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Web Accessibility for the visually impaired

Some might say that the World Wide Web is the best thing that ever happened. We read newspapers on the day they're published, order groceries and know the prices before we check out, and find out what titles are on a CD before we make our selection. But unfortunately, not every web page is optimally designed for use by web surfers with visual impairments. 

Learning About Accessible Web Design

If you are serious about making your web site accessible, the most valuable resource available is the Web Access Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium. There you'll find guidelines for making web pages along with explanations and techniques. The content guidelines are found at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT.

You can also visit http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=57&TopicID=167 to learn more about:

• the visually impaired user's technology, and how it affects your design
• important guidelines for improving your web site
• tips and tricks for web developers
• how to design accessible web forms
• how to make your blog accessible
• and lots more.

 

 

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Hi,

Secunia has updated the Secunia Online Software Inspector (OSI) with new
rules for detecting insecure software.

Run the Secunia OSI to make sure that your system is up-to-date:
http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/online/


What is New:

1) Inspection rules have been updated for Opera.


You have received this email because you have subscribed to the Secunia
OSI Reminder Service.

Best regards,

Secunia Support

 

 

The NEW Optelec   MultiView    Designed with YOU in Mind! The Optelec MutiView is a transportable, multipurpose CCTV for document reading, distance, and self viewing.  A versatile 3-in-1 camera and 19" widescreen display has a small footprint, allowing for simple transit and easy storage.  Operational with either the left or right hand, this light weight camera can effortlessly be disconnected from the arm and moved to multiple work stations.    The Optelec MultiView is sure to be the perfect low vision solution for all your needs!! Available November 30, 2009.   For details on the New Optelec MultiView visit us on the web at www.Optelec.com or call 866-999-9188 to find an Optelec Representative in your area. Optelec US, Inc. 3030 Enterprise Court Suite C Vista, California 92081 www.optelec.com    866-999-9188

Forward email This email was sent to by noreply@optelec.com. | Privacy Policy. Optelec US | 3030 Enterprise Court | Suite C | Vista | CA | 92081

The NEW Optelec   MultiView    Designed with YOU in Mind! The Optelec MutiView is a transportable, multipurpose CCTV for document reading, distance, and self viewing.  A versatile 3-in-1 camera and 19" widescreen display has a small footprint, allowing for simple transit and easy storage.  Operational with either the left or right hand, this light weight camera can effortlessly be disconnected from the arm and moved to multiple work stations.    The Optelec MultiView is sure to be the perfect low vision solution for all your needs!! Available November 30, 2009.   For details on the New Optelec MultiView visit us on the web at www.Optelec.com or call 866-999-9188 to find an Optelec Representative in your area. Optelec US, Inc. 3030 Enterprise Court Suite C Vista, California 92081 www.optelec.com    866-999-9188

Forward email This email was sent to by noreply@optelec.com. | Privacy Policy. Optelec US | 3030 Enterprise Court | Suite C | Vista | CA | 92081

 

 

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Windows Firewall with Advanced Security: Step-by-Step Guide: Deploying Windows Firewall and IPsec Policies

This step-by-step guide illustrates how to deploy Active Directory® Group Policy objects (GPOs) to configure Windows Firewall with Advanced Security in Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 R2, and Windows Server 2008.
Although you can configure a single server locally by using Group Policy Management tools directly on the server, that method is not consistent or efficient when you have many computers to configure. When you have multiple computers to manage, create and edit GPOs, and then apply those GPOs to the computers in your organization.
Common scenarios, including firewall rule deployment, server and domain isolation, and IPsec tunnel mode configuration are discussed.
DOWNLOAD HERE

 

 

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Migrating to Windows Small Business Server 2008 from Windows Small Business Server 2003

This document contains step-by-step instructions for migrating to Windows Small Business Server 2008 from Windows Small Business Server 2003.
This guide helps you to install Windows SBS 2008 in Migration Mode on a new server, and then to migrate the settings and data from the old server that is running Windows SBS 2003 to the new server that is running Windows SBS 2008. This guide also helps you demote and remove your old server from the network after you finish the migration process.
DOWNLOAD HERE
 
Windows Small Business Server 2008 Migration Help
This compiled help file contains step-by-step instructions for migrating Windows Small Business Server 2008. This file contains updates to the sbs_migrationCHM.chm help file that ships with Windows SBS 2008. You can find this file in the c:\program files\windows small business server\bin directory of Windows SBS 2008.
DOWNLOAD HERE

Windows Small Business Server 2008 Migration Checklist
Windows Small Business Server is designed to run on a single server and is capable of providing all the services and applications that are needed by a small business. Migration involves moving a customer’s entire IT infrastructure from one set of hardware to another, and this can include line-of-business applications, intranet sites, and user data. Seen from the outside, migration appears to be a complex, daunting task. A successful migration requires an understanding of your customer’s environment, plus knowledge of the steps needed and things to watch for while performing the migration. This migration checklist helps you migrate from Windows SBS 2003 to Windows SBS 2008. It is meant to be used as a quick guide to other tools and in-depth documents. Using this checklist and the other tools, you will be able to complete your migrations successfully for your customers.
DOWNLOAD HERE

 

 

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Internet Explorer 9 Preview

Microsoft this week unveiled a very early version of Internet Explorer 9 and major initiatives around performance, standards compliance, and hardware acceleration.

 

 

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Announcing Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Beta

This morning Microsoft announced the public availability of Beta versions of Microsoft Office 2010. We are also releasing Beta version of Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010. You can download Business Contact Manager Beta from following locations. Check out BCM 2010 overview here.

• Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Beta (32-bit)
• Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Beta (64-bit)
• Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Database Tool
• Business Contact Manager Language Packs (32-bit) (Not available in English)
• Business Contact Manager Language Packs (64-bit) (Not available in English)

Business Contact Manager Beta is now available in six languages- Chinese, English, French, German, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.
 Few important notes:

• This version of Business Contact Manager requires Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Beta. Please don't install this on Microsoft Office 2007 and older, or Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview. First install Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus Beta before installing Business Contact Manager. You can get Office Beta from http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/en/default.aspx
• Office and BCM bitness should be same, i.e. If you install 32-bit (64-bit) Office, install 32-bit (64-bit) BCM.
• Office and BCM languages should be same, i.e. if you install Japanese version of Office, make install Japanese version of BCM. We don't support Office and BCM in different languages.
• Business Contact Manager for Outlook 2010 Database Tool lets you create a BCM database on a machine with SQL Server without having to install Office+BCM. This is useful if you have dedicated server machine that hosts BCM.
• Language packs are supported only with a full English BCM build. If you prefer, you can directly install BCM in your choice of language. Alternatively, you can install English BCM and one or more language packs.
• Database migration is supported from older versions of BCM including BCM 2010 Technical Preview.

Feedback from Technical Preview participants was very helpful in improving the product.  Please try it out and send us your feedback.
Thanks
Mukesh

 

 

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congratulations to the Office for Windows team

It's a big day for my colleagues on the Office for Windows team: at PDC 2009, we announced that Office 2010 is now in public beta.
For your reading pleasure, here's some links with additional details:

• The official press release has an interview with Kurt DelBene, the SVP of the Office Business Productivity Group: Microsoft Office 2010 Reaches Beta, Bringing Productivity Gains to the PC, Phone, and Browser.
• The Office 2010 Engineering blog: Announcing Office 2010 Beta Availability has plenty of details about the new version of Office.
• The Outlook team blog: Announcing Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, which gives some details about new features found in Outlook 2010. (Including support for multiple Exchange supports, which Entourage users will know we've had for ages. ;)
• The PowerPoint team blog: Announcing PowerPoint 2010 Beta Availability has a nice bulleted list (of course!) with information about new features.
• On Twitter, you can follow @office, and there's an #officebeta hashtag too.
• And, of course, Office is on Facebook, too, complete with a quiz to determine which Office app you are. (I'm Excel, in case you're curious. I'm wearing a green shirt today, so I suppose that's fitting.)

Before anyone asks ... the as-yet-unnamed next version of Office:Mac will hit store shelves in time for your holiday buying pleasure next year. I don't yet have beta plans to share, nor can I share specific features or screenshots yet. The second that I get the go-ahead to talk more about it, I'll do so.

 

 

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An Early Look At IE9 for Developers

We’re just about a month after the Windows 7 launch, and wanted to show an early look at some of the work underway on Internet Explorer 9. 
At the PDC today, in addition to demonstrating some of the progress on performance and interoperable standards, we showed how IE and Windows will make the power of PC hardware available to web developers in the browser. Specifically, we demonstrated hardware-accelerated rendering of all graphics and text in web pages, something that other browsers don’t do today. Web site developers will see performance gains and other benefits without having to re-write their sites.
Performance Progress. Browser performance involves many different sub-systems within the browser. Different sites – and different activities within the same site – place different loads and demands on the browser.
For example, two news sites might look similar to a user but have very different performance characteristics. Because of how the developers authored the sites, one site might spend most of its time in the Javascript engine and DOM, while the other site might spend most of its time in layout and rendering. A site that’s more of an “application” than a page (like web-based email, or the Office Web Apps) can exercise browser subsystems in completely different ways depending on the user’s actions.
The chart below shows how much time different sites spends in different subsystems of IE. For example, it shows that one major news site spends most of its time in the script engine and marshalling, while another spends most of its time in script and rendering, and the Excel Web App spends very little of its time running script at all.

Note that this chart shows the percentages of total time spent in each subsystem, not relative time between sites. It focuses on just the primary browsing sub-systems and doesn’t include “frame” functionality (like anti-phishing), or third-party software that’s running in the IE process (like toolbars, or controls like Flash). It also factors out networking since that’s dependent on the users network speed. Notice also that a site’s profile can change significantly across scenarios; for example, the Excel Web App profile for loading a file is quite different from the profile for selecting part of the sheet.

The script engine is just one of these browser subsystems. There are many benchmarks for script performance. One common test of script performance is from Apple’s Webkit team, the SunSpider test. The chart below shows the relative performance of different browsers on the same machine running the SunSpider test.

In addition to IE7 and the current “final release” versions of major browsers, we’ve included the latest pre-release “under development” builds of the major browsers. We’re just about a month after IE8 was released as part of the Windows 7 launch, and the version of IE under development is no longer an outlier. 
It is worth noting that once the differences are this small, the other subsystems that contribute to performance become much more important, and perceiving the differences may be difficult on real-world sites. That said, we remain committed to improving script performance.
We’re looking at the performance characteristics of all the browser sub-systems as real-world sites use them. Our goal is to deliver better performance across the board for real-world sites, not just benchmarks.
Standards Progress. Our focus is providing rich capabilities – the ones that most developers want to use – in an interoperable way.  Developers want more capabilities in the browser to build great apps and experiences; they want them to work in an interoperable way so they don’t have to re-write and re-test their sites again and again. The standards process offers a good means to that end.
As engineers, when we want to assess progress, we develop a test suite that exercises the breadth and depth of functionality. With IE8, we delivered a highly-interoperable implementation of CSS 2.1 and contributed over 7,200 tests to the W3C. Standards that do not include validation tests are much more difficult to implement consistently, and more difficult for site developers to rely on.
Some standards tests – like Acid3 – have become widely used as shorthand for standards compliance, even with some shortcomings. Acid3 tests about 100 aspects of different technologies (many still in the “working draft” stage of standardization), including many edge cases and error conditions. Here’s the latest build of IE9 running Acid3: 

As we improve support in IE for technologies that site developers use, the score will continue to go up. A more meaningful (from the point of view of web developers) example of standards support involves rounded corners. Here’s IE9 drawing rounded corners, along with the underlying mark-up:

Another example of standards support that matters to web developers is CSS3 selectors. Here’s a test page that some people in the web development community put together at css3.info; it’s a good illustration of a more thorough test, and one that shows some of the progress we’ve made since releasing IE8:

Community testing efforts like this one can be helpful. Ultimately, we want to work with the community and W3C and other members of the working groups to define true validation test suites, like the one that we’re all working on together for CSS 2.1, for the standards that matter to developers. For example, this link tests one of the HTML5 storage APIs; some browsers (including IE8) support it today, while others don’t.
The work we do here, both in the product and on test suites, is a means to an end: a rich interoperable platform that developers can rely on. 
Bringing the power of PC hardware and Windows to web developers in the browser. The PC platform and ecosystem around Windows deliver amazing hardware innovation. The browser should be a place where the benefits of that hardware innovation shine through for web developers.
We’re changing IE to use the DirectX family of Windows APIs to enable many advances for web developers. The starting point is moving all graphics and text rendering from the CPU to the graphics card using Direct2D and DirectWrite. Graphics hardware acceleration means that rich, graphically intensive sites can render faster while using less CPU. (This interview includes screen captures of a few examples.) Now, web developers can take advantage of the hardware ecosystem’s advances in graphics while they continue to author sites with the same interoperable standards patterns they’re used to.
In addition to better performance, this technology shift also increases font quality and readability with sub-pixel positioning:

96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom using GDI (note jaggies):

96 point Gabriola on a Lenovo X61 ThinkPad at 100% Zoom: Direct2D (without jaggies):

Last week, Channel 9 interviewed several of the engineers on the team. You can find videos of the interviews here:

Introduction, and Interoperable Standards

Early look at the Script Engine

Hardware accelerated graphics and text in the browser via Direct2D

While we’re still early in the product cycle, we wanted to be clear to developers about our approach and the progress so far. We’re applying the feedback from the IE8 product cycle, and we’re committed to delivering on another version of IE.
Thanks,
Dean Hachamovitch
General Manager, Internet Explorer

 

 

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Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Beta 3 for Windows from Fileforum now.

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Here's what happens when our beloved Scott M. Fulton, III is away from his test machine while covering PDC 2009: you get a Firefox beta announcement with none of the scores, charts, or metrics you're accustomed to getting. Instead you just a plain old "Go download this!" message from yours truly.

Mozilla pushed out the latest beta last night, just a little over a week after we checked out beta 2. Mozilla says more than 80 changes have taken place since the last version came out, and they include the ability to run scripts asynchronously to speed up page load time, and a feature called "component directory lockdown."

Well, it's not really a feature so much as a loose end that was tied up. Component directory lockdown is an extremely simple concept: third party applications no longer have access to the "components" directory, and can only extend Firefox through traditional add-ons and plug-ins.

Johnathan Nightingale explained "component" extensions in the Mozilla Developer Blog this week, "There are no special abilities that come from doing things this way, but there are some significant disadvantages. For one thing, components installed in this way aren't user-visible, meaning that users can't manage them through the add-ons manager, or disable them if they're encountering difficulties. What's worse, components dropped blindly into Firefox in this way don't carry version information with them, which means that when users upgrade Firefox and these components become incompatible, there's no way to tell Firefox to disable them. This can lead to all kinds of unfortunate behaviour: lost functionality, performance woes, and outright crashing ??" often immediately on startup."

If you are running 3.6 beta 2, you can simply go to Help > Check for Updates... to upgrade to beta 3. It can also be downloaded directly from Mozilla.

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2009

 

 

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Dear IT Community Using AT with Cell Phones:

Sincerely,
 
Christopher McMillan, CIO
CEEK Technology
Blog:  http://ceektechnology.spaces.live.com
Web Site:  http://www.ceektechnology.com

 

 

From: mspeak_mailing-bounces@codefactory.cat [mailto:mspeak_mailing-bounces@codefactory.cat] On Behalf Of Caroline Ragot
Sent: Tuesday, November 17, 2009 9:22 AM
To: Mobile Speak/Magnifier Symbian Users List; Mobile Speak/Magnifier Smartphone Users List; Mobile Speak Pocket Mailing List
Subject: [MSpeak] Advantages and Disadvantages of Mobile Speak 4's licensing system

 

Hello all,

Here are the main advantages and disadvantages of Mobile Speak 4's licensing system. We believe it is the best way to answer most of the wishes of our users.

Advantages:

• Cross Platform: you can move your license of Mobile Speak from a Symbian phone to a Windows Mobile device, and vice versa. You can also move your license from a Pocket PC to a Smartphone and vice versa. You won't have to pay an upgrade fee to move your license from Symbian to Smartphone or Pocket PC anymore.
• Compatible with GSM as well as CDMA phones: choosing to tie the license to the phone number allows Mobile Speak to be compatible with GSM as well as CDMA phones. CDMA phones (from Verizon and Sprint for example) do not have SIM card.
• Automatic deactivation: choosing to tie the license to the phone number allows Mobile Speak to perform automatic deactivations. As long as you keep the same phone number you won't have to deactivate your license from the old device before activating it in the new one. You won't have to send certificates of broken or stolen phone to get free user ID resets because there is no need to reset user IDs anymore as the deactivations are now automatic. User ID resets are no longer needed, it is all automatic, you don't have to pay any extra upgrade fee to switch phones, you just have to keep the same phone number.
• Easy to remember: your wireless phone number is your user ID, much easier to remember than a random user ID.
• Untied to your SIM card: if you switch SIM cards which can happen often, you won't have to pay any fee as long as you don't change phone number. For example, you can have to change SIM card if you lose or get your phone stolen, if you lose or damage your SIM card, if you change carrier (depending on the country, some carriers let you keep your phone number when changing service provider), etc.
• Works with multiple personal devices: users who have more than one Symbian or Windows Mobile GSM devices can activate Mobile Speak in all their personal devices using a single license. As long as you keep using the same phone number in each device, and use each device when the SIM card is present, only one license is needed.

Disadvantages:

• PDA only devices won't be supported.
• You can not use the same license in 2 different phones with 2 different phone numbers. You can move your license from one device to another, and use several phones but you always have to use the same phone number.
• A connection to Code Factory's server will be required to activate. If you are a Windows Mobile user you can do it through Active Sync without any additional cost. If you decide to activate by GPRS Internet or SMS there will be a very small cost charged by your service provider.
•  If you change phone number there will be a transfer fee. (All the pricing information will be given by Code Factory's distributors when Mobile Speak 4 is released).

Best Regards,

--
Caroline Ragot
Marketing Director

Follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/codefactory and on our blog at http://codefactoryblog.wordpress.com/

Code Factory
Making mobile phones accessible to the blind and visually impaired.
www.codefactory.es

 

 

 

 

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Did you hear about Microsoft Microsoft Office Web Apps?

Microsoft today announced the start of the Microsoft Office Web Apps Technical Preview program for consumers. Beginning today, a limited number of invitation-only participants will receive access to lightweight versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint on the Web through Windows Live. The Technical Preview is available in English and Japanese, with additional languages to be added later this fall.

Microsoft is also announcing the formal names for the Web-based applications. Together, the applications are called Office Web Apps. Individually, they include Word Web App, Excel Web App, PowerPoint Web App and OneNote Web App.

PressPass: What is the purpose of the Office Web Apps Technical Preview program, and what can we expect at this point?

Schultz: The early Technical Preview program is designed to collect additional customer feedback prior to the broad release of the service. After this Technical Preview milestone, which is focused on consumers, we’ll continue to update the Office Web Apps, leading up to the broadly available beta and the official launch next year, and frequently update the service based on new user feedback after that.

Starting today, a limited number of invitation-only participants will receive access to the Word Web App, Excel Web App and PowerPoint Web App through Windows Live SkyDrive. These Office Web Apps are part of the Office Technical Preview program, which means they aren’t feature-complete yet. The OneNote Web App and additional Office Web App features, including further integration with Microsoft Office 2010, will be available at a later date.

The publish capability is another innovation, allowing Office documents to be embedded in blogs, social networking sites, and other Web sites. This the first in a series of updates you’ll see from Microsoft as we approach the broad beta timeframe for Office Web Apps, so stay tuned!

PressPass: How do Office Web Apps work with Office 2010?

Schultz: The Office 2010 release is designed to deliver a great productivity experience across the PC, mobile phone and browser. More than 500 million customers are familiar with Microsoft Office at work, home and school. Office Web Apps work with Microsoft Office, so there’s no need to learn another program or service.

The great integration with Office gives people the ability to quickly and easily save and open documents from the Web, directly from Microsoft Office 2010. Seamless integration with Windows Live lets people access, edit and share with friends, family and co-workers anywhere.

PressPass: Why are you offering Office Web Apps through Windows Live? What does this mean for Windows Live customers?

Schultz: More than 500 million people around the world use Windows Live, giving our customers a powerful hub to organize their lives. With Windows Live, people can store and share information such as photos, contacts, calendars and documents, all in one place on Windows Live SkyDrive. With the addition of Office Web Apps, people will soon be able to go to Windows Live to create, edit, share and collaborate on Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, OneNote digital notebooks and Excel spreadsheets — online, with high fidelity.

In addition to Windows Live, businesses will be able to get Office Web Apps through volume license agreements and via subscription offering through Microsoft Online Services.

Read more on …

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2009/sep09/09-17officewebapps.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2008/oct08/10-28PDCOffice.mspx

 

 

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Is it OK to Use OEM Windows on Your Own PC? Don't Ask Microsoft

While researching my most recent article, No OEM For You: Windows 7 OEM Packaging is Not For Individuals, I ran into an issue that I should have foreseen: Microsoft's licensing reads like the Dead Sea Scrolls and you need to be an expert in Aramaic to understand it. I don't speak this EULA language, but I know someone who does, Ed Bott. And coincidentally, but not surprisingly, he was actually working on his own post about the OEM versions of Windows 7 when I pinged him. And as he promised, his own more thorough post is now available. It's a must-read.

If Microsoft expects its customers to take license agreements seriously, it has a responsibility to communicate the terms of those agreements to its customers clearly and unambiguously. As I noted earlier this month, Microsoft does a generally poor job of explaining its complicated rules for how Windows licensing works. But I deliberately left one type of Windows license off that list, because it deserves its own special place in the Corporate Communications Hall of Shame.

I’m talking about OEM System Builder licenses for Windows desktop editions. If you look at any online shopping site that caters to PC enthusiasts, you’ll find these copies displayed alongside the upgrade and full license packages that Microsoft says retail customers are supposed to buy.

According to Microsoft, [those who] bought that software and installed it on their own new (or old) PC ... are violating the terms of the OEM System Builder license agreement, which says, in convoluted language, that you must install the software using the OEM Preinstallation Kit and then resell the PC to a third party. If you install that software on your own PC, you don’t have a “genuine” copy of Windows.

Be sure to check out the full post which, thanks to Microsoft's secretive practices, reads like a Dan Brown mystery, except of course that Ed's post is well-written and has to do with EULAs, and not the Masons. You get the idea.

 

 

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Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony [Dual Boot]

Windows 7 and Ubuntu, despite their opposing missions, can get along like best pals on a single computer. Here's how to set up a dual boot system that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds in perfect harmony.

By default, Windows 7 takes over your boot-up process and wants to be your only OS, and Linux treats Windows like a weekend hobby you keep in a shed somewhere on your hard drive. But I've been dual-booting Ubuntu and some version of Windows 7 for nearly a year, and I've learned a lot about inconveniences, annoyances, and file-sharing necessities, and now I'll walk you through how to set up your systems to achieve a peaceful union of your dual-boot OSes. (Both with Windows 7 already installed, and with a clean system ready for a new dual-OS existence.)

Follow through this guide, and I'll explain how to rebuild a system from the ground up with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, with either a backed-up and cleaned-out hard drive (recommended) or Windows 7 already installed. When we're done, you can work and play in either operating system, quickly and conveniently access your documents, music, pictures, and other files without worry or inconvenience, and boot into either system without having to worry about whether Windows is going to get mad at you. Plus, when Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows 8 come along, you'll find it much easier to install either one without having to start over entirely from scratch.

What you'll need

• Windows 7 installation disc: For clean installations, either a full installation copy or an upgrade disc is needed. If you own an upgrade disc but want to start from scratch, there's a way to do a clean install with an upgrade disc, though that's a rather gray-area route. Then again, there's probably not a person on this earth that doesn't have a licensed copy of XP or Vista somewhere in their past.
• Ubuntu 9.10 installation image: You can grab an ISO at Ubuntu.com, or hit "Alternative download options" to reveal a (usually very fast) BitTorrent link. You'll want to get the ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso download for 32-bit systems, or ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent for 64-bit on AMD or Intel systems (despite the name).
• Blank CD or empty USB drive: You'll need one of these for burning the Ubuntu ISO, or loading it for USB boot. If you're going the thumb drive route, grab UNetBootin for Windows or Linux, plug in your USB drive, and load it with the downloaded ISO image.
• All your data backed up: Even if you're pulling this off with Windows 7 already installed and your media and documents present, you'll want to have a fallback in case things go awry. Which they shouldn't, but, naturally, you never know.
• Free time: I'd reckon it takes about 2 hours to pull off two OS installs on a clean system; more if you've got a lot of data to move around.

Setting up your hard drive

If you've got nothing installed on your system, or you've got your data backed up and you're ready to start from scratch, you're in a great position--skip down to the "Partition your system" section. If you've got Windows already installed, you can still make a spot for Ubuntu, though.

(Only) If Windows is already installed: You're going to "shrink" the partition that Windows 7 installed itself on. Before we do that, clean out any really unnecessary applications and data from your system (we like Revo Uninstaller for doing this). Also, open up "Computer" and take note of how much space remains on your main hard drive, presumably labeled "C:". Head to the Start menu, type "disk management" into the search box, and hit Enter.

Windows 7 probably put two partitions on your hard drive: one, about 100 MB in size, holding system restoration data. We don't want to touch it. Right-click on the bigger partition to the right, and choose Shrink Partition.

After a little bit of hard drive activity and a "Please wait" window, you'll get back the size you can shrink your Windows partition by.

If the space Windows offers doesn't jibe with what your Computer view told you was "remaining," you might need to hit Cancel, then head back and defragment your hard drive, and take some of the steps laid out by the How-To Geek. Run the Disk Management tool again and try a Shrink Volume operation again, and free up as much space as you can.

Partition your system: You're aiming to set up a system with three partitions, or sections, to its hard drive: One lean partition for the Windows operating system and applications running from it, another just-big-enough partition for Ubuntu and its own applications, and then a much larger data partition that houses all the data you'll want access to from either one. Documents, music, pictures, application profiles—it all goes in another section I'll call "Storage" for this tutorial.

How do you get there? We're going to use GParted, the Linux-based uber-tool for all things hard drive. You could grab the Live CD if you felt like it, but since you've already downloaded an Ubuntu installer, you can simply boot a "live," no-risk session of Ubuntu from your CD or USB stick and run GParted from there. Once you're inside Ubuntu, head to the System menu in the upper left when you get to a desktop, then choose the Administration menu and GParted under it.

You'll see your system's hard drive and its partitions laid out. You're going to create partitions for Linux and your storage space, but not Windows—we'll let the Windows installation carve out its own recovery partition and operating space. On my own system, I give Windows 15 GB of unallocated space, and Ubuntu another 15 GB of space right after it, with whatever's left kept as storage space. Then again, I've only got a 100 GB hard drive and don't run huge games or applications, so you can probably give your two operating systems a bit more space to grow.

Click on the unallocated space and hit the "New" button at the far left. In the "Free space preceding" section, click and hold the up button, or enter a number of megabytes, to leave space for Windows at the front. When you've got the "space preceding" set, set the actual size of the Ubuntu partition in the "New Size" section, and leave "Free space following" alone. Choose "unformatted" under file system—we'll let Ubuntu do the format itself and hit "Add." Back at the main GParted window, click on the space to the right of your two OS spaces, hit "New" again, and set the file system as "ntfs." Give it a label like "Storage," hit "Add," and at the main GParted window, hit the checkmark button to apply your changes. Once it's done, exit out of GParted and shut down the system from the pull-down menu in the upper-right corner.

If Windows is already installed: If you've shrunk down its partition for free space and booted into a live Ubuntu or GParted, click on the "Unallocated" piece next to the two "ntfs" partitions that represent your Windows 7 installation and system recovery tools. Create a 15(-ish) GB unformatted partition, and give it a label like Ubuntu. If you've got a good deal of space left, format it as "ntfs" and label it something like "Storage." If you can just barely fit the Ubuntu partition, you can just keep your media files in the Windows partition—until you can remedy this with a full wipe-and-install down the line.

Experienced Linux geeks might be wondering where the swap space is going—but don't worry, we'll create one, just not in its own partition.

Installing and configuring Windows

Grab your Windows 7 installation disc—either a full copy or modified upgrade disc, and insert it into your DVD drive. If your system isn't set up to boot from CD or DVD drive, look for the button to press at start-up for "Boot options" or something similar, or hit up your system maker's help guides to learn how to change your boot order in the BIOS settings.

Follow through the Windows 7 installation, being sure to choose "Custom" for the installation method and to point it at that unallocated space we created at the beginning of your hard disk, not the NTFS-formatted media/storage space we made earlier:

Work your way through the Windows 7 installation, all the way until you reach the Windows desktop. Feel free to set up whatever programs or apps you want, but what we really want to do is set up your Storage partition to house your pictures, music, video, and other files, and make your Libraries point to them.

Hit the Start menu, click Computer, and double-click on the hard drive named "Storage" (assuming you named it that earlier). In there, right-click and create new folders (or hit Ctrl+Shift+N) for the files you'll be using with both systems. I usually create folders labeled Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos—I could also see folders for saved games and data files from big software packages. Copy your media files into these folders now, if you'd like, but we've got a bit more tweaking to pull off.

In the left-hand sidebar, you'll see your "Libraries" for documents, music, pictures, and video. At the moment, they point to your Public shared folders and the My Pictures-type folders on your main Windows drive. Click once on any of the Libraries, and at the top of the main panel, you'll see text stating that this library "Includes: 2 locations ...". Click the blue text on "2 locations," then click on each of the folders below and hit "Remove" on the right-hand side. Now hit "Add" and select the corresponding folder on your Storage drive. Do the same for all your music, pictures, videos, and other media folders.

Want to add another library for quick access? Right-click somewhere on the desktop, choose New->Library, and follow the steps.

That's about it for Windows. Now get your Ubuntu CD or USB stick ready and insert it in your system. Ignore whatever auto-play prompts appear, and restart your system.

Installing and configuring Ubuntu

Restart your computer, this time booting from your Ubuntu Live CD or USB boot drive. When your system boots up, choose your language, select "Try Ubuntu without any changes to your computer," and you'll boot into a "live" desktop, run entirely off the CD or USB stick. Once you're booted up, try connecting to the internet from the network icon in the upper-right—it helps during the installation process, ensures your network is working, and gives you something to do (Firefox) while the system installs.

Click the "Install" link on the desktop, and fill out the necessary language/location/keyboard info (most U.S. users can skip through the first 3 screens). When you hit the "Prepare disk space" section, select the "Specify partitions manually" option, then hit Forward. Select the free space that's after your first two Windows partitions with ntfs formats, then hit the "Add" button at bottom. Your partition should already be sized correctly, and the only thing to change is set "/" as a mount point. Here's what your screen should look like:

Click OK, then finish through with the Ubuntu installation. If it catches your Windows 7 installation, it might ask if you want to import settings from inside it—you can, if you'd like, but I usually skip this. Wait for the installation to finish, remove the CD or thumb drive, and reboot your system.

When you start up again, you'll see a list of OS options. The only ones you need concern yourself with are Windows 7 and the top-most Ubuntu line. You can prettify and fix up this screen, change its settings, and modify its order later on. For now, let's head into Ubuntu.

We're going to make the same kind of folder access change we did in Windows. Click up on the "Places" menu, choose "Home Folder," and check out the left-hand sidebar. It's full of links to Documents, Pictures, and the like, but they all point to locations inside your home folder, on the Linux drive that Windows can't read. Click once on any of those folders, then right-click and hit Remove.

You should see your "Storage" partition in the left-hand sidebar, but without that name—more like "100GB filesystem." Double-click it, type in the administrator password you gave when installing, and you'll see your Documents, Music, etc. Click and drag those folders into the space where the other folders were, and now you'll have access to them from the "Places" menu, as well as any file explorer window you have open.

Ubuntu won't "mount," or make available, your Windows 7 and Storage drives on boot-up, however, and we at least want constant access to the Storage drive. To fix that, head to Software Sources in the System->Administration menu. From there go to Applications, then the Ubuntu Software Center at the bottom. Under the "Ubuntu Software" and "Updates" sections, add a check to the un-checked sources, like Restricted, Multiverse, Proposed, and Backports. Hit "Close," and agree to Reload your software sources.

Finally! Head to the Applications menu and pick the Ubuntu Software Center. In there, search for "ntfs-config," and double-click on the NTFS Configuration Tool that's the first result. Install it, then close the Software Center. If you've got the "Storage" or Windows 7 partitions mounted, head to any location in Places and then click the eject icon next to those drives in the left-hand sidebar. Now head to the System->Administration menu and pick the NTFS Configuration Tool.

You'll see a few partitions listed, likely as /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, and the like. If you only want your storage drive, it should be listed as /dev/sda3 or something similar--just not the first or second options. Check the box for "Add," click in the "Mount point" column to give it a name (Storage, perhaps?), and hit "Apply." Check both boxes on the next window to allow read/write access, and hit OK, and you're done. Now the drive with all your stuff is accessible to Windows and Linux at all times.

Adding swap to Ubuntu

"Swap" memory is a section of the hard drive that your system's memory spills over into when it gets full and busy. Until recently, I'd been creating a whole separate partition for it. Recently, though, I've found that swap isn't always necessary on systems with a large amount of memory, and that swap can simply be a file tucked away on your hard drive somewhere.

Follow the Ubuntu help wiki's instructions for adding more swap, but consider changing the location they suggest putting the swap file—/mnt/swap/ for the place your Storage is held—/media/Storage, in my case.

Share Firefox profiles and more

That's about it for this guide to setting up a harmonious Windows and Ubuntu existence, but I recommend you also check out our previous guide to using a single data store when dual-booting. It explains the nitty-gritty of sharing Firefox, Thunderbird, and Pidgin profiles between Linux and Windows for a consistent experience, as well as a few other dual-boot tricks.

You might also want to consider creating virtual machines with VirtualBox for those moments when you're in one OS and need to get at the other. Ubuntu is free to create as many instances as you want, of course, and Windows 7 (Professional and Ultimate) are very friendly with non-activated copies—not that either can't be otherwise activated in cases where it's just a double-use issue.

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What'd I miss that makes Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 get along even better? What needs clarifying or fixing? Tell us your questions and solutions in the comments.

 

 

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