So, you could take a window that wasn’t covering the dock…

… and move it so that it would have covered the dock, only the dock would “dodge” out of the way.

In Ubuntu 12.04, however, this feature was removed. It wasn’t just that the feature was turned off, but that the code was removed from Unity, so anyone wanting the feature returned was out of luck. In Ubuntu 12.04, should a window move into the Unity’s dock’s “space” the window will simply slide behind the dock.

How to get the feature back? As mentioned, the code was removed from Unity, so there’s no setting to tweak, even when using a third-party tweaking tool, but thanks to a patched version of Unity, now available via a personal package archive (PPA), Ubuntu users can soon have their “window dodge” feature back. Here’s how to get it.

First, open up the Terminal.

Now type sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ikarosdev/unity-revamped to add the PPA to your list of software sources.

Now type sudo apt-get update to update those software lists, which will make the new, patched Unity available for upgrading.

Finally, type sudo apt-get upgrade to upgrade your currently installed Unity to the patched Unity with “window dodge” feature included.

Once you’ve done this, you’ll need to install one more program (if you haven’t already installed it), which will allow us to enable the “window dodge” feature (even after installing the patched version of Unity, “window dodge” is still turned off by default). We’ll be installing the CompizConfig Settings Manager (CCSM), so type sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager to do this.

Now, after the upgrade to the patched Unity and installation of CCSM is finished, go ahead and log out of your current session, then immediately log back in.

We’ll now need to open up CCSM, which we can do by typing ccsm into the Dash.

Scroll down to the “Ubuntu Unity Plugin” (found in the Desktop section), and open it.

The setting we want is in the first tab, and you can see it below. We want either “Dodge Window” or “Dodge Active Window”.

If we choose “Dodge Window” then any window that would have covered the Unity Dock will cause the “dodge” behavior, while chooseing “Dodge Active Window” will cause the Dock to dodge only when the foremost window would be covering it. Once you have made your decision close the Settings Manager and try to move a window on top of the dock. It should now “dodge” out of the way, just as we wanted.

And that’s it. One last note about this: as we are using a patched version of Unity, it is possible that whenever Unity is upgraded by Ubuntu, you will lose the “window dodge” feature, at least until the new version of the patched Unity is available. Other than that, the patched version of Unity is identical except for this patch, and one to allow minimizing by clicking on the dock icon, so there should be no problems associated with using it.

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The first step is to download and install Thunderbird. You can head over to the Thunderbird home page and download the installer (simplest for Mac or Windows), while Linux users will likely want to install Thunderbird via their distro’s software repositories.

Now we’ll need to ensure that Gmail is configured to allow POP3 access. So click this link (make sure you’re logged into your Gmail account) to view the POP/IMAP settings.

As you can see above, we’ve turned on POP3 access, which will allow us to use our Gmail account with a Desktop client, in this case Thunderbird. Also, note that under option 2 (under POP Download), we have chosen to “keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox” when messages are accessed with POP. If we use this option, then nothing we do with Thunderbird (such as accidentally marking a message as “read”), should affect anything we see in the Gmail Web interface.

Note: we’ll be showing the POP3 configuration instructions in this article, but you can check out this link to see Google’s ideal configuration settings for IMAP mail clients, if you were wanting to use Thunderbird as an everyday client. We chose POP3 as our backup method, as it will download all your emails, and not simply new emails as they arrive.

Next, launch Thunderbird by double-clicking its Dock icon or Desktop launcher, selecting its Start Menu entry, or… whatever.

Now we’ll enter in your account details, so go to the Edit menu and then Account Settings (menu names/locations may be slightly different on different operating systems).

When the Account Settings window opens, choose Add Mail Account from the Account Actions menu.

Now simply enter in your Gmail info. Thunderbird has a database of many different email providers, so should automatically fill in the correct server info. The only thing to think about at this point is whether or not to switch from the default server (IMAP), to the alternative (POP3, as we did).

Now, before leaving the Account Settings window, click the Server Settings tab, then make sure to change the “Check for new messages” setting is reduced to 1 minutes (at least while we download your old emails), as well as checking the “Leave messages on server” option, while making sure the next two options (“For at most” and “Until I delete them”) are unchecked.

Now move to the Junk Settings tab and uncheck the “Enable adaptive junk mail controls” option. As Gmail already has good spam filtering (and we’re only using Thunderbird to archive our Gmail account), this will ensure that every email is downloaded.

Finally, click the Disk Space tab, and make sure the “Don’t delete any messages” radio button is selected. This way, no messages will be deleted, simply to conserve disk space. This should be the default option, but it doesn’t hurt to double-check.

At this point, you can go ahead and clock the entire Account Settings window and return to the main interface. If it hasn’t started archiving your Gmail messages, click the Get Mail button in the toolbar, and the process will begin.

Depending on how many emails you have, this process could take quite a while, but when you’re finished, you should have a full backup of your POP3 server.

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For example, I have a printer attached to my Windows 7 computer in my home office and I wanted to be able to print to it from my MacBook Pro running Lion. I thought it was going to take a long time, but luckily it didn’t! In this post, I’ll walk you through the steps to share a printer from Windows XP or Windows 7 to your Mac.

Note that the part about adding the printer to your Mac is the same regardless of whether it’s from Windows XP or Windows 7. The only difference is the way your share the printer in XP and 7.

Share Windows XP Printer

The first thing that needs to be done is the share the printer. In Windows XP, you can do this by going to Control Panel and clicking on Printers and Faxes.

Next, right-cick on the printer and choose Properties.

Finally, click on the Sharing tab and choose Share this printer.

It’s probably a good idea to keep the name of the printer short (less than 8 characters) and also not to include any spaces or special characters. Just keep it to letters and numbers. Click OK and you’re done. Now skip down to the adding printer to your Mac section for the rest of the instructions.

Share Windows 7 Printer

In Windows 7, the process of sharing a printer is slightly different. First, go to Control Panel and click on Devices and Printers.

Next, right-click on the printer and choose Printer Properties. In XP, you had to choose just Properties.

Finally, go to the Sharing tab and check Share this printer. That’s it for the Windows part!

Add Windows Printer to OS X

Now for the final part. In OS X, go to System Preferences and click on Print & Scan.

Now click on the little + button at the bottom of the box that shows you the currently installed printers.

Now you’ll get a pop up dialog that has a few options across the top. In our case, we want to click on Windows. This will automatically find all the Windows computers on your network! Sweet!

Click on the name of the computer with the shared printer and you’ll be asked to connect to it as a guest or registered user. In my experience, I was only able to connect as a registered user and only to Windows computers that had a username AND password. If you don’t have a password on your Windows user account, you won’t be able to connect and therefore won’t be able to see the shared printers. I can’t figure out a way to get it to work without having a password on the Windows account.

Now you’l see the last box on the right will have the name of the shared printer(s).

Click on the printer and then at the bottom you have to choose how to print. You have an option for Generic Postscript or Generic PCL, but normally you’re going to want to choose Select Printer Software. By default, OS X has a lot of drivers for the most common printers.

They even had my Lexmark 7600 printer in the list, meaning I didn’t have to worry about downloading the latest Mac driver for my printer and installing that.

And that’s about it. The software will be installed and you should be able to print. If your printer is not in the list, then you had to choose Other in the drop down and then choose the driver manually. You’ll have to download the latest Mac driver for your printer in order to do that.

Having trouble connecting to the shared printer on your Windows machine? If so, post a comment here and tell us where your process failed. Enjoy!

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This is very useful for people who tend to keep a large number of applications running at once. This often leads to the user having a monitor which is very cluttered.

Now, a user can open an application then move it to a different workspace; this allows the user to keep different “jobs” separate (work-related programs on one workspace, social networking on another, while music and videos play on a third workspace). In Ubuntu, you can access your workspaces in two different ways. You can click the Workspaces icon in the Ubuntu dock to open up the Workspace view.

You can also hit the Super-s keyboard combination. In either instance, you’ll now see the two-by-two grid mentioned above.

Each “thumbnail” represents one workspace. Simply double-click the workspace you want to switch to, or if you want, you can drag windows or programs from one workspace to the next.

In versions of Ubuntu prior to 12.04 (and in Kubuntu, which uses KDE), it was possible to have as many workspaces as you wanted. However, with the release of Ubuntu 12.04, the user is now limited to only four (arranged in a two by two grid, as shown above). In reality, the feature for 4+ workspaces is still available, but the setting has been removed.

So, what if the user wants more workspaces? There are actually a number of ways to go about this. We’ll be using Ubuntu Tweak, but if you’re a fan of MyUnity or even the CompizConfig Settings Manager, you can go that route. To use Ubuntu Tweak, we’ll first need to install it; to do this we’ll use the Terminal.

Now type sudo apt-add-repository ppa:tualatrix/ppa to add the Ubuntu Tweak repository.

Now type sudo apt-get update to update your software lists. This will make your system “aware” of any potential updates, as well as software in the new personal package archive (PPA).

Finally, you can install Ubuntu Tweak by typing sudo apt-get install ubuntu-tweak.

Once Ubuntu Tweak is installed, go ahead and open it.

After a bit, you will see the main Ubuntu Tweak overview window.

Click the Tweaks tab to see all the available options.

The workspace settings can be found, surprisingly enough, by clicking the Workspace option. Do that now.

By default, as shown earlier, you have four workspaces, aligned in a two-by-two grid. That setting looks like this.

To change it, simply move the slider. Below you’ll see that we’ve given ourselves four workspaces horizontally, and three vertically, for a total of twelve instead of four. The settings allow us to give ourselves as many as 16 in either direction.

The changes take place immediately. You can go ahead and quit Ubuntu Tweak (or leave it open in case you want to change your setting immediately). In our case, hitting Super-s brings up the new workspaces… all twelve of them.

As you can see, some of the workspaces are brighter than others. Only those workspaces with active windows in them are bright. The rest are dim. You can “activate” a new workspace simply by dragging a window into it.

It’s that simple. While you probably don’t need 256 workspaces (16 horizontal and 16 vertical), they’re there if you want them. Still, if you just wanted to “up” your workspace number by a handful, now you can.

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Of course, I could not immediately find it and had to go flipping through all the ribbons before I finally saw it! By default, in Word 2010, it’s located on the Review tab under the Proofing section.

Clicking on that will give you not only the number of words, but also other stats like pages, characters with and without spaces, paragraphs and lines.

I still find this quite annoying since I use it so often, so I wanted a quicker way to access this same info. Luckily in Word 2010, there is an option to add the word count to the status bar at the bottom. Just right-click on the status bar and you’ll see an option for Word Count.

Once you select that, you’ll see the word count at the bottom left of the status bar:

That’s pretty much it! If you want, you can also add Word Count to your quick access toolbar by right-clicking on the icon in the Review tab and choosing Add to Quick Access Toolbar.

Now it’ll also show up at the very top, but this is really no different than it being in the status bar, it’s just a personal preference. You have both options.

As an extra bonus, I’ll just throw in a few more features that I used a lot but took a minute to find in Office 2010. For example, where is the Find & Replace in Word 2010? On the home tab, at the very far right, click on Replace.

Where is spell check in Word 2010? Again, this is on the Review tab under Proofing.

And finally where is the developer tab for those of us who need it? For that, you need to click on File, Options and then click on Customize Ribbon. Under Main Tabs, you need to check the box next to Developer Tab.

This will allow you to open Visual Basic and record macros, etc. If you’re looking for something else in Word 2010, let us know in the comments and we’ll get back to you! Enjoy!

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