Microsys Blog

If you regularly use office applications and tools, chances are that you at some point have experienced problems with at least some office documents and files. When errors pop up, and you don’t have any recent backup, you need a tool to fix and repair office files.

If you use office software such as Access, Excel, Word and Outlook, you should check out the Office Fix tools from Cimaware. It can help you restore damaged Access databases (including modules, queries, forms etc.), Excel spreadsheets, Word documents etc.

Of particular interest to just about every business owner, software developer and power user is their Outlook PST recovery tool. Whatever the problem, there’s a good chance you can recover emails with all of your important contacts and files

Have you ever wished for an easy way to see the actual differences between two images? Or maybe by accident saved a source code file into two different new files, each with their own changes? And now want to merge the differences compared to the original version? Then the ECMerge diff and merge tool is what you need.

When other diff and compare tools have failed to do what you want, ECMerge two-way and three-way (i.e. two edited files that both originate from the same file) diff comparison of documents, images and other file types will help you identify and handle all changes. This in turn makes it much easier to reconcile additions/removals in the different files!

For more information, check the compare and merge feature tour that describes all the functionality in great detail with screenshots.

Welcome to my brand new “cool stuff” section of this blog where I will write about, yes you guessed it, cool stuff made by other people. It may be hardware, software, books, who knows, but today I am going to start out with a program that will be a perfect fit for existing users of my website webmaster tools: CSE HTML Validator.

Already back in late nineties this was the best website validation tool to use when checking websites for errors. Now, much later, it still continues to improve, year after year, surpassing all other tools of its kind. People using alternatives such as the W3C HTML and CSS online validators owe it to themselves to try this combined HTML/CSS and accessibility validator.

Are you only working on personal or educational websites? Then you may be interested in their free html validator. While not offering nearly as many functions as the standard and professional versions, it will still complement W3C validators and give more tips and warnings about website issues.

Note: While our general purpose website analysis tool supports HTML and CSS validation using W3C online validators, this process is slow and does not cover the same amount of areas CSE HTML Validator does. However, CSE HTML Validator comes with an API which means we will investigate if we in a future version of our software can integrate with this validation engine as well!

A bit of an unusual post by me, but I want to share my experiences regarding this topic.

About 7 years ago I had problems with my eyes that had grown so big I was unable to work in front of a computer screen more than 10 minutes at a time. My eyes would simply explode and all the white in them would become red. Then that happened my eyes would also become sore. It had become a vicious circle and at the time many eyes doctors were clueless and had failed to read up on common symptoms among IT people who work many hours each day behind a computer. Luckily I finally found an eye doctor that was of some help, and managed through experimentation to get my red eyes problem under control.

In the years following I tried a number of things. Some of these worked wonders. This is my own “as-is” personal list of tips and tricks to reduce problems with red and sore eyes:

• Consult with an eye doctor if you experience problems with red eyes.
• Get tear eye drops with no preservation additions. Usually that means one day dosis containers.
• Get eyedrops against allergy, again unpreserved like the tear drops.
• Make sure you do not expose you eyes to direct lighting. Experiment with slightly dimmed soft whole-room lighting.
• Turn down contrast and light on computer screen.
• Avoid reflections. Check your monitor, windows, glass frames etc. Avoid, dim and defocus all light reflection sources as much as possible.
• Remember to blink with your eyes. Studies have shown those that work and read much at computer screens blink less, which in return dries the eyes.
• Be aware of the room temperature. Computers can warm small rooms very quickly, and this can really worsen eye irritation.
• Force some pauses into your work. Chat with colleagues, sort papers or whatever.
• Use modern “flat screen” TFT monitors. Do not use one that reflects light!

Above are things that helped me the most. In addition you can also:

• Get your eyesight checked. Glasses can help reduce eyestrain “work stress” on eye muscles.
• Try massage and relax the muscles around your eyes once in a while.
• Get checked for obvious allergies. Whether it is pollen or something else.