In my view, there is a flaw in Word that is getting worse over time: The default zoom is 100%. With 4K monitors becoming more and more common, and with higher resolutions no doubt coming soon, this zoom leaves us with a tiny Word document that we must manually zoom in on each time. So here’s the solution: In Word, click File, Options, Customize Ribbon In the right pane, ensure “Developer” is checked Click OK and click on the Developer…
I am a big advocate of using research to improve our daily lives. Some research is tangible, such as the invention of a device or machine that you can buy and use, but others is less so. A recent piece of research was completed by Shaver-Troup where she found that the font that some text is written in has a measurable impact on how easy it is to read. With Thomas Jockin’s help, she created a font named Lexend which…
I have recently been learning how to use WebGL to make some computer graphics. In the last six weeks I have progressed from simple wireframes, to lit, textured models, casting shadows etc. I thought it would be fun to show such an animation here. Every week what I have been able to produce has been improving, so I am excited to see what I am able to produce next week. I think, largely, what WebGL is capable of is only…
One of the several C# programs I am working on at the moment were started while I was still learning to write complex programs. Until I am aging out of the workforce, I hope every program I write, is done while I am learning! The thing about learning as you write – especially as a full-stack developer – is that your later code is better organized, better designed, and more robust, than your earlier code. There are many, many advantages…
Recently I have been spending more time writing content for this website, and shortbooks.online. This has made me think about making websites in the early days. I started ‘blogging’ around 2002, long before platforms like WordPress, Blogger etc. became mainstream or particularly easy to use. I had FTP access to my website hosting, and I taught myself HTML (and later, CSS). Each post I wrote on my early blog was written directly in HTML, and I copied and pasted a…
When writing a program that needs to interact with Exchange (whether on-premises or off-premises/online), the easiest way is to use PowerShell commands. This is done by adding the following above your namespace declaration: using System.Management.Automation; The key thing that I have found to be a problem for C# programs using PowerShell is that occasionally you will receive an error message that says “A connection to the directory on which to process the request was unavailable. This is likely a transient…
Everything I read about object oriented code gives an example, like an animal, that has features such as a number of legs, and a breed, and any number of other, entirely-irrelevant-to-real-life-examples. These examples are good at describing the very, very high-level concept, but they fail to provide the concrete examples that a user might genuinely need in their coding life. A module I have written pulls data from Active Directory, and has functions that can change that data. I believe…