Firefox on Android won’t open PDFs

When trying to click a PDF link in Firefox on Android an error comes up that says “Error. The file could not be downloaded. Please save the file to your local storage and then try to open it.” The PDF is never downloaded and not able to be viewed.

Type the following in the address bar: about:config
Search for: browser.download.preferred.application/pdf
Click reset

Give Android a speed boost

Every time I installed Windows XP (which I must have done a thousand times, literally) one of the first things I’d do is to install Tweak UI and adjust the mouse hover speed to 0 and turn off menu animations.  If the computer was particularly slow I’d turn off cursor shadows and menu fading and combo box animations as well.

tweak-UI

Android has a similar setting for changing the window and transition animation scale and the animator scale.  By default these are set to 1x.  I turn them to off but some people like to set them at .5x which speeds them up without loosing the fancy animation.

By default these settings are hidden in a developer options section.  To get access to this area you go to the about device section in the settings and tap on the build number area 7 times.  Sounds a little goofy but kinda fun at the same time.  Once you do that you’ll have a new settings area called developer options.  I haven’t messed with anything else in this area apart from the window and transition animation scale and the animator scale.

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I have only tested this on the Samsung Galaxy S6 and can definitely tell a difference in moving around the system.  Not that the Galaxy S6 is a slow phone by any means but I’d rather have the menus and windows just pop instead of looking pretty.

Original article is from Boy Genius Report

Android Email Issue – “Waiting for Sync”

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I have a couple of users where I work that were experiencing an issue with our Exchange server not syncing their email.
Those affected where getting a “Waiting for Sync” message in their email client on their phones.
All of the Exchange settings were right, internet access was working.  Nothing had changed on the server side.

Apparently this is the result of a recent Android update.

Fix: Go to Settings then Data Usage. Hit the menu button and look for “Auto-sync data.” It needs to be checked.

Source: OPSActive.com

Connect USB thumb drive to new Nexus 7

NexusImporter

I was curious as to whether or not I could connect a USB thumb drive to the new (2013 model) Nexus 7 tablet.  I have a cheap micro USB to USB connector I bought from Amazon.  The initial test of the thumb drive came up empty, it lit up but I couldn’t access files.  I then tested a USB mouse with the connector and it worked fine.  I had used a thumb drive in the past with the previous Nexus 7 but that solution required the device to be rooted which I didn’t want to mess with this time.  After some poking around I found the Nexus Media Importer that claimed to allow you to connect a thumb drive and copy files.  The app costs $3.99 and I didn’t want to waste money if it didn’t work.  Luckily the developer has another app called Nexus Photo Viewer that is free.  It just can’t be used to copy files to the device.  I installed the photo viewer, plugged in a thumb drive and was able to view images on the drive.  With that assurance I purchased the media importer app and it works great.
There might be a way to use a thumb drive with the tablet without paying $3.99 but for me this was quick and easy.

Android App: PocketCloud Pro

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Being in IT and working in an all Windows shop I would say that remote desktop is the number one used app on my PC.  VNC is used a lot as well for connecting to PC’s but mostly I’m all about managing my servers using remote desktop.  Most of that is done from VisionApp’s remote desktop software (but that’s for a different post).  So, on my Asus Transformer Prime tablet (which I love by the way) one of the first things I searched for in the market place was a remote desktop client.  I tried out a few but settled on Wyse Technology’s PocketCloudWyse has a number of products from thin clients to remote desktop clients and more.
I typically go with free apps because I don’t have an abundance of money and because I like to hop around OS platforms on the Tablet side so when I originally saw the $14.99 price tag I skipped it over.  They do have a free version that doesn’t let you add more than one pre-configured remote desktop connection and does work well.  But, I like to be able to pull out the tablet and quickly connect to whichever server I need to do some work on.  I had used PocketCloud on the iPad as well and liked it there as well.  The recent update added several useful features and it’s well worth taking a look at.

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Android browsing Windows 7 network shares

I’ve been trying unsuccessfully for a couple of days to get my Android tablet to browse network shares from my Windows 7 PCs.  No matter what I did or how many different clients I tried none of them would connect.  After messing with settings on both the tablet and my PCs even my iPad would not connect to any shares even though it was previously working.  The rest of my PCs would open the shares just fine.  Through troubleshooting the iPad I came across an article on Stratospherix‘s website based on a Microsoft knowledge base post that mentioned a registry setting sometimes needed changed to allow additional network clients to connect to Windows shares.  I’m not even entirely sure this is what fixed my issues but after changing this on one of my machines I was able to connect from both the iPad and my Android tablet.

Here’s the registry key to add:

  • Click Start, click Run, type regedit and then click OK.
  • Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
  • Click Edit, point to New, and then click DWORD Value.
  • Type IRPStackSize, and then press ENTER to name the value.
    (The name is case-sensitive)
  • Click Edit, and then click Modify.
  • Click Decimal and in the Data Value box, type 30, and then click OK.
  • Restart your PC and then re-try to connect with the app.

Update: 1/16/2012 – I tested this on another PC and can confirm that this fixed my connection issues.  I was not able to connect to another PC on my network on either my iPad or Android tablet.  I added the registry key, rebooted and was immediately able to connect both devices.  I still had issues using ES File Explorer and credentials that included special characters.  If I changed the password to one without special characters I was able to connect but with special characters it would give a login failure.  Other Samba clients like AndSMB or Astro worked with the special characters in the password.

Open .mobi files on Android 4.0

The Kindle app for Android will open the .mobi files. I used Dropbox to get to the file and thought I’d just be able to open it from Dropbox into the Kindle app like I can on the iPad. That didn’t work and it told me to download an app that could open the file type. I copied it from Dropbox to my downloads folder then used a file manager to try and open it without luck. Then I noticed a Kindle folder. I copied the .mobi file into the Kindle folder then opened the Kindle app and it worked!