Those of you who follow me regularly will know that last year I designed a new Metro-themed skin for my own website, The Long Climb and that if I’m honest it’s not worked very well.  The reason being that what I ended up with was a half way house between a new Metro website and a traditional style blog.  Clearly I was going to have to think again and do some major overhauling of the interface to get it right.

This got me thinking in some depth about what would make a really good Metro website and why that would be.  It’s not just a case of putting together some blocks with stuff on them along with a few circular icons and hoping for the best.  When designing a new website there are all manner of things to consider such as the visual order of the items you see on the page and how the reader is drawn around the page, how items will fit together (which is especially important on a Metro site when symmetry is vital but elements are all different sizes) and how you might accommodate external items such as advertising.

Then you need to consider how to accommodate different types of device.  These include smartphones, tablets of varying makes and sizes and full PCs where, with people running Windows 8 they could be using the Metro version of Internet Explorer, full screen on a 1920 pixel wide monitor.  These all have to be accommodated for so an adaptable design is required that will automatically rescale the elements on a page to fit the width of the browser window.

Then you have to consider that different web browsers on different devices operate in a variety of ways with some supporting plug-ins and some not, such as iOS and the Metro version of IE10 in Windows 8 not supporting Flash (or any plug-ins at all come to that).  It was clear then that the website would have to be true HTML5 in order to have any kind of longevity.

On a device such as Windows Phone or a Windows 8 tablet or computer the design also needs to feel natural and a comfortable fit for the user interface.  When Microsoft designed the Metro UI concept it wasn’t just about slapping some blocks together, it was about using symbols and iconography that we’re used to in our daily lives that allow the content to shine while making the interface itself fade into the background.

Suffice to say that when I really got into this I realised just what a major project I had taken on, especially when I began to think of all things I would want to do with the site in the years to come.  I needed a proper and full design brief then and so began to write such a document to help me get my ideas together, and that a designer and coder could use as a bible when actually building the site.  I thought I’d share this document with you, firstly as it ended up being a 52 page behemoth on how you can design and build a Metro website, but also because I thought you might find some of the content interesting or even useful if you are planning to design and build your own Metro website.

You can view and download the book below on this link HERE, sadly the embedding here didn’t want to work.  This new website will go live for me sometime this year.

It’s not that long since I relaunched a new touch-friendly website here at The Long Climb, and you’re looking at it now.  For all it’s benefits though it is still a half-way house between a traditional-style website and a new Metro style site, some bits have never worked completely and there are also things I’ve very much like to add.

Over the last couple of months then I’ve been busy planning and designing a new site design, which you can see below.  It’s also time to vote though on which of five possible navigation styles you like the most (please post your comments below) as it will be extremely interesting to see which is your favourite and which you think is the most user-friendly and usable.

The site will as it does now come in multiple colour-choices, and I’d appreciate your comments on these as well.  You can click on any image to view it full-size.  Many thanks for your input with this 

Mike Halsey

Navigation Layout Choices, 1 to 5

Adaptive Design

480 / 720 / 1024 / 1280 (with 1280 alternative) and 1600 pixel widths

Main Page Layout

Article Page Layout

Article Page Layout with Embedded Video

Picture Viewer

Video Player

Pop-out Audio / Podcast Player

Alternate Selectable Colour-Schemes

I’m absolutely delighted to announce that I’ve negotiated a friends discount of 30% off my new eBook “Need2Know: Office 365 Security Essentials” from Fair Trade DX.  The book, which is only $9.95 to begin with, is an absolute bargain at just $6.96 after the discount    To take advantage of this head to over the Fair Trade DX’s website and enter the code friend_of_mike at the checkout.

Many smaller organizations rely on a few tech savvy managers to ensure that Microsoft Office is configured and deployed to best support core business objectives. If you are one of these indispensable managers, you are probably aware that the online collaboration features of Office 365 also create security risks not associated with desktop versions of Office. In Need2Know: Microsoft Office 365 Security Essentials, author Mike Halsey identifies and explains those risks, and answers essential questions about how to run Office 365 safely and securely. With a program that eliminates the need for a patchwork of third-party solutions, it’s important to harness the tools at your disposal to the fullest.

Microsoft Office 365 Security Essentials shows you how to secure your Office 365 team site, how to manage your users and administrators, and how to employ secure practices with Microsoft and third-party tools, as well as good old common sense. Author Mike Halsey brings wisdom from his extensive work with Microsoft Windows and the Office product family to the table to help you address the security threats you must know how repel in order to protect your company and its assets.

In Microsoft Office 365 Security Essentials, you will quickly learn how to:

• Manage Office 365 email and contacts securely
• Implement team site security effectively
• Handle security when using Office 365 with other Microsoft products
• Create and manage different types of Office 365 user accounts
• Set appropriate permissions on Office 365 team site accounts
• Identify different types of Internet threats, and implement an effective antivirus solution
• Implement common sense password security and use encryption to protect sensitive data

Microsoft Office 365 Security Essentials also includes handy references to safe password creation, secure web browsing, and anti-spam best practices, suitable for sharing with employees and coworkers.

I was pretty delighted when my Microsoft MVP was reawarded on the 1st of January for a second year.  Microsoft award their “Most Valuable Professional” award each year to around 4,000 individuals covering almost all of their product lines.  In a statement on their website they say…

We seek to recognize the best and brightest from technology communities around the world with the Microsoft® Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award.  These exceptional community leaders come from a wide range of backgrounds. They are teachers, artists, doctors, engineers, as well as technologists, who actively share their high-quality, real-world technical expertise with the community and with Microsoft.  With the MVP Award, we thank these inspiring individuals for representing the voice of thousands in the community through the powerful and independent feedback they give us, and for helping our customers maximize the potential of their software.

Getting an MVP is pretty cool and my renewal came as a big though very welcome surprise and does come with some tangible benefits (software mostly) and access to product groups within Microsoft to feed back comments and ideas, and find out what’s up and coming with their products in the coming months.

I received my award pack yesterday and I thought you might be interested to see the physical goodies that Microsoft give awardees.  They include a lovely glass trophy which you get in your first year with a small lug with the year written on it.  In successive years they just send you more lugs.  These include blue 5 year lugs for long-time awardees (some have been MVPs for as long as 17 years!).  Also in the pack you get a Microsoft ID card for when you visit company sites, a metal lapel badge, a framed certificate and this year, which seems a little out of place, a set of MVP stickers.

In fact I’ve been challenging people to come up with the most imaginative use for the MVP stickers and I’m offering a small prize for the best suggestions (why not give your suggestion in the comments below) and ones so far have included being stuck to a car dashboard so the traffic police in the Microsoft car parks don’t give you a ticket, marking your coat hook at work or covering the glowing Apple logo on a Macbook (alas they’re not quite large enough for this).  For now I’ve settled with one on my laptop lid.

I was renewed in part because of my writing here at gHacks and our sister site Windows7News and I’d like to thank all of you for your support this last year.  2012 is going to be great as I have at least two Windows 8 books coming out 

Despite the MVP renewal I will continue to call out Microsoft whenever they get something wrong and, in all honesty, I’m considering buying my first Mac this year too!  Photos of the 2012 MVP award pack are below along with the use I put at least one sticker to.

As the author of “Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out” I get asked all manner of questions all the time on how to fix or diagnose problem A, B or C.  To help with this I run a regular series of live webcasts through the O’Reilly website.  The latest of these is by far the most popular and requested.  Diagnosing and Repairing Difficult Problems in Windows 7.

Windows 7 is by far the most stable and reliable version of the OS that Microsoft have ever produced, but as a piece of software it contains millions of lines of code and it’s a huge and extremely complex beast.  This can make diagnosing any difficult problem an extremely daunting experience.

In this live webcast, which if you miss it you can view afterwards if you have pre-registered, I’ll show how you don’t even need third-party tools to complete complex diagnostics, with a tour of a plethora of helpful diagnostic utilities that are already a part of Windows 7.

The webcast is completely free, live and starts at 10AM PT – San Francisco | 6pm – London | 1pm – New York | Fri, Jan 13th at 5am – Sydney | Fri, Jan 13th at 3am – Tokyo | Fri, Jan 13th at 2am – Beijing | 11:30pm – Mumbai on January 12th 2012.

It can be difficult enough finding out what’s gone wrong with windows 7 or a program, but some problems can be a nightmare to diagnose. In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how to diagnose really stubborn and hidden problems in Windows 7, and explains how you can go about fixing them.

The webcast will last for approximately 60 minutes and is part of a regular series that, from February, will return to its regular First Thursday spot.  You can register for this free webcast here.  The next webcasts will be…

February 2^nd 2012 – Using Virtualisation in Windows 7

Despite Microsoft’s best efforts, Windows 7 won’t run every piece of software and some of it you might really want or need.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out explains how you can use free virtualisation tools in any edition of Windows 7 to keep valuable and useful older software working in a safe and secure way.

March 1^st 2012 – Building a Bomb-Proof Backup Strategy

Backup, Backup, Backup is a common mantra, but often it’s easier said than done maintaining a good backup strategy due to the time and effort involved long-term.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through how you can build a simple, hands-free backup strategy that is quite literally bombproof.

April 5^th 2012 – Manually Removing Viruses and Malware from Windows 7

Getting a virus on your computer is a pain and they’re becoming ever more difficult to remove.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out talks you through the process of manually and safely removing viruses and malware from your computer without damaging your files or Windows itself.

May 3^rd 2012 – Building and Upgrading a PC

With computers now more powerful than ever before, and with wallets being squeezed, there are more and more reasons to hang on to your existing equipment.  But how can you breathe new life into an ageing PC on a tight budget?  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out shows you how to quickly and simply get extra life and performance out of your PC, fix common hardware faults and what to look for to build a fantastic new PC from scratch.

June 7^th 2012 – Managing Family Safety in Windows 7

The Internet is a dangerous place and every parent worries about what their children might be doing, and what they might be exposed to online.  In this webcast, Mike Halsey, the author of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Inside Out walks you through the process of keeping your children and your family safe online from viruses, criminals and inappropriate content with simple to use free tools.

Back in 2006 I wrote a short 68 page guide to Windows Vista to help friends and family get the best out of the new operating system.  This “Windows Vista Power Users Guide” received a fantastic review from the new media editor of Windows Vista: The Official Magazine in the UK who called “a really in-depth guide that everyone should at least have a look at”.  Spurring me on, when Windows 7 launched three years later I wrote a much more comprehensive 170 page “Windows 7 Power Users Guide” with the intention of using it as a springboard to a full publishing deal.

The Windows 7 Power Users Guide is now completely free and has received some fantastic reviews online, including one technology watcher in the US who wrote…

I’m a tad surprised by this move because unlike a lot of other free “eBooks” published by 3rd parties that are often just shilling their other properties and IP, this is a really good book.  If you flip through all 170 pages I guarantee that you will learn something.

Now I’m delighted to announce that the Power Users Guide format has been picked up by US-based publisher Apress.  The “Windows 8 Power Users Guide” will be released alongside the launch of Windows 8 in 2012 and while it will retain much of the ideas and concepts that made the previous editions of the book so popular and successful, this time there will be some interesting changes to make the book batter than ever before.

This book will be now targeted directly at people who are already used to using Windows but really want to get the best out of it.  This will include IT Professionals and enthusiasts.  I’m not going to give away too much about the content as that is a closely guarded secret, but this will be nothing like any Windows book that you’ve seen or read before!

With the Windows 8 Power Users Guide Apress and I are going to redefine what computer books for professionals will be, and present all the information you need in an engaging and exciting new way to really help you use Windows 8 “like the pros do”.  The Windows 8 Power Users Guide will be available to buy online and from all good bookshops worldwide in 2012.

When Nokia’s strategic partnership with Microsoft to use Windows Phone on all their forthcoming smartphones was announced early this year it caused considerable excitement.  The company’s own ageing Symbian operating system was failing and their partnership with Intel to produce MeeGo wasn’t going anywhere.  Nokia was in trouble and leaked memos only served to confirm it.  Windows Phone wasn’t going anywhere either, having faded into the background within just a few months of launch.

Now then the eyes of the world were on Nokia’s first Windows Phone handset, the Lumia 800, and the company has kindly sent me one for review.  This handset is the black model, the first to market but it does also come in other colours including a very fetching pale blue.  It has fantastic build quality with four silver buttons on the right side for volume, power and camera and a headphone jack on the top.  The USB port is concealed behind a pop up flap, as is the SIM card slot.  The battery is internal and non-removable, but this shouldn’t be a problem for all but the most hardened road-warriors.

The build quality is simply excellent.  It uses the same hardware as the company’s recent N9 handset with a glorious almost full-front glass cover and fine attention to detail throughout.  It’s a little heavier than a standard Windows Phone but it sits very comfortably in the hand and is equally as comfortable when making calls, something not every phone can claim to be.

There’s an 8MP camera with a Carl Zeiss Lens and dual LED flash on the back and a 1,400MHz processor, 512Mb of RAM and a healthy 16Gb of storage inside along with all the usual technology that you’d expect from a modern smartphone.

In use there are a few issues with it.  The problems with battery life have been fixed by a rushed-out patch, but the camera leaves photos looking a bit pale and washed out.  The camera with Xenon flash on my HTC Mozart and even the dual LED flash camera on the new HTC Titan are better, this camera isn’t up to Nokia’s usual high standards.

The screen too looks a bit small under the huge glass screen.  It’s 3.7 inches though and you soon get over this.  On standard (medium) brightness though white backgrounds look a little creamy and the curse of the AMOLED screen returns with live tiles seeming fuzzy around the edges when viewed up close.

I’m also concerned about the pop up flap covering the micro-USB socket.  It’s hard to open some times and looks flimsy enough to break over time.  If this flap were on the bottom where you wouldn’t notice it this could be forgiven, but it’s not, instead it’s right on top of the handset.

It’s in the software though where this phone really shines.  Some Nokia apps simply duplicate the music and mapping software already in Windows Phone, though they fortunately don’t replace it.  The Nokia Drive Satnav app though is simply superb.  You can download maps for a great many countries free of charge so you can use the app while either driving or walking without needing to worry about maintaining an open data connection.  This app makes the Lumia 800 worth having on its own.  The inclusion of a silicon-rubber case is welcome too, as is the low profile charger.  You’ll need to charge the Lumia 800 daily but this is standard fare for modern smartphones.

All in all I’m delighted with the Lumia 800 as it doesn’t disappoint.  It is every bit as desirable as an iPhone 4 physically and perhaps even a little more so.  If this is what Nokia are able to produce in under a year for their first Windows Phone, the handsets the company will produce in the coming years will be very exciting indeed.

Christmas is traditionally the time to give and receive technology, at least it is these days, so a few days ago I posted a free eBook guide to setting up and configuring a new PC which I hope you’ll find helpful and pass on to friends, family and colleagues.  Many people will get a new Windows Phone for Christmas, this includes myself as Nokia have just sent me a Lumia 800 for review.  Any new operating system presents its challenges though and so here I thought I’d publish a quick guide to getting started with your new WIndows Phone handset.

Setting up Accounts

You can set up all your online accounts, Hotmail, Yahoo!, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc in the settings panel from the main screen.  To get here, swipe from right to left on the screen and swipe your finger up the screen to scroll the all programs list until you see Settings.  These accounts are found in the Email & Accounts panel.

Here you can set up and manage all of your accounts.  Click Add an account to add additional accounts your your phone.  Remember you can have as many email accounts set up as you wish and each one will display its own live tile on the Start screen (there’s no integrated inbox feature yet).

You should click on your email accounts and select what content is synchronised (you may see Calendar, tasks and other options here that you can select) and how often you want the phone to check for new email.  If your data plan is tight you might want to set this to just hourly or perhaps even manually.

Managing Contacts

When you set up different accounts in your phone the handset automatically shows every contact you have on all those accounts in your contacts list.  In the People hub you can set the phone to only show you contacts from people who want to see and call.  To get to these settings swipe your finger up from the bottom of the screen in the people hub and you will see the Settings option displayed.

Here you can press the Filter my contact list button to show and hide people from different accounts.  If you want to choose who you keep up to date with though in the feed you can also tick the Only show posts from people visible in my contact list option.  This means then that you’ll only see Facebook, Twitter etc updates from the people you have chosen to appear in your contacts list, and from nobody else.

Other useful settings

A couple of other useful settings you might want to activate are the Battery Saver which can help conserve your battery when it begins to run low by automatically switching off data features (except for SMS which will still work).

The Find my Phone option is also extremely useful.  By using this you can log into your account at Live.com and track your phone, remotely ring it or even lock it and wipe it if you lose it.

Customising the Start Screen

You will certainly want to customise the Start screen on your handset and it’s not immediately obvious how you can do this to many people.  If you tap and hold on any Live Tile you will see an unpin option appears on it.  If you click this pin you will remove the Live Tile from the Start screen.

You can also rearrange the tiles on the screen and place them where you want.  Tap and hold the icon you want to move and then you can drag it around the screen to place it somewhere else.

You can also add other programs from your installed apps list to the Start Screen in the same way.  Just tap and hold on the app and a menu will appear giving you an option to pin it to the Start screen.

Lastly you will want to secure your phone with a password and I’ve written a guide to how you can do this here.  I hope you’ve found this short guide helpful and I really hope you enjoy using your new Windows Phone.

To accompany my live webcast tonight I’ve written a short accompanying eBook, “Setting up and Configuring a New PC“.  For everyone getting a new PC this Christmas time, or any time at all, this is a guide to how to set your computer up so that it causes you the minimum of fuss.

The book covers everything you need to know in a friendly and helpful format including the all-important “Where’s my Windows installation DVD?”.  Other subjects are how to protect your PC with anti-virus software and Windows Update, removing the trial and bloat software that tends to come pre-loaded on PCs these days and how to protect your files and folders by moving them away form Windows.

Some activities in this eBook are not for complete novices so please read the instructions very carefully and if at all possible, have a technically-minded friend with you when you set your computer up.  Everything is straightforward enough but as some aspects of these exercises deal with some advanced features in Windows 7, you should always be careful and follow the instructions to the letter.

The eBook is 25 pages and is formatted for easy printing, so you can have it to hand when setting up your computer.  You can download this free eBook here and I hope you enjoy your new PC.

Search in Windows 7 can be difficult and awkward to use as in order to use it properly you have to remember a lot of, sometimes very obscure commands including  size:gigantic to find the files you’re after.  I even released the chapters on Windows 7 search from my free Windows 7 Power Users Guide as a free supplement long before I made the book itself free.  You can still download my free guide to Windows 7 search here.

Sometimes though you want a more natural way to work with search in Windows and you might be surprised that it does actually exist, but it’s hidden away.

Natural Language Search is an option hidden in the file options.  From a Windows Explorer window click the Organize button and then Folder and Search Options from the menu that appears.

At the next screen, under the Search tab, you can tell Windows 7 to Use Natural Language Search.   This system isn’t perfect but it can a decent fist of commands such as “files created by Mike” or “tiny music files”.

This is an excellent, albeit slightly flawed way to interact with search in Windows 7.  Since this system was designed by Microsoft we have seen great advances in search with Microsoft’s Bing search engine and we can sure that some, if not many of these advances will find their way into the next version of Windows.

It’s a shame really that natural language search, which Google has been tremendously successful with for a decade now, isn’t something we can yet properly use with our computers.  This is especially galling given the ever growing volume of files of different types we are accumulating.  It will be great to see not just improvements to this in Windows 8, but also the feature brought more to the foreground.