You can do the same with Far Manager. Open drive menu (Alt+F1 or Alt+F2), select your flash drive and press Shift+Del. You should get this confirmation:

Select “Remove” and you’re done. Note that the key combo (Shift+Del) is different from ejecting CD/DVD (Del).

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open BBQ demo in Internet Explorer
2. Click Next button few times
3. Open history menu

Observe:

No page titles, just URLs. Definitely it would be nice to see photo numbers there.

First, let’s see how Asual jQuery Address fix this problem:

_title = _d.title = value;
if (_juststart && _frame && _frame.contentWindow &&
    _frame.contentWindow.document) {
    _frame.contentWindow.document.title = value;
    _juststart = FALSE;
}

Aha! For IE7 you need to set title of the hidden iframe in addition to setting document title. So this is how you set page title:

document.title = "New title";
var iframe = $("iframe:hidden");
if (iframe.length > 0 && iframe[0].contentWindow && iframe[0].contentWindow.document)
  iframe[0].contentWindow.document.title = "New title";

Updated demo should work correctly in Internet Explorer 7.

Let’s take previous demo and use jQuery BBQ plugin instead. Our goal is Ajax photo gallery that supports browser’s back button. We will display numbers instead of actual photos for now.

$(function ()
{
  $(window).bind('hashchange', function(e) {
    var i = parseInt(e.fragment, 10);
    if (!isNaN(i))
      switchTo(i);
  });
  $(window).trigger('hashchange');
});

function switchTo(i)
{
  if ($("#number").text() == i)
    return;
  $("#number").text(i);
  document.title = i;
  if (i > 1)
    $("#lnk_prev").attr("href", "#" + (i - 1)).removeClass("disabled");
  else
    $("#lnk_prev").removeAttr("href").addClass("disabled");
  if (i < 20)
    $("#lnk_next").attr("href", "#" + (i + 1)).removeClass("disabled");
  else
    $("#lnk_next").removeAttr("href").addClass("disabled");
}

Instead of handling click event we modify href attribute of the links. BBQ will fire hashchange event whenever we "navigate" to a new page. No need to prevent default processing – simple!

One gotcha to watch out for is changing page title. If you take naive approach and simply use document.title (like I did) to set page title you won't see your titles in the history menu in Internet Explorer 7:

Compare with Internet Explorer 8:

Let’s say you want to build photo gallery. Something like this:

You want to open next and previous photos without page reload, using Ajax. One problem with this is that browser’s back button stop working. Fortunately, it’s easy to fix with jQuery Address plugin from Asual. I tried using this plugin and it worked very well. I’ve put together a simple demo.

For simplicity, let’s display just a number instead of actual photo:

Every time you click right arrow the number increases; left arrow decrements the number by one. Simple! Back and forward buttons should work. Also, it would be nice to have different titles in the history:

The code:

$(function ()
{
  $.address.strict(false);
  $.address.externalChange(function(e)
  {
    switchTo(e.value);
  });

  $("#lnk_prev").click(function(e)
  {
    e.preventDefault();
    var i = $("#number").text() * 1 - 1;
    switchTo(i);
    $.address.value(i);
  });

  $("#lnk_next").click(function(e)
  {
    e.preventDefault();
    var i = $("#number").text() * 1 + 1;
    switchTo(i);
    $.address.value(i);
  });
});

function switchTo(i)
{
  $("#number").text(i);
  $.address.title(i);
}

The magic happens in click handler. $.address.value method changes page address and adds browser history point. You need to cancel navigation by calling e.preventDefault() – otherwise browser would follow the link and two history entries would get created.

Note that you need to disable plugin’s strict option, otherwise it would add slash symbol immediately after hash symbol, like this: /#11.

1. You can’t pass arguments to the script, and
2. You can’t launch script in a separate window

Here’s how to fix this:

1. Start regedit, open HKCR\Microsoft.PowerShellScript.1\shell\Open\command key
2. Set it to
   "C:\WINDOWS\system32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe" "-file" "%1" %*

Now you can press Shift+Enter to start PowerShell script in a new window.

As a bonus, you can now double-click .ps1 files in Windows Explorer to launch them. Why is this not a default behaviour? Most likely Microsoft decided to be extra cautious here.

Make sure you have Powershell version 2.0 or higher for this to work. How to check Powershell version.

I decided to use PowerShell. It’s new, it’s powerful, it comes pre-installed with Windows Server 2008. PowerShell is very popular among system administrators.

Also, I got an idea to save output of backup application to log file so that I could see results later. And this is where things didn’t work as I expected. Here’s how to redirect console program output to a file:

s3.exe > log.txt

If you run this you will be surprised to find that log.txt is empty. As it turns out s3.exe, being a good Windows citizen, writes errors to STDERR stream. To redirect error output to the same file you need to add magic string 2>&1:

s3.exe 2>&1 > log.txt

Two new problems appear. First, errors appear as exceptions in log file:

s3.exe : s3.exe version 1.6 - check for updates at http://s3.codeplex.com
At PS Logging.ps1:4 char:43
+ s3.exe <<<<  2>&1 > log.txt
    + CategoryInfo          : NotSpecified: (s3.exe version ...s3.codeplex.com
   :String) [], RemoteException
    + FullyQualifiedErrorId : NativeCommandError

PowerShell helpfully wraps STDERR output into exceptions. This is nice but I don’t need it! All I want is to see how a program worked by examining log file. Do this to unwrap exceptions and show plain text:

s3.exe 2>&1 | foreach-object {$_.ToString()} | Out-File log.txt

And second, errors are out of order with normal output. They could appear before or after normal lines emitted by a program, making it hard to diagnose problem. To confirm that, I created a simple console program:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
   for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
   {
      Console.WriteLine("Hello");
   }
   Console.Error.WriteLine("Bah bah");
   for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
   {
      Console.WriteLine("2");
   }
}

If you run this program from PowerShell and redirect output to a file, error message (bah bah) could appear anywhere in the log file:

Hello
Bah bah
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
Hello
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2

The solution I came up with is to let old reliable cmd.exe to do the work:

cmd /c s3.exe `>log.txt 2`>`&1

Note backsticks – I use them to prevent PowerShell from parsing redirect operators.

Links

PowerShell ABC's - O is for Output
How to capture exe output to a PowerShell variable
Another approach to unwrap exceptions: use add-content cmdlet.

1. Go to Commands › File association.
2. Create a new association by pressing Ins.
3. Enter *.doc;*.docx;*.xlsx;*.pptx as a mask.
4. Enter @"!.!" as Execute command (used for Enter).

You can still open docx file as an archive by pressing Ctrl+PgDn.

1. Photographer uploads photos after the wedding.
2. Friends and relatives view photos. Some of them order reprints generating extra money for photographer.
3. Photographer pays me a monthly fee.

How did I come up with this idea? I was looking for an idea for my own software product for a long a time. Then, in one of the books I read an interview with Joel Spolsky where he recommended creating a niche product. As an example he suggested creating a photo manager specifically for wedding photographers instead of photo manager for everybody. And I thought to myself: heck, that’s not a bad idea, I’ll try to execute it.

Surely, there are other products that do the same thing. This doesn’t stop me. If my execution is at least half-good, I should get some clients. I’m aiming at creating a small Italian restaurant on the web, not a global chain of fast food franchises.

Select CD-ROM and press Delete. CD/DVD will get ejected.

You can also press Del key on network drives to unmap them.

Fortunately it’s very easy to restore this functionality:

1. Launch [C:\Program Files\Far2\Addons\Macros\MiddleClickAsEnter.reg]. If you don’t have this folder re-install Far and add Addons » Macros feature.
2. Restart Far Manager.