Chocolatey, package manager for Windows

Installing WinMerge via Chocolatey, a Linux-style package manager for Windows. Well, it's not really a Linux-style package manager, especially since it won't automatically find dependencies, but for those who like the command line or just want to try a different way of installing Windows programs than actually visiting a website, downloading the program, and running the installer, this is quicker and fun. Perusing the list of programs in the database is educational as well for software junkies.

To save a list of the current database, type something like the following:

clist > c:\choco-list.txt

Found this via Lifehacker.

"Pin" a site in Windows 7/8 that opens in Google Chrome

I've been using IE10 in Windows 8 to surf Facebook.com for several months. It's always worked fine, but about a week ago it seems that Facebook introduced a change that IE10 can't handle - photo overlays (when you click on a photo in Facebook) are all broken in IE10. It's easy enough to open the site in Chrome, but I find myself missing the coolness of just clicking the big pinned Facebook icon sitting in my taskbar.

What's a "pinned site"?

For those not familiar with this, one of the features introduced in Windows 7, and continued in Windows 8, is the notion of "pinned sites". Open a site in IE9 or IE10 and drag/drop the site icon in the address bar onto the taskbar, and it will create an icon for that site on the the taskbar that will use the site's default favicon and will, when clicked, open the site in Internet Explorer. The browser's window color will be automatically themed to match the dominant color in the favicon (this is fun). If the site's developers have added the appropriate meta tags, there will be customized options available for the site in the icon's right-click menu. Facebook's pinned icon even displays an asterisk on the icon when there are new notifications!

How do I get a "pinned site" to open in Chrome?

After a bit of experimentation I figured out a way to put a "pinned" icon in the taskbar that, when clicked, opens facebook.com in Chrome, even if IE is set as your system's default browser:

- Open Chrome.
- Right-click the taskbar icon and pin it to the taskbar.
- Right-click the newly pinned icon, and at the bottom of the context menu, just above the "Unpin" option, right-click the Chrome icon and go to Properties.
- In the Target field, put your cursor at the end of the line, add a space (if there isn't one already), and type "facebook.com", without the quotes. (as a paremeter, basically).
- Go to the General tab and change the name of the shortcut to "Facebook", without the quotes.
- The icon will be Chrome's, if you have a Facebook image file you want to use for the icon, you can use the "Change icon" button to do it, although you may need to mess with the file some depending on the format.

Now you've got what appears to be a pinned site icon on the taskbar that opens facebook.com in Chrome instead of IE. Unfortunately, it's not a real pinned site - it won't have the extra right-click options like "News" or "Messages" that the actual pinned icon would have, and it won't change when there are new facebook notifications - but until either Microsoft or Facebook fixes whatever is causing photo overlays to break in IE10, this is the next best thing!