SuperWasp

Productivity tips, reviews, tools, software and gadgets.

Fix: Localhost unavailable with ESET NOD32

Developers using Visual Studio will probably encounter this problem after installing ESET NOD32 antivirus or ESET Smart Security Antivirus+Firewall: browsing the web with Internet Explorer works fine except for websites you develop yourself (localhost).

Disabling the firewall or antivirus features doesn't solve this problem, however replacing localhost with 127.0.0.1 (or using FireFox) does solve it.

The real problem is easily fixed though.

Windows Vista:

In the start menu, type "notepad %system%\drivers\etc\hosts" and instead of pressing enter, right-click on the notepad icon in the top of the list (see screenshot). In the context menu you must click on "Run as administrator".

Windows XP and 2000:

Open a command prompt (cmd.exe) and type these commands:

cd %system%\drivers\etc

attrib -r -h -s hosts

notepad hosts

You will then see the following file in notepad:

The last line contains the problem. It reads:

::1             localhost

You can either remove this line and save the file, or comment it out with a pound/hash character #. Voila, fixed!

Labels: Administrator, fix, IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft, problem, Vista, Visual Studio 2005, Visual Studion 2008, vs2005, vs2008, web develoment, Windows, Windows Vista

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  Posted by oVan on Friday, March 21, 2008 | PermaLink | 4 comments

New VirtualPC images released for IE6 and IE7

As expected, Microsoft has released updated VirtualPC hard disk images with IE6 and IE7. These contain a pre-activated Windows XP SP2, and either IE6 or IE7 and the IE7 Readiness Toolkit. For more information on installing and using these images, read the blog post about running IE6 and IE7 on a single machine.

These new images will expire on December 7, 2007. By that time Microsoft will probably release updated images again.

Remember that you can download Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 for free!

Labels: IE, IE6, IE7, Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer 7, Virtual PC 2007, VPC, VPC2007

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  Posted by oVan on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 | PermaLink | 0 comments

Test your website on all browsers for free!

This is an excellent tip for developers who want to test their website on all major browsers and platforms, without having to buy a Mac, Windows and Linux pc at the same time.

On browsershots.org you can get a screenshot of your website from a whole list of available browsers. It does take a while before you get all screenshots (from 15 minutes to a few hours sometimes), probably due to its large success so far. However, since this is a free service, there's no need to complain I suppose.

Here are some screenshot from browsershots.org that shows this very blog as it is displayed in Opera 9.20 on Linux and Firefox 2.0.0.4 also on Linux:



When you click on the image of the Opera screenshot, you'll see a close-up like this:



And finally when you click again, you'll get a 1:1 view on the screenshot, so you can examine every pixel of your layout.



If you need a faster solution, you can try BrowserCam which has affordable prices and gives you near instant results and much more options.

Labels: Apple, browser, Firefox, free, Internet Explorer, linux, Opera, screen capture, Web Designer, web develoment

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  Posted by oVan on Monday, June 11, 2007 | PermaLink | 1 comments