Sometimes, particularly with plain text files, you want to save a file as a certain extension. For example, you might want to save a text file with an INI or an XYZ extension.

One option you have for doing this in the Save As dialog box is changing the option in the “Files of type” drop down appropriately and then typing the filename. However if you simply put the full name of the file – including the extension – in quotes, this forces the specified filename regardless of what the “Files of type” drop down says.

For example in Notepad, if you type some text and then go to Save As, you will see the default extension is text files (TXT). If you type “myfile.zyx” (including the quotes) into the file name field, the file will save with the extension you specified instead of the default extension.

While this may not be a huge time saver, it definitely can save you some clicks when you need to use it.

People save web pages to ensure they can retrieve information later without having to load it on the internet. It also is a way of retrieving a web page just in case the original web site has an outage or goes offline for whatever reason.

There are two basic ways of saving web pages, that being via the browser or "printing it" to a PDF.

Via the browser

The browser that has the absolute best web page save feature is Internet Explorer 8, due to the fact it can save entire web pages as a "Web Archive." When you click File/Save As (if you don’t see that in your IE 8, press ALT on your keyboard to bring up that menu,) you’ll see it as a save option:

When you choose to save it will "crunch" everything into a single file:

Why is this the best? Because it’s a single file that contains everything (and that’s why it’s labeled as an archive.) All the text, all the images and everything included. If you load it afterward, it looks exactly the way it was originally. It is to the best of my knowledge the only browser that does it right.

Other browsers, such as Firefox, save as "Web page, complete" and it’s nothing but a huge mess. An HTML file will be saved which is the web page, but a subfolder will also be created with all the images, JavaScript files, etc. You can literally get 20+ files out of a single web page save.

Love or hate IE 8, it rules the roost when it comes to web page archiving.

Drawbacks:

• Only one – it’s proprietary to IE 8. Otherwise it’s the best way to archive a web page.

Via PDF Creator

If you don’t use IE 8 and want a web to save web pages a single files that include images and so on, the best way to do this is to use PDF Creator to create PDF files. This is free software that will install a virtual print driver and can be used in your web browser of choice.

Once installed, go to any web page, load it, then click File/Print or press CTRL+P. 

Choose PDF Creator from the window that appears:

..click OK.

The page will be crunched and made ready for PDF rendering:

You’ll see this:

Click the Save button at bottom right. You’ll be asked to name the file and where you want to save it to. Once done, the page is archived as a PDF.

Drawbacks:

• Many times the PDF creator will default to a serif font (Times New Roman) instead of the font seen on the original web page.
• Any links in the web page will not work in the PDF.

These drawbacks are usually acceptable being it’s the text you care about the most when it comes to a web page. Any images on the page will be embedded in the PDF; all text is searchable as well.

In addition, the PDF created even for very large web pages will be small in file size, suitable for sending in email if you want to send it off to a friend.

Via ScreenGrab

This is for Firefox only.

ScreenGrab is a FireFox plugin. It allows you to save a PNG or JPEG screen shot of any web page, but does so far better than ALT+PrintScreen. ScreenGrab will take an image of the entire page including the full length. The screen shot taken will look identical to what you see on-screen.

Drawbacks:

• Since the output file is an image, none of the text can be searched and links won’t work either.
• The default output file is a PNG. If the web page you save is very long, the file saved will be enormous.
• On very large web pages it can cause Firefox to freeze up when attempting to take a full screen shot, particularly on slower computers.

You can make the screen shot ScreenGrab takes to be smaller by purposely not using the browser maximized, because yes, ScreenGrab captures everything – including all the white space on the sides.

To use ScreenGrab, install the add-on, then on any web page, right-click and choose ScreenGrab:

"Complete Page/Frame" will save the entire page, length and all.

"Visible portion" only captures what the browser is displaying at that moment.

"Selection" allows you to select what you want captured.

"Window" acts like ALT+PrintScreen does.

Choosing to Save will save the file. Choosing to Copy will copy the image to the clipboard buffer where you can paste into another program such as an image editor, Word, etc.

If you have your own web site you most likely transfer files via FTP every so often. Wouldn’t it be cool if you could store your documents, spreadsheets or anything else OpenOffice can make there?

You can.

Note before continuing: I have only tried this with the Windows version of OpenOffice, but it’s assumed this will work on the Linux or Mac OS X version in exactly the same way.

Step 1.

Launch OpenOffice Writer and go to the Options panel. In Windows this is done by clicking Tools then Options.

Once there, expand OpenOffice and click General. Next to Open/Save Dialogs, check the option for Use OpenOffice.org dialogs.

Looks like this:

Click OK when finished.

Step 2.

Before using FTP it’s suggested you login via the FTP client of your choice and create a non-public directory. For simplicity’s sake I named mine docs. You can name yours that or any other name you wish. Create this folder at the FTP root (not to be confused with server root).

In plain English: If you login to your FTP server via a client, you’ll see a list of directories. Your docs directory should be at "first level" so you don’t have to type in a bunch of stuff just to get to where you need to go.

Step 3.

Type up a test document in Writer, then click File then Save As…

When the save window appears, you have to open up the FTP server first before saving. In the File Name field, you would type:

ftp://YOUR-FTP-USER-NAME@ftp.YOUR-WEB-SITE.com

If you created the folder docs, it would be:

ftp://YOUR-FTP-USER-NAME@ftp.YOUR-WEB-SITE.com/docs

After clicking Open you will be prompted for your FTP password. Enter it in and you’re good to go.

Additional notes

Is this secure?

No. This is plain text FTP authentication. But for most people this shouldn’t be a problem.

Are the transfers fast?

Yes. OpenOffice transfers files via FTP just like a normal client would.

Do I have to keep typing in my username/password over and over and/or switching directories to load/save?

No. OpenOffice will remember the last known directory you were in.

Can I make OpenOffice "forget" the FTP password?

Yes. Simply close all OpenOffice apps and the FTP password will be "forgotten". Bear in mind this includes the QuickStarter resident app as well (in Windows: Right-click the OpenOffice QuickStarter next to the clock, choose to exit).

Will this work for any OpenOffice application?

Yes. Whether your composing a document, spreadsheet, presentation or database, as long as the "Use OpenOffice.org dialogs" is checked in the General section of Options, all have ability to save and load via FTP.

Is there any drawback to saving via FTP?

Other than the plain text authentication stuff, there isn’t any file transfer progress meter like there is in an FTP client. For large files this may be a bit annoying not knowing when transfers will complete. My suggestion is to stay under the 1MB mark so loads and saves go thru quickly.

Can you have more than one user accessing a file at once via FTP?

Yes but the sessions will be separate. This is not like loading a file over a LAN. I strongly recommend against having multiple users accessing the same files over FTP. Do-able? Yes. Recommended? No.

I don’t have an FTP server but like the idea of saving my stuff to a remote server. Is there any other option?

Google Docs using the OpenOffice.org2GoogleDocs extension. That extension not only does Google Docs but also Zoho and WebDAV connectivity as well. This extension was last updated April 8 2009, so it’s very recent and actively developed.

You may have a disc, be it music or data, that is scratched and will not read in your optical disc drive no matter what you do to it. Can it be saved?

Possibly. There are a few things you can try to save that disc.

Hardware method: It could be just the drive you’re using

If the disc won’t read in your optical drive, try another one that’s close by. If you don’t have one to spare, try a friend’s computer.

Interesting side note: Older optical drives with slower read speeds have a much higher chance of reading a maybe/maybe-not bad disc than newer drives do because they don’t spin up as fast. Being that laptop optical drives are typically slower, if you have a laptop with a CD/DVD drive, try that. You might be successful.

Software method: Using Nero Burning ROM to attempt a super-slow-read copy

Nero Burning ROM (paid application) has been around a long time and is arguably one of the best disc copying software utilities ever made – if not the best.

If the disc you have will spin up but will not read, Nero might be able to save it or at least at a good chunk of it.

When you copy a disc using Nero Burning ROM (part of the Nero 9 suite), it will first try to copy at the maximum speed possible. When it runs into a part of the disc it can’t read properly, Nero will purposely slow down the drive (all the way to 1x if necessary) and try every single possible way to read the data. If it can’t read the data, it will skip that part and go to the next readable portion and move on.

The disc copy make take a really long time – but you might be able to save whatever was on the disc or at least a good portion of it. If it’s just a portion, better to have something than nothing, right?

I have saved discs with Nero Burning ROM that no other app was able to copy, so I can attest that yes, it does work when all others fail. And if Nero fails.. well.. try washing the disc first (see below).

Physically doing something to the disc: Washing it first

CDs and DVDs are made of two things, aluminum and plastic. The outside shell is plastic, the shiny part is the aluminum. The part that is scratched is the plastic.

Plastic can be washed with just about anything, but the goal is to not scratch it any further.

Paper towels and non-scented ammonia-free glass cleaner (like Windex) do work. Why paper towels and not tissue paper? Because tissue paper is an abrasive and will scratch the plastic surface even worse.

Tip on cleaner used: Do not use anything labeled as a degreaser (like Formula 409). "Straight" glass cleaner is what you want.

Tip on paper towels used: Unscented, plain, no patterns such as Bounty or Brawn.

(Incidentally this is the same reason you never clean eyeglasses with tissue paper because it will scratch those up over time as well.)

Can you read a disc that is physically cracked?

Example: You leave a disc on the couch and forget about it. Later on you go to sit on the couch and watch TV, then…

CRACK!

Uh-oh. You sat on the disc. Very cracked but still together.

Is the disc still readable? Believe it or not, yes – or at least with CDs. A CD which has an "outside in" straight crack in it (from the outer edge to inner edge but not to the center) can be read as long as it’s even with the rest of the disc. However there is the possibility the disc might shatter when in the optical drive. Chances are this probably won’t happen – but it might.

DVDs when cracked usually cannot be read at all. If this happens to you, toss the disc out because there’s not anything you can do about that.

Tip to avoid this scenario: Don’t sit or step on discs (duh).

[Cracked CD photo by hermanturnip]

In the United States we don’t necessarily have a problem (yet) with what’s known as "capped bandwidth" (i.e. your ISP puts a usage limit on how much data you can transfer per month), but for other places it’s a big deal because once you tap the limit, your ISP slows you down to snail-crawl speeds until next month when the limit is reset.

This information is also useful to those on broadband connections and wi-fi spots where speed counts the most (the less you load the less time you have to wait).

1. Use RSS

Whether you use Bloglines, Google Reader or a client like RSS Bandit, using RSS is faster and uses much less bandwidth than loading a web site directly. PCMech, for example, has article content delivered via RSS.

2. Don’t load Flash content

Concerning file size, text is small, images are relatively small but Flash content is rarely small. You can uninstall the Flash plugin entirely but if you don’t want to do that (and I don’t blame you), use the Firefox extension Flashblock instead where you can turn it off and on at whim.

3. Use an e-mail client instead of web-based mail

Every time you load web-based mail in a browser (no matter what provider you use) it’s full of coding that on load makes it a bit large file-size wise. And if it’s a free mail provider there are also advertisements loaded in as well. If you use a traditional e-mail client like Outlook Express, Mozilla Thunderbird or Windows Live Mail it’s loaded locally and the only bandwidth it uses is when you send or receive mail.

Tip: Have the client download headers only whether using POP or IMAP. This way no mail is fully downloaded unless you specifically instruct the client to do it. This is especially useful if you receive file attachments often.

4. Use a free multi-protocol instant messaging app

Free multi-protocol instant messaging apps don’t load advertisements and purposely don’t have all the "cool" features from-service clients do which cuts bandwidth usage (every little bit counts). Some choices are Trillian, Pidgin, and Miranda.

5. Turn your computer off when not in use

Although this is really obvious, if your computer is making no network requests it’s not using any bandwidth at all. Most of us leave our computers on all the time, but if bandwidth is a concern, turn it off when you’re not using it.

Think the floppy disk is dead technology?

OpenOffice 3… floppy disk!

Google Docs.. floppy disk again!

Windows Live Writer… FLOPPY DISK!

ThinkFree.. ACK! FLOPPY DISK AGAIN!

You cannot escape the floppy..

I think it’s about time to.. oh, I dunno.. change the save icon to something besides a 3.5-inch floppy diskette.

We’ve all been there. We’re spending a little free time online catching up on our web surfing and social media addictions. We find something really cool that we want to read or a video to watch. Only problem is that you don’t have time to consume that content right then.

You could bookmark it, sure. But, how about we make it truly portable.

Continued