Enhancing Your Web Productivity II

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.

Zipping and Unzipping Utilities

The first group of desktop applications is for file sharing. In sending emails, you find a button for file attachments. File attachments are like footnotes in a research paper. They are references or relevant materials that you feel your reader should see so as to understand your message or add credibility to it. One internet phenomenon that modem users often encounter is packet loss. It is the amount of data that fails to get across the web from a server to one's computer because of disturbances in the web. You've probably seen this happen with photos: with packet loss, one can see only a part of the whole picture. To get around the problem of packet loss, it is best to compress files first so as to make them smaller in size. A file thus compressed would then have extension names like *.zip, *.rar or even *.gz. To uncompress them, one would use tools made for such a purpose. The most popular compression (and decompression) tool is perhaps WinZip. Check your desktop if you already have it. If not, then download any of the following freeware zipping/unzipping utilities:

• AlZip from AlTools
• ZipGenius from ZipGenius.IT
• 7-Zip from its website.

Graphic Viewers and Editing Software

If you are intending to post images with your articles, I would suggest that you resize them for the web first. I have explained this elsewhere in another article that you may find interesting. In that article too I a tutorial on how to use IrfanView for resizing graphic files. There is another article that shows you how to create avatars from files already existing.

Irfanview is just one of the better freeware graphic utilities available on the web.Below are some other free graphic utilities:

• XnView (The website offers other graphic utilities.)
• FastStone Viewer and PhotoResizer (Two separate applications)

Portable Document Format Readers

The PDF file has become the standard in portable documents, that is, a document that one can read in any computer. So long as one has a PDF reader installed in one's system, reading a PDF file is a cynch. It is also the best way to distribute a document over a network. I've seen email messages with MS Word (*.doc) files attached to them. The thing about *.DOC files is that they contain macros and therefore are susceptible to virus. For this reason, it is best to convert such files into PDF before offering them to anyone through the web or otherwise.

PDF readers are free. Adobe, the creator of PDF, offers the Adobe Acrobat Reader for free at its website. The size of the Acrobat can be daunting for downloads. So if you don't like long downloads, try the Sumatra PDF Reader. It is small and can fit in a floppy disk.

For creating PDF documents, the Adobe Acrobat is the best but the most expensive. Fortunately, there are free alternatives. High Dots offers file convertors for free. For your immediate use, there is the DOC-Convertor and the RTF-Convertor. Both can create PDF files, one from *.htm, *.asp and other coded files, and the other from *.RTF and *.DOC (Win WordPad text file and MS Word 97-2003 files respectively).