In the System namespace there is a class called Environment which gives you access to a lot of information about the environment where your application is running. A nice one that I use is stored in the NewLine property. It gives you the characters sequence that represent a new line (\n and \r together typically, and since I never remember the order, this property is useful :-P)
In the image above you can the complete list of properties and methods available. More information can be found at the MSDN .NET Framework Developer Center.
As I have said before my favorite browser is Firefox. And my current operating system is Windows Vista Ultimate. They work well together, but visually I think that Firefox doesn’t fit that well. When you have Aero turned on it is even worse. I would like to make Firefox look a little bit more like IE7 on Vista. And now it does! The picture bellow shows how nice it looks now and it’s perfect fit with Windows Explorer.
How can you achieve the same result? By taking advantage of the great customization features of Firefox!
First of all I installed Glasser which is an experimental Firefox add-on that adds the Windows Vista glass frame to Firefox toolbars.
The next step is to customize other visual settings. I was surprised to find out the Firefox theming is based on CSS, so you can adjust a lot of the look’n'feel of your favorite browser like you were styling a webpage. A great add-on that can help you with this task is Stylish. It allows you to manage several stylesheets files, by adding new ones, activating/deactivating the existing ones (with preview) and even editing the files manually.
Obviously you don’t have do write your own stylesheets from scratch. There is a huge (or at least decent) database of stylesheet files for Firefox that can be found at userstyles.org. It has not only styles for your browser but also for specific websites like Gmail, Google Reader, etc.
Here’s a list of user styles that I used to accomplish the final result shown in the image above.
FF3+Glasser: Vista OS integration - Gives the IE7-like look to the address bar and back/forward buttons
Firefox 3 Glasser Padder - Just gives a little space to the main toolbar, not required.
Hide Home-button text on the Bookmarks Toolbar - If you want the Home button in the address toolbar without the “Home” text, you can use this style.
Native-looking progress meter for Fission ext - Makes the progress bar green and glossy like the Windows Explorer progress bar (e.g. folder search progress bar). You must use it with Fission add-on which puts the progress bar behind the address bar, otherwise it doesn’t have any effect.
I used an add-on in order to add a “New tab” button next to the last open tab, on the tab bar.
Personal Menu add-on allows you to transfer the main menu items to a single button that you can put in any toolbar. It is the last button next to my bookmarks. Using this add-on you can get rid of the main menu, but have it easily accessible whenever you need it.
The best of all is that since I am using a portable version of Firefox 3, I won’t lose any customizations even if I format my computer, or move into another one.
Feel free to ask any questions regarding the customizations I’ve done to Firefox.
Have you heard about Windows SideShow? It’s kind of a geeky feature of Windows Vista. 
It allows you to connect an external device to your PC, displaying gadgets like incoming e-mails, photo galleries among other stuff. There are already some devices that support this feature. You may be familiar with an ASUS laptop which comes with a display on top of it.
There are other devices detached from your laptop like digital picture frames.
More details available in the Windows Vista official website - Window SideShow details.
A beta version of a piece of software is now available which transforms your Windows Mobile 5 or 6 devices into a Windows SideShow compliant device (using bluetooth). 
The developer preview can be found at Microsoft Download Center. Follow the instructions that come with the software. After a successful install you can download and install new gadgets from Window Live Gallery. (Suggestions: Microsoft Office Power Point Remote and Picture Viewer)
You can configure your gadgets for each plugged Windows SideShow device in the Windows Control Panel (Control Panel\Hardware and Sound\Windows SideShow).
Take a look at some screenshots at Chris Craft’s Blog.
(Based on another great post from Channel 10)
It is pretty simple! Just one shell script line of code
Learn how to do it in this blog.
Today I found about IExpress Wizard utility. It is built-in in Windows and allows to create self-extracting/installing packages.
I won’t write down a tutorial. Since I learned how to use it by running it just one time, it is pretty easy. Choose your package name, include a prompt before install (if you want to), choose files, include a license agreement file (if wanted), choose a command to run after the extraction and enable a restart request if needed. A finished message can be customized.
To open the program, go to Start-Run and enter iexpress
Really useful to distribute small software packages and applications add-ons, and … well just use your imagination.
Source: Alfred’s Tech Blog
I simply hate Programs and Features feature in Windows Vista when compared with the Windows XP Add or Remove Programs feature. Why? Just an interface issue. When you go to Programs and Features the list of programs starts empty and is filled while Windows finds out that programs you have installed.
Every time I try to click in a program to change or remove it, before the search is complete, I loose track of that item because there are always new items being added to the list and hiding the existing ones (when they are added before that one). Because the fill isn’t ordered, but the items remain in alphabetic orders, you never know in which position of the list a new item will pop up.
I rather prefer the old loading message before all the items appear at once. At least I don’t have the frustration of seeing the program I want to change and not being able to access it, and when I walk through the list I know that there will be no items appearing in the beginning of the list where I had already seen.
Maybe in Windows 7 this will be improved. Who knows? Meanwhile, I can live with it
