MS Project 2003 on Ubuntu

As I already mentioned about Gantt Charting, on Windows commonly used is MS Office Project. Not always you can avoid its use, especially if anyone else in your company uses it and you'll be asked to prepare a Gantt chart for them.

So what can you do if you don't want to abandon your great Ubuntu desktop?

The solution is to run in under the hood of Crossover (will only work with MS Project 2003 Pro).
But I ran into some trouble, so I'll explain the solution here.

It is still recommendable to use any of the
open source applications which I mention here!

Install instructions

1. Install Crossover of course. Do it with your normal user account, the recommended way.
2. Install MS Project 2003 Pro from Crossover's internal installer, inside a win2000 bottle.
   
   • After being installed you can already run Project, but it will complain all the time that you have to add gbui://mainpage.htm to your trusted sites inside of Internet Explorer.
3. So we have no other choice as to install IExplorer always.
   
   • Make sure you select the same win2000 bottle as the one of Project, otherwise your settings will not been seen by Project.
   • Crossover will tell you that it is a bad idea and that it will most likely fail, but nevertheless go on and ignore the warning at the end.

Configuration

Now we have to add the mentioned page to your trusted sites list.

1. Launch Crossovers Configuration application.
2. Manage Bottles tab.
3. Select the win2000 bottle and push Configure.
4. Enter the Control Panel tab.
5. Push the icon for Internet Options.
6. Go to Security --- Trusted sites -- Sites... and enter gbui://mainpage.htm
   
   • You'll have to disable Require server verification first.

That's it, leave and apply the settings and from now on, MS Project 2003 will work like a charm.

Ubuntu 8.10

Yesterday the latest Ubuntu version was released.

Just upgrade your existing Ubuntu system or see the download and upgrade instructions in one of these sites:

• http://www.ubuntulinux.org
• http://www.ubuntu.com

Open Source language checker

LanguageTool is a rule-based language checker that will find errors for which a rule is defined in its XML configuration files or Java code.

You can think of LanguageTool as a tool to detect errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect, e.g. mixing up there/their, no/now etc. It can also detect some grammar mistakes. It does not include spell checking

It has been integrated in OpenOffice's latest 3.0 release, but can be used under 2.x also.

Install instructions in OpenOffice 3.x

Double click LanguageTool-0.9.4.oxt to install it. If that doesn't work, call Tools -> Extension Manager -> Add... to install it.
Close OpenOffice.org and re-start it.

For OpenOffice 2.x use LanguageTool-0.9.2.oxt instead.

Google Redesigned

Google Redesigned is a Firefox extension that aims to fully redesign the look and feel of popular Google services. This is achieved with Cascading StyleSheet (CSS) files which are loaded on the client's browser. The extension simplifies the use of these styles by providing auto-updates, easy management and notifications of changes.