Quoting, Printing or Saving parts of webpages

http://www.kwout.com

If you want to quote part of a website which includes graphics (so you can't just highlight it), here's a cool way of doing it! Go to the kwout link and enter the address of the webpage you wish to quote in the box where it says "http:// ...", drag a box over the region of the webpage you wish to quote, click "Cut Out", then choose the options that suit you and copy the code given to embed the image of the chosen area somewhere else on the web.

As for printing parts of a webpages, a very simple trick I only learnt recently is that of highlighting the part you wish to print, then when you print, click on "print selection only". This is a good way of avoiding banners, advertising etc. that usually plague the tops of webpages. Not all browsers have this option though, but some do, such as Firefox.

And one final note, suppose you want to save the selection, but not necessarily print it. Then, again you highlight and "print selection only", but you also check the option "print to file", so instead of printing, the selected part of the webpage will be saved as a file on your computer.

A Trick for Reading Old Books on the Computer

http://www.gutenberg.org

Perhaps there's a better way of doing this (in which case please enlighten me), but I've discovered recently about Amazon's Kindle for computer. Technically, Kindle is a handheld device for storing books on which it is apparently quite pleasant to read, but there is also a version for computer. If you go to Amazon, you'll notice many books offered for Kindle for free. The only catch is that you have to have a Kindle to read them. But if you look under "1-click purchase (for $0.00)", you'll find a link to download "Kindle for Mac" or "Kindle for PC", which is actually a neat piece of software. Then for all the books no longer under copyright, even though Amazon may charge for them, you can pick them up for free at the following sites:

http://www.gutenberg.org
http://www.archive.org
And what's great is that for any book on these sites, there will be an option for Kindle, which will allow you to read it using that piece of Amazon software. Opening the Kindle option will automatically add that book to your library on your Amazon Kindle (and you may delete it later if you wish, though if you get it not from these sites but from Amazon, Amazon will always remember and have it archived for you to put back in your library even if you don't want them to). Technical note: the actual source files will be in the Documents folder if you have a Mac and end in .azw.

But who wants to read long books on a computer? I'd rather borrow or buy them. Still, there are aspects of the Kindle software which actually make it quite useable though I'd normally hate to read long things on a computer. Most notably, by pressing Apple and + on a Mac (and no doubt something similar on a PC), you can enlarge the font and narrow the window and the text adjusts to the screen, so you can read from a greater distance than normally at a computer or from a smaller part of the screen than normal. Also, you can highlight passages and add notes, and the software saves the parts you've highlighted or annotated (and in the case of Amazon books even backs them up for you, again it seems though you might not want it to). And finally, of course, the books are searchable.