Microsoft^® Windows^® 8 logo

When I teach Windows to people who have never used a computer, they learn everything from how to hold a mouse, pointing and clicking, dragging and dropping, opening and closing windows, to using applications after about an hour of instruction and a couple of hours of practice. Lots of people are still hesitant, but after a three-hour class they have functional computer skills.

The same is true when I teach Microsoft Word for beginners. After about an hour of instruction and a couple of hours of practice, they can create a letter or write a story, colour the text, change the font, and format paragraphs. They may not be proficient enough to join a secretarial pool, but they have functional word processing skills.

I’ve also taught Microsoft Word to people taking the Microsoft Office Specialist certification. Often these people are familiar with older versions of Microsoft Word (which used toolbars and menus) but now they’re learning the new interface, which uses the Ribbon. After about an hour of instruction and a couple of hours of practice, they can find most of the functions to colour, size and format text. They may need many more hours of instruction and practice to pass the certification exam, but they’ve adapted to the new interface.

So, by analogy, I expect that people first introduced to computers on Windows 8 will take about an hour of instruction and a couple of hours of practice to become competent with the Windows 8 Modern Interface, and people with experience on Windows XP and Windows 7 will take about an hour of instruction and a couple of hours of practice to become competent on the Windows 8 Modern Interface. The difference? People used to previous versions will grumble and complain about it a lot more. I’ve done that myself; after spending well over two decades using toolbars and menus I still occasionally flounder to find the equivalents in the Ribbon. It is frustrating to unlearn old habits, or to learn new things. But Microsoft is not just making changes for the sake of making changes. The Windows 8 Modern Interface works perfectly well on desktop computers, and much better on touchscreen computers, tablets and phones. The old desktop interface that requires scrolling and clicking with a mouse just doesn’t work with a touchscreen. But for people who don’t want to make the switch the old desktop interface is still available.

While it may be funny to see people using Windows 8 for the first time without any instruction, it’s not a very real scenario. Someone who has never used a computer is unlikely to buy one without getting help, either from the retailer, a community course, or helpful friends and relatives. People who have used a computer before may struggle a bit, but if they already know the basics (scrolling, clicking, dragging) they will figure it out after a couple of hours of practice.

–Bob.

Update 27 Oct 2012: At the Windows 8 Launch Party it was made clear that the word “Metro” is no longer to be used; it is now called the “Windows 8 Modern Interface”. So I’ve updated this post.

The Kitchener-Waterloo chapter of the Ubuntu Canadian Team had a wonderful Ubuntu Release Party today. Laurel Russwurm baked a cake and I made some devilled eggs:

Quantal Cake and Devilled Eggs

If you squint a little you can make out the Ubuntu logos…

Ralph brought the official Ubuntu banner:

At the Kitchener Quantal Quetzal Ubuntu Release Party

That’s Jeff, Sergiane, Raul, Ralph, Karim, Bob, and Henrique.

Then it was time to cut the cake:

Cutting cake is serious business!

And the second shift finishes it off:

The rest of the partygoers

That’s David, Gord, Bob, Ralph, and Darcy.

Many thanx to Paul for hosting and The Working Centre for the use of St. John’s Kitchen!

Pictures taken by Laurel L. Russwurm and used under a Creative Commons — Attribution — CC BY license.

Pictures!

Hello Everybodee! I’m happy to announce that we’ll be having the Kitchener-Waterloo Ubuntu Release Party for the version named Quantal Quetzal, v12.10 at St. John’s Kitchen this Saturday.

The best parties always happen in the kitchen. Although we won’t have access to the cooking facilities, bring along some snack food to share, maybe some blank DVDs, and your laptop or netbook.

St. John’s Kitchen, 97 Victoria St. N.

Saturday, 20 October 2012 from 4:00pm to 8:00pm iCal

St. John’s Kitchen Map
97 Victoria Street North
Kitchener, Ontario Canada

Automobile parking is available through Heit Lane in the Worth A Second Look parking lot; bicyles can be locked to railings at the entrance to St. John’s Kitchen.

Event link: http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/ubuntu-ca/2029/detail/
(Registration is optional, but appreciated)

I’m looking for a free/libre calendar server to run on a GNU/Linux server.

It needs to have CalDAV connectivity, so that I can use Evolution, Sunbird or Thunderbird/Lightning as my only client. Ideally, it will also have a Web interface for both administration and calendar viewing, exports to iCal (.ics) files, supports iMIP, and offers Atom/RSS feeds of calendar items.

Here’s what I’ve found so far. If you know of others, please leave a comment.

There’s also a list at CalConnect’s CalDAV Servers

WordPress Plugins

The other calendars I’ve been trying are WordPress plugins. There is much promise in their description blurbs, but so far I’ve rejected most:

• 11 January 2011
  Originally posted
• 26 March 2011
  Added Linuxaria’s suggestions
• 16 April 2011
  Added WordPress plugin info; added CalDAV column; filled in some attributes
• 11 October 2012
  Updated feature list for Zimbra
  I’ll be writing a review of Zimbra Open Source Edition soon, detailing some of my experiences (eg. requires Flash for the administrative Web interface)
• 12 October 2012: Put WordPress calendars in table format, added My Calendar
• 5 November 2012: Added Dosch’s suggestions
• 16 November 2012: @Encyclomundist dents about Citadel.org
• 26 September 2013: I’ve started to use ownCloud 5.0 as a calendar repository accessed with Lightning using WebCal. ownCloud doesn’t publish an iCal feed or have a public read-only view, but since it’s Free Software constantly under improvement I’ll stick with it for a while.
• 9 November 2013: I think @postblue turned me on to Baikal: Using #Baikal to sync tasks, contacts and calendars…
• 9 November 2013: I’m now using Timely All-In-One on some blogs, will be upgrading others. It’s not the perfect iCal plugin, but the best one yet.
• 9 November 2013: @McScx and @lxw37 both introduce me to Horde.
• 13 August 2015: Just discovered Blaise Alleyne’s post on Degooglifying (Part IV): Calendar. This is pretty much the same solution I’ve settled on; ownCloud + Thunderbird and Lightning. I’m not quite as advanced as Blaise on the mobile front, though.

This is a “living” post, so it will float back to the top of the blog as I update it.

–Bob.

Thunderbird’s address book has a “Get Map” button to show an address location on a map. By default, Thunderbird uses Google Maps to display a location. Wouldn’t it be nice to use OpenStreetMap in Thunderbird instead? Here’s how!

OpenStreetMap

http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?q=135+pilkington+avenue,+birmingham&format=xml&polygon=1&addressdetails=1

Thunderbird

Substitution variables:
@A1: address, part 1
@A2: address, part 2
@CI: city
@ST: state
@ZI: zip code
@CO: country

Now we combine the two in Thunderbird’s configuration file prefs.js:

user_pref("mail.addr_book.mapit_url.format", "http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=@A1,@A2,@CI,@ST,@CO");

If you prefer not to edit the pref.js file, here’s a step-by-step procedure to do it with the graphical interface.

If you’re using Linux, select Edit, Preferences from the Thunderbird menu. On Thunderbird for Windows select Tools, Options. Click on the Advanced toolbar button, then the General tab.

Click on the Config Editor… button.

Click on the I’ll be careful, I promise! button.

Type mapit in the Search field,

Double-click on the line for the mail.addr_book.mapit_url.format parameter.

Delete what’s there, and type http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search.php?q=@A1,@A2,@CI,@ST,@CO

Click OK, close the about:config window, and close the Preferences window.

Now we need to find an address book entry with enough data to generate a map.

From the Thunderbird menu, select Tools, Address Book, and double-click on an entry. Click New Contact if there’s nobody in your address book (and you can enter your own address).

Click on the Private or Work tab to show the screen for address entry.

At minimum, fill in the Country field. Adding State/Province, City and Address will improve the resolution of the map. If you do fill in higher resolution fields (Address or City) then you also need to fill in the lower-resolution fields (State/Province and Country), or the Nominatim search won’t work.

Note that the Nominatim URL query doesn’t include the @ZI variable, so the ZIP/Postal Code field isn’t used to create the map.

When all the data is entered, click OK.

With any address field filled in, the address book entry now displays a Get Map button.

Go ahead, click it!

And there we have it! An OpenStreetMap of the address in the Thunderbird address book.

If you’ve done this, or have suggestions for improving these instructions please let me know in the comments or by e-mail at bjonkman@sobac.com.

–Bob.