorly written Flash ads.



Update: I forgot to mention you can customize the toolbar and add a button that will turn Flash on and off on demand. FlashBlock is the best add on ever!  lol.

Win7Tip: Java Plugin not Installed after Installing Java 6 64 bit on Windows 7

It is a bit of a long title but here is the problem.



Problem: Java JDK/JRE 6 is installed on my Windows 7 system, but the Java Plugin is not installed in any of my browsers. What gives?



Solution: My guess is, the installed browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Seamonkey, Safari) are all 32 bit versions. So the 64 bit Java installer does not update them.



To solve the problem, just install the 32 bit version of Java 6. This installs the plugin for all the browsers. You end up with Java in the following locations:



32 bit: c:\Program Files\Java

64 bit: c:\Program Fiels (x86)\Java



Just put the Java of your choice in your path and you should be good to go.

Set Menu/Application Font Size in Firefox

After using a Windows 7 machine for a week or two I noticed that the font size of the menus of Firefox seems a little small. It turns out you can actually adjust the size of the application fonts in Firefox using CSS.



First, you need find the sample template for changing the Firefox UI, userChrome-example.css. This can be found in the following directory:

c:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\defaults\profile\chrome



First, copy userChrome-Example.css to userChrome.css.



Next, add a rule to set the default font size. For example, this sets the font size to 10pts:

* {
 font-size: 10pt !important;
 }

With the file created and rule added, copy userChrome.css to your profile directory for Firefox. This gets a little tricky as the AppData directory is hidden by default so you may need to actually type the name into Windows Explorer. So here is the path:

c:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\someRandomeString.default\chrome



That is it. The font size for menu and other application text should now be set to 10 pts.