UPDATE 07/11/11: I can now confirm that this solution definitely works with both the HTC Desire (original) and the new HTC Sensation on the Orange UK network.

One of the things I was most looking forward to with the Android 2.2 update was the ability to create a wi-fi hotspot using your phone, or tethering as it’s more commonly known. Extremely handy when travelling on trains in the UK as very few of them have broadband facilities available. So it was one of the first features that I tried out after my phone upgraded itself, but was immediately disappointed to find that although my laptop connected to the hotspot easily, there was no internet connection available.

I searched long and hard for a solution to this and it soon became immediately apparent that this is an issue specifically for HTC phones on the UK Orange network.

Luckily the solution is easy, but don’t be surprised if you have to repeat the following steps after each Orange update – annoyingly it does occasionally reset to the default settings. This should get you up and running though…(in theory!)…

1. On the home screen click Menu -> Settings -> Wireless & networks -> Mobile networks -> Access Point Names

2. You should see the following three options:

Orange Internet
Consumer Broadband
Orange MMS

Select Consumer Broadband

3. Change the following settings, taking care to make sure that you copy these details exactly (including capital or lowercase lettering)…

APN from consumerbroadband to orangeinternet

Username from <Not set> to Orange

Password from <Not set> to Multimedia

Authentication type should be set to CHAP.

4. Press your Menu button, tap “Save”

Now in theory, you should be able to create a hotspot and connect to the internet. Hope that helps someone!

I’ve known about Vizzy for a while, but I’ve previously had no real need for it and when I’ve tried to install it in the past it didn’t seem to work with Chrome (my current browser of choice) so it was uninstalled pretty quickly. But this time I had no choice but to get it working – and as it turns out, the solution was pretty simple…Step 1 – Install Flash Debug Player

First off you need to make sure that you have the flash debugger installed. You can download it here and you can test if it’s installed by clicking here. Don’t worry if you’re using Chrome and the test site is saying that you don’t have the debugger installed, if you view the link in any of your other browsers you will see it has worked.

NOTE: if you use FlashDevelop like myself then you’ve probably already got the debug player installed, but it won’t hurt to reinstall it anyway (and it will update you to the latest version).

Step 2 – Install Vizzy

You can download Vizzy here. To test, open a swf that you know contains traces in your browser and make sure Vizzy is open at the same time. Vizzy will act like your Flash IDE Output window. But again, don’t worry if you’re using Chrome and it’s not working at this point.

Step 3 – Disable Chrome’s pre-installed Flash player

Steps one and two should be enough for you to view flash tracing in most browsers – Firefox was working straight away for me. However if like me you want to use Chrome instead, you will need to disable Chrome’s internal pre-installed Flash Player. Don’t worry it’s very easy…

a) Open a new Chrome window (CTRL-N if you’re reading this in Chrome)

b) type

chrome://plugins

into the address bar.

c) You should see a list of plugins – Flash is most likely to be the one at the top. Click “Details” in the top right hand corner and you will notice that there are 2 versions of flash installed. One of these is the pre-installed Flash player and the other is the Flash Debug Player you installed earlier. Find the one that ends with gcswf32.dll (ie. Chrome’s version of the player) and click “Disable”.

That’s it, you’re done. Clicking here should now tell you that you have the Debug Player installed and Vizzy should now work for you.

Enjoy!

But yesterday I was introduced to something in FlashDevelop that I’d never seen before. The king of all shortcuts:

CTRL - SHIFT - 1

How I’ve lived without this shortcut before I don’t know. I feel like a fool for not discovering it earlier. It does absolutely everything…

• Place your cursor next to a class variable, hit the king and you get a little pop-up menu offering to create you getters and setters.
• Written a variable inside a function and now want to make it into a class variable? Place your cursor, hit the king and you’ll be offered to “Promote to class member”. It will then declare the variable at the top and correct your function accordingly.
• Need a new function? Type the function name, press the king, “Generate function”. Done.
• Need a new class? Type the name, king, “create class”, done.

This shortcut literally does absolutely everything from declaring variables to generating functions. I keep discovering even more things all the time. It’s such a timesaver. Truly the ultimate multi-purpose shortcut.

But now I’ve found the fix…and it’s an easy one…

Techie Version:

Some text:

1. Open RegEdit and navigate to:
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Classes\CLSID\{DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}
2. Change the AppID value to:
   {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}
3. Test. It should work immediately.

Non-techie Version:

1. Click on the “start menu”
2. Type “regedit” into the search box and hit return
3. In the left hand pane open the following folders:HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
   then SOFTWARE
   then Wow6432Node
   then Classes
   then CLSID
   
4. Now find and click on the following folder:
   {DC6EFB56-9CFA-464D-8880-44885D7DC193}

5. On the right hand side you should see a number of files appear. Mine showed four in total. Right hand click on AppID and select “Modify”
6. Delete the contents of the box and then copy and paste the following into it instead:
   {534A1E02-D58F-44f0-B58B-36CBED287C7C}
   
7. When you click OK, you should now be able to view PDFs using the preview pane. click on and off a PDF a couple of times with the preview pane open.

Hope that helps someone!

Please note: Although I know that this worked perfectly fine with my machine, I can make no guarantees that it will work with yours. By doing this you are altering your computer’s registry…I cannot accept responsibility if anything goes wrong as a result of doing so. I am merely offering this help for those that are confident enough to try.