Friday, September 25, 2009

Free (and very simple to set up) websites

Back in April I blogged about ways to set up a free website. I have just come across two new services, called Roxer and WebSketch, which blow the rest out of the water. Each is beyond simple to set up - you just drag things around the page. The WebSketch site has a helpful demo video walking you through the process. And you can do many things which are almost impossible in the other free services, for instance layering objects on the page. The gallery of website examples compiled using either Roxer or Websketch contains some very impressive examples. And your web address is much the same as you would get with other services: eg, http://myaddress.roxer.com I suspect this will not be particularly suitable for complex websites (and in the case of WebSketch, you are limited to 15 pages per site), but for home, hobby, club or small business use (and many of the gallery sites are small businesses), these look to be absolutely ideal. Now, how do I convert my club site from Wetpaint to Roxer?

Alternative web browsers

Firefox and Internet Explorer aren't the only way to explore the web. Here are 9 alternative, lesser-known browsers whose unique features make them worth consideration. (Found at TechRadar.)

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Online word processors

Seeing I'm talking a lot about word processors today (see post below), let's look at online word processors. An online word processor gives you the ability to create, edit, save, and access your documents from anywhere. You can start your document in Christchurch, and finish it in Auckland. The best ones also allow you to share documents, track changes, revert to earlier versions, and collaborate with other writers, some of them in real time. Best of all, any reasonably up-to-date computer can access them, usually without installing anything. Some require ActiveX, Flash, or Java — all of which are already present on most computers – but depending on your system or the quality of your broadband, they may sometimes work at slow speed.
A quick search came up with a list of at least 10 free services, of which Google Docs is probably the best known. There are probably almost as many again that work in more specialised ways. But here's my quick list:
Google Docs
Zoho
Buzzword (owned by Adobe)
iNetWord
ThinkFree
EtherPad
ajaxWrite
Box.net Web Documents
docly
Peepel
Many of the above are part of an office suite, containing also spreadsheets and maybe presentation software. The big upsides are the free service and the ability to collaborate with people in different locations without having to shuttle files around. One of the downsides, though, is the big unknowns regarding security, and whether you want critical data stored on the internet rather than on your hard drive.

Word processor war hots up with new (free) arrivals

I have just come across and have been trialling some new word processors, which I want to discuss. But first, have you noticed that of the several dozen word processors and/or office suites now available, the only one you have to pay for is Microsoft's? How long can they withstand the accelerating assault? Okay, Microsoft Office has many features not found in these others, but be honest - how many of those features do you actually use? And there is a big cost attached, not just in price, but in real estate. Office 2007 weighs in at over 400mb, and that's without the recent Service Pack upgrade (which is a 300mb install file). I suspect that Microsoft developed the .docx format to try and lock people into their system, but as many of the new alternatives can happily open .docx files, that's not a bar to using others. Apart from inertia, or the probably misplaced concern that you will lose compatibility if you move away from your Word comfort zone, I can see almost no reason not to change. So here are some of the recent arrivals:
Kingsoft Office is top of my list. It's what OpenOffice.org should have been. At 101mb installed, it's less than a third in size of the Big Two, and it launches much faster. It has all the bells and whistles you need, with a nice interface - very like what Microsoft Word would have looked like if they had not introduced the hateful Ribbon. It comes with spreadsheet module and presentation module as well. And it opens .docx files. I understand it was developed in China, but you would never know.
Jarte was developed from the same engine that drives WordPad (the built-in word processor that comes with Windows and which hardly anyone uses, generally for good reason). Jarte (how do you pronounce it?) is like WordPad on steroids. It has a completely different kind of interface which takes a few minutes to adjust to, but the opening screen gives you some good pointers. Two big pluses - it occupies only 5.5mb of disk space, and launches almost instantaneously. And it opens .docx files. There are limitations. This is a word processor, not a pseudo layout program as Word tries unsuccessfuly to be. So there are no floating text boxes, drawing tools and the like. But nonetheless it has a surprising amount of features.
Softmaker Office is another office suite, but just with word processor (Textmaker) and spreadsheet (Planmaker). In terms of interface, it looks a bit like a slightly more basic OpenOffice.org, but again it has most functions you would require. The amazing thing is that it comes in at a miniscule 2.4mb size, and again launches quickly. It also opens .docx files. If you have an older computer that is struggling to keep up with the increasing system demands of recent software, this would be a good option.
I haven't mentioned AbiWord, an open source project that has been around for years. It's fairly basic, and the interface is looking rather tired now, but it's still fairly popular in the Linux community. In light of the above new entries, I don't think it cuts it the way it once did.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Reference guides

A couple of helpful ideas from PC World...
1. If you're looking for a quick-reference quide to Word, Photoshop, PowerPoint, etc, check out TechPosters. Some of the stuff at the front page is seriously geeky, produced by people with way too much spare time, but by browsing the Categories section on the righthand side, you'll find guides for plenty of mainstream stufff. Look in MS Office, for instance, for posters on Word, PowerPoint, and the like. Check Browsers for posters on Firefox and Internet Explorer. And so on. Within each category you'll see a large preview of each poster, followed by a link for downloading a PDF you can then print. What's great is that the site has guides for older versions of programs as well, like Publisher 97. (If you can't find something by perusing the Categories, try using the Search field.)
2. And here you'll find an article listing 8 easy extras for Internet Explorer 8.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Web-safe fonts

Practically every personal computer has a set of fonts installed. These fonts are usually the default fonts for the operating system that the computer is using or come with software added by the user. Therefore, different computers can have very different sets of fonts installed. If you are designing a webpage, or sharing documents between computers (and particularly if the document will move between PC and Mac), you need to keep this in mind. If you decide to use a font on your web page that a visitor doesn't have, that font will appear differently (and often unattractively) on the visitor's machine. This is where web safe fonts come in. Web safe fonts are a set of highly common fonts that come installed on most computers. Here is the list to help you on your way:
Serif: Book Antiqua, Bookman Old Style, Courier, Garamond, Georgia, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times New Roman, Times.
Sans Serif, Arial, Arial Black, Geneva, Impact, Lucida Sans Unicode, MS Sans Serif, MS Serif, Symbol, Tahoma, Trebuchet, Verdana, Webdings, Wingdings.
Incidentally, many type faces have equivalents under different names, simply published by a different type foundry. You can often tell which are equivalents because the names have some common connection. Arial and Helvetica are equivalents (although I can't find a connection between the two words in this case). But Swiss and Geneva are also equivalents to Helvetica, which is easy to pick if you were ever a stamp collector, as Helvetia is the word for Switzerland that appears on their stamps. Similarly, Times and New York are equivalents (Times was designed originally for the New York Times newspaper).