Advanced configuration

Many people think that the windows firewall is bad, however not many know that the new vista firewall has advanced features!

see here:

Vista firewall's advanced configuration settings. To view or change them, you must create a custom MMC. Here's how:

1. Click Start | Programs | Accessories and select Run.
2. Type mmc.exe in the Run box. You may be required to enter administrative credentials or click to authorize running the program.
3. In the blank MMC, click File | Add/Remove Snap-in.
4. In the Available Snap-ins list, scroll down and select Windows Firewall With Advanced Security. Double-click on it or highlight it and click the Add button.
5. In the Select Computer dialog box, accept the default (Local Computer) and click Finish.
6. Click OK in the Add/Remove Snap-ins Box.

Now you can expand the items in the left console tree, as shown in Figure E, to see the advanced configuration options.

Figure E

Use the Vista Firewall With Advanced Security MMC to configure inbound and outbound rules and more.

Multiple firewall profiles

Your computer can have multiple profiles, depending on whether it's connected to its corporate domain (such as when your laptop is connected at work and logged onto the domain), connected to a private network (such as your home peer-to-peer network), or connected to a public network (such as a wi-fi network at the airport or hotel). Firewall behavior can be different for each profile. Thus, the Windows firewall might be off when connected to the domain, which is protected by a sophisticated perimeter firewall, but on when connected to a private or public network.

To change these settings, click Windows Firewall Properties. On the Domain, Private, and Public Profile tabs, you can turn the firewall on or off and specify whether to block or allow inbound and outbound connections. By default, outbound connections are allowed and inbound are blocked (with exceptions allowed). You can also select to block all connections, including those with exceptions. The Private Profile tab is shown in Figure F. (Options are the same on each profile tab.)

Figure F

You can set firewall behavior separately for each profile.

You can customize settings for each profile by clicking the Customize button. This allows you to control whether to notify the user when inbound connections are blocked and whether to allow unicast response to multicast or broadcast requests. You can also set the logging options on a per-profile basis. (This is the same simple logging of dropped packets and/or successful connections.)

If you loved TweakUI in Windows XP, then you’ll love Ultimate Windows Tweaker in Vista. Give access to over 130 different settings to customize Vista.

ITsVISTA

Tweak UI For Windows Vista : Ultimate Windows Tweaker From WinVistaClub

Related posts

• ITsVISTA Tip 23: Empty Vista’s Recycle Bin from the Command Line
• Getting More Out of Vista Through Customization
• ITsVISTA Tip 7: ‘Open CMD Prompt Here’ in Vista is Simple
• ITsVISTA Tip 38: Disable Vista’s Notification Area
• ITsVISTA Tip 34: Force Vista to Shutdown Faster

Having system error and freezes with Adobe Fireworks CS4 in Vista? Here’s some troubleshooting you can do to resolve the issue.

ITsVISTA

Troubleshoot system errors and freezes in Fireworks CS4 (Windows Vista)

Related posts

• 8718ad77
• KB400848
• KB401521
• KB936645
• Adobe declares Vista Home Basic insignificant, Microsoft smiles

Problems with your Adobe Flash CS4 installation on Vista? Here’s some troubleshooting tips.

ITsVISTA

Troubleshoot installation problems with Flash CS4 Professional (Windows XP and Windows Vista)

Related posts

• KB401499
• KB401508
• Acrobat updated to integrate with Vista and Office
• 333696
• Adobe to CS2 users: Want Vista? Upgrade

As I had promised yesterday in my little teaser, today (again at 2AM), I’m announcing the availability of “Flickr Search Connectr” for Windows 7. If you have a copy of Windows 7 and the tubes aren’t blocked, I encourage you to try it for yourself.

So what is this voodoo you might be asking? Well this is actually a combination of two components, both carefully put together in a couple of hours by amateur programmer yours truly. The first is a OpenSearch Description File generator (also known as the “Search Connector” in Windows 7) and the second is a Flickr web service. Combined, they allow you to search and access images on Flickr right in the Windows 7 Explorer using the new “Search Federation” platform.

Please note because I’ve implemented a man-in-the-middle solution, it carries obvious performance penalties and as such please be patient when waiting for the results to load.

What federated search is about is the ability to search remote file repositories on the local network or web. In Windows 7, this feature is implemented natively in the shell. And because Microsoft is the evil monopoly it is, it’s implemented using open standards OpenSearch and RSS2 so it’s simple for developers to take advantage of.

As a theory as to why not many people are excited about this, the example Microsoft used to promote this feature (on their website and at PDC08) was searching an online Sharepoint server. Practical, but not cool at all. It may be an enterprise feature by design, but I think it has legs as a consumer feature too which is why I built this Flickr as a proof-of-concept.

If you want to know what makes searching within the shell cool, it means you’re interacting directly with the file. It’s a little clunky in the M3 Build 6801, but even still you can double click a picture to open it in larger view or set it as your background.

Now imagine the possibilities. Searching the files on your remote Windows Home Server, searching your documents on Google Docs, finding music on Pandora, finding videos on YouTube, finding PDFs from your library. Basically anywhere with a repository of files.

I look forward to the full MSDN documentation (no documentation now) to outline what this platform can do. Also can’t wait to see what other and more talented programmer can mash-up and most of all, which first parties will be first (pun) to support this powerful platform.

Alternatively, you can right-click on a tab and select Open in New Window.

The feature, that mimics Google Chrome’s behavior, had been requested and planned several times in the past.

Tab tearing is the latest in a long list of tabbed browsing improvements that already included a new tab button, a tab preview panel, tab reparenting for true tab moving across windows, tab cloning, and visual tab switching. Some of the changes follow a design shift to make the tab bar visible at all times, which has also got the throbber out of the menu bar, as it is now redundant with each tab’s activity indicator.

Animations for moving, opening and closing tabs was also mentioned for Firefox 3.1 but it’s still unclear if will make it.

As usual with new features, tab tearing has introduced a few new bugs, but, hopefully, they will all be ironed for Firefox 3.1’s next development release, Beta 2, due within the next couple of weeks.