Hands on: Shortcuts and searches

Click and switch
Another new Windows feature came sneaking under the radar this month.

Having downloaded the latest Intellipoint 6.1 software for my Microsoft mouse, I was surprised to see that a wheel-click on a link in Firefox showed a preview of all my open windows, tiled against the desktop with semi-transparent surrounds.

Wafting the pointer over any of these magnifies it slightly, and clicking bri ngs that Window into focus. It’s almost a 2D version of the Vista 3D Flip.

It turns out that this feature is called Instant Viewer, and is the default behaviour of the middle mouse button. Fortunately this can be changed, either globally or on a per-application basis, so after some fiddling I can use Instant Viewer without sacrificing the middle button functionality in Firefox (or Internet Explorer 7).

The button options in Intellipoint 6.1 are impressive – you can re-program each button to 34 different functions, which offers countless ways to render Windows unusable, though it will insist that one button is assigned to ‘Click’. One good point of Instant Viewer is that like Alt & Tab (and unlike the Taskbar) it shows open Control Panel items. One bad point is that it only seems to be available via the mouse – no keyboard shortcut is provided, which seems something of an oversight.

I’ve been taken to task by Graham Rice for stating that the XP onscreen keyboard is a good way to foil keystroke logging. Further investigation shows that it isn’t. It will foil physical devices attached to the keyboard, but stealthy software can capture these ‘keystrokes’ as they are sent to the application, and I’ve since confirmed this using the Lite version of Blazing Tools Perfect Keylogger. Apologies all round.

USB inventions
In the past nine years or so the Universal Serial Bus has not just supplanted the serial and parallel ports of yesteryear, but led to a proliferation of devices. There are sensible things that I’ve bought – scanner, printer, wireless mouse and keyboard, memory sticks, a memory card reader, and, of course, USB hubs to provide parking for all these devices. Then there are the more fanciful things that I’ve been given, including a microscope and a coffee cup warmer.

Pride of place in my collection of daft devices is the Osmooze P@D or Personal Aroma Diffuser which wafts scents around my office with controls designed to ‘choose your own fine programming of the emission cycles, in function of the sensitivity of your nose, the fragrance you use and your olfactory expectation’.

Although the P@D is a hard act to follow, I think that the Wiebetech Mouse Jiggler is a likely candidate. This is a memory key-sized device that simulates random mouse movements to stop the screensaver activating or the PC going into standby mode.

The target market consists of those performing backups or large downloads and forensic experts who need to prevent a password-protected screensaver kicking in when they examine a suspect’s PC.

Oh yeah? Real forensic teams have officers whose sole job it is to wiggle the mouse while their superiors get on with the clever stuff. I suspect this product is primarily designed for practical jokers. Make up your own mind by going to www.wiebetech.com/products/MouseJiggler.php.

The obvious counter to Mouse Jiggling snoopers is to not give them a chance. Let’s assume you have the ‘On resume, display welcome screen’ option ticked and your user account is password protected. After leaving your PC temporarily, you can return to the Welcome screen by using ‘Log off, Switch User’ or pressing the Windows key and L. This will keep all your work in memory, but you will need to log in with your password to get at it.

But what if you are the snooper? Can’t you just turn off the XP screensaver from Display Properties and standby from Power Options? Well yes – unless these have been restricted. Anyone with administrator status can run the Group Policy editor (Start, Run, gpedit.msc).

Navigate to User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Control Panel, Display. Here you’ll find you can enable the password protection, and the timeout for the screensaver. Doing this will disable changing their values in Display Properties.

Restricting power options is more difficult – although you can hide Power Options in Control Panel from User Configuration, Administrative Templates, Control Panel, ‘Hide specified applets,’ this doesn’t stop users running them, by, for example Start, Run, powercfg.cpl.