A much desired hack for IE 7

If you're like most people, you're using a version of Internet Explorer (abbreviated as IE). You might not have made the switch to IE7, but when you do, there is one hack that I highly recommend. By default, IE7 runs without a menu, like shown below:

To enable menus, simply go to tools (it's just a little bit underneath the 'X' in the upper right hand corner), and there will be an option near the bottom called 'Menu bar'. Click on this and the menu bar will appear, but not where you would expect:

(Do you see it?)

Ok, we can fix this. Fire up the old trusty 'Regedit' tool (** Disclaimer: only modify the registry if you are comfortable doing so. Failure to be cautious can cause you to be the owner of a $500 paper weight). Navigate to 'HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Toolbar/WebBrowser/'. Now, left click below the current keys in this folder and select “New > Dword (32 bit) value”. Name the new value 'ITBar7Position'. Once created, modify the value and change it to be 1. Exit the registry and restart IE7. If successful, you should see something like this:

That's much better.

What I will do in the next 6 months to become a better developer

I've been on a quest in the last couple of weeks to discover tips on becoming a better developer when I ran across this podcast by Scott Hanselman which suggests a few ideas but largely states that whatever it is you decide on, that you write it down and you make it public. So this is my first blog post as part of my attempts to become a better developer in 6 months.

Instead of picking just one item, I've picked 5 items to work on and complete by October 11^th, 2008.

1. Post 26 blog entries, approximately one blog post a week.

2. Read the source code for 2 open source projects.

3. Read 2 books on development

4. Start a local pub club for software development

5. Publish 2 software applications

I think the first item is self explanatory. The second item is also courtesy of Scott Hanselman on this blog post. I've decided I'm going to tackle two related projects, NAnt and CruiseControl.Net. I've already glanced at the code for CruiseControl.Net for reasons that I'll explain in a couple weeks.

The idea for reading development books came from the original source for this idea, a blogger named Justice Gray. While I won't go to the extent that he planned (I say planned, because he never reported on his success or failure), I do plan to read two books. The first is a book my wife picked up for me because it had the word “Code” in the title, Dreaming in Code. I've read the first two chapters of the book and so far, it's better than I expected. The second book is more technical, Web Technologies: A Computer Science Perspective. I read a sample chapter of the book courtesy of TechRepublic, and I enjoyed the nature that the material was presented in.

The idea for a pub club comes from Scott Hanselman's podcast I mentioned earlier. I think it will entail only other developers that work at my company, but I hope to add other people as I get acquainted with other developers in the area.

Finally, I plan to release two software applications. I have several ideas for software projects floating around in my head, and I hope that giving myself a deadline is what I need to ensure these projects get accomplished. More on what these software applications are in a couple of months.

Now that I've laid down my 6 month plan, do you have a long-term plan to be a better developer?