My longing for this has been answered mightily by a Japanese freelancer who developed a small program named GDI++ that works on top of a Open Source product named FreeType (an advanced font rendering program across OSes). This small program works beautifully and adjusts the font rendering to Mac OS X like smooth and clarity all over the Windows. It is so beautiful how it can turn a boring looking windows to smooth and clear display. See the comparison shots below:

Without GDI++

With GDI++

Here are some instructions on how to get this working on your computer:

1. Download GDI++.
2. Extract this ZIP file in any directory, for example: C:\gdi
3. Double-click the file: gditray.exe
4. Now, your task bar you can note a “G”, like the image:
   
5. Double-click it, it should start glowing green:
   
6. Enjoy this beautiful font-smoothing.
7. You can adjust the font-smoothing level by right clicking this icon and choosing Use Preferences and selecting any of the three Japanese letters shown there.

Try it out…

As an Individual who has spent very good time on some of the best Open Source products, I always believed that having an alternative to the proprietary solutions that tend to be just the money machines is always refreshing. Many people think that Open Source means free software (in terms of cost). Open Source doesn’t meant to be free of cost. This is highly important because, many organizations, when offered a choice of Open Source, immediately backed up saying there’s as quality as the money goes (which means, the higher the price, the perfect the software – again a phenomenon). Individuals also believed that you can’t expect quality from a person who’s doing coding for free. That’s is true if we don’t consider the passion that some people really show in the work they do no matter whether it’s for a cost or not. There are also some Open Source software which are not free of cost. Again, as I stated, a software’s quality can’t be decided by its price or proprietary.

The significant difference as I see it, whether it’s a paid software or free-of-cost software lies in whether the software is open to modifications or not. Many organizations argue that having an Open Source software doesn’t means anything since they couldn’t modify it because of the unavailability of the resources or the time to do so. That’s acceptable, but that can’t be a reason to ignore a software that gives the possibility of modification against a software that gives a possibility of just patches that may come in a year. I would say the main reason why Open Source got so famous is because of the company Microsoft. They realized it very late. But its simply the single most reason why so many people got frustrated with Proprietary software. The kind of frustrations that started with the Windows Operating System to all of Microsoft products that showed systemic errors which gave nothing as a reason to understand, support that always considers the Customer is the problem, updates that always breaks more things than the ones its supposed to fix. There are so many instances that can be told about this. But again, Microsoft is an example only (highly significant example). There are so many popular Proprietary software companies like Adobe, Corel etc that produces software which are used by millions of users worldwide yet giving them frustrations at some point of time. Any software that is written by human being can always contain bugs, that is an understandable universal fact. However, that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t be fixing it. That’s where Open Source gets handy providing a way to fix things by ourselves if we have the time and resources to do so. Or, at least allows us to look into the right place for answers when something goes wrong instead of closing itself sealed and ask us to contact the Administrator who was never there.

Another argument of corporates against Open Source is the availability of Customer Support. I actually get surprised when organizations through such a lame argument. Because, its prudently evident that you can get as much support as given by any Proprietary Software in any of the Open Source software if only you looked in the right place. Many Open Source products that are free-of-cost has a Support availability through community which is also free-of-cost or a paid contract for support just like the proprietary ones. Here, yet another advantage of Open Source software over proprietary software is that in most cases, for the proprietary software you’ll be ended up paying the license cost and support cost wherein Open source you’ll be paying for only the support. In the case of Proprietary software, community support is always very less because the community is again another set of frustrated users who either got lucky to find an way to fix the problem or paid the cost to know the solution. But, in Open Source, the community is the strongest support you can ever get as it consists of users who are passionate about figuring out the problem by themselves, hacking through the code and fix it by themselves instead of looking for outside support and people who actually wrote the original code of that software. In my experience, I’ve always seen that the best learning one can get is from the one they learned by hard ways.

Life-time of the Open Source software is another concern of Corporates. In this case, we have to be the judge of ourselves or get good judgement from the community. It is sadly true that most Open Source software tend to expire after some time. However, this is not the case with most popular open source products that learned a way to earn (through paid support or advertisements) and keep the community going. So, it will be a tough decision for the corporate to decide which parts of their IT infrastructure can be replaced by Open Source implementations that don’t just expire. There is also a high advantage if the corporate is willing to understand the code. If it spent enough time and resources to understand the code and structure of the open source implementation, they can always keep the software up to date despite of whether it got expired in the community or not. It also serves another purpose as if at any point of time they encounter a problem, they can simply fix it themselves.

Implementation and migration cost over proprietary implementations already in place is another huge concern of Corporates. I’ve to agree with this completely as it’s a very tough decision for Corporates who invested a lot in proprietary implementations that were running for quite some time. However, I would never suggest open source as a complete and overall drop in replacement. Implementation can be step by step and highly planned to avoid this. Also, once implemented, on the long run, it reduces much of the cost which is the running cost of proprietary implementations. Over a period of time, if we analyze, we may found that even the implementation cost is fully recovered by the reduced running costs.

Virus, Malwares and Trojans disguised as Open Source software is also a concern of individuals and corporates alike who are considering open source alternatives. I can’t guarantee here that every open source is secured. However, I can guarantee that most of the popular open source distributions tend to be more secure than the proprietary distributions. One should also consider the kind of place from where the software is being downloaded and run some anti virus tests before starting implementation. Downloading from official servers of the organization that developed the open source tends to be always more secure. Also, I’ve seen that open source implementations were quick to release updates if any vulnerabilities found in their software. Again, as I told previously, the corporates themselves can look into the code and decide if there were any malware code existing in the open source implementation. Particularly because of the Open Source nature, these kinds of malware codes tend to be less targeting the Open Source products against the highly targeted proprietary products. That is again another advantage of open sources considering in the case of proprietary softwares, you can’t find a way to cure the vulnerability until the developer themselves provides a patch.

Conclusively, in reality, there are more reasons to adopt Open Source than there are for adopting Proprietary Source if we know what we want and what we can do with what we require.

Please let me your comments…

1. Download the Zip file that contains all the files explained here.
2. Download and Install the Monaco font for Windows.
3. Extract the Zip file to Desktop or your convenient Location
4. Start your Eclipse based IDE
5. Choose Window -> Preferences
6. Choose General -> Appearance -> Colors and Fonts
7. Expand Basic and choose Text font under that. Click on Change button from right side, choose the Monaco font and choose size as 9pt
8. Choose General / Your IDE Name / Your Plugin page for the specific Language
9. Expand the Editors under the above said group and look for the CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, PHPDoc and ScriptDoc options.
10. In the extracted files you’ll see .col files for all the above specified languages.
11. Under the language group, select Colors and choose Import from the right side. Choose the appropriate .col file from the extracted location.
12. Click Apply and Close Preferences by clicking on OK. Close all open files and reopen them to see it in cool Vibrant Ink theme.

So far I’ve created theme for CSS, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, PHPDoc and ScriptDoc only. If you have an Eclipse based IDE that you’re using for any other languages (like Ruby, Python etc), please request here so that I can send you over the color files for the same.

1. Microsoft Visual Studio – SharpDevelop, MonoDevelop
2. Web Development IDEs – Eclipse, Aptana
3. Microsoft .NET Framework – Mono
4. Microsoft SQL Server – MySQL, PostgreSQL, FireBird
5. Microsoft Project – OpenProj, Open Workbench
6. Microsoft Visio – Dia, StarUML
7. Microsoft Publisher – Scribus
8. Microsoft Office – OpenOffice
9. Microsoft Office Outlook/Outlook Express – Evolution / Mozilla Thunderbird
10. Microsoft Exchange Server – Zimbra, OpenXchange
11. Microsoft SharePoint – Alfresco, Deki Wiki, DotNetNuke, PHPNuke
12. Mercury LoadRunner – OpenSTA
13. Adobe Flash – OpenLaszlo
14. Adobe Acrobat – PDFCreator
15. Adobe Photoshop – Paint.NET, CinePaint, GIMP, GIMPShop
16. Adobe Illustrator – Inkspace
17. Adobe Premier/After Effects – Avidemux / Jahshaka
18. BusinessObjects Crystal Reports – JasperReports, DataVision, OpenRPT
19. Microsoft Dynamics – SugarCRM
20. Microsoft Money / Quicken – GNUCash, Grisbi
21. MindManager – FreeMind
22. WinZip – 7zip
23. Beyond Compare (File/Directory) Comparison – WinMerge
24. CodeSmith (Easy Code Generator) – MyGeneration
25. Icon Editor – IcoFX
26. FTP Client – FileZilla

There are much more than this list is available. But this is a start to remove on famous proprietary software from your arsenal.

As my previous post on SharpDevelop explained, SharpDevelop in many ways a better alternative to Visual Studio. However, the significant differences between these two and the advantages or disadvantages over each other are explained here.

Advantages of SharpDevelop over Visual Studio:

1. Open Source (Full Source Code available freely)
2. Completely Free to use for both Commercial and Personal use
3. Supports all .NET Framework, Compact Framework, WinForms (with excellent extra GTK# for X-Window based systems), Console Application, Direct3D (wow, Game Development anyone?), WPF, and Windows and Web Services.
4. Supports additional languages like Boo, F#, ILAsm and Python (very good)  out of box apart from C# and VB.NET.
5. Supports Installer Creation (a very likable feature works better than VS in my opinion)
6. Light on Resources and faster on Building (refer Point 8 below). The last time I checked, has only 80 KB of RAM with 0.x% CPU Usage even after opening a bulky WinForms project and keeping couple of forms open in design mode. (A relief from VS’s usual 128 KB or more RAM and 4-5% CPU Usage)
7. Inbuilt Re-factoring Engine (you’ll need the paid software JetBrains ReSharper if you want this in Visual Studio)
8. Parallel Build support for Multi-core machines (faster building, very likable feature which is sadly not available in VS as of 2005)
9. Supports important Visual Studio add-ons like FxCop, StyleCop, NUnit, PartCover etc.
10. Version Controlling with Subversion (which is far better a solution than VSS. I’ll post another post soon explaining the benefits of SVN over VSS. You can of course use AnkhSVN to get this in Visual Studio though.)
11. Wide range of very useful Add-ons (as the case with most Open Source projects)
12. Inbuilt Documentation Generator (Sandcastle, SHFB)
13. Very likable Class Diagram and Code Coverage views
14. Very likable F# Interactive, Boo Interpreter and Python Console
15. Supports Mono (the alternative .NET 2.0 Framework for Linux, BSD and Mac OS X)

What I see as disadvantages of SharpDevelop:

1. Code Editor has some minor glitches (I’ve seen some glitches on code folding and unfolding though it’s just visual not physical)
2. Lack of VSS Support (though I’m not looking forward to it as it’s a proprietary version control system to be included in any open source project like this)
3. Lack of Visual Studio like Object Browser (I miss that one here, though #Develop has very good Class Browser)
4. Somewhat Buggy (I’ve seen it crashing sometimes but understandable due to its Open Source nature)

But apart from this, programmatically speaking, you can do everything that you can do in VS with #Develop. It’s pretty impressive for a Open Source project.

Now, you can shed all your worries of that and embrace the open source community for making a powerful Open Source IDE named SharpDevelop. It was so powerful that you can seriously consider it for a complete drop-in replacement of Microsoft Visual Studio. It supports almost all of the Visual Studio features and much more. It supports Subversion for Version Control. In my opinion Subversion is far great an Version Control system than VSS. Here is the screen shot of how it looks:

But, the powerful community of enthusiastic Open Source developers and the Industry leader in Linux and Networks, Novell had together made it a reality at last.

I found some months before upon googling that there is an open source implementation of the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) and the CLR (Common Language Runtime) for the C#.NET language and .NET Framework 2.0 based on Microsoft’s somewhat open source like, Shared Source CLI (Rotor). It was a pleasant surprise and upon digging I found it was really around for a long time. The project is called Mono (Spanish for Monkey) and is available at the Official Website here.

The latest version Mono 2.0 is pretty much grown and stable product. It supports both WinForms and Web Programming as in .NET Frameworks and allows your code to run from any latest version of Linux, UNIX (BSD), Mac OS X, and of course, Windows. The WinForms version of the Mono Framework also allows to have GTK# (a C#.NET implementation of the GTK+ – the cross platform windowing toolkit for X Window system along with Qt) as an alternative to have much native support for X Window based systems (UNIX, Linux and Mac).

Currently the Mono 2.0 version support the following languages: C#.NET, Java, Boo, Nemerle, VisualBasic.NET, Python, JavaScript (JScript), Oberon, PHP, Object Pascal, LUA, Cobra and various other third party developed add-ons supporting custom languages. I would say this is WOW!!! I can never thank the Open Source community and Novell more enough for such a great product.

Please go ahead and check it out…

For starters, Firefox Version 3.1 comes with the new JavaScript engine (just like Chrome’s V8 engine) which is far powerful and faster. Though the memory issues still plague Firefox users, I’ve seen the beta version of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 beats that. So, here is my guide to those who would like functionality and look and feel like Google Chrome in Firefox.

Making your Firefox 3.0.5 look like Google Chrome (A Compromise actually…)

(NOTE: Some of the Extension needs you to login to Mozilla in order to install them as they are experimental)

1. Download and Install the Chromifox Theme from Mozilla Add-ons site
2. If fortunate and have Vista, download and install the ChromiGlass extension to give Chrome touch
3. If unfortunate and have XP or Linux, download and install the Total ReChrome extension to give Chrome touch
4. Download and Install the New Tab button on right extension to have new tab functionality like Chrome
5. Download and Install the LocationBar extension to have Chrome like address bar functionality
6. Download and Install the PersonalMenu extension to have Chrome like Menus
7. Download and Install the Download Statusbar extension to have Chrome like Downloads
8. [Experimental] Download and Install the autoHide Statusbar extension to have Chrome like status bar
9. Download and Install the Google Toolbar for Firefox
10. After installing all these, restart Firefox. You’ll already be seeing the Chrome like look and feel.
11. Right click on the Toolbar and remove the tick in Menu Bar
12. Right click on the Toolbar and choose Customize. Drag and drop Stop button to the next of Go button in address bar (this will make Go button become Stop once a page starts loading, just like Chrome)
13. From the same Customize box, Drag and Drop Personal Menu icon to the right side of Stop button. Close customize box.
14. Click on the Personal Menu icon (now will look like Chrome’s). Choose Edit Menu and choose whatever menu options that you want from Left side to Right side to have them under this single menu.
15. The Google Toolbar for Firefox (Version 5+) will mimic the new tab page feature of Google Chrome. However, if you don’t want it, you can turn off that feature alone from the Settings page of the Google toolbar.
16. Now, you should be seeing Firefox as Chrome

Making your Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 look and function like Google Chrome (A sure shot…)

(NOTE: Some of the Extension needs you to login to Mozilla in order to install them as they are experimental)

1. If you don’t have already, Download Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 from Mozilla website.
2. Download and Install the Chromifox 2 Theme from Mozilla Add-ons site
3. Download and Install the Total ReChrome extension to give Chrome touch
4. Download and Install the New Tab button on right extension to have new tab functionality like Chrome
5. Download and Install the PersonalMenu extension to have Chrome like Menus
6. Download and Install the Download Statusbar extension to have Chrome like Downloads
7. Download and Install the Google Toolbar for Firefox
8. After installing all these, restart Firefox. You’ll already be seeing the Chrome like look and feel.
9. Right click on the Toolbar and remove the tick in Menu Bar
10. Right click on the Toolbar and choose Customize. Drag and drop Stop button to the next of Go button in address bar (this will make Go button become Stop once a page starts loading, just like Chrome)
11. From the same Customize box, Drag and Drop Personal Menu icon to the right side of Stop button. Close customize box.
12. Click on the Personal Menu icon (now will look like Chrome’s). Choose Edit Menu and choose whatever menu options that you want from Left side to Right side to have them under this single menu.
13. The Google Toolbar for Firefox (Version 5+) will mimic the new tab page feature of Google Chrome. However, if you don’t want it, you can turn off that feature alone from the Settings page of the Google toolbar.
14. Now, you should be seeing Firefox as Chrome

The final result is as below:

After many unsuccessful attempts in finding suitable one, I’ve finally went ahead and created my own. Also, to add to the bliss, I’ve found a viable replacement for the so called, much loved Monaco font that’s a standard in Mac OS X for TextMate.

Download the Monaco Font. You should extract the font into the <os-drive>:\Windows\Fonts in your machine.

Download the Vibrant Ink theme for Komodo IDE settings. You should extract the settings file into the <os-drive>:\Users\<user-name>\AppData\Roaming\ActiveState\KomodoIDE\<version>\schemes for Vista and <os-drive>:\Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\ActiveState\KomodoIDE\<version>\schemes for Windows XP

Download the Vibrant Ink theme for Notepad++ settings. You should extract the settings file into <os-drive>:\Users\<user-name>\AppData\Roaming\Notepad++ for Vista and <os-drive>:\Documents and Settings\<user-name>\Application Data\Notepad++ for Windows XP

Download the Vibrant Ink theme for Visual Studio settings. You should extract the settings file into <os-drive>:\Users\<user-name>\Documents\Visual Studio <version>\Settings for Vista and <os-drive>:\Documents and Settings\<user-name>\My Documents\Visual Studio <version>\Settings for Windows XP

First of all, Google Reader, didn’t accepted my OPML file which I exported from RSS Bandit. So, I tried manually adding some of the RSS feeds and had a go. It’s really awesome.

Google seems to be making very good use of AJAX. Which really made their Web Based reader a pleasant experience.

I strongly recommend those of you guys who think a Web Reader is not good to see Google Reader.