Terry's Computer Tips - Newsletter
June 17, 2007

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Get Faxes Direct to Your Email

This week, I signed up for a service at which I had been looking for a while. CallWave Fax to Email lets me have a local fax number — in whatever area code that I desire — that receives faxes, turns them into Adobe Reader PDF files, and emails them to me.

I get all that for $7.95 per month, with an unlimited number of faxes received (some of their competitors have higher prices AND limits on how many faxes you can receive!). CallWave offers a risk-free trial — try it for 30 days. If you don't like it, cancel it before the 30 day trial is up and owe nothing.

Amazingly, this whole service costs much less than a phone line would cost, plus, I don't to worry about the machine itself, paper, ink or toner. PDF's are easier to keep, too — of course I can print the PDF if I really want a hard copy. If you already have your own dedicated fax line, you can even convert it to Fax to Email and keep the same phone number — and, CallWave Fax to Email is still only $7.95 per month. There's a $25 one-time activation fee to make the conversion.

Give CallWave Fax to Email a try. Sign up at http://terryscomputertips.com/Fax2Email

 

4.  First Comments on Apple's Safari 3 Browser for Windows

My first comment, on my initial start of Safari: Safari follows the Mac standards for the window title bar. Instead of having a strong background color when the window is active, the background color of the title bar never changes. Instead, the web page title is either a bold black if Safari is the active window — or it's a bold gray, if my active window is something else (like the editor I'm using to write this newsletter). Grade: -1 point.

The next point was that it filled my screen from top to bottom, despite being in Window mode (it didn't fill the width, which was good). I normall like a little blank space at the top and bottom of the windows. That's where I found one difference. In order to change the size of a Safari window, you have to grab the lower right-hand corner, left-click and drag. Unlike the standard functionality in Windows, you can not change by grabbing the top, right side, bottom or left side — only the right-hand corner lets you resize the window.

Anyone who has used any other web browser should be pretty comfortable with the menu bar (the text pulldown menu) in Safari. Apple has structured it in the standard Windows style. It's got a couple nice additions, too, like "Empty Cache" to get rid of the previously-downloaded versions of files. For a web developer, that's an essential feature since browsers often cache the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files — sometimes, I have to purge the cache to force a change to show up in my testing. For everyone else, it's merely nice.

The icon bar is different. There's an extra icon of a bug, which is to report bugs in the beta. The only question I have at present is "How to I add or remove icons from the Safari icon bar?" I know I can do it because I added a printer icon there. Now, I can't find how I did that.

Safari has a standard Netscape-type Preferences dialog box, which is found under the Edit entry on the menu bar. IE and Firefox both do this same thing via Tools, Options. The dialog box looks fairly normal...

Did you notice what's missing? There are no "OK" and "Cancel" buttons. When you make the change, it takes effect. If you start making changes and then decide to you don't want them after all, tough luck, you'll have to reverse them one-by-one.

Safari will import your bookmarks, too. It automatically imported my IE Favorites and my Firefox Bookmarks, too. I don't think it imported my Opera bookmarks, though. Unfortunately, it hides these imported bookmarks well. They are not easily available via the Bookmarks entry on the menu bar. You have to click on the icon that looks like an open book.

 

 

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Volume 3, Number 1 — Sunday, June 17, 2007

Copyright © 2007 Terry A. Stockdale.  All rights reserved.