The premise behind the text replacement software is simple – you type something and Texter expands it into something larger or more difficult to remember. How about typing addr and hitting the tab key to type out your mailing address? How about a few characters to spit out awesome quotes that you would never remember? If you are a coder you can use this for repetitive code-like functions you use over and over again – do you see where I am going with this?

Let’s take a look at how to install and use Texter. You can grab the installer from here. The download link is halfway down the page – you can’t miss it!

Run the installer and you will be prompted for an install directory like so:

Then you can click finish to launch the application or uncheck the box if you don’t want to start it.

Once Texter is done installing it will take a few minutes on first launch while it configures things in the background. You will see the following screen:

Once the app is finished initializing you will see the graphical user interface below:

Hit the plus sign below and enter your first “hotstring” – don’t be put off by the terminology – that is where you type your codewords. Then choose what will be its trigger. If it is a common few letters you will not want to use instant or you might be shooting yourself in the foot If you use a common word and use instant it would turn your common phrase into your replacement text right away. So for those instances use tab or space.

I love using instant! As you can see below I used the hotstring klg and it instantly turns into my name. Pretty nifty eh? This saves me a ton of time and typing during the day.

You can see below I created my work email, memo or document signature with Texter and when I type Thank and hit tab – blamo!  Instant signature. That shaves 10 minutes off my day.

You can include as much text as you want, see below for my preamble to the United States Constitution. I type preamb and hit tab and automagically the preamble appears. Really I can’t get enough of this!

Do you have another method for text replacement? Let us know about it in the comments. I would love to take it for a test run as improvements are always welcomed! Thanks Adam.

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Personally I’ve never felt quite at home in Word to write a story. Instead, I’ve always been using creative writing suites or pre-production packages.

That’s right, there is screenwriting software that’s specifically designed to help you formulate ideas and work in a simple, but flexible creative environment.

Celtx

I’ve written an article about yWriter in the past, a tool that would help you with outlining and working on your stories. A creative writing suite, if you will. Celtx is different. Oh sure, Celtx will be able to help you with your creative writing, but it’ll do so much more.

Celtx is screenwriting software that aims to aid in all media pre-production. So what does this mean? Whether you’re working on a novel, a film, a comic, a radio or podcast broadcasting, or even a video game, Celtx will help you put down those ideas and help you plan them in a quick and efficient manner.

With all types of features and support, you won’t have to jump over and through between five different screenwriting software applications anymore (if you even used any). Everything can be written, planned and colaborated from within Celtx.

Below we’ll take a look at some of the most prominent features in the application. Believe me, if you’re in the creative business, this is one application you’ll want to add to your arsenal.

Writing Suite

For the storytellers, Celtx comes equipped with the same basic tools you’d expect and a few more advanced ones as well. With a place to list your characters, locations and the like, you don’t have to worry about losing track again. When outlining a story, you can also use the storyboard feature you’ll be discussing below. One cooks with the ingredients at hand, and in our case there’s a buffet already laid out.

One of the most important aspects of Celtx – and its greatest features – is the ease with which one can embed other types of media. If you feel the need to add a picture, drawing or movie fragment to your work, or even an mp3, you can do so with a few clicks of the mouse. One of the reasons I prefer to use the Celtx screenwriting software sis that it doesn’t try to force you into certain ‘development roads’. You can use your own creative way to get at your destination.

In the writing category, Celtx comes with a few different editor flavors: Screenplay, stageplay,  AV scripts, audio play, comic book and text. It doesn’t matter in what branch you’re working, Celtx does not discriminate.

Storyboards

I have already mentioned the storyboards. Although you can indeed use them when you’re writing a novel, they’re much more commonly used in film production.

Create different sequences and easily add individual pictures and drawings, or even do a batch import. Label and narrate your pictures to create a detailed and intricate storyline. If you want, you can even specify the camera shot you intend to use.

Drag and drop groups of images to change the order of events. When you’re done (for the moment), print the pages or share them with your partners. If you want you can even play them in a full screen diashow.

Download Celtx for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at Celtx

Believe me, this doesn’t even begin to describe what Celtx can do. I’ve been using a lot of software, but this is certainly one of the most amazing screenwriting software suites I’ve ever seen. If you’ve got something to add, or are left with an unanswered question, head for the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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We have covered a lot of MS Word 2007 tips and tricks and how-to’s over the months and we have seen how the Office application can be used to create interesting documents. With decreasing attention spans and more hurried reading, designing documents for easy readability has become very important. People don’t read — they glance through. If it’s not your grandmother bequeathing you all her worldly possessions, I guess you too would prefer a rapid scan through a document instead of going at it by line.

Bullets are an essential tool for creating concise documents. You can capture the essential gist of a document in a bulleted list (or a numbered list for that matter).

When I was starting out with MS Word, I knew of only those that I got from the toolbar, with a click on Bullets and Numbering. As MS Word graduated to MS Word 2007, one colorful option came in. A few more days spent spraying bullets all over a document and I learned that there’s an entire gallery of bullets that can be used for improving the décor of one’s document. Not only that, I can use symbols and my own custom pictures too to create my own bullets.

So let’s take a look at the different ways in which we can create bullets. Of course, these are common across all MS Office applications.

Define your own bullet with symbols

MS Word makes it real easy to customize our own bullets if we don’t like the default ones.

• On the Home tab of the Ribbon, go to the Paragraph group where the Bullets command is located. Click the little drop down arrow to access the default bullets in the Bullets Library. Click on Define New Bullets.

  

• Next, click on Symbol and select any character you like to get a new bullet. You can select Wingdings, Wingdings 2 and Webdings from the Fonts dropdown to access a rich variety of typefaces as bullets. You can see a small preview too. Click on OK to set your new choice of bullet.

  

• Just like a font, you can change the color and size of a bullet.

  

Define your own bullets with pictures

• Alternatively, you can click on Picture in the Define New Bullet box to select any from the large gallery. You can also put a check on Include Content from Office Online.

  

• Click on Import to browse to an external file and include it in the collection.
• A lot of the picture bullets can be found under – (In Windows XP) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Media\Office12\Bullets.
• In the above location, you will see that the GIF files have average dimensions of 15 pixels. You can make your own customized picture bullets using the same dimensions in any graphic application.

  

Shortcut bullets with AutoCorrect

• The AutoCorrect feature of Word allows you to create fast bullets with some special characters. To see whether AutoCorrect is set for automatically creating bulleted lists, go to: Office – Word Options – Proofing – Click on AutoCorrect Options.

  

• In the AutoFormat as You Type tab, check Automatic Bulleted Lists.

  

• AutoCorrect recognizes any of these characters…
  *
  o
  — (em dash)
  –
  ––
  >
  –>
  =>
  …and changes them to bullets on the run when you press Enter. Type in any of these characters, press Spacebar, or a tab to enter the text for that line. Hit Enter to go to the next line as the bulleted list gets created with each press of an Enter.
• Creating bulleted lists with AutoCorrect works with all kinds of bullets like symbols and pictures.

Steal bullets from open documents

• If you get a document with a bullet you like, you can easily copy it into your collection. Bullets in an open document get added to the bullets collection under the group – Document Bullets. Select the bullet in that group, right click and Add to Library. Now, it’s yours’ to own and use.

  

• You can remove them by selecting them in the Library group and right clicking on Remove.

Composing bulleted lists is often harped upon these days. Don’t you think that attractive bulleted lists will help with more eye-catching points?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 3 Ways To Strip Formatting From Text in MS Word 2007 (9)
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• How To Turn MS Word 2007 Into A Minimalist Text Editor (15)

One of the alternatives that we could use to create documents on a Mac is Apple’s Pages, part of iWork’s suite of productivity applications along with Numbers (spreadsheet) and Keynote (presentation). The suite is tagged at US$79 and available for 30-day free trial. While the price is far less Microsoft Office suite, paid is still paid. But I think Pages has great features that’s worth the look, even it’s only during the free trial.

The Power of Templates

At the most basic level, Pages is a word processor. So you can use it for your everyday word processing activities from creating a document, writing and editing the text, importing other elements like charts and pictures, to printing or saving the document as a PDF.

Pages can also open documents from many other formats including Microsoft Word documents. Your work from other computers under any other OS can be resumed on your Mac using Pages. The same thing goes for the other end, Pages can also save your work as Word documents. To reveal more saving options, click the little arrow beside the name field when you save your work.

But the true power of this app lies in its beautifully pre-designed templates. Users can use these templates to quickly create professionally looking documents. As Apple puts it, “Even before you start writing, your document looks great.” This template-based method is also used by iWeb, Apple’s webpage design application.

There are over 180 templates for you to choose from, divided into two categories: Word Processing (work-related kind of documents) and Page Layout (more to the ‘fun’ type of documents).

From the Word Processing category, there are Letters, Envelopes, Forms, Resumes, Reports, and Outlines; while from the Page Layout category, there are Newsletters, Brochures, Flyers, Posters, Cards & Invitations, Business Cards, and Certificates. Both categories also offer blank documents and miscellaneous templates.

You can add your own templates and they will appear in “My Templates”.

Creating a good looking document using Templates

My first encounter with Pages was when my friend asked me to help him create a class newsletter. He was amazed at the stunning result that we produced in a short time.

And the process of creating that document required no rocket science. Here are the simple steps for creating good looking documents using Pages’ templates:

1. Open Pages and create a new document.

2. Choose a template

3. Edit the text and replace the pictures

4. Add as many pages as you need

5. Don’t forget to save your document after you’ve done.

Each template listed in the Template Chooser comes with several types of documents and each document consists of several types of pages. Playing with the combinations will provide you with a large number of choices and could keep you busy – in a fun way – for quite a while.

But if you think that the pre-designed templates are not enough, you could add more templates – free or paid – from the internet. One of the recommended places to get free templates is iWorkCommunity.

You could just open the downloaded templates, but if you want them to appear in Pages template list, you should put them inside this folder:

~/UserFolder/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/FolderName

Creating your own templates

But why stop at using templates from others? If you think you have an artistic side that you could be proud of, or if you think that you will consistently use a series of layouts over and over in your project, you could create your own templates, either for personal use or to be shared with others.

You could start building your template from a scratch by opening a totally blank page or you could also do it by modifying another template.

If you are starting from naught, you’d want to add elements to your documents like text boxes, and shapes. This can be done by going to the “Insert” menu or by clicking the icon in the toolbar.

To fill in the text boxes, you could generate some “Lorem Ipsum”s from Lipsum Generator.

To add pictures, open Media Browser from the View –> Show Media Browser or by clicking the toolbar icon.

Then insert some pictures by dragging and dropping the items from media browser to document.

Every element of the page can be edited by selecting it and open the Inspector (View –> Show Inspector or Command + Option + I or the Inspector toolbar icon).

Add more pages according to your needs and repeat the steps.

Once the layout process is finished, you should enable every element of the page(s) as a placeholder. This way, you are able to customize those elements later when you use the pages you’ve created as template.

To do this, go to “Format –> Advanced –> Enable Placeholder Text Authoring” menu. Then select the text and choose “Format –> Advanced –> Define As Placeholder Text”.

To do the same with images, click on the item but choose “Format –> Advanced –> Define As Image Placeholder” instead.

The final step is to turn your document into template. Choose the thumbnail of a page and go to “Format –> Advanced –> Capture Pages” menu.

And name the page.

Repeat the process to other pages.

You could manage multiple pages in a template from “Format –> Advanced –> Manage Pages” menu.

Then use the arrows to rearrange the order and the minus (-) button to delete the pages that you don’t need.

If you want to share your creations, they are available in the same location as your other imported templates: ~/UserFolder/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/

So far I haven’t found any free Mac alternatives for template-based word processors similar to Pages. But if you know any, share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Amongst all those experiences, few managed to really blow my socks off. This one did.

To be quite honest, this application doesn’t fit in under freeware, nor any of the open source categories – but we’ll get back on that later on in the article.

Sublime Text

For those of you who have come into contact with Notepad++, this application should look mighty familar. Rightly so, because Sublime Text is – in the first place – a text editor for code and other programming wizardry.

Nevertheless, if you want a calm, undistracting place to jot down your words, data and prose alike, you won’t find anything more Zen than this text editor. A spell checker is integrated, but for more extensive, picture embedding and style embracing papers I still advise you to use Open Office or Microsoft Office.

By the way, have I mentioned that it looks absolutely breathtaking?

Most programmers will find anything they need to be bundled into the application. There’s standard syntax highlighting for nearly all popular languages, including C, C++, C#, CSS, D, Erlang, HTML, Groovy, Haskell, HTML, Java, JavaScript, LaTeX, Lisp, Lua, Markdown, Matlab, OCaml, Perl, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, SQL, TCL, Textile and XML. Plan to be writing in plain text? There are several color schemes available that are easy on the eye.

This is all pretty standard stuff, and (apart from the slick looks) can also be seen in other code editors like the previously mentioned Notepad++. It is the additional features that turns Sublime Text into a must have application.

For a complete functionality overview, check the Sublime Text feature page. Below are a few of the features I liked best.

MiniMap

If you’re often working with extremely large documents (and we all know both programmers and writers do), you should know how big a pain it can be to navigate. The numbering of lines can be a help, but you’re often still messing around with that excruciatingly tiny scrollbar.

Located in a side panel, utterly left on the screen, Sublime Text offers a MiniMap. The concept is very simple – it’s like having Google Maps embedded in your text editor, your entire document from a birds eye view with the fluorescent square indicating the visible portion of text. To navigate, just grab the square and pull it to wherever you want. When working with even larger documents, your birds eye document view will scroll underneath the square as well, keeping it accessible towards infinity. Nifty.

Multiple Documents

Incredibly useful, both for programming and writing with references, are Sublime Text’s split screen modes. I purchased a second monitor to get this functionality, Sublime Text spares you the trouble.

You can easily open multiple documents in the text editor, not only in different tabs, but side by side. There are a total of five alternative screen layouts, allowing you to stack up to four documents next, or below, each other.

Freeware, Trialware – Whatware?

I mentioned it already at the top of this article – this application doesn’t fit in under freeware, or open source – so under what license does it operate? Technically, Sublime Text is trialware. The free version is to get a feel and get you warmed up for the big purchase of 59 USD.

However, there doesn’t seem to be a time restriction on the trial. In other words, you can use the trial as long as you like, without any inconvenience or even stripped functionality. You could consider it as a very peculiar kind of freeware.

That aside, I must admit that the developers of Sublime Text did one hell of a job. If you can spare the money, and thereby support the people that made this possible, I urge you to do so. Licenses can be used on as many machines as you want, and you’ll automatically receive licenses to all future upgrades.

What text editor do you currently use? Don’t be shy, tell us in the comments below!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Type Emails Faster with Texter Text Replacement Software (7)
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• How To “Find And Replace” Words In Multiple Files (23)

If you are quick with your copying and pasting and you do it with large amounts of text then I am sure you are careful about massive blobs of formatted text that spreads itself all over your Word document.

Ugh, plain text is so dull! Where’s the color…where’s the stylized font…where’s the pizzazz?

Yeah, it’s ho-hum for sure. But being able to strip formatting from text and pasting it in the original format has its uses and its moments. But for times, when we need to apply our own formatting or make it take on the formatting of a paragraph, ‘paste as unformatted text’ is the way to go. Matching the text format of what we are copying to what we want at the destination is always the job.

The feature as we all know is right there in MS Word. A click on Paste – Paste Special – Paste as Unformatted Text/ Paste as Unformatted Unicode Text, and we get it the way we want it. There’s also the Paste Options smart tag but it still involves moving the hands and selecting an option. It’s irksome if one had to do it repeatedly. As far as timesavers go, there’s nothing similar to the keyboard shortcut of Ctrl-V for unformatted text.

Oh wait, there are! Hold on to your mouse.

Over the course of time, I have evolved from the default way gradually to the three methods to strip formatting from text that are mentioned here. I will put down the three ways to always paste without formatting and I invite you to contribute your own. Some of us may be old dogs but it’s never too late to learn new tricks, even for an ordinary task as pasting unformatted text.

Hey…it’s right there in MS Word!

Sure it is. The feature is more targeted – Match Destination Formatting. It’s a simple matter of changing a setting and all text loses its source formatting to take on what’s there in the open document file. Here’s how it is –

1. From the Office button – click on Word Options at the bottom to open the panel.



2. Come down to the Advanced feature on the left. Within it, the second section is for Cut, copy and paste which lists the four options – Pasting within the same document, Pasting between documents, Pasting between documents when style definitions conflict and Pasting from other programs.
3. Change the default of Keep Source Formatting to Match Destination Formatting. Alternatively to paste text without any formatting, you can also choose Keep Text Only. Click OK and that’s it.

Get back that cleanliness with PureText

Plugging all Windows deficiencies has spawned a software industry of its own. Thanks to a neat little freeware called PureText we can strip the format from any copied block of source text. PureText gives us a new shortcut key using Windows Key +V which is the default hotkey for the app. Here’s how it is –

1. PureText does not need an installation. Run it and it operates from the system tray.



2. The formatting of any copied text on the clipboard can be changed by just clicking on the system tray icon. The clipboard text loses its rich formatting but retains carriage returns, tabs, or other white-space.



3. The clipboard text though remains available to be pasted normally (i.e. using a Ctrl+V) with all formatting intact if we so wish.

The little clipboard software is great because it’s just 13K, is portable and can be run on all Windows programs across all editions (Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista).

Let’s record a Macro

Macro programs are little snippets of code that turn a complex multi-step task into a single click function. In brief, they are productivity tools for power users and this ability is built into MS Office. A simple Macro program lets us paste text into a Word document without the original source formatting. Here’s how it is –

1. Go to the View tab on the Ribbon. Click on the Macros group button.



2. In the Macros box which opens, give a descriptive name (without space) for the macro you are about to setup. Press Enter.



3. In the Visual Basic editor, delete the default text and paste the following snip of code:Sub PasteSpecial()
   Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText
   End Sub



4. Click on File – Save Normal or on the Save Normal toolbar icon.
5. To assign a shortcut key to the Macro, click on Office button – Word Options.
6. Click on Customize on the left column. On the right panel, from the Choose commands from dropdown select Macros. Choose the PasteSpecial Macro.



7. To assign a shortcut key to the Macro, click on the Customize button for keyboard shortcuts.
8. In the Customize keyboard window, dropdown to the entry for Macros under Categories on the left. Select the PasteSpecial macro on the right. Enter a shortcut key combination like Ctrl+Shift+V in the Press new shortcut key area by typing the keys combo on the keyboard. Click on Assign and Close to set your Macro.

Give it a rip by copying and pasting some text.

The three ways give a simple makeover to a very basic document operation. In their own way they illustrate that productivity can be had in the tiniest of details.

How relieving are these quick ways to paste unformatted text? Or do you think that the default way stands up to the task adequately? Paste some of your comments below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Google Docs and Adobe Buzzword are good moves to bring a lot of office documents online. Online word processing applications offer distinct advantages such as mobility, a paperless office, increased collaboration, and file security. Of course the biggest ace of online word processors over traditional software is the big elephant in this tight economy – COST.

We all know the big players in this space of online word processing. We have Google Docs, Adobe Buzzword, Zoho Writer, and Thinkfree. Let us look at 6 more fab and free online word processors.

Writeboard

Writeboard is a text collaboration application from 37Signals. Although it does not have usual formatting tools found in other online word processors, this beast has excellent collaboration and revision tools authors, editors, and PR folks will love. After writing your text, you can invite other users to view and edit your copy.

With Writeboard, other users can revert back to old versions of your document without fear of deleting or overwriting something. You can also compare between revisions with marked and highlighted changes.

Writeboard is a useful word processing tool for multiple collaborators and writing teams. Check out full feature list and additional screenshots here.

Peepel WebWriter

Peepel WebWriter and WebSheet make up the Peepel Online Office Suite. Peepel lets you import your documents and spreadsheets into your Peepel account so that you can share files and work on them with your team.

Peepel also offers a RSS feed update for revisions of your shared documents.  Peepel’s contact manager will organize your members so that you can easily invite them to do specific tasks.

Darkcopy

Distraction-free writing is an old theme for GTD workers and folks wanting to escape the temptation of Facebook and other time wasters. Somehow, the idea of having a blank black screen with green letters much like the old DOS-based office software became the formula for distraction-free writing.

Darkcopy is one such web app. The idea behind Darkcopy is that you need only a black screen and neon green text to write – no twitter notification, finished downloads, or antivirus status messages popping up and bothering you. You can use the full screen mode for the full distraction-free effect, then save the document as text file once you are done writing.

Writer From BigHugeLabs

Writer from BigHugeLabs is similar to Darkcopy but with more options such as word count view and PDF downloading. Unlike Darkcopy, you can change the color theme if you do not want the bland green version.

Register for a free account to save your documents online and retrieve them from anywhere. Have a writer’s block? A link at the bottom of the page will lead to the BigHugeThesaurus to help you with word usage. The nifty tool also gives story and blog post suggestions.

Shutterborg

Shutterborg is another minimalist word processor with some formatting tools and saving options. Shutterborg lets you open a document from the web where you can revise an exact copy of a webpage.  Just call the URL of the file and edit the document in Shutterborg.

Shutterborg shines with its eye-candy interface. For me, Shutterborg looks the cleanest as far as online office apps go (try it in full screen). It is also fast and feels more streamlined compared to Google Docs even if it lacks key functions like online storage. Read more on Shutterborg here.

WriteWith

WriteWith is a simple-to-use web-based word processor with real-time collaboration tools. Like Writeboard, writers can sift through revisions with ease and assign other people to edit/revise documents. Team leaders and other members can set deadline on their tasks for a more streamlined workflow.

I personally like the tagging feature of WriteWith since it organizes my files well.

Other WriteWith features include integrated chat, post-to-blog, and export options to a large number of doc formats.

Google Docs is still the king of online office suites – but these word processing apps have some nice things working for them. Whether you prefer distraction-free writing or heavy collaboration work, there are definitely tools out there that do specific things better than Google or Buzzword.

Which web-based processor suits you the best?  Head on down below and give us your suggestions!

Image Credit : isaac bowen

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

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Have you ever had a PDF file that you needed to convert to an editable Word document? Your boss is yelling at you to copy and paste 500 pages from a PDF into a Word document and you are scared that you will have to type this whole document out – fear not MakeUseOf readers, we have a solution for you!

How about copying a block of text or a chart from a PDF to Word or another text editor?

I can assure you that it has been literally torture over the years. There have been a few costly programs that did what I wanted – but even then, it was not done well. I’ve searched for a lot of different programs that would let me convert PDF to an editable Word document in the past, read an older review here.

Now, a free product comes moseying along and does the deed AND WELL!

Let’s take a look at AnyBizSoft’s PDF to Word Converter.

You need to download the application and submit your email address to get a free registration code.

Without registering, the program will only convert 3 pages. So I gave in and gave them my address. I got an email back quickly with my registration code. Next, you will hit the Register button in the upper right-hand corner next to Help. Put in your email address and serial key. It will thank you for registering and then we can start converting!

Hit the Add PDF button in the middle of the window and point the program towards your PDF file that you want to convert to Microsoft Word. On the bottom of the window are your output settings. I set mine to a custom location but you can also have it save in the same folder as the source by checking the top box.

Once you select your PDF, all you have to do is hit the big blue Convert button. That will start your PDF processing. It took about 45 seconds to convert a 5-page PDF that was made up of shaded columns.

The program told me it was complete. I hit OK and the Microsoft Word document loaded.

The document was so on the money it was scary. Because of some graphics overlapped with lines, there was initially a spacing issue. That was easily corrected – because EVERYTHING WAS EDITABLE!

Wow, this is simply awesome!

Do you have a favorite tool that you use for conversions like this? If so please share it with us in the comments!

Found this article interesting? Check out other articles discussing ways to convert PDFs to editable Word documents:

- Convert That PDF To Word. Get That Text Back!
- PDFtoWord: Accurate PDF To Word Converter
- ConvertPdfToWord: PDF to Word Doc Converter

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Many writers prefer a simple text editor sans the frills. Something like a Notepad or writing tools which are generically called ‘minimalist text editors’. I relate them to a horse’s blinker. They serve their utility in that they cut off all distraction between the writer’s eye and his words on the screen.

I wrote my first sentences on MS Word and have always liked its power. Even with all its options, maybe one could make it ape a ‘minimalist text editor’.

The idea…

The idea then, is to simulate a minimalist text editor like Darkroom with a black background, a contrasting font color and an ‘easy on the eyes’ font face. To get the complete real estate for writing and to do away with the distractions, its full-screen view minus MS Word 2007’s ribbon and the Windows Taskbar. But, with the spellchecker and the mini-formatting toolbar remaining in action.

The hack…

1. Start up MS Word 2007. Create a blank document from Office button – New – Blank Document.
2. Change the layout of the page to Web Layout. This can be done from View – Web Layout. Alternatively, from the layout buttons located on the bottom right of Word’s status bar.
3. Set the page color to black for one part of the high contrast effect. Click on Page Layout – Page Color.
4. The other part involves setting up a high contrast font. On the Home tab select the Normal style. Right click and choose Modify…
5. In the Modify Style box, change the font face to Lucida Console and the font color to green (or any other cool color you are comfortable with). You can also set other options like spacing and indents.
6. Save as a Word Template from the Office button – Save As – Word Template.

To view our template in full screen now, we have to follow two steps:

1. Click the Office Button – Word Options – Customize. Select Commands Not in the Ribbon from the drop-down on the left. Scroll down the alphabetical list to select Toggle Full Screen View, and click the Add button to include it in the Customize Quick Access Toolbar column on the right.

   The Quick Access Toolbar is the small set of icons you see just above the Office ribbon next to the Office Button.

   

2. The Windows taskbar is now the only leftover against a full screen view. Right click on the Windows taskbar – click Properties – select Auto-hide the taskbar. The Windows taskbar remains offscreen unless we move the mouse near the bottom edge of the screen.

That’s it! When you want to write in your own ‘darkroom’, just click on the template, switch on the full screen view from the Quick Access toolbar and tap into your creativity. [To exit full screen view, press the Esc key on your keyboard.]

There are simple ways to do some things for which we often rely on additional downloads. I hope this is one of them. Put on your writer’s cap and try out your new writing canvas. And of course, type in your comments or suggestions.

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But for the serious guys, the source code is often a mine of info. It’s the backdoor into a competitor’s SEO strategies – keyword use, design optimization etc. In brief, what’s the guy doing right and what is he doing wrong.

Every browser has an inbuilt viewer, much like a notepad. Commonly found under the View menu, it displays the client side source code at the touch of a mouse. Commonly though, it is not feature rich. For instance, a feature to change the font face would have been nice. Also, a simple addition of a comment before saving the file is not possible as it is usually read only. It is merely meant to be a viewer… the word ‘editor’ a bit ill-chosen.

So can we get the browser to use the editor of our choice? Thankfully, most of the browsers themselves are open to the idea. Here’s how we can foist our own choice on Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera.

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 3’s default viewer is accessed from View – Page Source. It has basic options to change the text size, syntax highlighting and a feature to wrap long lines. One feature I like is that Firefox lets me see the source for a selected area of the webpage (Right click – View selection source).

But to choose another editor, let’s do this:

1. Type about:config in the address bar. Ignore the alert which comes up and go ahead.
2. In the application preferences page, scroll to the bottom half of the page or use browser’s Find (CTRL+F) to search for two values.
3. Find and highlight view_source.editor.external. Double click and toggle it to “true”.
4. Next, just below it find and highlight view_source.editor.path. Double click on it and enter the new path of your preferred editor in the Enter string value box. If the path doesn’t exist or is not executable, the inbuilt viewer will be used.

It’s done!

Firefox has a host of add-ons which help to get under the hood of a webpage. Ann Smarty, a colleague here at MakeUseOf has covered seven of them quite comprehensively in an outside post at SearchEngineJournal.com. Of the 7 add-ons mentioned, only View Formatted Source is not updated for the latest version of the browser.

Internet Explorer

IE8’s source viewer, accessed from View – Source doesn’t add anything more than the standard options. But the inbuilt Developer Tools feature gives IE8 some extra teeth and us, an option to have an editor of our choice.

Developer Tools is a debugger which makes dissecting a webpage and its included elements like CSS, Javascript and HTML much easier. The developer tools can be opened by –

• Open IE8. Press F12
• Or on the Menu click Tools – Developer Tool.

It is a powerful tool and to explain it would require a few tutorials of its own. Here, we just want to change the source code editor.

1. Open Internet Explorer.
2. Press the F12 button to start the Developer Tools.
3. Click on File; Choose Customize Internet Explorer View Source.
4. Three options are presented: Default Viewer, Notepad, Other…
5. You can use Notepad or select Other for an editor of your choice. Browse to the location of your program, select the program’s executable file and click Open to set it up as the new editor.

Opera

Opera v9.64 does allow you to make changes and apply them on the fly in its source editor. The source editor is available from View – Source. Opera also gives you the option to change the default and it is easy.

1. On the Menu, click on Tools – Preferences.
2. In Preferences, select the Advanced tab. Under Programs, click on Edit for Choose application for viewing source.
3. Opera gives us three choices,
   • The Opera source viewer – use the inbuilt one.
   • Open with default application – specify the path of your preferred application.
   • Open with other application – here you can browse to the program of your choice, select its executable and set it as the editor. You can also fix launch parameters for the program in the Parameter field.
4. Click OK to close the source viewer options and set the changes.

A short note on Google Chrome…

Google Chrome does not allow us to change the default source viewer (yet!). Chrome has a Developer’s section under the page icon, from where you can view the source of the current page, use Debug JavaScript function and open a JavaScript console. The source viewer itself is minimalistic with syntax highlighting, line numbers and active links.

The view source option is akin to a diagnostic kit, especially for a web developer. Therefore, it makes sense to use the better ones on the table like for instance Notepad++, SourceEdit, or even dedicated but lean HTML editors like Homesite (good but not free). For more free options look at 3 Windows Text Editors For Programmers.

As we are talking about the ‘language of code’ why not also look at Damien’s post on tools to clean up CSS files.

Have you changed your source viewer/editor? Or are you sticking to the default? Also let us know your own editor of choice.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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In it’s basic form, SourceEdit is a glorified text editor. However, what makes SourceEdit so useful for application developers is it’s ability to instantly switch into a coding environment, complete with automatic formatting and color coding that can help you maintain correct structure and syntax when you write applications in C++, Java, Visual Basic and about ten other common programming languages.

A Review of SourceEdit

Used as a standard text editor, the look and feel of this application is a lot like WordPad, but the additional formatting features are created with programmers in mind. It is an all-in-one editor that accomodates (as best it can) the formatting and syntax from thirteen of the most popular desktop and internet programming languages. The coding environment is fairly clean and easy enough to learn quickly.

The buttons on the main menu bar include standard file and copy commands, and also includes Insert Time Stamp, Display File in Default Browser (for HTML programming), managing bookmarks, and options. The left pane provides an easy browse feature to open and save files. Switching between the various programming languages is as easy as right clicking in the text area, selecting “options,” and then choosing the “Langauge/Tabs” setting.

In this screen, you can choose the default language that you want to use when the application first opens. The default language determines how the application will format and color code your text as you write your software.  In my particular case, I usually use Visual Basic as my default, but I often switch to HTML when I’m doing web design work.

Programming Features of SourceEdit

Once you start using the application as an editor, and not just as a text editor, its value really shines through.  In my case, I use it to throw together simple Visual Basic scripts that perform basic file manipulation or database query tasks. This application automatically formats each line correctly indented, depending on the programming structure you use. For example, For loops, If-Then statements, and other routines are automatically formatted for you – so the software looks clean and professional.

As you can see, the example above shows how SourceEdit formats Visual Basic code, with subroutines in blue, numbers in red, and regular text in black. However, just setting the current language setting to HTML, you can also use the same software to edit HTML code with the appropriate syntax color coding.

As you can see here, HTML tags are all clearly identified in maroon, tag elements are highlighted in blue, comments are green, anything in quotations is dark grey, and actual page text is black. For web programmers who enjoy the control that text editing offers, this application allows you to keep that control, but you also receive the benefit of formatting and syntax, so that you’re less likely to forget a tag or otherwise completely mess up your web page. I’ve used SourceEdit for my HTML coding needs ever since the software was first released, and it’s saved me immeasurably in reduced troubleshooting time.

Another nice feature of the software is that if you don’t like the default color schemes as shown above, you can customize the software so that the various elements of your code are colors that you prefer.  To do this you right click in the text area, click options, and click “Color/Font.”

Here you can change keywords, operators, variable types and a whole list of other programming elements to display in whatever color and font style that you prefer. Another nice customization feature of this software is the ability to specify specific keywords for the software languages. You do this by going to Tools, and then “Language Editor.” For example, in the shot below, I’m adding a custom “starting,” and “ending,” keyword for ASP code. This feature is nice for when there are certain functions that exist in the language you use that SourceEdit doesn’t originally recognize. This is where you can add those new functions or commands.

Finally, another programming feature that I like about this software is that there’s an “autocomplete” tool. Pressing Cntrl-Space enables a drop-down box that provides you with the autocomplete options based on what you’ve already typed.

Other Cool Features

The programming functionality of this software alone sets it at the very top of my list for favorite text editors. However, there are even more features that I feel deserve honorary mention because of how useful they’ve been during the time I’ve used this software. The first one of those is the “file mapping” feature.

File mapping (in the options dialog) allows you to tell the software which syntax/color scheme to use depending what the extension is of the file that you’re opening. For example, if you open a .cpp file, the software will automatically enable C++ color codes, using .php will use PHP syntax, and so on. This saves you time because you don’t have to constantly reset the current language setting.

Another cool feature of this software is the HTML toolbar feature, which automatically inserts HTML tags for you, using the correct formatting.

In the shot above, I’m about to select one of the “form” options. When you click on any of the buttons in the HTML toolbar, it will insert the correct HTML code wherever you currently have the cursor placed. For people who can never remember how certain tags are used (like me), this feature is a life-saver.

And finally, saving the best for last, there’s the ability to view four documents at once using four frames.

The ability to split the text editor display into four screens is just icing on the cake for any programmer who, like me, loves to copy and paste code snippets that I’ve already written elsewhere. This feature lets you easily scroll through all of your code on the same screen instead of flipping through several windows hidden throughout your desktop.

Do you like to program using a text editor rather than through programming software, and if so, do you have favorite editors that you like to use when programming text-based languages? Share your opinions in the comments section below.

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If you are like me – a native Linux user and a seasoned blogger – here are 6 free blogging clients for Linux users.

While they are not as good as Windows Live Writer, they are still able to help you get the job done quickly and easily.

1. BloGtk

BloGtk is a blog editor for the Gnome desktop. It supports Blogger (1.0), Movable Type, WordPress and any other blog platforms that support atom publishing protocols.

While there are several formatting options for you to style your post, it does not has a WYSIWYG text panel. Instead you will find a mix of HTML and plain text in the text editing area. You will have to switch to preview mode to see what the post look likes in the browser.

One thing good about BloGtk Linux blog editor is that it supports custom tags. You can define your own tags and add custom HTML code into your post effortlessly.

2. Thingamablog

Thingamablog is more than a blog editor. It is in fact a blogging software that allows you to create, edit, publish and maintain your blog from your desktop.

If you already own a third party web-hosted blog (such as WordPress, Blogger, LiveJournal), then this software is not suitable for you. Instead if you are looking to start your own blog and want to manage everything right from the desktop, this will be a great tool for you.

In Thingamablog, you can find the blog configuration option, post composing sections and many useful tools to help you manage your blog. It is just like a WordPress condensed to desktop version (minus the plugins).

In addition, Thingamablog is coded with Java, thus making it cross-platform compatible. As long as your system has got Java runtime, you will be able to run Thingamablog.

3. ScribeFire

I won’t go into detail about ScribeFire since this is a very popular blog editor and many people (including MakeUseOf) have done a review about it.

One good thing about ScribeFire is that it is cross-platform compatible and can be used wherever Firefox is installed. It also comes with plenty of useful features such as rich-text WYSIWYG editor, scheduled posting, live preview, site pinging and much more.

For those who have not tried out ScribeFire, I strongly recommend you do so now. You can find the Firefox’s ScribeFire extension here.

4. Drivel

If you are running a LiveJournal blog, then Drivel is going to be very useful for you, much more than Windows Live Writer. Drivel is said to support the entire LiveJournal features set, including selecting a mood, set the music you are currently listening to, friends and many more.

Drivel also supports other blog platforms such as Blogger, Movable Type and WordPress.

While configuring Drivel, you will find that WordPress entry is not included. You will have to have the Movable Type entry and change the information to your WordPress blog.

The text editor is simple with a clean interface. Most of the options only appear if you have configured it for a LiveJournal blog.

5. Gnome Blog Editor

For a fully-fledged feature-rich blog editor, I won’t recommend this, but if you are looking for a simple editor that allows you to write and publish quick posts without any hassle, then Gnome Blog Editor is the best for you.

There are times when you come across some interesting articles on the Web and you want to make a brief post and post a link to that article. With Gnome blog editor, you can quickly fire it up, write your post and hit the “Post Entry” button to publish it. Simple, quick and easy.

6. QTM

QTM is designed for the KDE desktop, but it works in Gnome as well. Among various native Linux blog editors (ScribeFire not included), I would say that QTM comes with the most complete features (though it is still far off from WLW) for most blog platforms.

You get a decent text editor, with options to specify categories, tags and pingbacks. There is also a quick post template where you can create a template set that you can use to publish quick posts.

Alternative blog editors that are not on the list.

Other than the 6 listed above, there are some more blog editors that you can use in Linux. The reason I didn’t include these in the list is because I have difficulty getting them to run properly on my computer. They are still available for your usage, but I can’t vouch for their quality.

• Bleezer – Java based blog editor. I found this to be rather buggy.
• JBlogEditor – The project is no longer under active development.
• KBlogger – native blog editor for KDE

What other desktop blogging clients for Linux you have heard about or tried in the past? Make your say in the comments.

Image credit: churl

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Of course the first thing you will probably notice it is lacking is a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing mode. I told you it was for HTML purists! It does offer a preview mode, but it is view-only. If you consider a visual editor to be a must-have, then w.bloggar may not be for you.

w.bloggar does offer HTML syntax highlighting, which is something that Windows Live Writer does not have.

Uploading/Inserting images is easy and it all happens in just two clicks. You just click the upload file button

and then select whether you want to post an image or a link to download the file being uploaded. You can also edit the tag options before inserting the HTML.

The fact that it uploads images directly to the blog as you are writing the post makes it much easier to work with the HTML. It also speeds up the final article posting, since the images are already on the blog.

w.bloggar supports many more web services and blogging platforms than Live Writer. Here is a list of the web services supported:

• Blogger
• MSN Spaces
• TypePad
• BigBlogTool
• Blogalia
• TheBlog
• Blog-City
• EraBlog.NET
• Upsaid
• UBlog
• SquareSpace
• BlogWare
• DearDiary.Net

As well as a number of different blogging platforms and content management systems:

• MovableType
• Nucleus
• b2
• WordPress
• b2 evolution
• Blog:CMS
• .Text
• BlogWorks XML
• Drupal
• LiveJournal
• pMachine
• Xoops
• E-Xoops
• PostNuke
• blojsom
• Roller Weblogger
• Domino
• YACS
• Xaraya

Given the comprehensive list, the chances are quite good that your blogging platform is supported. w.bloggar is a very small app, so it loads very fast and is ideal for using on portable drives. It is very easy to use, and will integrate very well and quickly with your blog. If you prefer to work with HTML directly when writing for your blog, you’ll definitely want to take a look at it.

What do you think of w.bloggar? Are you aware of any other good portable blogging tool we should know about?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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How to install additional Gedit plugins

While Gedit ships with a set of default plugins, you can surely add as many as you like. To install a plugin for Gedit, you must first download it to a local folder and then extract the contents to ‘~/.gnome2/gedit/plugins/’ directory. Also look for a package named “gedit-plugins” in your distribution’s package manager, this package contains some additional plugins for gedit. Once you have installed the plugin you want, you need to enable it via Edit>Preferences and then the Plugins Tab.

And finally here is a list of the top plugins you should definitely check out if you do a lot of text editing:

Align

Lets you arrange blocks of text into columns easily and quickly. Just select the text to be arranged, go to Edit > Align, specify the column separator and presto you have instant columns. No more pressing tabs and arranging text manually!

Auto tab

Autotab detects the indent/space settings in a file and adjusts tabbing accordingly on the fly. Very useful if you have to edit code written by others using different editors.

Browser Preview

Allows you to preview the webpage code you are editing in gedit in different browsers like Firefox, opera, IE, konqueror etc. A dream come true for any web developer.

File Browser (included in default install)

Lets you browse through directories and files in the side pane. Choose the file you want to edit, double click and away she opens in a new tab.

Character Map (included in gedit-plugins)

So you want to type in a different language? Keyboard problems? or do you wonder from where does µtorrent gets its µ? Look no further than the character map plugin. Enable it and you will be able to view the character map in the side pane. Just click on the character you want to insert and it gets inserted in the file.

Class Browser

As the name suggests, this plugin provides you a class browser for browsing source files. You can get an overview of various identifiers used in the code in the gedit side pane once you enable this plugin.

Document Words Completion

This plugin brings Auto Complete to gedit. While you are typing, this plugin will attempt to complete the current word, based on the words that have appeared previously in the current document. You can configure it to AutoComplete or offer suggestions when you hit Ctrl+Enter

External Tools (included in gedit-plugins)

External tools plugin allows you to add custom entries to the tools menu. The entries can run external commands on the current file. A totally indispensable tool considering what all can be achieved with text files and the Linux command line. Highly recommended if you do any kind of repetitive work on text files.

Sort and Spell Check (included in default install)

What good is a text editor without the ability to check your spellings? Yet most text editors lack this functionality.Enable the Spell plugin to add Spell Check functionality to gedit. The Sort plugin on the other hand allows you to sort elected text. You needn’t use sort/sed/awk to sort the file for you. It can be done right from within gedit

LaTeX Plugin

The LaTeX plugin helps you to write and compile LaTeX code. With features like LaTeX code completion, coupled with the power of other plugins, gedit with LaTeX plugin can greatly simplify your work. The LaTeX plugin can be used for BibTeX bibliographies as well.

Session Saver (included in gedit-plugins)

Session saver allows you to save you current workspace within gedit as it is, so that when you restore a session at a later time you can start right where you left your work.

Snippets (included in default install)

Snippets plugin allows you to insert frequently typed phrases and text by using hotkeys or a shortcode. You can configure your own snippets so that if you type something like MUO it automatically gets substituted with MakeUseOf.com. Snippets is one of my personal favorites and can save you a lot of typing.

Tabs Extend

Adds Firefox like useful features to gedit tabs, including the ability to undo a closed tab, close all other tabs, close all tabs and close tabs to the left of the current tab. Very useful if you are working with a lot of files simultaneously

More?

If you are a programmer who uses text editor every now and then to edit some code, gedit has some awesome plugins to make your work easier. The color picker (gedit-plugins) lets you visually choose a color and insert its hex value into your code,code comment lets you comment/uncomment selected text with a single command, there are plugins to tidy up your HTML, indent code, match braces and then there is the python console and many many more. If you use gedit for general purposes you can explore bookmarks, splitview and directly mail the text file from within gedit with plugins. All these and many more are mentioned on Gnome Live. Some of the links are broken and some plugins don’t work as expected so you might be in for some hit and trial.

What really prompted me to write this article was that many people don’t realise that a program such as gedit (viewed as a simple text editor) can support so many additional functionality via plugins. A reason could be that people hardly care about setting preferences for text editors and the plugins option is buried deep inside preferences. I am curious to know how many of our readers knew about gedit plugins? The geeks would have known for sure, so we can expect some plugin suggestions in the comments too. Which ones are your favorites?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

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Before we start, let me lay out the things you will need:

• A text editor capable of editing HTML. I suggest TextWrangler.
• Signature Profiler
• Some basic knowledge of HTML.
• An online file-sharing service like DivShare or Box.net to store your avatar.
• To be running Mac OS X 10.4.x and higher.
• To be using Mail on Mac OS X.

This entire tutorial will transform your email signature from this:

to this:

If you’re still excited, then read on. But be warned, depending on your level of geekiness, this process may or may not be easy for you. [Disclaimer: this tutorial is actually an improved version of this one]

First step – Making a HTML signature

You have to understand that in order to insert HTML in your email signature and make it interactive, it’s actually two different procedures. The first is to change it into HTML, the second is by using Signature Profiler and adding the interactive stuff: iTunes status, random quote, Skype button.

Let’s focus on the HTML part first. You’ll need to open up TextWrangler and create your HTML signature. There are some limitations to adding HTML – for example, GMail does not recognize body or style tags and all CSS must be embedded. Head here to read more about CSS in email.

If you have no idea where to start, use this example HTML file as a base to mess around with. If you want, you could tweak it to fit your style. You should fill in your name and social sites where the fields indicate. Also, you’ll need to upload your avatar to Divshare or Box.net, get the direct image link and insert it in the image tags. The size of the image varies and depends a lot on the style of your signature and how many lines of text you will have. Like I said, you will need to play around and customize it yourself.

If you notice, there’s a specific line of text after the second break, {itunes.display.info} is used later to retrieve your iTunes status.

To see how your signature will look like, save it (to the desktop or anywhere else convenient) and drag it into Safari. Once you’re happy with the results, click on the File menu and Save as ‘webarchive’ onto your desktop. Name it “HTML sig”. We’ll return to it later.

Step two – Show your currently playing song

Now that you have your HTML signature all set, you’re ready to add the interactive stuff like iTunes status and Skype buttons.

Download and install the Signature Profiler plugin for Mail and restart Mail. It should now be added into your Mail preferences.

Here’s what SigPro can do:

• Add iTunes currently playing song, artist and album
• Add a Tail signature
• Add a random text qoute
• Add your Skype Status and buttons to call you
• Lots more advanced stuff like calling scripts

If you’re planning to show your iTunes status, then you’ll need to create signatures for them. Personally, I’ve only created two new ones: one to show the song iTunes in playing, and another when it is paused, stopped or not running. To do this, you’ll need to go to the Signature tab in Mail preferences. Create a new signature and call it “iTunes playing”. Right click in the signature field and you’ll notice that SigPro has added their Replacements into the menu.

Add the items {itunes.playing.song}, {itunes.playing.artist} and {itunes.playing.album} into the signature field from the right-click menu. Now all you need to do is to customize it. Here’s what I would write: I’m listening to {itunes.display.song} by {itunes.display.artist} from their album {itunes.display.album}.

Keep in mind that these are just text, so you can adjust the font attributes. You’ll need to select the curly brackets as well when changing the size and colour of the fonts, if not you’ll lose the formatting.

Now, make another signature for iTunes’ paused state. It doesn’t need to have any fields in it, just a short message will suffice.

After you’ve done that, go to SigPro’s tab in Mail preferences and hit the ‘iTunes & Quotes’ tab. For each iTunes state, select the appropriate signature. Now test it out! Play iTunes and see if the signature changes (it will change right there in Mail preferences).

Step three – Swapping your text signature for the interactive one

If you already have a plain text-only signature set in Mail, good. If not, set one up and associate it with an account (by dragging the signature from the middle column into the appropriate email account in the left column). Quit Mail.

After you’ve done that, go to ~/Library/Mail/Signatures/ and you will find all of your signatures in webarchive format. Assuming that you only have one email account set up in Mail, you will have three signatures: your regular signature, “iTunes Playing” and “iTunes Paused” signatures. To find out which is the one you want to change, double-click them to open in Safari until you find them.

Once you’ve located it, copy its file name. It should look something like this “F61C8250-DE9F-4B33-A17D-2F5FF6E3B5B9″ (without the webarchive extension). Rename the “HTML sig” file on your desktop with this file name. Drag the new signature file from the desktop into the ‘Signatures’ folder and replace the older signature file.

Open Mail and your signature is now HTML and interactive.

A few things to remember: The avatar doesn’t load in Mail’s preference but it will load when composing a new mail. Also, any changes made in the HTML signature will be hard to repair. For instance, if you accidentally delete the avatar logo from the signature, you will have to start from scratch again. Keep a copy of the ‘webarchive’ files so that you can restore your signature in case of a disaster.

You can also add other stuff (like the Skype button) into your signature by right-clicking and selecting fields from the SigPro Replacement menu. If you want more control over its formatting, then I suggest that you add the fields by editing the HTML signature in TextWrangler.

If you’re into this kind of thing but don’t use Mac, then I would recommend that you check out Saikat’s article on creating multiple singature in Gmail. Retaggr is also an easy way to add a funky signature to your emails, David mentioned it earlier in his post about how to create online business cards.

Please ask if you have any questions about this tutorial or if you somehow screwed up and need help. What are the other methods you use to interactify/interactize your email signature? Let us know in the comments.

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Download and install Gobby. Gobby is available for Windows, Linux and Mac. Linux users can also try the distribution’s package manager to install Gobby.

The first thing you would need to do to begin editing collaboratively once Gobby is installed is to “create a session”. Click on “create session” and fill in the details. Gobby lets you choose the port to be used for connections, the name that will be displayed, a color that will be used to mark the edits that are performed by you and it lets you create a password for the session so that only intended recipients may join in.

From the other side your counterpart would need your IP address, use ipconfig on Windows and ifconfig on Mac and Linux to know your IP address and send it over to the other person. The other person can then join in with the details you provided and can choose a display name and color for themselves just like you did. Gobby will let them know if what they chose clashes with any of the contributors currently in the session.

They will then be able to see the documents that are available for editing in the current session, click on one of them and hit subscribe to be able to edit it with you collaboratively. Gobby can be used to connect and bring together any number of contributors.

Once connected Gobby allows you to chat with the contributors and edit the files and view changes made by others in real time. Gobby is excellent for source code editing as it recognizes and supports syntax highlighting for quite a lot of file types. You can view, add and remove file types and manage other preferences from the preferences dialog.

Gobby supports editing multiple files in collaboration with multiple users. This means that while you are editing file X the other users may be editing file Y together collaboratively and then you can view the changes in real time! You can even view all the contributors and the files they are working on. Gobby lets you save sessions for later use, so that all the details and document lists are preserved and you won’t have to set it up again.

If you don’t want to install Gobby then its worth mentioning that simple collaboration is also possible via Google Docs if you don’t need some of the advanced features of Gobby. Just click on “share” from within the Google Docs interface and enter the email address of the person you want to invite, then from that point on, you can edit the document together.

Have you ever edited a document collaboratively? Do you know about some other tools besides Gobby? Let us know in the comments.

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Wikis are great for collaboration and note taking. Web workers have been using it to collaborate, Ubuntu has been using it, we use it here at MakeUseOf. However if you don’t have a web server and can’t install Wiki online, the next best thing is to have a wiki on your desktop.

ZIM is one such package that helps you create a wiki on your desktop. Or in other words you can use it as an excellent note taking application.

ZIM is a WYSIWYG text editor which aims to bring the concept of a wiki to your desktop. So why would you need a wiki on your desktop?

Well, here are some things you can do with it :

• Create TODO lists
• Create a notebook to keep important ideas or a general scrap book to note down your thoughts.
• You may then export it in HTML format and view them in a browser just as you would view webpages.
• Any other creative non-traditional ideas?

So it’s a note taking application. Why ZIM then? Just have a look at some of the features of ZIM:

• Saving transparently as you type and finish.
• You can even have a revision control of your notes/pages
• You can embed images as well (I missed it badly in Tomboy). Just link to them from within the text file.
• You can use the wiki syntax and keybindings or the editor to style and manage your notes/lists.
• It also supports plugins to perform tasks like spell checking, export, calendar, todo list and more.

Here is a small screenshot tour to give you an idea of some of the capabilities:

Open or create a new notebook:

Type in the notes with all the formatting using either the wiki syntax or the toolbars or shortcut keys:

Manage Plugins:

Using the calendar and plugins:

Export to HTML or another format using a variety of options.

The notes are stored as text files with wiki markup. This means that you can edit them with other applications as well. With the keybindings and wiki syntax, ZIM has become my favorite and I seldom use Tomboy now. If you are using Ubuntu, ZIM is just a command away:

sudo apt-get install zim

If you are using another distribution then you might want to check out your package manager. Nevertheless, here is the download page.

ZIM can be used on Windows as well, only you require the gtk+, perl and gtk-perl bindings. Also check out the instructions for Windows Install. Try it and let us know how you liked it or do you use another note taking application? I know BasKet can do similar things but I am not a big KDE fan.

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It does highlighting and line numbers, these were my first reasons for using it. Notepad ++ has been my best friend for writing scripts and HTML files.

Now I had a new challenge and my buddy Mike told me that Notepad ++ would be my easiest and FREE solution.

Here was my dilemma – I had 8,342 HTML files and I needed to replace some text on every single page to reflect a company’s identity tweaking. The company was mostly adult-oriented before and now they are trying their hand at mainstream. They needed to remove the word ADULT from their company name every where throughout their site. Now your friendly neighborhood admin was not going to be doing this manually – that was for sure. So I fired up Notepad ++ and searched for this magic option.

Sure enough there it was on the search menu – the option that was going to make my life easier – “Find In Files”.

Using this awesome feature I am able to have Notepad++ find all files with the word I choose in them. It then shows me the results of my search. Once I click on all the instances I want to change, it will open those files. I can then do my “replace on all open files”.

After you find all your instances and have all the files open in Notepad ++ you can then click over to the replace tab – now you will see a option to replace throughout ALL OPENED FILES! Sweet!

I am guessing that some of you out there have never heard of or used Notepad ++ before. So let me run down the basic features with you. If you are a scripter, coder or any type of programing monkey this program will make you salivate!

Check it out, Notepad ++ has:

• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• User Defined Syntax Highlighting
• Auto-completion
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
• Macro recording and playback
• Bookmarks

Do you have another way to find and replace throughout a slew of files? After completing this task I was told about another free application that might have made my life even easier… It is called BkReplaceEm and stay tuned for my review!

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So I started the quest to find more suitable tool to east the pain and find Lyx – available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The definiton on their web page said: “LyX is a document processor that encourages an approach to writing based on the structure of your documents (WYSIWYM – What You See Is What You Mean), and not simply their appearance (WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get).”

Feel The Lyx
Start by downloading the 18 Mb++ installer, then you may continue with the not-so-smooth installation process. Lyx require your computer to have LaTeX system before you can install Lyx, otherwise please use the option to download MiKTeX. Other interuptions are the step to choose the Language and the step to choose and download dictionaries. Please note that installation plus MiKTeX and English Dictionary download require about 375 Mb of your hard disk space.

On the first sight, there’s no love. Aside from standard tools, the interface was a bit cluttered by all of these icons of symbols of everything that made my high school’s mathematical days miserable. But those ‘clutteries’ are the ones that set this document processor apart from all the rest. Creating any science equation is a snap even for the person who has developed acute science allergy for years like yours truly.

I will not go above and beyond explaining how to do that since Lyx site has complete screencasts on the How-Tos. You just click the picture on each spesific topic to watch the tutorial. Extensive documentation is one of the advantages which people will find useful.

More Than Meets The Eye
But writing scientific equation easily is not the only advantage of Lyx. It’s fast with no memory hog, able to track changes and use branches for having more versions of the same document. As a bonus: yellow sticky notes.

Academic writers (as well as commercial writers – both fiction and non fiction) will also find Lyx valuable as it supports Structured document creation, including: advanced features for labels, references and bibliography (including BibTeX support), standard word processor operations; spellchecking (uses ispell in the background), also footnotes and margin notes.

What I find really useful for the writing purpose is the support for table of contents creation and outliner mode, in which you can move chapters and sections around in the “Table of Contents” dialog; and the availability of different textclasses which allow you to type different kinds of documents: letters, articles, books, movie scripts, LinuxDoc, and slides.

You can view the full list of Lyx features here.

I’ve only used Lyx for a short time, and it’s not the most good looking document processor out there, but the speed and functionality have already make it my main choice of writing tool. So, unless any of you readers can give me better alternatives (use the comments field below), I’d say “Make way for Lyx!”

(By) Jeffry Thurana is a blogaholic who has just started his own self-improvement journal “Supersubconscious” and manages an Indonesian tech blog “InterNeTips“. He actually thinks there are 30 hours everyday.

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Plus if you’re willing to donate a minimum of $1 to the developer, he’ll throw in the enhanced version of the software which will give you the ability to encrypt your files as well.

But for most people, including me, the basic free version will suffice. Let’s take a look at it and see how easy it is to split and merge your PDF documents. Let’s start with merging a file.

After installing the software, open it up and click on “merge / extract” on the left hand side. Then on the right hand side, click on “add”. This will allow you to add the PDF files you want to merge, to the program.

If there is a password for the PDF file, add it in the “password” column. If you only want certain pages from the file to be merged, put the page numbers in the “page selection” column (such as 1-5, 12, 14).

The next step is to complete this part :

As you can see, if the PDF file has forms, tick the box. Then indicate the folder where you want the newly merged file to go on your computer in the “destination output file” box. Then click the “run” button. Your merged file should then be made for you in less than a minute or so depending on the size of the files.

Now, to extract pages from a PDF file is also dead simple. Just go through the previous process again but this time, choose only one PDF file. Then in the page selection column, choose the pages you want to extract. Then press the “run” button. Your pages will be extracted as a single PDF file in literally seconds.

The third option is to take a PDF file and split it all the pages up :

You can also choose to give each new PDF file a prefix such as the name of the original file so you can keep track of which pages belong to which file.

All in all, this is a pretty powerful free tool and it gives you one more reason not to shell out the money for Adobe Acrobat. This is definately going in my “keeper” folder and I am contemplating giving a donation to the developer to try out the encryption feature.

[Rating=5]

(By) Mark O’Neill is a blogger, professional freelance writer and the editor of Make Use Of. Check out his personal blog at BetterThanTherapy.net

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If you’re prepared to pay for a text editor with a free trial option, there is Dreamweaver and Aptana, Aptana has three software packages Aptana Studio, Aptana Cloud and Aptana Jaxer.

If you don’t want to pay for a text editor and would prefer a free option, read on…

Intype

Intype is a really good lightweight text editor for Windows. The interface of Intype is just like the one for TextMate for OS X so it works really well and keeps things simple, easy and tidy. Intype has been around since its first alpha release back in January 2007 and is now on alpha version 3. The progress of Intype has been really slow because they only have two developers. The first is Martin Cohen who is the project leader and the person behind interface for Intype. The second person is Juraj Durech who is responsible for the core C++ programming.

When Intype finally hits 1.0 I think that it’ll be without a doubt one of the best text editors around. Why? Well, Intype is only at version 0.3.1 at the moment and it already packs a good punch. It supports bundles and plugins as well as a bundle editor and a lot more features. All of Intype’s finished and pending features can be viewed here.

The languages that Intype supports syntax highlighting for are C, C++, CSS, HTML, HTML (Rails), Jasmine, Java, Javascript, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SQL, SQL(Rails), Textile, XHTML, XML, XSL and YAML. The Bundles that Intype comes installed with are PropertyList, C, CSS, DOM, HTML, Jasmine, Java, Javascript, Perl, PHP, Python, Rails, reStructuredText, Ruby, SQL, Textile, XML and YAML.

What is a bundle?

A bundle is like a shortcut for typing certain functions and commands in languages. An example of how to use a bundle in PHP is if I want to do an If statement, I would type ‘if’ and then hit enter and then it would fill in the other characters to save me time.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a very popular open source text editor for Windows that a lot of programmers use because of the functionality that it has. Notepad++ was first released in November 2003 and as of writing this article is at version 5.0.

Just like Intype, Notepad++ supports syntax highlighting for a lot of languages.

The languages that it supports syntax highlighting for are C, C++, Java, C#, XML, HTML, PHP, CSS, makefile, ASCII art, doxygen, ini file, batch file, Javascript, ASP, VB/VBS, SQL, Objective-C, RC resource file, Pascal, Perl, Python, Lua, TeX, TCL, Assembler, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, Properties, Diff, Smalltalk, Postscript, VHDL, Ada, Caml, AutoIt, KiXtart, Matlab, Verilog, Haskell, InnoSetup, CMake and YAML.

Notepad++ has a style editor so that you can change the syntax highlighting of a language so that it’s more comfortable for you if you’re used to a different type of syntax highlighting that Notepad++ uses by default.

Notepad++ allows for the use of plugins and comes with 8 installed. Light Explorer, Spell-Checker, NppExec, MIME Tools, FTP, NppExport, Compare and Document Monitor.

Notepad++ also allows for the use of macros to save you from typing the same functions over and over again. In the preferences you can change everything from the tab size to the blink rate and width of the caret. There is also a shortcut mapper so that you can configure shortcuts to fit how you like.

Notepad++ has a lot of features that I could be here all day writing about so if you want to check out the other features that Notepad++ then head over to their website.

ConTEXT

When I was a full time Windows user my text editor of choice was ConTEXT. I really like the look and feel of ConTEXT – it’s simple and it just works. As ConTEXT is so light it requires hardly any RAM, so if you’re running a few memory intensive applications and you also need to do a bit of programming then ConTEXT is a good choice.

The languages that ConTEXT supports for syntax highlighting are C, C++, CSS, ConTEXT Highlighter, ConTEXT Language Files, Fortran, Foxpro, HTML, Inno Setup Script, Java, JavaScript, Object Pascal, Perl, PHP, Python, SQL, Tcl/Tk, Visual Basic, x86 Assembler and XML. If you don’t like the syntax highlighting that ConTEXT uses then you can always edit it under Options->Environment Options->Colors. You can also download more highlighters from their website.

With ConTEXT you can integrate a compiler to compile source code that you have written to keep a good work flow. To keep things organized with ConTEXT you can also create and manage project files.

ConTEXT also allows the creation of macros to save you time from typing the same functions.

To view all the features that ConTEXT has view their website here.

What text editor do you use for programming? One of the ones above or a totally different one? Tell us all about your favourite program in the comments.

(By) Wez is a student studying computers, also does programming and video tutorials and writes about technology, software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com

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Over the past few years a new breed of text editors have flourished – so called ‘minimalist’ text editors – which can be used to block out all other distractions and let you focus on the task at hand – crafting words into sentences. These “no-frills editors” don’t offer formatting or many of the other features you see in modern word processors, what they offer is the ability to concentrate solely on your writing.

For the purposes of this article, we are limiting our minimalist text editors to Windows programs, and also a constraint is that they must do full screen with no other programs present. If the second parameter does not bother you as much, please continue on to the bottom of this article to see some other recommended editors.

Darkroom

Darkroom is a clone of Writeroom for Mac. Nothing like Writeroom (for OSX) existed for the Windows platform, so the author wrote it using the .NET framework.

When you open Darkroom, you will see what we mean when we say “minimalist text editors”. The application presents you with a full black screen, a green cursor, and a few up/down arrows.

Features are pretty sparse, and I don’t mean this in a negative way. Ctrl-S gets you a save menu, and there are several other keyboard shortcuts. If you unmaximize the program, it allows you to see a menu with a few other options – such as statistics on the text you wrote (number of characters and words).

jDarkRoom

jDarkRoom is a java clone of Darkroom. However the similarity begins and ends with black screen and green text. jDarkRoom has many more features, and a full list of them is available from the Help menu (F3). Mark actually did a writeup on jDarkRoom already so you should look there for an in depth review.

The features I think are very handy: automatic saving of your file, ability to change the color and size of text and the ability to search text are all nice.

Also since jDarkRoom is written in Java it is a cross platform product that works great on many other operating systems.

Word 5.5 for DOS
Surprised to see this one on the list? So am I. What is old is new again!

Microsoft patched Word 5.5 for the Y2K bug and decided to release it for free instead of trying to sell it again (and really, who would buy it?) Well, what do you know, some writers still use this program to write their books. It has a simple layout and takes up the whole screen. All of the options are there to help you write. Although the formatting options may be a distraction, you can easily forgo them if you choose.

The kick ass thing about Word 5.5 is that it also includes a spell check and thesaurus. This can really help out those budding writers in a pinch. There are some fancier options for footnotes, head notes and the like, but I don’t believe most web writers will use these. For the intrepid, there are also macros – so if there is a process that you find yourself repeatedly doing you can really cut out some time.

The default blue, gray and teal color scheme is ugly (think DOS in 1990 or so) but this is totally customizable through the options. Also, in case you are wondering, your mouse does work to open the menus and place the cursor, so using it is not a keyboard-only affair.

q10
If DarkRoom and WriteRoom would have a big brother, his name would be q10. q10 offers the same dark screen and minimalist functionality of the other writers, while adding handy features which do not distract from your task at hand.

The colors are totally adjustable and by default there is a bar at the bottom which uses very dark text to blend into the background. This bar displays the file name, a count of words, pages and characters, the file name and a clock. There is also audio feedback which I did find a bit annoying but it is possible to turn this off.

Using Ctrl-P brings up a menu with all of the available options. This menu is much more user-friendly than Darkroom or jDarkRoom and lets you tweak just about any setting in the program.

Some features I really like in q10:

• Auto saving based on time or paragraphs written,
• Built in spell checking, auto correction and ‘quick text’,
• Setting a word ‘target’,
• Setting an alarm for X minutes and
• A find/replace system.

Summary
Of all of the above programs, I found q10 to be the ‘most qualified’ to take over my writing tasks. In fact, I wrote this article using q10 and it really helped me reduce the time it took to write it. Depending on your needs, you might find any one of the above better suited for your task, so make sure to try them all.

Other Text Editors
There are some other popular text editors for writers. Of course, one of the most simple ones is Notepad, which comes with Windows. A step up from that is a Notepad replacement. There are a plethora of them, some of my favorites are PSPad and Textpad. See here for a pretty comprehensive list.

There is also the school of thought that favors vi or emacs. These programs, while not easy to pick up for a beginner, can also be very powerful especially if you learn the special keyboard shortcuts or are able to create regular expressions to manipulate the text. They aren’t for the timid but give it a shot if you are interested.

Do you have a favorite text editor that I have left out? Please let me know in the comments so our other readers might benefit from your knowledge!

Dave is an IT Manager by day and technology consultant by night. He is interested in all things internet but is specifically interested in system administration, network security, history, and backpacking. He lives near Philadelphia with his family. See his blog @ systembash.com.

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