How Do I Turn Off Active Desktop with XP

• Right-click on your desktop--> Properties
• Go to the "Desktop" tab
• At the bottom click "Customize Desktop"
• Go to the "Web" tab. 
• Nothing in there should have a checkmark. 

Recall or replace an email message that you sent

The recall feature in Microsoft Outlook tries to stop delivery and, optionally, replace an email message that you have already sent to another Microsoft Exchange Server user within your organization. Message recall is available after you click Send and then realize that you forgot to attach a file, include information in the message, or want to revise what was originally sent. You can’t recall messages sent to email addresses outside your organization.

Note:  A Microsoft Exchange Server account is required.

Recall a message

To recall a message without sending a revised message, do the following:

1.   In Mail, in the Navigation Pane, click Sent Items.
2. Open the message that you want to recall.
3. On the Message tab, in the Move group, click Actions, and then click Recall This Message.
4. Click Delete unread copies of this message.

Note:  If you don’t see the Message tab, make sure that you have opened a sent message as described in steps 1 and 2.

Note:   If you are sending the message to many people, you may want to clear the Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient check box.

Recall and replace a message

In addition to trying to recall a message, you can send a replacement message. For example, if you forgot to include an attachment, you can try to recall the message, and then send a replacement message that has the attachment. The original message is removed from the mailboxes of the recipients who have not yet opened it, and then is replaced with the updated message.

To recall a message and then send a revised message, do the following:

1.  In Mail, in the Navigation Pane, click Sent Items.
2. Open the message that you want to recall and replace.
3. On the Message tab, in the Move group, click Actions, and then click Recall This Message. 
4. Click Delete unread copies and replace with a new message.Note:   If you are sending the message to many people, you may want to clear the Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient check box.
5. Click OK, and then update the new message. You can also remove or add file attachments.
6. Click Send.

Stealth Settings for Skype

For a very long time, I have been dying to see the Invisible Mode applied selectively.

There are many times, or perhaps daily, when I want to be Invisible only to certain Contacts, or just one Contact, but not to everyone else.

This feature is available in various Instant Messengers, such as the Stealth Settings (for individual Contacts) in the Yahoo Messenger.

But there is no such setting in Skype as of now. There is a workaround however.

I simply block the contacts when I don't want to talk to them, then just unblock them when I want to.  If you block a contact, you will appear as offline to them regardless of the status you selected.  They will also receive no notification or warnings when you block or unblock them.

What does Operation is not valid due to current state of the object exception mean?

Error message

System.InvalidOperationException: Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object.

Stack trace

[InvalidOperationException: Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object.]
at System.Web.HttpValueCollection.ThrowIfMaxHttpCollectionKeysExceeded()
at System.Web.HttpValueCollection.FillFromEncodedBytes(Byte[] bytes, Encoding\ encoding)
at System.Web.HttpRequest.FillInFormCollection()

[HttpException: The URL-encoded form data is not valid.]
at System.Web.HttpRequest.FillInFormCollection()
at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_Form()
at System.Web.HttpRequest.get_HasForm()
at System.Web.UI.Page.GetCollectionBasedOnMethod(Boolean dontReturnNull)
at System.Web.UI.Page.DeterminePostBackMode()
at System.Web.UI.Adapters.PageAdapter.DeterminePostBackMode()
at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint,\ Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

Cause:

• Microsoft’s Security update MS11-100 released on December 28, 2011, limits the max no. of form keys, files and JSON members to 1000 in an HTTP request. 
• ASP.NET rejects requests that have more than 1000 of these elements and the user sees an error in the browser.
• In the older version of ASP.NET( i.e prior to this update) HTTPValueCollectionClass did not have the ThrowIfMaxHttpCollectionKeysExceeded method. This method was introduced in the class after this update. So if the request contains more than 1000(default value) elements, we see this exception.

Solution: 
Increase the value of key aspnet:MaxHttpCollectionKeys to a higher number for example 1500.


Side-effect
The amount we specify has an impact on upload speed of our content, which will be proportionally slower. Therefore, it’s better to set the value, that should be enough for the exception to not occur.

How To Use a previously Used theme again in Google Chrome

You might have faced this situation. You had a theme in Google Chrome. You changed it. You did not like the second one and wanted the first one again. But you can’t find how to do it. There is no theme manager in chrome yet. There is no way to manage themes like you would apps that you have downloaded. Once you click on "Choose Theme" it will download the crx and then overwrite whatever theme you had previously installed.

By going to Settings you will see a section called Appearance, however the only revert option is to revert to default.
One way of keeping, managing, and sharing the themes you choose is to go to the themes page and share the theme you are installing with either your Gmail or Google+. This will at least provide a way to track which themes you like, and it will keep all of the links to the themes in 1 place. Here are the steps to share with a blank circle to keep it private.

• Go to Settings > Appearance
• Select "Get Themes"
• Find one you want and hover over the card. Next to the "Choose Theme" button, select the "Share" button
• Share the theme with Google+ or send it to someone on gmail.
• Choose to share the theme with a Circle that only you are a member of, that way all the posts will be visible only by you or if you are sending an email send it to yourself

Now when you visit Google+ (or Gmail if you choose to share via email) you will have a list of all the themes you've tried or want to try in the future.

How to Code HTML Email Newsletters

Google Mail, Lotus Notes, and Outlook 2007 present their own unique coding challenges. Outlook 2007, believe it or not, has significantly less support for CSS than previous versions of Outlook!

Google Mail’s lack of support is a little more forgiveable — because the application runs in a browser, it cannot control the contents of the emails it displays. Consequently, Google’s engineers have had to take steps to ensure that their application displays properly regardless of the quality of the HTML or CSS in which emails are written.

As a result, Google Mail is a new web mail service that acts like an artifact of the early 1990s, when web standards were primitive. It takes some work, but it is possible to crack open a Google Mail page and see just how convoluted the services approach to rendering HTML email actually is.

For one thing, Google Mail deletes the CSS styles contained between any style tags, no matter where they appear in the email. And fonts displayed within HTML tables — the only alternative to using styles — have the odd habit of appearing larger than intended, no matter how the HTML email is structured.

The good news, however, is that if you code to account for the oddities of these email three applications, your HTML email code is more likely to display well in most, if not all, email clients. Here are some techniques that appear to work well in Google Mail and other older email software:

• Define the background color in a td cell with the bgcolor attribute, not the CSS style.
• As noted above, use the background attribute in the td cell for background images instead of using CSS. One side-effect of this approach is that the background image can be made as tall as needed — if the content used in your email template is likely to vary in size, using an extra-tall background image in this way allows the height of the email shrink or expand, depending on the height of the copy, from one email to the next. Remember, though, that Outlook 2007 ignores background images completely.
• If it works better, use the padding declaration to control margins within a td cell. The margin style does not work in these cells, but padding does.
• If you need a border around a td cell, keep in mind that Google Mail displays a border around a td cell when it’s defined in a div, but not when it’s defined as a border style in a td tag.
• If you need a light-colored link against a dark background color, put the font definition in the td cell (so it applies to p and a tags equally) then add a color: style to the a tag.
• If the p and a fonts appear to be different sizes, wrap the a tag in a p tag.
• Google Mail aggressively uses the right-hand column of the Google Mail user interface, which squeezes the HTML email into the center panel. Be sure the padding style in the content tds is set to 10 pixels all round, so that text does not hit against the left and right edges.
• When testing an HTML email with a Google Mail account, it’s likely that you’ll find that one or more font styles are missing in the td, h1, h2, p, a, and other tags. Inspect every font carefully to make sure Google Mail displays the fonts correctly.

Besides Google Mail, there’s another, less obvious hazard a programmer faces when creating HTML email: Lotus Notes. Many large corporations continue to support and upgrade their Notes installations (as of 2004, IBM reported that 95 million people used Notes).

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to tell which companies use Notes. The best approach is to follow the guidelines described in this article — the more primitive the code, the more likely it will work well, if not perfectly, with Notes.

That said, it’s quite possible that Notes will introduce to your HTML email quirks that are almost beyond belief. For example, the software can convert images to their proprietary formats, or simply ignore flawless basic HTML in one email, but display other HTML fine in another email.

A trial version of Lotus Notes is available for download if you need to test your mail in Notes — see the resource list at the end of the article. Here are a few tips that will help you convince Notes to display your HTML email properly:

• As we discussed previously, use a container table that contains all the internal layout tables (for example, for the header, content, and footer). This keeps the email together in one chunk of HTML, so pieces of the layout are less likely to wander when displayed in Notes.
• Create a gutter around the container table by setting the width to a percentage and/or using a cellpadding of at least 5.
• As I mentioned earlier, avoid using a style declaration in your email’s head tag. It might be the approach that adheres to web standards, but Notes (like Google Mail) might delete your styles. Rely, instead, on inline styles within the table, td, h1, h2, p, a, and other tags.
• Use absolute URLs to images stored on a web server. You can’t do much about Notes converting images, but using remote images might help.
• Intra-email links, using named anchors, rarely (if ever) work in Notes. It’s simply best to avoid links that jump down the email to a specific piece of content.
• Avoid colspans in your HTML tables. Notes — especially its earlier versions — can deal only with basic table layouts.
• Be sure that your td cell widths are accurate. Unlike web browsers, which automatically set all cells to the widest-defined width, Notes sizes each td cell based on its defined width.
• Centering an email layout usually won’t work in Notes. Email layouts generally have to be left-aligned.

Using these techniques to achieve a successful render in Google Mail and Lotus Notes will ensure that your emails also display fine in Outlook 2007, which uses an older HTML rendering engine. Microsoft has published details about what their email software will and won’t display properly; more details can be found in the Resources section at the end of this article).

The Email Standards Project has additional details on CSS support in Outlook 2007, and Microsoft is one of the companies at which their lobbying efforts are targeted.

SUMMARY

Many people who receive email prefer HTML over text for a number of reasons. For programmers, though, the task of creating an HTML email that will display consistently appears both simple and horribly complex. This article has described many of the issues and strategies for creating markup that will work across email software.

What’s the best idea to take away from this article? If there’s a choice to be made between a simple email design and a more complex solution, simplicity is always the safest bet.

How to enable Chrome's Do Not Track option

Google has added a new feature to Chrome: Do Not Track.

Step 1: Click on the drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner of the toolbar and choose Settings.

Step 2: At the bottom of the page that loads, click on Show advanced settings. 

Step 3: Step 3: Under the Privacy heading, check the box next to Send a "Do Not Track" request with your browsing traffic.

As a substitute, You could also try using Incognito mode.