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All About Vectors All of the aforementioned file types and others essentially fall into two categories—raster and vector. Raster-based applications—and their accompanying file types—use pixels to create images. When you zoom in, you can literally see the individual pixels. Vectors, on the other hand, create shapes with “nodes” and “points.” The points and nodes can be moved to change the shape, and it can be scaled to any size without losing quality, unlike a raster-based image....

The PHP Foundation is a newly established organization that will provide funding to sustain the language’s development. It’s been founded by ten influential companies in response to the departure of long-standing contributor Nikita Popov. The Foundation was announced in November 2021 shortly before the release of the PHP 8.1 feature update. Popov’s decision to move on from PHP and focus on LLVM development will impact the language as he’s been responsible for many of the most noteworthy changes through the PHP 7 and 8 release series....

Earlier this week we asked you to share how (if at all) you monitor your bandwidth for both home networks and mobile devices. We’re back to share your favorite tools and tips. Image available as wallpaper at ChrisHarrison.net. Monitoring the Home Computer The majority of readers (77%) monitor their connections in some way either at home, on their mobile devices, or both. The reasons for monitoring ranged from necessity (to avoid overage fees) to curiosity (because they liked tracking or to, for example, keep their ISP honest)....

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite mobile calendar app; you weighed in and now we’re back to highlight the trends in your comments. Overwhelmingly readers were pretty content with the native apps on their smartphones. The magic combination seemed to be a good native app, that synced with Google Calendar, and then possibly enhanced with a good homescreen widget. Dave writes: Kerensky97 sticks to just the native app:...

The results might surprise you! Our friends over at 7 Tutorials did some testing and found that the free IObit uninstaller application actually stacked up pretty well against the paid solution from Revo—though perhaps with a few less features. Note: we’ve always been fans of Revo Uninstaller around here, since it does have a lot of features to help clean up bad apps that the free alternatives don’t have. Either way, the 7 Tutorials article is worth a read....

How Can I Monitor Mobile Usage On My Android Phone? Dear Data Miser, My cellular provider is really brutal with the overage fees and I’m worried about getting slammed by them again. I can log into my account and check my usage online but that’s a hassle and not very up-to-the-minute. Is there anything I can do on my actual phone to keep an eye on things? Sincerely, Data Miser in Mississippi...

Once a week we round up some of the questions pouring into the Ask HTG inbox and share them with everyone. This week we’re looking at how to connect a particularly stubborn laptop to a Wi-Fi router, setting up a growth-friendly home backup plan, and what to do with RAW camera files. Why Won’t My New Laptop Connect to My Wi-FI Router? Dear Wi-Fi Crazy, I’m tearing my hair out here....

By default notifications in Windows 8 are set to display for 5 seconds, however, you may want them to stay around for a bit longer. How Change the Duration of Notifications Press the Win + X keyboard combination, or right click in the bottom left hand corner of your screen to open the WinX menu, then launch Control Panel. Now head into the Ease of Access section. Then click on the Ease of Access Center link....

Only Schools Get Multi-User iPads Only schools can use multiple user accounts on an iPad. If you do manage iPads for a school, look at Apple’s “Shared iPad for Education” feature. Multiple students in a classroom can share an iPad and select between user accounts on the lock screen. Unfortunately, this really is only for schools. You’ll need the Apple School Manager service to get this set up. Apple rolled out this feature with iOS 9....

If you love new gear but not high prices then we’ve got some deals for you; grab some deeply discounted laptops, monitors and HDTVs, and free mobile apps in this week’s Geek Deals roundup. We’ve combed the net and grabbed some fresh off the press deals for you to take advantage of. Unlike traditional brick and mortar sales internet deals are fast and furious so don’t be surprised if by the time you get to a particularly hot deal the stock is gone or the uses-per-coupon rate has been exceeded....

Have you tried one of the Windows 8 Preview releases and found you like the Charms bar on the Metro Start Screen? If you’re not quite ready to give up Windows 7, there is a way to get the Charms bar from Windows 8. You can easily add the Charms bar to your desktop in Windows 7 using a RocketDock skin. RocketDock is a free, customizable application launcher for Windows....

Greg Hartrell, Product Director, Games on Android and Google Play, spoke about bringing Google Play games to Windows: Google didn’t reveal many too details about its plan to bring Android games to PCs, other than saying that it’s happening next year. That means we’ll have to wait and see which games end up making their way to PC or if a monthly service like Play Pass will be supported. Perhaps the entire Android game library will be supported, though that might be asking a little too much....

Modern Hard drives have an internal mechanism called S.M.A.R.T. through which it is possible to know when a hard disk is about to fail. Wouldn’t it be nice of the server to Email you before such a failure? Overview Programs like the “mdadm” (for software RAID management) and the “Palimpsest Disk Utility” (used on the Ubuntu LiveCD), use the S.M.A.R.T information to inform you when the disk is about to or has failed....

Imagine: you walk into your room, sit in front of your computer, and it unlocks itself. You finish what you’re doing, walk away, and it locks itself. No, it’s not magic — it’s Bluetooth and it’s easy to set up! What You’ll Need A computer with a Bluetooth connection A phone or other device that can connect via Bluetooth Either the Microsoft or WIDCOMM Bluetooth stack (for Windows) Appropriate software BTProximity for Windows (free) Discontinued Proximity and an AppleScript for OS X (free) BlueProximity for Linux, packaged for Ubuntu (free)...

Many people underestimate the importance of tab stops. Setting up your tab stops in Google Docs first allows you to focus on your document’s content rather than how it’s going to be formatted. A tab stop is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the spot where your cursor stops when you press the Tab key on your keyboard. Most applications like Google Docs and Microsoft Word have default tab stops set and ready for you to use....

Microsoft Excel has hidden many features in its Developer tab, available on both Windows and Mac. This tab is not visible by default, but you can toggle on an option to make it visible. We’ll show you how. What Does the Developer Tab Do in Excel? Excel’s Developer tab contains many options that you can use with your spreadsheets. These options include: Create macros Run existing macros Make use of XML commands Use ActiveX controls Make apps you can use with Excel Add form controls Use ShapeSheet in Microsoft Visio Make new shapes and stencils in Microsoft Visio...

Recently, we published an article that showed you how to always show the startup dialog when you open Opera, which allows you to specify what’s displayed when Opera opens. You can also specify what happens when you close Opera. All these options are accessed by selecting Settings | Preferences from the Opera menu. To save all the open tabs from the current session and open them again the next time you open Opera, select Continue from last time from the Startup drop-down list on the General tab....

You can block people on Tinder so that they don’t see your profile and you don’t see them while swiping through in the app. We’ll show you how to block and unblock users in the Tinder app. What It Means to Block Someone on Tinder When you block someone on Tinder, that person can’t see your profile anymore, nor can you see theirs. Basically, Tinder prevents both of you from coming across each other’s profiles in the app....

Start by launching the Play Store on your Android device. If you don’t have a shortcut for the store on one of your home screens, you can swipe up to open the app drawer and then tap on the icon. Next, select the hamburger icon in the top-left corner to open the overflow menu. Scroll halfway down the list and then tap on the “Settings” option. Select the “Auto-Play Videos” listing found under the “General” subheading....

Have you ever been connected to a network, and plugged in a 3G card and wished you could make only a certain program use your 3G connection ? Well you can, read on to find out how. Installing ForceBindIP Head over to the ForceBindIP download page, and grab a copy of the zipped version. Once it has downloaded, extract the contents of the zip file. You will need to copy both files....