Many sites weren’t of any help at all, and some replies to this question on forums were met with, “Uninstall the program”, which is perhaps the stupidest answer of all.

So here’s the resources I finally used, so you don’t need to look anymore.

Removing “Send To” Entries:
Customize the Windows Vista Send To Menu - Simple, easy, and won’t break your computer.

Removing “New” Entries:
Clear Unwanted Entries from Explorer’s New Menu - For the more advanced only! You’ll have to edit your registry for this, but it’s relatively straightforward.

General Menu Customization
Fast Explorer - For the more advanced only! It was useful for getting rid of one of my general context menus that popped up on any file or folder I clicked for an archive program I used.

Within the past two years or so, there have been GIANT LEAPS in usability on Linux platforms. The latest version of Ubuntu is an awesome testament to that fact. The last time I tried to configure a Linux machine - I think it was an installation of Suse - I managed to break it within a few hours after it was installed. I’ve also managed to kill Kubuntu before. I haven’t broken Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty) yet. This is a sign from the Gods.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is when a new user, like me, needs to get something done, obviously they turn to “experienced” Linux users, and the first thing those users say is, “open a terminal and type…”

This is very discouraging for those of us using the new installations and wondering why there isn’t a way to do it through the normal interface. The thing is - there ARE ways to do it through the normal interface now, but the people who have been using Linux forever only know how to do it through the terminal and find it easier that way - even though it isn’t easier for the rest of us who are graphics-oriented.

I’m not saying those of you who are using the terminal are wrong or bad people. And I know that a lot of people coming to you guys with questions have not “RTFM’ed”. But just be aware that help documents have improved, and that they and other system configurations no longer need to be accessed from the terminal.

And to new Linux users out there - pick up a modern installation and try to RTFM. And stop asking experienced users “how” to do things. It’s one thing to ask, “Is it possible to do this?” or, “What’s it called when you do this?” so you know how where to look in your manuals, but if you ask an experienced Linux user “how” to actually do it, you’re going to be in for a world of hurt. Just so you know.

To see what I mean, check out these screenshots:

VS.

Realize VLC Sucks

Don’t get me wrong. I use VLC all the time - it plays EVERYTHING and it’s easy to screencap from. HOWEVER. For MKVs and SoftSubs, it really, really, really sucks. A few issues I’ve encountered:

• Displays programming it can’t understand in curly braces {}.
• Displays in an ugly default font.
• Sometimes, ugly default font is jaggedy and unreadable depending on the programming.
• It renders multiple simultaneous subtitle lines on top of each other, making both unreadable.

There’s more, but these are the ones that irritated me.

Also be aware that VLC has a lot of older codecs and libraries that, besides making ugly subtitles, cause other issues, such as the h264 videos loading slower. Also, their settings are maybe a bit TOO complex and not very user friendly.

Pretty Subtitles In Windows

If you’re watching these types of files in windows, you really ought to be using The Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP). Wipe out any other codecs and players on your system and install CCCP, and you will never need anything else. There’s nothing more to it!

The site provides you with a utility to help track down your stray codecs, and the pack itself contains two very awesome players - Media Player Classic and Zoom Player. Don’t download them separately - use the ones that come with CCCP. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did.

Pretty Subtitles On The Mac

This is a smidgen more complicated than Windows, but not much more, I promise!

Step 1

Download and install MPlayer. You want MPlayer OS X 1.0rc1.

Step 2

Open up the preferences menu. On my machine, it’s on the top bar under MPlayer OSX:

Step 3

Under the “General” tab, set your font mirroring the settings below. You don’t have to use Gulim - any true type font (.ttf) will do. Also feel free to set the font size to “normal” instead of “small” -I just prefer mine smaller by default.

Step 4: Final Step!

Click the “Miscellaneous” tab. Check off the “Additional Settings” checkbox and paste in this line:

-ass -embeddedfonts -correct-pts -sid 0

If this doesn’t work, try adding -fontconfig at the end.

MPlayer Extras

If you still aren’t seeing subtitles, be aware of these two shortcut keys:

• v: toggles subtitles on and off
• j: shuffles through subtitles if there is more than one option

REJOICE!

You should have pretty subtitles now. These are the best options available as far as I know, though of course there is always a user choice in these things. Hopefully this has helped you out a little!

References

Here are the references and links I’ve used for this post.

• http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=824048&postcount=28
• http://www.cccp-project.net/
• http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
• http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.php?p=820875&postcount=18

Telegraphics

It comes with a version for mac and windows. Spiffy! Just pop the plugin into the File Format folder as directed in the readme it comes with and you’re all set. It’s also neat that it’s open source, so you can see how they did it.

There were also a few other links worthy of note:

• Photoshop .icns plugin (for mac icons) - IconLab
• Linux extract and convert icons - icoutil

Well there’s a new program out on the block - Multiple IE by TredoSoft.

The installer allows you to run other versions of IE (versions 3-6) next to your IE 7 installation. The cookies and conditional comments work right, too! There are still a few issues, but it’s clearly better than any other solution out there.

Essentially, you just upgrade your IE6 to IE7 normally so that everything works properly, and then run the Multiple IE installer.

The reason for this is because for a bit I was just trying to create a long string with the style tags and rules inside it, and then just pop it in the innerHTML of the body. (Hey, I’m no Guru, I have a lot to learn!) Needless to say, this caused a few issues.

At first I tried to use DOM Stylesheets to serve my purposes, but I soon found that although they work in Mozilla and IE (though IE works funny and has different functions to use), the document.stylesheets object and it’s functions are woefully supported in other browsers, Safari in particular.

My next attempt was a tad more successful - I used document.createElement("style"), appended the rules to it as a TextNode, and then appended the style to the <head>. I then learned that IE does not like to append TextNodes to style elements.

So, after a bit of research I found a way to get IE to insert the text into the style. It works in the latest-greatest Mozilla, IE, Safari, and Opera. Not sure about older versions. Just have it run onLoad() and make an example div to test it out.

var myCSS = "div{background-color: blue}";
var myStyle = document.createElement("style");
	myStyle.setAttribute("type", "text/css");

//only IE uses style.styleSheet, the rest use style.sheet
if(myStyle.styleSheet){
	//Many browsers won't let you change the style's cssText, but IE does.
	myStyle.styleSheet.cssText = myCSS;
} else {
	//this is the standard way to do it, which IE does not support.
	myCSS = document.createTextNode(myCSS);
	myStyle.appendChild(myCSS);
}

document.getElementsByTagName("head")[0].appendChild(myStyle);

Obviously if you don’t want things to blow up in more archaic browsers, you’re going to want to do a detect for document.createElement before running this code.

Now if you’re pulling in XML with AJAX you know that it can be a perfect pain to parse the file. You’ve got to make sure that the file is converted into a document element (and the methods for doing so are unfortunately not cross-browser), and even afterwards there’s no cross-browser method to finding the tags you want - at least not one that will give you clean code. Basically, your choices are:

• getElementsByTagName() - it works, but the function is long, and you’ll have more loops and nests than you can shake a stick at. Also, you’re limited to tags.
• Functions such as firstChild and childNodes - which again, leads to long code and lots of nesting. Plus, using these you don’t even know what the tags are you’re messing with, and heaven forbid you change the XML schema a bit, if you didn’t well-document your javascript it could take you a bit to find the lines you need to alter.
• XPath and XSLT transformations - which are sadly not cross-browser and in some cases don’t even exist in certain browsers.

That third option is what this post is really all about. After doing some research I have found a few lovely developers who created a wrapper for Internet Explorer to help it behave similarly to Mozilla, thus creating nice cross-browser XML parsers. Here are the three bigger ones.

• Sarissa is my personal favorite of the three. It’s a cross browser library that handles making document objects, xmlHTTPRequest, xPath parsing, XML to XSLT transformations, and converting XML into strings. There is a lot of documentation on it, the forums are fairly active, it’s an active project, AND besides working for Mozilla and IE, it also partically supports Safari and Opera (which have incomplete native functionality).
• Glazkov’s XPath Parser is by far the easiest of the three to use. It lets you use XPath parsing to traverse through the HTML DOM. I was pretty pleased with it and even managed to make a few wrapper functions for it to make it even easier to use. Unfortuantely, through, it only works with objects that are in your normal document’s DOM - that is, it won’t work on an XML type document. Bummage. It’s also been put in hiatus. Still, if you’re only using it to go through your own DOM, it’s the best one to go with.
• Google AJAXSLT - I’m really only including this because it’s Google. It does, from what I can tell, AJAX calls, XPath parsing, and XML to XSLT transformations. The project itself isn’t terribly well documented and has been stagnant since October 2005. However people seem to enjoy it and they use something similar to this for Google Homepages, and they’ve said recently that the project isn’t abandoned, just not a priority. So if you can figure out how to use it, it’s probably pretty neat.

• Web Developer - A great toolbar that allows you to easily disable browser elements (css, cookies, javascript, cache, etc), outline elements on a page, edit css and html, and even view the generated source on the page - that is, what your JavaScripts print out.  Way nifty.
• Colorzilla - Lets you pick a color from anywhere on a website and copy it into your page.  Has a color pallet that lets you fine tune your colors, too.
• MeasureIt - Lets you draw a ruler on a webpage.  Pretty useful for estimating space.
• View Source Chart - The ultimate tool for viewing the generated source of a page.  Color codes and indents everything into nice crisp boxes.
• View Formatted Source - Like the View Source Chart but want to kick it up a notch?  Not only does this extension view the generated source (though not as neatly organized, I think) - you can also view images by highlighting them int he source code, and the same goes for the CSS of an element!  PLUS it has an inline element that allows you to select a section of the page and view it’s source. AWESOME.
• FireBug - A spiffy little console that attaches to the bottom of the browser.  Lets you traverse the DOM, view errors in JavaScript, XML, and CSS (and toggle them on and off!), shows you results of AJAX requests, and even gives you the option of writing messages directly to the console instead of alerting them through JavaScript.  Very, VERY awesome.
• Console² - If FireBug is a bit too much for you, you can always turn to Console².  As of Firefox 1.5 all your error messages for XML, CSS and JS are all shoved into the same JavaScript Console.  This extension renames it to an “Error Console” and allows you to toggle your error types on and off.
• CSSViewer - Switch it on and then hover over any element to get it’s style in a nicely organized floating box.  Very cute, but doesn’t seem to like frames very much.

There are a few more out there that I haven’t tried, but look pretty useful.  Please do try them and comment here with results!

• Regular Expressions Tester
• XPath Checker
• XPather 

• Browsers (RSS) (2)
• CSS (RSS) (1)
• Flash (RSS) (1)
• Javascript (RSS) (3)
  • Regular Expressions (RSS) (1)
• Linux (RSS) (1)
• Photoshop (RSS) (1)
• Vista (RSS) (1)
• XML (RSS) (1)

This one is for pulling <script> tags out of a string. It should match any case, account for attributes in the opening tag, and match any code including line breaks in between the tags.

First up, a code to jut match an opening <script> tag, because any open <script> tag can screw up a page, so you might want to take care of just that:

/<[Ss]*?script(s[Ss]*?)?>/gi

Next, a tag to grab a <script> tag from beginning to end, so that you can protect all the text, or replace it, or what have you.

/<[Ss]*?script(s[Ss]*?)?>[Ss]*?<[Ss]*?/script(s[Ss]*?)?>/gi