Ever want to search for something special in Google? They have some special search capabilities, like just Linux, or U.S. Government for example. See this page for the choices:
Special Google Searches

If we know one thing for sure it is this: Web Design is not static. Things that were amazing five years ago, or three minutes ago, may not be so amazing any more. The web is the classic open forum where each participant can seek his/her/their own level of sophistication. Often things are collaborative, much like our site HTMLfixIT. Because of this, we hope to keep some current information on our blog to help you find things that may be of interest to you.

This site will tell you what happened on a particular date in history, which may add interesting content to a web site. How much was a gallon of milk, gas, etc. Who was born, what were the headlines?

Enter Date (MM/DD/YYYY)
(Be sure to enter slashes in the date. For example: 07/20/1969)

This can be found here:
http://www.dmarie.com/timecap/step1.asp

I sometimes have documents submitted to me with a request to make them into pdf (portable document format) files so that they will display in Adobes free Acrobat Reader program. I have never had enough demand for this to justify buying the full blown Acrobat program. In the past I often use Corel WordPerfect (because it will save as a pdf), or used a screenshot and saved using a presentation program I sometimes use. None of these solutions did the job in all circumstances …

I recently happened onto this site: http://docupub.com/ and it seemed to do a very good job of converting my document on-line. I simply waited for it to convert, and then right clicked on the resulting link and choose save link to disk. Problem solved.

It supports all of these file formats:

Supported file formats:

Generic Formats
Adobe PDF
Adobe PostScript
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)

Microsoft Publisher documents

Word Processing Formats
ASCII Text
ANSI Text
Microsoft RTF
Microsoft Word for PC v2
Microsoft Word for PC v3
Microsoft Word for PC v4
Microsoft Word for PC v5.5
Microsoft Word for Macintosh v4
Microsoft Word for Macintosh v5
Microsoft Word for Macintosh v6
Microsoft Word for Macintosh v98
Microsoft Word for Windows v2.x
Microsoft Word for Windows v6.0
Microsoft Word for Windows 95
Microsoft Word for Windows 97
Microsoft Word for Windows 2000
Microsoft Works v1.0
Microsoft Works v2.0
Microsoft Works v3.0
Microsoft Works v4.0
Microsoft Windows Write v1.0
Microsoft Windows Write v2.0
Microsoft Windows Write v3.0
WordPerfect v5.x
WordPerfect v6
WordPerfect v7
WordPerfect v8
WordPerfect v9/2000
WordPerfect for Macintosh v2
WordPerfect for Macintosh v3

Spreadsheet Formats
Corel QuattroPro v7
Corel QuattroPro v8
Lotus 1-2-3 v2
Lotus 1-2-3 v3
Lotus 1-2-3 v4
Lotus 1-2-3 v5
Lotus 1-2-3 96
Lotus 1-2-3 97
Lotus 1-2-3 R9
Microsoft Excel v3
Microsoft Excel v4
Microsoft Excel v5
Microsoft Excel v6
Microsoft Excel 97
Microsoft Excel 2000/XP
Microsoft Excel for Mac 98
Microsoft Works Spreadsheet v1.0
Microsoft Works Spreadsheet v2.0
Microsoft Works Spreadsheet v3.0
Microsoft Works Spreadsheet v4.0
Presentation Formats
Lotus Freelance 1.0-2.1
Microsoft PowerPoint 4.0
Microsoft PowerPoint 95
Microsoft PowerPoint 97
Microsoft PowerPoint 2000/XP
Microsoft PowerPoint for Macintosh 98

Graphic Formats
AVS - AVS X image file
BMP - MS Windows Bitmap image file
BMP - OS/2 Bitmap
DCX - ZSoft IBM PC multi-page Paintbrush file
DIB - MS Windows Device Independent Bitmap
DPX - Digital Moving Picture Exchange
FAX - Group 3 FAX encoding
FITS - Flexible Image Transport System
FPX - FlashPix Format
GIF - CompuServe graphics interchange format
GIF87 - CompuServe graphics interchange format ver 87
ICO - MS Windows Icons
ICO - OS/2 Icons
IPTC - Newswire profile
JBIG - Joint Bi-level Image experts Group file interchange format
JP2 - JPEG-2000 JP2 File Format Syntax
JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format
JPG - Joint Photographic Experts Group JFIF format
MIFF - Magick image file format
MNG - Multiple-image Network Graphics
MPC - Magick Persistent Cache image file format
MTV - MTV Raytracing image format
OTB - On-the-air Bitmap
PBM - Portable Bitmap
PCD - Kodak PhotoCD - Base/16, Base/4 and Base only
PCDS - Kodak PhotoCD - Base/16, Base/4 and Base only
PCT - MacIntosh PICT
PCX - PC PaintBrush
PGM - Portable GrayMap
PICT - Apple Macintosh QuickDraw/PICT file
PNG - Portable Network Graphics
PNM - Portable Any Bitmap
PPM - Portable PixelMap
PSD - Adobe Photoshop
P7 - Xv's visual schnauzer format
RAS - Raster Sun Microsystems
RGBA - Raw red, green, blue, and matte samples
SGI - Irix RGB image file
SUN - Raster SunMicrosystems
TGA - TrueVision Targa
TIFF - Tagged Interchange File Format
VICAR - V.I.C.A.R. Image file format
VID - Visual Image Directory
VIFF - Khoros Visualization image file
WMF - Windows Meta File
XBM - X Windows system bitmap, black and white only
XPM - X Windows system pixmap file (color)
XWD - X Windows system window dump file (color)

Let me know how it goes if you give it a try.

Well this is it! We have been messing up under this domain name for exactly one year today. So thanks for visiting our creation. In that time we have formed our sister operation, littlehosting, that offers full service web site hosting for reasonable cost — where we don’t nickle and dime the customer like other low cost hosting often does. During that time we have had 20,000 unique vistors (our counter — we use our own — unlike other counters does not recount visitors as they wander about the pages).

It is hard to say what might be our greatest success to date. Is it the number of people we have helped via our chat room with on the spot answers to what perplexes them in the world of web design and coding? Is it our highly popular scripts (many of them free, with a few advanced versions like our IPN and supercharged stats counter that are rolling out the door for the price of just $10 that we also back with chat room and forum support)? Is it just that Franki has had something to do so he has not been arrested for any of the capital offenses he regularly contemplates? Why don’t you tell us how we have made your life better. Send us a greeting.

Best of all, we aren’t done, we have bigger and better plans for the coming year. So give us your bookmark, donate if you can (link below), contribute a tutorial, whatever you can do, but above all, keep visiting!

Don
HTMLfixIT.com

Not much new to report at this time, but a couple of warnings:

Firstly, there are a couple of nasty virus’s around at the moment, including but not limited to the widespread mydoom.A virus. Our mail server has filtered out thousands of mydoom virus emails in the past month. So if you use any version of Windows, and you don’t have any virus protection, you’re asking for trouble. 🙂
Update: Recently released is the MyDoom.F virus, this one is potentially more damaging then MyDoom.A because MyDoom.F will actually delete files from infected machines.

On another note, are the 914 Nigerian scammers.. their long existing mail abuse has scaled up noticeably of late. So if you get an email from the wife/girlfriend/brother/sister of some dead or imprisoned foreign diplomat, and they want to use your bank account to put millions of dollars in it.. don’t buy it.. they have no money and want yours.

I kind of think that anyone looking at a web development site most likely wouldn’t fall for one of these, but thousands of smart people do … every year.

For more info on these scam emails, see scamorama.com. To see some stories about the feds getting a few of them, see this rather interesting account. Feds strike back.

As far as the development of our scripts, I have been swamped in work this month so far and have not been able to spend much time on them. We are making slow progress though.

I am very excited about eventually releasing our version of the popular Formmail script. Ours is a quite unique approach to this very useful class of script, we think it will be very popular. It might even overtake the HTMLfixIT statistical hit counter as our most popular script. (Of which the free version has been downloaded over 3000 times now.)

Franki
HTMLfixIT.com

Well, we are back on the job (not that we ever left, but effective again anyway), making some changes and additions to the site. The most noticable is a new look in the banner, but lots is going on around the site.

I’m working hard to get the PayPal IPN Perl script I’ve written ready to be released as the second advanced (meaning great for a very modest cost) htmlfixit script. It is ready and purchases are starting to trickle in.

The advanced statistical counter has been selling well, and has gotten some really good user reviews (that I have been trying to add to the testimonials page when I get spare seconds.)

If you have a suggestion about a script you’d like to see us write here at htmlfixt.com … or features you think we should add to existing scripts, then feel free to use the contact link and let us know.

We’ve not been that impressed by the google ads we put on the site. Google doesn’t allow us to block ads based on keyword, so they often reflect ads from products competing with our own, and that is not a good situation. Also the money the ads seem to be generating is not exactly steller either (based on clickthrough only). We are trying to decide if its worth continuing them. (At the current rate, we’ll likely get our first cheque from google in about a year). It seems the internet is/has become saturated with advertising now … and the money to be made from it has dropped accordingly. Still, it was worth trying and we were interested in whether having Google ads increased your ranking with Google. Results so far have been inconclusive in that area.

rgds

Franki