If you’re a blogger and often have to draw good looking html tables, it may be a daunting task. Our favorite blogging tool, Windows Live Writer, though provides a native table creation utility but it lacks good formatting options.

Here is a better and quick way. First go to MS Excel and create the best looking table in the world. With various options in Excel 2007 ad Excel 2010 it is literally a matter of minutes. Once done simply select and copy the complete table.

Go to Windows Live Writer. Right click where you would want to insert the table and choose Paste Special instead of Paste.

Select Keep Formatting, press Ok button and you have your HTML table generated.  (Check how the above table rendered on one our earlier articles)

Recommended: 43 Hand Picked Tools for Bloggers

Bloggers: Create a beautiful looking HTML table in minutes is a post from ReviewOfWeb

Recently while creating an opt-in form I had to incorporate this functionality in my squeeze page. Results that Google threw up, were either too complex or too simple which won’t suffice my need.

So, here, I have written a piece of code which will help me in future and hopefully you too!

This code uses two event handlers onfocus and onblur. The first one comes into the picture when focus is set on a particular object while second one comes into the picture when focus is just removed from an object.

<input onfocus="this.value = (this.value=='First Name')?'' : this.value;"
onblur="this.value = (this.value=='')? 'First Name' : this.value;"
type="text" name="MERGE1" value="First Name" size="0">;

Explanation:

• onfocus checks for the value First Name, if it is present, it clears the field.
• onblur check for the blank value. So say you bring your cursor to a particular field and then moves away from it without entering any value. This is where onblur event would insert the default value again.

Code: Click on an edit box and make the text disappear is a post from ReviewOfWeb

Sometime back while working on excel 2010, it seems by mistake I disabled the option to use “cell drag and drop”. This feature allows you to drag the mouse and copy cells. If this option is disabled, your mouse pointer will never change to move pointer on selecting a particular cell.

Ok, here is what I mean. In the illustration shown below, mouse pointer is getting changed to move pointer as soon as I bring it to the edge of a cell.

There is some info available on the net for Excel 2003 and the earlier versions ie  by going to Tools > Options > Edit and checking "Allow cell drag and drop", you can enable this option but there is no information regarding the same for Excel 2007 and Excel 2010. So how can you enable this option in 2010?

1. Go to File > Options > Advanced > Enable file handle and cell drag-and-drop
2. Check this box.
3. Click OK and you’re done

I wish there was some “mapping file” available from Microsoft for mapping excel 2003 and earlier versions navigation to excel 2007/2010. It could save us a lot of time.

Where to find Allow Cell Drag and Drop option in Excel 2010? is a post from ReviewOfWeb

A firewall is essential when it comes to preventing malicious software and hackers from gaining access to your computer. With Windows 7, you can actually fine-tune your firewall settings to match your daily usage while still keep your computer well protected. To access the advanced settings and help you get started right away, follow these next few steps.

First of all, you need to disable your Windows firewall to gain access to recommended settings. To do this, go to Control Panel> System and Security > Windows Firewall and then click on the “Change notification settings” link on the left panel. Disable both private and public network firewall and click apply to continue. At the Windows Firewall control panel page you see after clicking OK, you will notice a new button labeled “Use recommended settings” — this is what we are after — so go ahead and click the button.

A popup will ask for your confirmation, and you can safely click Yes to continue. Windows will analyze your current computer state, along with installed applications, and determine the right firewall settings for your computer. After the process is completed, you can continue with fine-tuning the firewall settings to suit your needs.

To access the advanced settings for Windows 7’s firewall, click “Advanced Settings” on the left panel of the Windows Firewall control panel page. You will see a new page with Inbound Rules, Outbound Rules, Connection Security Rules, and Monitoring links on the left panel. You can disable available rules or create new ones — for Inbound and Outbound Rules, this is essentially important and allows you to set the firewall to work according to your needs — and manage monitoring preferences from here.

How to Configure Windows 7’s Firewall is a post from ReviewOfWeb

Some sites like Gmail have problems with the cache of browser. If you are a regular user of Gmail, you may encountered this issue where it just doesn’t load and you have to manually clear the cache to make it working.

Here are some keyboard shortcuts to load a web page bypassing cache: that can help you a bit

1. For Internet Explorer: Hold the Control key and click the Refresh button on the toolbar.
2. For Firefox: Hold down the Shift key and click the Reload button on the navigation toolbar.
3. For Safari: Hold down the Shift key and click the Reload toolbar button.

Simple yet effective tip.

Source

How to load a web page bypassing the cache of browser? is a post from ReviewOfWeb

So recently I have to change my laptop’s hard disk. It is always a big pain to move files, bookmarks and other info from one laptop to another. More so, moving means all the installed programs would need to be re-installed on the new machine. If you are a blogger like me, you will have other softwares like Windows Live Writer too.

This time when I moved, I wrote a quick check list which I ‘m sure would prove to be quite handy to all of us in future.

Take a scan of your system using Belarc advisor:

Belarc advisor creates a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, etc and displays the results in your Web browser. It also shows the keys/licenses of installed softwares. I would recommend to take a print of this web page created by Belarc and keep it in a safe place.

Back up ALL your important files in a USB or a CD’s . I use my classic 80 GB Ipod for these purpose. Like any USB devices, it proves to be quite handy and fast.

Back Up Firefox bookmarks and related profiles:

Firefox bookmarks, cookies, Google Toolbar data for firefox all resides in a folder inside.

C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Profile Name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

The folder would have some name like eid50wk9.default. Take a copy of this folder.

Back Up IE favorites:

Take a copy of IE favorites that reside in

C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Profile Name>

Back Up Memento Notes:

I use Memento Notes as a Post-IT for my laptop. It’s a small, no-frills program that sits quietly in my task bar. If you are taking a back up of Memento notes, make sure to copy both memento.exe and memento.notes. Memento.notes is like a database where all your Post-ITs reside.

Back Up Windows Live Writer (WLW):

If you ‘re a blogger I ‘m sure you must be using this great application from Microsoft. WLW inherently does not provide any means to take a back up of stored drafts, settings, external plugins etc. Scott has created an excellent Windows Live Writer back up utility.  After a quick installation, it takes a single click to take ‘Backup’ and then one more click to ‘Restore’ your settings on the new computer. Note that while restoring, Windows Live Writer should be closed otherwise it may throw an error. Also if you don’t see your posts after restoring, don’t fret. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\<your profile>\My Documents\My Weblog Posts\Drafts and double click on one of the posts , you will then see all posts inside WLW right hand pane.

Back Up Email client:

It will depend on the kind of client you are using. For Mozilla Thunderbird, back up means simply copying the mail folder to the back-up location.

I trust these points would be useful for all of us. I suggest you to bookmark(Ctrl-D) this post for future use.

Moving from one machine to another? Follow these tips. is a post from ReviewOfWeb