Flash players and other embedded applications in Firefox require their own hooks for keyboard and mouse input. For years, Flash has grabbed Firefox keypresses, which stops people from using the keybo ard for navigation, creating new tabs, or even exiting the Flash focus. Learn how to creat e a Perl …

Use Perl, cnee, and custom algorithms to measure how specific users move the mouse and click buttons. In this article, we discuss how mouse-click hold times, or a combination of keyboard and mouse activity can enable new levels of access-requirements obfuscation. Learn how to apply the open source tools cnee …

Monitor application usage, system attributes, and user activity to more effectively use the power-management systems of your laptop or desktop computer. This article provides tools and code to build on existing power-saving measures by monitoring your application-usage patterns. Use the techniques presented here to change your power settings based on …

Recent pushes for "green" technology focus mostly on talk, with little action for the typical home- or small-office environment. Many users leave their systems online continuously through laziness or ignorance, resulting in a significant source of power consumption, as well as an additional vector for malware propagation. The tools and …

Most online mapping applications assume that the desired view is always north at the top of the image. This article presents tools and code that show how to replace the map image with an inverted copy, where south is at the top. Using a Firefox extension and the Imager Perl …

Keystroke dynamics is a relatively new field that enables identification of individuals through statistical analysis of their typing patterns. Previously published articles on developerWorks have shown how to integrate the concept of keystroke dynamics into your applications, as well as a real-world example of modifying Gnome Display Manager (GDM) to …

Recent applications have greatly increased the ease of development and ubiquity of 2-D maps. Tools like Microsoft® Live Search Maps and Google Maps offer a wealth of tools for enhancing these single-plane maps, but often ignore altitude as the third dimension of information. This article presents tools and code to …

Unlike traditional single-screen setups, multi-screen display systems require special consideration for user interfaces (UIs). This article presents tools and code designed to address the acquisition and change of input focus across multiple displays. By enhancing existing X Window System focus information using Ghosd displays and the Synergy debug-level output, multi-screen …

Time-availability maps provide a listing of who is most likely to be available for a certain hour in a certain location. Find out how to use Google Earth and a log of your communications to map and identify the time and place when availabilities match. Featured in an IBM developerWorks …

The Find command in Firefox locates the user-specified text in the body of a Web page. The command is an easy-to-use tool that works well enough for most users most of the time. Sometimes, however, a more powerful Find-like tool would make locating text easier. This article shows how to …