Native Look VCL Project Started

I posted some articles to discuss the differences between Delphi visual components and native Windows controls. I think it is worth to make a project rather than share them as attachments here. Now I started an open source project. The project aims to restore the native Windows control look and feel. Please feel free to use it and to share it.

BTW: Due to Internet censorship of China, it is quite difficult to access blogspot.com and blogger.com. If you mail me for technical support, please leave a reply address as well.

Appearance Preferences Interface Tab

Unfortunately, icons are gone in all Context Menu by default since openSUSE 11.3. Even worse is that the Interface has been removed from the Appearance Preferences Window.

I think i am not the only people, who would rather remember the menu item position than search for its label. So I became very unproductive when I have to face a very long context menu of Eclipse without any icons.

Here is the way to give it back:

1. In the terminal, call up gconf-editor 
2. Navigate to desktop/gnome/interface
3. Scroll down and check the menus_have_icons box.

Have fun ;-)

Finally get back all 4GB memory

HP is so ridiculous to send me a 64-bit quad-core HP Pavilion s5235 but a 32-bit Windows 7. Only one thing troubles me, that only 3.25GB (4GB memory is installed) memory is usable. So I called HP customer service, but they cannot give me a 64-bit Windows due to some 64-bit hardware driver problems They also said that I am lucky, because on some devices only 2.99GB memory can be recognized.

Generally speaking, 3.25GB memory is significant for me. And I believed that this is a hardware limitation for a 32-bit operating system, until I read this article. Now I'd like to share you a very simple way to use 4GB memory on a 32-bit Windows 7.

1. Disable your anti-virus program temporarily. 
2. Download the software ReadyFor4GB from here or here 
3. Apply the patch and reboot your system

It works perfect but you will see a "Test mode ..." watermark on the right bottom of every screen. Because the patch instructs you to add "testsigning on" to the startup script, which you cannot bypass. The correct thing you should do is:

1. Download the software RemoveWatermark from here, here or here
2. Apply the patch by pressing 'Y' and reboot your system

Now you can use full 4GB memory!