Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts

Wednesday 24 April 2019

Using Windoze for the first time in years

I'm having to use Microsoft Windows 10 for some work. I haven't touched Windows since XP. Here are some things which I thought would be useful.

The 'Start menu' is that ugly stuff at the bottom left which appears when you click on the Windows icon. It may look bad now, but when Microsoft brought out Vista etc, things looked so much worse.

Pin an application to the start menu

Left click on the Windows icon at the bottom left of the desktop. This shows the Windows 10 primary start menu ('Start menu').
Find your application shortcut by going through the alphabetically ordered list in the 'Start menu'.
Right click on your chosen shortcut.
Choose 'Pin to start menu'.

Remove an application from the start menu

Left click on the windows icon at the bottom left of the desktop. This shows the 'Start menu'.
Find your application shortcut icon within the 'Start menu' on the right.
Right click the icon and choose 'Unpin from start'.

Pin an application to the taskbar

Left click on the windows icon at the bottom left of the desktop. This shows the 'Start menu'.
Find your application shortcut by going through the alphabetically ordered list in the 'Start menu'.
Right click on your chosen shortcut.
Choose 'More' -> 'Pin to taskbar'.

Settings

Left click on the primary 'Start menu'.
To the far left are a small number of small icons.
Choose 'Settings'.

Notifications

Left click on the primary 'Start menu'.
To the far left are a small number of small icons.
Choose 'Settings'.
Choose 'Notifications & actions'.
Turn off some of those pesky apps which send you notifications when you're trying to work.

Keyboard shortcuts

Alt + Tab : Switch between open apps
Alt + F4 : Close the active item, or exit the active app
Windows logo key  + L : Lock your PC
F10 : Activate the Menu bar in the active app
Ctrl + Esc : Open Start
Ctrl + Shift + Esc : Open Task Manager
Esc : Stop or leave the current task
Windows logo key  + E : Open File Explorer
Windows logo key  + I : Open Settings

Monday 7 February 2011

Zend on XAMPP on localhost on Windows

I learned to use the MVC psuedo design pattern through codeigniter. MVC seems to be commonly used through the Zend Framework. I learned PHP through a Zend course and was keen to have the Zend MVC Framework on my XAMPP localhost server. So I followed the instructions from the Zend website, which weren't great.

First of all, before you begin the tutorial from the Zend website, you already have the Zend Framework on XAMPP. It's in the PEAR directory. So you just need to replace this with an up to date version.

The other thing you need to replace is zf.bat, which lies within the php directory.

Another thing you need to do before reading the Zend instructions is edit your hosts file. Here are a couple of lines from mine:

127.0.0.1       quickstart.local
127.0.0.1 localhost


Now. Here is the crucial one. If you follow the Zend instructions to the letter, you are left with a localhost which only works with the Zend Framework. You don't want this. What about all the times you are not using Zend?
So, you need to use 2 ports for your localhost. One for Zend and one for everything else. Then you can set
up your VirtualHost entries within httpd.conf like these:


Listen 80
Listen 8080



<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerName quickstart.local
    DocumentRoot C:\xampp\htdocs\quickstart\public
    SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV "development"
    <Directory C:\xampp\htdocs\quickstart\public>
        DirectoryIndex index.php
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName localhost
    DocumentRoot C:\xampp\htdocs
    SetEnv APPLICATION_ENV "development"
    <Directory C:\xampp\htdocs>
        DirectoryIndex index.php
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

You can then go to your web browser and use :
http://quickstart.local:8080/ for Zend and
http://localhost/ for everything else.