Web Talk

If you are a web writer, of if you happen to write a lot while in the Internet, then you may find this trick quite interesting. As a matter of fact, Firefox 3 (and Firefox 2 also) has got a nice Spellchecker among its features. To enable it, just follow this simple procedure.

1. Type about:config in the Address bar and press Enter.
2. A message followed by a button saying “I’ll be carefull. I promise!” should appear. Click on it.
3. Type layout.spellcheckDefault in the Filter field.
4. Under the Filter field the preference layout.spellcheckDefault should appear. Click on it.
5. Set the value equal to 2 to enable spell checking in single-line line controls.

If you have issues writing on your computer because you are sidetracked by icons, sidebars, bright colors, different useless options which confuse you etc., then you have got to try this nice website. As a matter of fact DarkCopy contains a nice, simple, bare-bone, black text editor which promises you not to distract when you are writing something. There are just two simple options: Save as a file to save what you have written as .txt format and Start full screen to enlarge the typing area to the whole screen. The rest is up to you. After all the only thing which really matters is what you write!

A few days ago I spoke about a nice application that lets you convert your .doc documents into the new and hated .docx format. Today I want to speak about a web application I already reviewed but that, in the meanwhile, has implemented among its features the nice .docx converter. This free web application is called Zoho Writer. But Zoho goes beyond this and in fact lets you create from scratch a .docx document without installing any software! Good job Zoho!

If you are a webmaster and you own a blog or a website you know very well how painful can be to create a .htaccess, above all if you don’t know or remember all the codes you have to put into the file. That’s why you may wish somebody or something to make the “dirty job” for you. Well, with .htaccess editor you can forget how to create a .htaccess file! In fact, as the name of the web application suggests, within the website you can find a simple text editor that will help you create the file. A full set of options and codes are available such as: deny, allow, basic autentication, error page default page etc. To try if you don’t want to get crazy trying to figure out what code you don’t remember!

As you know, Microsoft with its new Office 2007 has introduced the new .docx format for its documents, with the main purpose of getting rid of the old .doc. The main issue of this new format is that it is not compatible with older Office versions. As you may imagine, a lot of users or I’d better say, most of the users still use old Office versions or worse, other editor software that can not open the .docx format. That’s where Docx2Rtf comes to help us. This little freeware software lets us retrieve all the information stored in those documents and convert them into .rft documents. You can even decide to convert these files into .PDF! Docx2Rtf is a freeware application for Word 2007 Docx and OpenOffice Sxw and Odt files. The latest versions can even read .prc and .pdb format that are used by a lot of Palm powered devices. Download Docx2Rtf, the Docx Converter now!

Update: If you don’t want to download any program, but you still need a docx converter you can always use an online application. If you want to know more about online text editor applications click here.

If you don’t want to download or worse, buy Acrobat Reader, and you are looking for something really easy to open your PDF files with, then this simple but effective website is for you. PDFescape lets you open any PDF file within the browser itself with no need to install any piece of software. Reading from the website:
“With PDFescape, you can fill in PDF forms, add text and graphics, add links, and even add new form fields to a PDF file. Best of all, it’s Free!”

Features in detail:

• Fill out PDF files with Form Fields
• Add Text and Shapes to PDF files without form fields
• Save PDF files to your local computer
• Have PDF files emailed to you or any other email address

Of course there is also the possibility to buy a premium account that adds more features, but even the free account is ok for most people’s need. I would like to mention the fact that, by using the free version, the website will add a little logo at the beginning and at the end of your PDF file.

If you are not at your own computer and there is no software to write a letter, if you don’t trust Microsoft Word, if you are at the airport and you need something secure to write an important document, or if you don’t want to spend a dime on any writing application, there are many solutions for you. Many of them are related to Web.20. Did you know that you can write on Internet for free without downloading any software? Give a look at these web sites and find out how powerful an online text editor can be. Continue reading »