Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2011 November 5

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November 5

Firefox restoring old session

I use Mozilla Firefox as a browser, and I have Googled for help with this question to no avail. I have an issue with Firefox, where I wish it behaved differently, and I can't find a page on the Internet to satisfy me on this point. I either want to ask how to make it do what I want it to do, or I want to suggest that it be modified so that I can make it behave.

When the computer crashes, for whatever reason, and there was a browser open, I can't open a new browser window without it trying to reload all the tabs I had open at the time of the crash. That's terrible, because seven times out of ten, the crash was caused by a tab I had just opened, probably in a grave error of judgment. Mozilla currently tries to restore my browser as it was at crash-time, and only when this fails does it offer to start a fresh session. This attempted reload has by now cost me n minutes, where n is some number between 3 and 525,600.

I want to tell Mozilla to open a fresh browser without even attempting to reload whatever perverted thing I had just been doing to crash the previous browser. Is this possible? If not, what does it take to make it possible? I thank you in advance for any responses. -GTBacchus^(talk) 07:18, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but whenever this happens to me I just stop loading the tab then it ASAP before it even starts loading. I do this by using "ctrl + pageup/pagedown" to move from one tab to another then mash the "esc" key to stop it from loading.

Unlike internet explorer, I know firefox is more responsive especially when it comes to using shortcut keys. But if this doesn't work for you and it takes a long time to load (525,600 minutes!), I'd seriously consider just reinstalling it since I only have a couple of add-ons anyways. --Thebackofmymind (talk) 07:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It's possible, but you have to go into about:config IIRC to fix it; http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:config_Entries There might be more than one, but I think browser.sessionstore.max_resumed_crashes is one (mine is set to 0). Frequently what Thebackofmymind has suggested works, however, and you can also try starting the browser in safe mode with the -safe-mode switch. ¦ Reisio (talk) 17:02, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Should be much easier than any of that. Assuming you're using a recent version of FF go to Tools>Options in the menus, choose the General tab, and right at the top is the option "When Firefox starts:" with a drop down list with three options, either show your home page, a blank page, or reload tabs from last time. I know this because personally I want it to reload all my tabs (I keep a lot open) and spent a while finding out how to make it do that, as mine was defaulting to reloading the homepage; horses for courses. :) --jjron (talk) 22:42, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Odd, mine does something not listed in those 3 choices: It pops up a window that asks me if I want to start fresh or continue with the old tabs. This is the best option, IMHO, although I do wish I could pick specific tabs to reload and others to close. StuRat (talk) 23:01, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I assume you have older versions of firefox too. Because in my version (Firefox 6.0.2) when firefox crashes there is a new window labelled "Well this is embarrassing..." showing a checklist of which tabs I want to re-open. I thought that OP was one of those people who didn't like new firefox so I told them what I did before. Also, in this firefox I can manually trigger Jjron's idea by hitting the new "firefox button" then clicking "History" then "restore previous session". Just thought I'd let you all know :) --Thebackofmymind (talk) 23:32, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, this is true (both comments above). I think in the newer versions if you have 'reload my tabs' selected in the General tab it comes up with the "Well this is embarrassing" thing with the options to reload or start fresh - this is in case one of the tabs caused the crash. From memory, if you have 'reload my homepage' selected (and presumably 'load a blank page' but I've never used that option) you don't get the choice, it just reloads the homepage/s, but as you say you can reload via the history (I also used that route a few times before I found the drop down list to set the default). I have v7.0.1 and I think it still gives the option at restart (but can't remember for sure, they seem to be updating it a hell of a lot recently). I also wondered whether the OP may have had an older FF; I seem to remember at some stage it automatically reloaded your tabs, which is why I went hunting for that when I got a newer version and suddenly it was just reloading my homepages. So the options - go the back-door route, or update to a newer version and use the built in options; it is free after all. --jjron (talk) 08:13, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

transparent window?

Is there a program out there that lets me type on a window that is semi-transparent, letting me see the contents of another window below? thanks --Thebackofmymind (talk) 07:48, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure, a few of them. Googling "transparent notepad" or "notepad transparency" turns up a bunch of similar programs. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:51, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

It is a function of the window manager. If I wanted, I can set my window manager to make all my windows transparent. I wouldn't be able to use it very well, but I could do it. Windows Vista and Windows 7 have added a lot more eye candy to their window manager. I'm sure transparency is in there somewhere. -- kainaw™ 13:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

PowerMenu is Windows freeware that can make (almost) any application window transparent, among other things. -- BenRG (talk) 19:36, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

BenRG, your suggestion looks the most attractive, but it doesn't seem to work for Windows 7.

I'm not really sure what you're talking about Kainaw, and Mr. 98 it was kind of suspicious to click whatever download you found on google but I went and tried them out. The 2nd one looked better, but my antivirus (F-secure) detected malware. The 1st one seems to be working fine though. Thanks people. --Thebackofmymind (talk) 21:28, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

PowerMenu works for me on Windows 7 32-bit, but it looks like it doesn't support 64-bit processes on 64-bit Windows. You could try sifting through the alternatives listed here—it's not clear which ones have 64-bit support. Or you could look for a 32-bit version of whatever application you want to make transparent, I suppose.

I'm almost sure the malware report is a false positive. False positives are very common, and are a serious problem for small software developers ([1]). According to VirusTotal.com, F-secure sees "Gen:Heur.MSIL.Krypt.2", which is obviously a heuristic. Interestingly, another scan of the exact same file less than three weeks ago triggered no warnings ([2]). I bet this "virus" will disappear in a few more weeks. -- BenRG (talk) 04:34, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

May I ask how you got PowerMenu to work? The program's icon appears on the bottom left, but right clicking on that or right clicking on any other windows of any of the programs doesn't bring up the additional options they promised. The "properties" section of "my computer" says that it's 32-bit, but maybe it's because it's Windows 7 starter?

And I don't know what a heuristic is, but I guess that is good? --Thebackofmymind (talk) 01:58, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I used an application called actual transparent windows, it's $20 but has a free 7 day trial, so if you need it for a once off thing that would work. I used it to trace some maps I had into level design program for a game. It was quite good, if I was going to use it more often I'd consider spending the $20. It works on win7 64bit, that's what I have, and you can set the level of transparency very easily. Vespine (talk) 05:36, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The PowerMenu options appear in the system menu of each window, which is the menu you get by clicking on the icon at the far left of the title bar. PowerMenu is a 32-bit application; I don't think a 64-bit version exists. It will run on 64-bit Windows, but the method it uses to alter the system menu (injecting code into the application) won't work with 64-bit applications because it's 32-bit code. It does seem to work with 32-bit applications on 64-bit Windows. It won't work with the bundled version of Notepad, but it will probably work with the 32-bit version of Notepad if you can get your hands on it (from a 32-bit version of Windows) and it will probably work with any third-party Notepad replacement as long as you use the 32-bit version.

A "heuristic" means that instead of detecting a specific known malware program, the antivirus software tries to detect things that are supposed to be "suspicious" in some way. Often "suspicious" means "characteristic of some known malware and also a lot of legitimate software". For example, some antivirus programs have marked anything that uses UPX as "infected" by UPX. As long as no large software vendor (with lawyers) uses UPX, they have minimal incentive to fix this because the false positives make people feel like they're being protected. In this case, judging by the name "Heur.MSIL.Krypt", F-Secure thinks this program is encrypted MSIL (.NET). It is a .NET application, but I looked at it with ILSpy and it's not encrypted. Even if it was (which it isn't), all it would mean is that the author didn't want people looking at the code with ILSpy, which is no more suspicious than not publishing the source code. -- BenRG (talk) 06:39, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

PowerPoint Compatibility

I'm using PowerPoint 2010 on a Windows 7 machine. I will be giving the presentation on an XP machine that uses PowerPoint 2003. I'm having problems with compatibility. When I tried to give my presentation on the old machine with the old version of PowerPoint, none of the animations would work, even though I had saved the presentation as a PowerPoint 1997–2003 .ppt file. In all fairness, Windows does tell me that my animations may not work. Does anyone know a work around? — Fly by Night (talk) 11:29, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

From the grumbling I hear from the powerpoint jockeys, animations are not cross-platform. Everything else has a workaround. The rule is to fake animations whenever possible by making multiple slides and moving objects a little on each slide. Then, use auto-advance or simply click forward a bunch of times. -- kainaw™ 13:20, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Is installing Microsoft's PowerPoint Viewer on the machine an option? Another possibility is to convert the presentation into another format, e.g. Flash, in a way that preserves the animation. I found this from a quick web search. (I have no experience with that software whatsoever so I'm not recommending it; I'm just point it out as an example.) --173.49.15.58 (talk) 17:31, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the ideas. I'll take a look at the links now. — Fly by Night (talk) 20:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

If you can't install the PPT viewer on the other machine, you may be able to load the viewer and show on a CD or USB drive and run them both off there (may depend on your access privileges though on the other machine). In the File menu go to "Save and send" and choose "Package presentation for CD"; this even automatically includes the PPT viewer on the CD. And if that fails, perhaps try the "Create a video" option (would depend on the nature of your slideshow how successful this would be though). --jjron (talk) 11:17, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea. I would only have very limited authorisation on the system. If it were to be saved on a CD, then would I need to keep pausing and unpausing all the time? — Fly by Night (talk) 20:35, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

No, if you do the first option it just runs as a normal PPT, just uses the viewer on the CD rather than relying on what's on the system. One thing to be wary of is that I have found PPT can struggle for speed if it's running off anything other than the harddrive if it contains any really big graphics or anything. If you did the second option, saving it as a video, then as I understand it, it uses all your set timings, animations, etc, to create the video (I've never actually done this cos I've never needed to). If your timings were out, or if you don't really use timings in any meaningful way, then yes, you'd need to keep pausing to get the breaks you wanted. --jjron (talk) 14:54, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. — Fly by Night (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Would it be possible to get a copy of PowerPoint 2003 for, and install it on, my Windows 7 machine? — Fly by Night (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Sure; I can't imagine there'd be any incompatibilities with Win 7 & 2003. A quick search on eBay turns up many copies of it, though you'd probably have to buy the full Office suite. They start from only about $30, so not dear. But most likely someone you know would have an old outdated copy laying around that's no longer in use and you could install. Having said which, some of those programs don't like having different version installed on the same machine, and perhaps you don't want to uninstall 2010, just want the option of using 2003. I can't say for sure about Office, but I have had different versions of various Adobe programs installed at the same time with no issues, same with various other less demanding software. And if you went down that path, you'd still have to go through and re-setup the PPT pres. --jjron (talk) 10:18, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Question about Android

What download mode does? what is the diffrence between firmware to the opreation system to rom? Did Samsung release its own version to the 2.3.6 firmware(or there is one global)? Does Samsung Kies update the kernel or both? Will it extint the mods of Orange? What is recovery mode?Exx8 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 13:29, 5 November 2011 (UTC).

This is a duplicate post. I answered above in great detail. Nimur (talk) 17:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Free software for motion-compensated de-interlacing

Are there free software tools that can perform motion-compensated de-interlacing of video? (From what I understand, de-interlacing algorithms incorporating motion compensation are computationally expensive and are usually implemented in silicon.) --173.49.15.58 (talk) 17:01, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

You can play with deshake in ffmpeg. The tool is free software, the algorithms are all free source code. The hard part is doing it well. You can iterate successive passes of deshake and deinterlace, making incremental improvements each time (I'm envisioning an iterative small-change in each pass, then using the result to re-estimate the shake, then re-deinterlacing, all using avsynth or some other tool to avoid recompressing intermediate results); or you could modify the algorithms to feed forward the motion vector estimates. "Computationally intense" is half the problem; "theoretically difficult" is more apt .... the problem is underconstrained, which means it cannot be done perfectly for all cases. And let's not even try to resolve rolling shutter. If you have interlacing and rolling shutter: your video is as good as it will ever be. Live with it, or blur it until you can't tell anymore. Fortunately, few sensors exhibit both effects. Nimur (talk) 17:40, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure deshake + deinterlace is the same as motion-compensated de-interlacing. It seems that deshake compensates for small camera motion within the duration a field is captured. Motion-compensated de-interlacing involves spatial-temporal interpolation across fields. --173.49.15.58 (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

High quality (often motion-compensated) deinterlacing is a common topic in the doom9 forums. [3]. I believe QTGMC is often considered subjectively one of the best at the current time but MCBob + NNEDI may also hold that role, but can also very slow. I'm not sure if either are completely free software however. (These often rely on several plugins so it's likely complicated to check.) Nil Einne (talk) 18:49, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've also found TomsMoComp. An old comment I saw at http://forum.digital-digest.com was very positive about the quality of the results. --173.49.15.58 (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

'Old' may be important here, I believe TomsMoComp was considered amongst the best once but is now generally considered to have been superceeded in quality by QTGMC and others (see [4] [5] [6] for example). Of course as Nimur has said and some of the forum postings discuss, this does depend on the source and in any case is subjective. Also I'm not sure whether the quality difference is enough that you will generally notice the difference when watching the content. And if your interest is from a technical and free software POV, TomsMoComp may (I don't know if these are true, they are simply hypotheticals) have other advantages like being free software or being simpler to understand. I believe one of the advantages of QTGMC is it's generally considered easier to use and having a decent quality to speed tradeof, which may or may not be what you want if you're trying to learn how to do subjectively excellent deinterlacing. Nil Einne (talk) 10:14, 8 November 2011 (UTC)