A Day in Paradise

So here’s some background. I need to create an application which a user will use to keep himself logged in to a website and able to receive messages which are sent to him through the website interface.

One of the options was to create an external application, a prototype of which we had built. The problem with that was that it was another piece of software which you had to install and keep running. The price of maintaining a standalone application was also high. Our application needed a Windows based webserver for its backend, which added additional cost and administration costs.

Enter EffectiveBrand toolbars. These guys have a kick-ass application, create an Internet Explorer toolbar using their simple point and click interface using componants . Some VERY good ideas here, and in half an hour I had done 70% of what I needed to do.

Using the external HTML componant which retrieved its data from a php backend in conjuction with the RSS componant, I had the one way messenging system that I needed.

To maintain the browser session the html componant has to refresh every X seconds (I am using 15 for my tests). It was here where I run into the brick wall. Every time IE refreshes the damn thing makes a click, 4 times a minute, all day, is VERY friggin annoying.

So I google for the answer, and below is the “simple-to-follow” solution, to make your stupid browser not click every time it refreshes. Pretty crazy… Anyway, aside from that, my prototype is working pretty nicely.

richard’s ramblings…: Internet Explorer Clicking Sound…
To remove the sound, open your Control Panel. On Windows 95/98/2000, doubleclick on the “Sounds and Multimedia” icon and choose the “Sounds” tab. On Windows XP, doubleclick the “Sounds and Audio Devices” icon and choose the “Sounds” tab. On Windows NT, just doubleclick the “Sounds” icon. From here, the instructions are the same for each of the above operating systems. Scroll down in the “Sound Events” window until you reach the “Windows Explorer” section. In this section there is a “Start Navigation” option to assign sounds to. In the “Name” Drop down menu select “None” and then hit “OK”.