TipzNTrix

In the previous article we drew your attention to the way familiar web or web-related applications can be extended. In this article, we would like to point you to the existence of other software that you'd be needing to enhance your news item posts at the NewsRoom or increase your web productivity.

FlashDrives and Portable Software

Years ago, one had to have a floppy disk to work between two computers. Today, while the 1.45 MB floppy is still available, it is more desirable to have a USB (Universal Serial Bus) FlashDrive to be used between home and office computers.

If you need a versatile note-taking tool that is small, light and lauches quickly, then you don't have to look far. "Scratch" was designed to be all the above.

With a browser, a text editor and an email address plus a computer that is linked to the web, you are set. So what's the point of this article? Answer: enhanced functionality. With a few more software installed into your computer or flash drive, you can greatly expand the capabilities you already have with the tools mentioned above.

Your Windows installation ships with Windows Notepad and WordPad.  The first is your all purpose text-editor; the second is your word processor.  But both are so very basic that certain features one would like to see in an editor are missing.  For example, both applications can only edit one document at a time. Notepad is notorious for its 64kb file limitation.  WordPad while not suffering from the same ailment also has issues that prevent it from being used for serious work (e.g., it can't insert a graphic file from the hard disk, it has no spell check, etc.).  Fortunately there are software applications made specifically for Windows that are intended to take the place of these two very basic text editors.  Below are freeware editors that are considered top of the line replacements for either Notepad or WordPad.  All of these carry no advertisements whatsoever.  I will be limiting my list to text and RTF editors that I have used myself and continue to keep in my computer.

One of the things that a citizen of the world wide web should be accustomed to is the fact of compressed archives that bear extension names like *.zip or *.rar or *.tar.gz. These are archives containing files that have been compressed so as to minimize a phenomenon called "packet loss". "Packet loss" may occur when transferring files from one computer to another when internet traffic is bad. To minimize this, large files or a collection of files are compressed using a software made for this. To get to those files, one will have to uncompress them using either the software that was used to compress such files or another one that is capable of performing the task.

The Request

"Could you please show, through a demo or something, how all your HTML tutorials work out in practise?"

The remark came from a teenager who is interested in creating a website but does not have the time to finish reading the growing body of tutorials I am maintaining at the Collectanea Informatica. So I decided to create a demo website that summarizes what I have written in my tutorials. It is called My Site so that it can be everyone's. I believe that by creating that one-page demo website, I will be making it easier for web newbies to know how and where in a page a particular HTML tag or javascript can do its magic. I also believe that the best way to learn how to code in HTML is to expose oneself to a lot of websites and study their source code.

So you have acquired a new computer, but you think you don't have the word processing tools to get it going? Look again. A newly installed operating like Win98 or WinXP will have at least two word processing tools packed with it: Notepad and WordPad. You can access both via Start--> (All) Programs --> Accessories.