Tech Talk site update

15. October 2008 by Myke.

As a lot of you know, our host company unoanduno.com (trying to be as nice as possible), killed the blog sites for about 9 days.  We are back up and running but have been slammed lately with so many projects.  We will post very soon once we catch our breath.

Cheers!

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HP Acquires LeftHand Networks

1. October 2008 by Myke.

HP Acquires LeftHand Networks to Extend Leadership in Storage and Virtualization Solutions

PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 1, 2008 - HP today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire LeftHand Networks Inc., a leading provider of storage virtualization and iSCSI storage area network (SAN) solutions.

LeftHand Networks’ solutions enable midsize companies and remote offices or branches of large corporations to easily and cost-effectively protect critical business data. HP has agreed to purchase LeftHand Networks for $360 million in cash, subject to certain purchase price adjustments.

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks is privately held and headquartered in

Boulder, Colo. It has 215 employees and more than 500 resellers and distributors worldwide. The company has more than 11,000 installations across 3,000 different customers.

A pioneer of iSCSI SAN technology, LeftHand Networks delivers scalable storage software on industry-standard hardware that supports existing technology environments. LeftHand Networks’ portfolio extends HP virtualization solutions to the midmarket with software that runs on both existing storage and industry-standard server hardware, reducing training time and overall complexity. As a result, companies can move to a SAN for significantly lower cost, manage their data more easily, and scale their storage infrastructures incrementally as their businesses grow.

Additionally, for certain virtualized environments, LeftHand Networks’ intelligent cloning technology can reduce the amount of disk space required for storage by up to 97 percent,⁽¹⁾ while its thin provisioning features reduce power consumption by minimizing the over-provisioning of storage.

In addition, LeftHand Networks also features advanced data replication technology with bandwidth management and failover protection. This makes it ideal for backup and disaster recovery operations between remote offices and a central location.

With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions. Customer needs at the low end of the market will be met with the HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System (AiO) and HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) product lines. The high end will be addressed by the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) line. Customers will further benefit since LeftHand Networks’ solutions are already certified to work with a wide range of HP products, including HP ProLiant servers, HP BladeSystem infrastructure, HP ProCurve Networking and HP Insight Control management software.

“Customers need a faster, less complex and more economical route to storage networking to better protect their critical business data,” said Dave Roberson, senior vice president and general manager, StorageWorks Division, HP. “The acquisition of LeftHand Networks significantly expands our storage portfolio, enabling HP to deliver customers an expanded suite of storage functionality, scalable capacity and interconnect options for every budget and performance requirement. With our strong channel and leading position in the industry-standard server market, we are ideally positioned to deliver this technology to customers worldwide.“

“Joining with HP is a natural fit for our customers and channel partners, giving them an expanded portfolio of server, storage and networking products and services that are already supported by LeftHand Networks’ solutions,” said Bill Chambers, chief executive officer, LeftHand Networks. “The combination of LeftHand Networks’ virtualization technologies with HP’s has the power to significantly accelerate server consolidation projects by making the deployment of shared storage much easier and more cost-effective.”

The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to be completed in HP’s first fiscal quarter of 2009. Following completion, the business will be integrated into the HP StorageWorks division within the Technology Solutions Group at HP.

More information about HP StorageWorks is available at www.hp.com/go/storage.

About LeftHand Networks

Founded in 1999, LeftHand Networks pioneered IP-based storage area networks (SANs). SANs built using LeftHand Networks’ SAN/iQ® software are uniquely able to distribute and protect data across a cluster of industry-standard storage servers. The company’s patented architecture increases data availability, allows users to start small and grow the SAN seamlessly, and simplifies management. The LeftHand SAN is ideal for storage and server consolidation, multi-site SANs and disaster recovery. LeftHand SANs are available in the United States, Canada and throughout

Europe. For more information, contact LeftHand Networks at info@lefthandnetworks.com.

About HP

HP, the world’s largest technology company, provides printing and personal computing products and IT services, software and solutions that simplify the technology experience for consumers and businesses. HP completed its acquisition of EDS on Aug. 26, 2008. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

Note to editors: More news from HP, including links to RSS feeds, is available at http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/.

⁽¹⁾ Based on preliminary findings with two hundred 10 GB intelligent cloning volumes.

This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including the expected benefits and costs of the transaction; management plans relating to the transaction; the expected timing of the completion of the transaction; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits may not materialize as expected; risks related to the timing or ultimate completion of the transaction; and other risks that are described in HP’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended July 31, 2008 and HP’s other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including but not limited to HP’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2007. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.

2008 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

http://www.lefthandnetworks.com/pressreleasedetailredirect.aspx?oid=27d44bc6-ef0a-4260-a0db-db92a9d8beba

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Google Chrome - The Power Users Guide

26. September 2008 by Myke.

Mousing Around Chrome

Despite its marketing as a minimalistic browser that forgoes all the extras, Chrome’s interface actually sports quite a few useful features. Here are a few that will speed up your browsing with the mouse even more:

• Click and hold (or right-click) the Back or Forward button to go directly to a page far behind or forward in your browsing history.
• When you’ve got a URL on your clipboard, right-click Chrome’s address bar to Paste and goto your destination (and save yourself an extra tap on the Enter key).
• Click and drag any textarea corner to resize it to your liking; great for blog comments, web email, or forums with textareas that aren’t big enough to accommodate your masterpiece.
• Ctrl+Mousewheel to zoom in or out of pages in Chrome.
• Drag and drop downloads out of Chrome’s status bar and onto your desktop to save them there, or into any Explorer window to save them there. (You already know you can drag and drop a Chrome tab out into a new window, or back into an existing Chrome window to dock it there.)

Chrome’s Keyboard Shortcuts

If you’re not much for the mouse, you’re in luck: Google Chrome has lots of built-in keyboard shortcuts, many of which mirror Firefox’s—so you don’t have to retrain your fingers. Here are a few of our favorites:

• (Chrome only) Ctrl+B toggles the bookmarks bar on and off.
• (Chrome only) Shift+Escape opens Google Chrome’s Task Manager.
• Ctrl+L to move your cursor to the address bar.
• Ctrl+K moves your cursor to the address bar to enter a Google search.
• Ctrl+T opens a new tab.
• Ctrl+N opens a new window.
• Ctrl+Shift+T opens the last closed tab.
• (Chrome only) Ctrl+Shift+N opens a new window in “Incognito Mode.”
• Ctrl+Tab cycles through open tabs; Ctrl+Shift+Tab reverse cycles through open tabs.
• Ctrl+J opens the Downloads tab.
• Ctrl+W closes the current tab.
• Ctrl+R refreshes the current page.
• Ctrl+H opens the History tab.
• Alt+Home loads your homepage.
• Ctrl+1 through 9 switches to a particular open tab position.
• Ctrl++, Ctrl+-, Ctrl+0 Enlarges, reduces, and restores default text sizes, respectively.

Tweak Your Options

Hit up Chrome’s Options dialog (click on the wrench, and choose Options) to customize Chrome’s behavior even more.

• Set multiple tab as your home page. While Chrome’s default thumbnail page of your most visited sites is pretty cool, you might want to just skip that step and set the browser to open certain tabs every time. Like Firefox, Chrome can set several tabs as your homepage. In the Options’ dialog Basics area, under “Open the following pages,” enter the URLs.
• Open the last session’s tabs automatically. Also like Firefox, Chrome can automatically restore the tabs from your last browser session. In that same Options area as above, just select “Restore the pages that were open last.”
• Add the home button to your toolbar. Chrome’s toolbar is pretty sparse by design, but once you’ve set your homepage(s), you might want to get to them in one click. In the Options dialog’s Basics tab, you can also check off “Show Home button on the toolbar.”
• Set your default Downloads save location. Also in Options—but under the “Minor Tweaks” tab—you can set Chrome’s default download location to something other than the “My Documents” folder.

Master Chrome’s Startup Switches

Like all good open source software, Chrome comes with a long list of “startup switches”—that is, parameters you can use when you launch the program to customize its behavior. While most of the switches are only useful to developers, a handful let power users do some handy stuff.

Quick primer: To use a startup switch, create a new Chrome shortcut on your desktop (or elsewhere). Right-click it and choose Properties. In the Target field, add the switch in question immediately following the path to chrome.exe. For example, your target using a -disable-java switch might look like:

“C:\Documents and Settings\gina\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” -disable-java

Here are some things you can do with Chrome’s startup switches.

Tweak the number of suggestions the address bar offers. Increase or reduce the number of suggestions in the address bar drop-down using the -omnibox-popup-count switch. For example, to increase it to 10 suggestions, use -omnibox-popup-count=10. [via The How-To Geek]

Create and maintain multiple user profiles. Since Chrome learns so much from your usage patterns, you might want to create more than one user personality based on the task at hand. For example, you can set up a “work Chrome” and a “play Chrome” user profile (like you can with Firefox’s user profiles). While Chrome doesn’t offer a handy utility to create new profiles like Firefox does, all it takes is creating a new user directory, and then using Chrome’s --user-data-dir startup switch to point it there. The Digital Inspiration blog runs down how to create and use multiple profiles in Chrome.

Speed up browsing by disabling functionality. When you want to surf Flash-free, Java-free, or even Javascript-free (even though that’s not really the point of Chrome, but whatever), there’s a list of -disable Chrome startup switches that can block plug-ins, content, or features you don’t want, like:

-disable-dev-tools-disable-hang-monitor-disable-images-disable-java-disable-javascript-disable-logging-disable-metrics-disable-metrics-reporting-disable-plugins-disable-popup-blocking-disable-prompt-on-repost

Always start Chrome in a maximized window. Take advantage of all that screen real estate you’ve got with Chrome. Using the -start-maximized startup switch, the browser will fill your screen on launch, automatically.

Themes

Dress up Google Chrome to your liking by downloading a Chrome theme and saving itsdefault.dll file into the application’s Themes directory. Update, 9/9/2008: Link to Chrome theme download source updated.

For Windows XP users, by default that folder is:

C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application.2.149.29\Themes\

In Windows Vista it’s:

C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\0.2.149.29\Themes\

(Note if Google Chrome updates, you may have to change the version number in this path.)

Reveal Chrome’s Secret Diagnostic Info

While Chrome doesn’t have Firefox’s super-handy about:config area, it does have several about: pages that show you all sorts of interesting information about what’s going on behind the scenes. Check out Google Chrome’s full list of hidden about: pages here.

Get Extras: Bookmarklets, AutoHotkey Scripts, and More Chrome-Related Downloads

While Google Chrome doesn’t support extensions (yet), several macros, bookmarklets, and other third-party extras can make working with Chrome easier. Here’s a quick list.

• Block ads in Google Chrome with Privoxy. Using free web proxy and ad-blocking software Privoxy, you can block distracting advertisements in Google Chrome.
• Create Custom Chrome keyboard shortcuts with AutoHotKey. Our favorite Windows macro scripting language, AutoHotKey, can make browsing with Chrome via the keyboard even easier. Here’s a full Chrome shortcut AHK file that adds nine keyboard shortcuts (including the much-needed “Paste and go” shortcut).
• Preview a web site’s RSS feeds, or print a page in one click with bookmarklets. Without toolbars or extensions, plain old bookmarklets come in very hand. Here’s a bookmarklet that auto-detects and previews a web site’s feed. Here’s one that will print the current page. (You can also just hit the Ctrl+P keyboard shortcut).
• Open pages from Firefox in Chrome. If you’re browsing in both Firefox and Chrome and like to use Chrome for certain pages, the Open in Google Chrome Firefox extension does just that. With it installed, set certain links to open in Chrome, or select a link and choose “Open in Chrome” manually from the context menu.
• Run Chrome from your thumb drive. When you’re in IT lockdown or traveling from computer to computer (but want to keep your Chrome settings), you want theportable, standalone version of Chrome (free download).
• Anonymize your Chrome surfing. Chrome Anonymizer scrambles your unique ID and makes it impossible for anyone to track what you’re doing in Chrome.

Shuck off Google’s Branding and Go Open Source with Chromium

Switch to the more frequently updated and open source version of the Chrome browser, called Chromium. Google expert Phillip Lennsen Ionut Alex Chitu explains:

Do you want Google Chrome without Google’s branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check out Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.

Speaking of updating, you can keep on top of frequent Chromium builds using theChrome Nightly Builds Updater utility.

Look Forward to What’s Coming

Word on the street is that Chrome is coming for Mac and Linux users, as are extensions—plus it’ll be in Google’s upcoming mobile phone operating system, Android. (Linux users, if you can’t want for Chrome and don’t want to build Chromium yourself, here’s how to run Google Chrome in Ubuntu with WINE.)

What are your favorite Google Chrome tips and tricks? Shout ‘em out in the comments.

posted by: Myke Reinhold

info from: lifehacker.com http://lifehacker.com/5045904/the-power-users-guide-to-google-chrome 

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Cabling - Know when to walk away

10. September 2008 by Myke.

If you are like us, you have been called in to give an estimate on cleaning up some cabling work.  You walk in and within an instant you decide your company no longer cables.  We are gathering some photos now of some of the worst cabling jobs you have encountered.  We all want a clean and pretty data center, but sometimes you have to know when to say “no”.

         

And we save the best for last…

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Google Chrome all set to launch

2. September 2008 by Myke.

On September 2, 2008 Google will launch the first public beta version of Google Chrome.  With a list of features and cool little gadgets, they are making a move to battle Microsoft even more.

It’s entirely open-source.

It will have a built-in JavaScript virtual machine, called V8, which will radically speed up JavaScript performance in the browser.

The address bar has an auto-complete feature called Omnibox. Omnibox will offer search suggestions, pages you have recently visited, as well as others you have not but are popular around the Internet.

Anything that runs in a tabbed window will be sandboxed, meaning that it won’t affect your machine.

The default home page will show your last nine visited websites as thumbnails, as well as your recent searches and bookmarks.

Has a special privacy mode, called ‘Incognito’, which is a window where nothing that occurs in there will ever be logged on your computer.

Yes my fellow Beavis and Butthead fans, we said incognito.  We will be running this first thing tomorrow and testing the “incognito” features in a corporate environment.

More details to come…

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IE8 and it’s backwards incompatibility???

30. August 2008 by Myke.

Microsoft has officially launched it’s Beta version of Internet Explorer 8.  If you have been hiding under a rock in the IT world recently here is a list of “cool” new features of IE8.

Accelerators - Accelerators let you efficiently complete your everyday browsing activities like mapping directions, translating words, emailing your friends, and more in just a few mouse clicks.

InPrivate Browsing - Browse the web without saving your history with Internet Explorer 8’s InPrivate Browsing. Now you can “shop for that special gift” with confidence knowing your family won’t accidentally find out or use a shared computer without leaving a trace.  More like surf the Internet for PORN without your significant other or boss knowing.

Web Slices - Keep up with changes to the sites you care about most. Add a Web Slice and you won’t have to go back to the same website again and again for updates on news, stock quotes, online auctions, weather, or even sports scores.

Search suggestions - Search smarter with detailed suggestions from your favorite search providers and browsing history. See visual previews and get suggested content topics while you type in the enhanced Instant Search Box.

SmartScreen Filter - New security features help to protect you against deceptive and malicious websites which can compromise your data, privacy and identity.

Pretty cool but after a recent quote from Microsoft that was either misheard or elaborated by the MFIA (Mozilla Firefox Intelligence Agency), someone has some explaining to do.

“The core web rendering engine in IE8 is compliant with web standards, but we have also tried to maintain compatibility with sites written specifically for older versions of IE,” says Ryan Servatius, senior product manager at Microsoft’s Internet Explorer division.  This actually sounds pretty cool so far.

The new browser will come with a ‘compatibility button’, which users can click if they stumble across a site that was designed for older versions of the software. Once pressed, the page will reload in ‘compatibility mode’.  Again, sounds great so far to me.

“Sites that are specifically written for IE will not display properly. Many people probably will not ever use the compatibility button that Microsoft has built into IE8, which means some sites will not work and the user will get a message saying the site needs Internet Explorer.”  Huh???  Come again my man.  Maybe I am misreading this but it sounds like you know that a lot of sites will not even work and most people will never even know why.  I think you need ot go back to your marketing team and re-phrase that statement…maybe.

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Comcast gets slapped, then locks down bandwidth usage

30. August 2008 by Myke.

After the FCC ruled against Comcast and it’s illegal bandwidth throttling, they moved forward with publishing that all “excessive users” will be subjected to a possible warning and/or disconnection of service. Now granted the usage threshold you get to hit is 250GB per month, but those of us in the IT world know we can hit that with ease.  For the average Joe at home using the Internet for his bills, surfing and day trading this will be just fine as they will never hit that mark.  I still hate Comcast and their service and their lack of customer service.  Let’s just say I am one of MANY dissatisfied ex-customers of Comcast.  Just like my favorite Comcast haters Travis “Sugar Bear” Sarbin and Mona Shaw.

Let me give some advice to those over at Comcast that make the high level decisions.  A very large community of IT professionals and hard core gamers used/use your service because it was good and it worked great.  But then you basically slapped all of us in the face and said, “sorry, we no longer want your business”.  Ever since a group of us in Denver, CO switched over to QWest DSL we have been made happy again.  We can do business/work/pleasure all at the same speeds without any interference from QWest.  Do not crap on the best customers you can have.  We will hardly ever call you for service unless it is down or being throttled so you spend less money working with us.  You screwed up and are now are paying for it with large amounts of us leaving your service.  Goodbye and good riddance.

posted by: Myke Reinhold

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Customize/Create Outlook Web Access 2007 Themes

27. August 2008 by Myke.

OWA 2007 comes stock with 4 themes but if you require more or want to make a Corporate based theme, use these instructions.

A theme in OWA is a collection of media (e.g. .GIF and .WAV files) and .CSS files. These files are installed in folders under in the vroot under ‘version\themes’.

Out of the box, we ship with three themes: blue “Seattle Sky” (folder name ‘base’) and black “Carbon Black” (folder name ‘1′) and a mountain image “Olympic Sunrise” (folder name ‘2′). Customers can add more themes by creating new folders and adding their own customized files.

We recommend here that you optimize your theme by changing only the logo, top banner area and the selection highlights so the theme will have less potential for destabilization and bugs. Using very bright or very light dark for the selection colors and the top banner are not advised - try to use subtle or primary colors for the banner area and medium-hued colors for the selection/highlight colors. If you want to use darker or very light colors, you’ll need to also adjust the text for the appropriate level of contrast and the best legibility by testing on various monitors at different resolutions.

The base theme

The base theme lives under ‘themes\base’ and it contains all of the themeable files. Any other themes are built by overriding files in the base theme.

Say for example the base theme is made of files A, B, C and D. I can create a new theme by changing say, C and D, and leaving A and B untouched. Thus for the new theme, C and D will come from the new theme folder, while A and B will come from the base theme.

What’s in a theme folder

The two most important types of files in a theme folder are icons (GIF files) and styles (CSS files). Specifically, premium.css is the style sheet file for Premium OWA (the OWA Light client is not themeable).

Premium.css can be edited to change things like colors, gradients and font styles.

The GIF files can be edited to change any icons in the UI. Keep in mind that the sizes of the images should not be changed.

This is an improvement over Titanium, where only a handful of GIFs could be themed (the logo and a couple of others), and only the colors in the .CSS file could be changed.

How to install a theme

Create a new folder under version\themes (e.g. “themes\viayoga”).

Copy the files from the base theme that you will want to alter for your new theme. If for example, you want to change the logo, then copy ‘logop.gif’ from ‘themes\base’ to ‘themes\viayoga. The viayoga folder at this point will contain only one file. If you also want to change some of the styles, then copy premium.css. You can do this with any files in the base theme. As they are copied to the new theme folder, the theming engine will pull the modified files from the ‘viayoga’ folder while still using the unchanged files from the ‘base’ theme.

You can give a name to the theme in two ways:

Adding a file called themeinfo.xml and specifying the name in it (see below).

Leave it like this, and the name will come from the folder name (in this case, “viayoga”).

Restart IIS so OWA automatically picks up the new theme.

Themeinfo.xml

The syntax of this optional file is very simple:

<theme displayname=”theme name“/>

If present, the value of the displayname attribute is used as the name of the theme.

The themes we ship with contain a macro like this:

<theme displayname=”$$_BASE_$$”/>

…which we use internally to map to localized strings.

How to create themes

First, start by setting up the theme without changing any files. Create a new folder under themes (call it ‘test theme’), then copy premium.css, logopt.gif, logopb.gif and nbbkg.gif (the files for the top banner “brand bar”) to begin with, which are probably the first files that you will be editing for your theme.

Changing the top banner can be done most easily using a solid color or a vertical gradient similar to what is already in place. Your custom nbbkg.gif (repeating background image) can be any width but must remain the same height.

If you want to include a more complex or interesting image as your background, be sure to create the right and left edges as a mirror so that the strip meets when it repeats and appears as a single image so it will work on a variety of screen resolutions. Or, you can create one long image for the target width you’d like to support.

Looking at these files in an image editing tool, you can see that logopt.gif and logopb.gif are the top and bottom of the OWA logo including a background, and nbbkg.gif is a gif that repeats as the background.

We split the images up so that we can add “Connected to Microsoft Exchange” as a live text string that can be localized into different languages. You can create one image and remove this string by editing the style sheet. Simply add “display:none” to the tdLogoB class, then save your image as one piece, 238 x 49 pixels, and edit the height of the image here:

}

td.tdLogoT

{

width:238;

height:49;

background:url(”logopt.gif”) no-repeat

}

td.tdLogoB

{

vertical-align:top;

height:16;

padding-left:42;

font-size:7pt;

font-family:tahoma;

color:#EEEEEE;

background:url(”logopb.gif”) no-repeat;

display:none;

}

Example theme

As an example, we created a theme for a Seattle yoga company that provides yoga retreats and surfing lessons in Mexico (yes, you should go!).

We removed the “Connected to…” string by editing the style sheet as shown above. You can see how it looked before and after editing the style sheet and adjusting the images slightly. The background image is simply filled with a solid, bold color. The resulting background image - nbbkg.gif - only needs to be 1 pixel wide.

Changing colors and other styles in premium.css is the tricky part:

Use an image editing tool like PhotoShop or PainShop Pro to take screenshots and sample colors that you want to change. For instance, to change the yellow color of the selected module in the secondary navigation:

First, obtain the html RGB values (#RRGGBB) for that yellow: that value is #FFEFB2.

Then look for this in premium.css:

/* NavBar buttons selection color */

a.nbHiLt

{

background-color:#FFEFB2;

}

Here’s where the tricky part comes. In debug builds, we know this is the color because in most cases we have a comment above the style. As an OWA dev, we also have access to the sources so we can verify this is the color we want. For people without access or familiarity with the source code, this is a trial and error process: guess if this is the right style by the name of the class (which is relatively hard, because our names are shortened and not too easy to decipher unless you are an OWA dev), then apply the change, refresh your browser and see if you are lucky.

Continue changing the colors until the theme is starting to look right to you. For some pieces of the interface, there are two values specified for each end of a gradient, when a lighter color blends into a darker color. These work best with lighter hues of colors.

When creating your theme, you may find a color and want to do a straight find and replace action on the entire style sheet file. Be careful when doing this. For the areas defined as gradients (Find = “gradient” to see all the instances of these) you might accidentally change all the light grays to your new highlight color. Try saving and refreshing your build with your new theme selected in Options > General Settings > Appearance in order to make sure you’ve changed only the intended elements.

We don’t recommend changing the colors of the red and yellow informational messages that appear at the top of the message forms, alerting users to potentially harmful content, phishing attacks, viruses and blocked or missing content. We call these “infobars” (non-phishing are yellow:#FFEFB2 ) and “error infobars” (errors and phishing alerts are light red:#FFAEB9). There is also an infobar for meeting conflicts on meeting invitations:

/* Non-phishing infobar messages */

div#divIB div#dvExp, div#divIB div#dvInf, div#divIB div#dvExpErr, div#divIB div#dvErr,

div#divIB div#dvJnkMl

{

margin:2 0;

padding:1 3;

background-color:#FFEFB2;

border:solid 1 #FDD981;

}

/* Phishing */

div#divIB div#dvPhsh

{

padding:1 3;

background-color:#FFAEB9;

border:solid 1 #FF99CC;

Main Selection Colors

Selection in mail list is probably one of the most important highlight colors. This is the color over the selected message which tells users what item they are currently reading. There is a primary color to indicate focus and a secondary highlight color that is slightly lighter to show selection when the focus moves away from the item, like the currently selected folder or the current day in the Calendar. For each theme, these two colors are the same color that we use for the primary and secondary highlight colors.

Shown below, the primary color is on the left, the secondary color on the right. You can see the difference is quite subtle.

In the premium.css style sheet, this highlight in the mail list is specified as:

tr.sel, tr.srsel, tr.lrsel

{

background-color: #FFEFB2;

color:#000000;

}

tr.shdw, tr.srshdw, tr.lrshdw

{

background-color:#F8F0D2;

Icons

In order to change icons, the process is quite similar, find out which icon it is you want to change in your theme, copy it to your theme folder and then change it there. Then verify the change in the product with your new theme name selected. We use .gif files with transparent backgrounds. Make sure to keep the image sizes unchanged.

Customize the Logon Screen

To customize the logon (and log off) screen, update the images and the background color to create a custom look. You can create your own custom look and feel by updating the image files that create the logon screen. Note that the logon screen cannot be customized per theme since the user needs to enter their credentials and be authenticated prior to accessing their own user settings (theme selection) for each session. Therefore, you’ll need to directly manipulate the files in the base folder starting with the style sheet “logon.css” and the images that create the border and the main logo for the screen.

The screen is made up of several images for the border top, bottom, sides and also includes repeating images and corners for expansion. The images that create the logon screen are:

lgnbotl.gif

lgnbotm.gif

lgnbotr.gif

lgnexlogo.gif

lgnleft.gif

lgnright.gif

lgntopl.gif

lgntopm.gif

lgntopr.gif

To create a new look and feel, using a solid color is easiest since the screen uses the same collection of images for several screens and resizes horizontally and vertically based on the contents for each screen: logon, language selection (shown on the first logon per mailbox), and the log off screen that’s shown each time the user presses the Log Off button.

Before changing the images, you can make a backup of the image files in case you need to revert your changes to the original configuration. Start by opening the Microsoft Outlook Web Access logo (lgntopl.gif):

…and change it to your own company logo:

Here is a general idea of how all of the new image files will fit together on the logon screen:

Logon Screen: background color

Editing the logon.css is necessary if you want to change font styles and other colors, including the background color that exists behind the controls in the middle of the screen. Currently the background color is specified as #7F90B1. For our custom logon for Via Yoga, we need to replace this with orange #E48310 for the area behind the controls that is not colored by the other images.

Logon Screen: active text color

The active text color on the existing OWA logon screen is yellow: #F8D328 since that stood out best on the blue background as a secondary font color. We’ll want to change this for Via Yoga, but we still want the primary white text to come into focus first so we’ll leave all that text white. We’ll change the active text to the same blue used elsewhere in this theme to indicate that something is active or “clickable.” That blue RGB value is #266CBC. Do a find and replace to make this color change in the logon.css.

Logon Screen: final details

After logging off, this is looking pretty good, but the lines used to separate text and form elements are hard to see in the existing gray #A9AAC4. Open the logon.css file and find that color value. Change it to something a little lighter than your background but darker than the text so that the text still stands out as the most important information on the screen. We replaced the gray with a light orange RGB value #FFC279.

Voila - looks good:

posted by: Myke Reinhold
Info credit: Jorge Pereira and DJ Schwend

Posted in Exchange, Microsoft | Print | No Comments »

Applying Managed Folder Mailbox Policies via LDAP Filters

27. August 2008 by Myke.

In Exchange 2003 Mailbox Manager Policies could be applied to subsets of mailboxes using LDAP filters the same way Recipient Policies were applied. 

In Exchange 2007 this behavior changed.  Mailbox Manager Policies are now called Managed Folder Mailbox Polices and they are assigned on a per user level.  This new methodology allows more granularity and eliminates some of the confusion about which policy is being applied. 

However, in some cases the ability to apply these policies via LDAP filters is desired and the change is cumbersome.  If you prefer the filtered method for applying policies, you can write a script using the PowerShell function below:

functionApply-FilteredManagedFolderMailboxPolicies ($LDAPFilter, $ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy){      $root = [ADSI]”      $searcher = New-ObjectSystem.DirectoryServices.DirectorySearcher($root)      $searcher.Filter = $LDAPFilter      $searcher.PageSize = 500      $users = $searcher.findall()      foreach ($user in $users){            $UserDN = [String] $user.properties.distinguishedname            if ($UserDN -notlike “*SystemMailbox*”){                  $mailbox = get-mailbox $UserDN                  if ($mailbox.RecipientTypeDetails -ne “LegacyMailbox”){                        write-host “Updating: $UserDN”                        Set-Mailbox -Identity:$UserDN-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy:$ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicyAllowed:$true                  }            }      }}

This function will search your current domain for user accounts that match the supplied LDAP filter.  For each user returned, the account is checked to ensure that the mailbox is hosted on an Exchange 2007 server and will set the Managed Folder Mailbox Policy as desired.

Combining with the LDAP filters you have already created for your existing Mailbox Manager Policies, you can easily write a script to apply the appropriate policies via filters.

#Usage:#Apply-FilterdManagedFolderMailboxPolicies $LDAPFilter $PolicyName 

# Default PolicyApply-FilteredManagedFolderMailboxPolicies “(&(&(& (mailnickname=*) (| (&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(|(homeMDB=*)(msExchHomeServerName=*))) ))))” $null 

 

# Delete after 180 days policyApply-FilteredManagedFolderMailboxPolicies “(&(&(&(& (mailnickname=*) (| (&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(|(homeMDB=*)(msExchHomeServerName=*))) )))(objectCategory=user)(memberOf=CN=Delete After 180 Days,CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=com)))” “180 day policy” 

When writing the script, remember that the precedence of your policies should be lowest to highest.  The first policy you should apply should be your default policy (or $null if you don’t want one) and the last policy should be your most restrictive filter with the highest precedence.

In this example, the default action is to no assign policy.  The “180 day policy” is applied to the members of the “Delete After 180 Days” group.

When using groups to apply policies it is important to remember that there must be a default policy in your script so that once a user is removed from the defined group, the existing policy applied will be updated to the default policy.

About LDAP Filters

To get the LDAP filters used with existing Mailbox Manager policies simply open the policy and copy the text in the Filter Rules:textbox.   Paste this filter encompassed in quotes into your script and you will be good to go.

If you want to manually create your own LDAP search string you can use the information at Creating an LDAP Search String to get you started.

If you prefer the GUI method open Active Directory Users and Computers, right-click the Saved Queries folder, select New, and Query. Click the Define Query box and select Users, Contacts, and Groups from the drop down box. On the Advanced tab select the attribute you would like to use from the filter from the Field box.  At the very minimum you should add the following filters to start:

User: E-Mail Address                 Starts with          *

User:Exchange Home Server      Starts with          *

Scheduling the Script

To ensure user policies are updated correctly based upon the filters, you must schedule this script to run sometime before the Managed Folder Assistant runs on the servers.  Therefore as the assistant runs daily at 5am, the script should run daily at 3am.

posted by: Myke Reinhold
Info credit: Nick Smith

Posted in Exchange, Microsoft | Print | No Comments »

Exchange 2007 SP1 ActiveSync issues

27. August 2008 by Myke.

ActiveSync Default Policy

Exchange 2007 RTM would allow you to assign ActiveSync policies on a per user level.  Exchange 2007 SP1 added the ability to define an ActiveSync policy as a default policy for all users.  You can read more about this and other changes to ActiveSync in SP1 on the “What’s New for Exchange ActiveSync Mailbox Policies in Exchange Server 2007 SP1?” post on the Exchange team blog.

However, if your environment does not utilize ActiveSync policies you should be aware that the default policy will be applied to all users after upgrading to SP1.  The default policy is pretty vanilla and would not really impose any configuration changes on mobile devices.  However, users will be prompted to apply required security settings before syncing.  The following Exchange Management Shell command can be used to prevent the default policy from being applied to all users, thus preventing the prompt on mobile phones.

Set-ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy Default -IsDefaultPolicy:$false

**Note: Each time a CAS server is upgraded this policy will be re-enabled as the default.

Load Balancer SSL Offloading

If you have multiple CAS servers and are using SSL offloading on your hardware load balancers you should be aware that installing SP1 will re-enable the SSL requirement at the root level of the “Default Web Site”. This will likely prevent the ‘http listener’ form detecting that your CAS servers are available and OWA access will be unavailable.

To resolve this, edit secure communications on the Directory Security tab of the “Default Web Site”.  Uncheck the Require secure channel (SSL)checkbox.

**Note: The option is also re-enabled when running the Enable-ExchangeCertificate cmdlet to apply a new certificate to IIS.

posted by: Myke Reinhold
info collected at: Nick’s Unified Communications and Scripting Blog

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