How do you program a computer

You want to know how do you program a computer? On my site I will try to teach you how to get started. I'm a full-time professional software developer, so I have a lot of experience programming several programming languages, including C, C#, VB, PHP, Pascal, Java, HTML, CSS, ASP, VBA, Assembly and Access.

I am passionate about programming, but also electronics and I love to learn new things everyday. I'm a technical computer scientist, so I also know how electronics and digital circuits work. It's my intention to also explain about electronics and digital logic. I want make video's in the future and show how to build certain simple circuits to help you get started and understand how these circuits work. For the meantime, I will make use of someone else's video's to make things clearer.

Further, I want to explain how you should use certain commonly used software and how you can improve your computing experience. Also, I want to show some useful tools that you should get. I'll explain how these tools work.

I hope you learn something new from my site everyday and would like to hear from you in case I can explain something. Send your message via the contact page.

Do you need have suggestions / ideas for new useful software? Don't hesitate to contact me. I'll try to help and maybe I can make useful software for you. Or maybe we can develop software together.

For more information on how do you program a computer, visit the how to make a computer program page on my site.

Looking for specific software?

Visit my software search page to find specific software in the following categories: audio, business & finance, desktop enhancement, e-books, games, home & education, internet, multimedia & design, utilities, web authoring and software development.

Simple but yet so powerful

Did you know there is one keyboard shortcut I use all the time? It is Ctrl-Z. Many people do not know or use this shortcut, but it is so useful and powerful once you know it. It can be used in most applications to undo your lastest action, e.g. when you've deleted a word or sentence. After you press Ctrl-Z your deleted word or sentence will be restored. Also when using an image editor it is commonly used to undo your latest action (or actions by pressing the shortcut multiple times).

Off course I also make extensive use of the copy (Ctrl-C) and paste (Ctrl-V or Ctrl-Insert) shortcuts a lot, but many people know and use these shortcuts already. These shortcuts can be used to copy e.g. selected text or image and paste it somewhere else in your document. The Ctrl-left arrow and Ctrl-right arrow, Shift-left arrow and Shift-right arrow and Ctrl-Shift-left arrow, Ctrl-Shift-right arrow, Ctrl-Shift-up arrow, Ctrl-Shift-down arrow shortcurts are also very useful for navigating through or selecting text.

I also make often use of the Ctrl-Home (navigate to the top of the document), Ctrl-End (navigate to the end of the document) and Ctrl-Shift-Home, Ctrl-Shift-End, Ctrl-Shift-PgUp, Ctrl-Shift-PgDn and Ctrl-A keyboard shortcuts for selecting text.

Easily create and share amazing slideshow movies

With Fantashow and your favorite photos and video you can arrange a fantastic personal story in only a few minutes.

Music, text and 3D templates can be blended together. Add your favorite music or just use music from the library.

You can easily share your creations on YouTube or Facebook and burn high quality DVD copies. Also your show can be converted to a format suitable for your mobile device like iPhone, iPad or iPod touch (and others).

Showcase your precious memories and amaze your family and friends in a way that other static slideshow software just can’t.

Download a trial version (Windows only) or purchase right away Windows version or Mac version.

Useful Internet Explorer tips

Did you know that with the key combinations Ctrl + and Ctrl - you can easily zoom in and out on a webpage in Internet Explorer? I just found out today. Very useful. To reset to a 100% default view just use Ctrl 0. Zooming in and out is also easily done by holding down the Ctrl key while turning the mouse-wheel.

Another nice thing to know is that Internet Explorer has a built in profiler: just press the F12 key. This works in Internet Explorer 8. You can also install the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar.

In the print preview function (click on the printer icon and select print preview), you have some useful settings in case you want print a webpage on the printer. In the preview screen you can zoom the webpage in and out in order to adjust how the pages will be printed.

In Chrome also the F12 button gives insight into the currently loaded webpage.

For Firefox you can install the webdeveloper toolbar.

Learn using Google the right way

Most people have no idea all things you can do with Google. You can find what your looking for much easier when you know how to use Google the right way. Googleguide is an excellent resource for this. Get amazed with all you can do with this amazing search-engine. You'll won't regret spending some time on that site.

Create PDF documents without expensive software

Did you ever want to create PDF documents, but you don't know how or you just don't want to buy software. This is possible and completely free. Just install PDF Creator and once you're done, it has installed a new printer for you called 'PDF Creator'. Whenever you print some document from your favorite editor to this new printer, PDF Creator creates a PDF document for you with the content you wrote.

I have my PDF Creator allways configured so that documents printed to PDF Creator are saved automatically (see settings -> auto-save option) and after saving the PDF document it opens the PDF document with the default PDF program.

Sometimes you want to convert a PDF document to a Word document. This can be done with this PDF Converter (for Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7). A version for Mac is also available.

Great iTunes alternative

Are you tired of iTunes, because it's slow or you just want to manage your iPhone, iPod or iPad much easier like a removable disk? There's a great alternative for iTunes. Click here for more information: sync music from iPod to iPod.

iPhone ringtone maker

Do you want to create your own iPhone, iPad or iPod touch ringtones quickly and easily? Then take a look at this simple program. You can even try it for free! Visit the following page: how do i make an iPhone ringtone.

Music player tip

Of course you like to play music on your iPhone, iPad or iPod. The following tip is very useful. In the default music player app of your device, you can scroll from left to right in order to find a the start of a specific part of your song. This scrolling is not very accurate, so it's a little bit difficult to find the correct starting-position in your song. That's because the scrolling speed is quite fast initially. However, when you tap and hold your finger on the slider and move your finger downwards instead of to the left or right, you're able to adjust your scrolling speed. When you have the desired speed, then scroll to the left or right. This allows to find more accurately the start of a specific part of your song.

Saving battery-life power tip

Always turn Wifi / 3G / Bluetooth off in case you're not using it. For when it is on, your device uses more power. Also turning off location services and your music equalizer saves power.

Clean and secure your internet connection

First I want to explain what is a DNS (or domain name server). When you type in an address in your browser - like e.g. www.ictexpertise.com - this address is sent to the DNS of your internet service provider (or ISP for short). The DNS translates this address into a numeric computer address (currently IP-address 95.211.71.169 for my site) on which this site can be found on the net. You can see this in action when you type cmd in your Windows start menu-box in Windows 7 or Start-Run in Windows XP. In the black screen that then appears type in: ping www.ictexpertise.com and you'll see what I mean: you'll get a response indicating the IP-address of the webserver on which my site is running. The DNS-server is used in this process to make the translation.

Recently I installed the OpenDNS server addresses in my home network DNS-entries. It's really wonderful. The DNS-servers of OpenDNS are now directing my internet traffic instead of the DNS servers of my provider. I just registered on their site and filled in the categories of webpages I no longer want to show up in my browser and setup the addresses of their DNS servers in my network. It's a peace of mind to know that our children can't go to the most of the wrong sites by accident. Highly recommended and it's completely free. No need for installing software on your computer, just configure the DNS addresses. Malicious sites or sites from unwanted categories (you've chosen) will be automatically blocked.

Best is to do this on your router secured by a password you only know in case that's possible. My router doesn't support this, so I had to enter these addresses on each computer in my home network (off course this is less secure). On the site of OpenDNS is explained how this is accomplished. By the way, in case you have to enter the DNS addresses on each computer in the network, it's recommended to disable access to the networksettings by your kids via the group policy editor (gpedit.msc) in case you know how this works.

After all those years on the internet, finally a cleaner internet! For the meantime I'm very happy with OpenDNS. OpenDNS is fast and is also like a community: you can vote for sites in which category they belong. Also you can add new sites that weren't filtered yet. The community will then decide in which category your submitted site will be stored.

Recently, OpenDNS released it's first version of DNSCrypt for Windows. This basically encrypts the DNS requests between your computer and the OpenDNS-server, making your connection safer. No longer what you type in your addres-bar in your browser is sent to OpenDNS as plain text, but instead coded data. This makes it more difficult or even impossible for malicious software, hackers or your ISP to recognize which sites you are visiting, thereby increasing your security and privacy.

Free customer-service software download

Above you can see a screenshot of a simple customer-service software developed by me which you may use free of charge and give to your friends.

This software can be useful whenever you have many contacts by phone with your customers and want to make notes for each customer. These notes are stored per day.

You can download this customer-service software for free and you may use it without any limitation.

Eventually I can alter this software to meet your needs, by - for example - making it possible to print reports or coupling a order and invoice system to it.

Learn how digital logic works

Have you ever wondered how digital electronic devices work internally?

Digital logic is fun to learn with a free simulator. Visit the following page for more information to learn what is digital logic.

Learn the basics of Photoshop

When you want to learn the basics of Photoshop, you can find a good tutorial here.

Design Patterns

Read these short introductions about design patterns and design patterns simplified.

Useful macro for Microsoft Word

Whenever you copy and paste text in a Word document, Word keeps the formatting of the original text and when you paste the text Word shows a little button on which you can click to keep the text only. Personally I find this annoying, for most of the time I want to paste only the text without the formatting. On this site I learned how to create a macro for this and I assigned the ALT+V keyboard combination to this macro. Very useful. Now when I paste text I just press Alt+V and Word is not pasting the formatting of the text anymore. Very convenient to paste only text with a keyboard combination.

What's also annoying is that by default not allways a full menu is shown when you click on a certain menu in Word, Excel, etc..This can be easily solved by right clicking on any toolbar and choosing Customize (or via the menu via View - Toolbars - Customize). Next click on the Options tab and put a check before 'Allways show full menus'. Next click Close.

People can't hear you when calling with Skype

I've seen several times that when using a USB webcam with built-in microphone with Skype when you want to call that people can't hear you. It's because Skype is automatically switching back using the default (perhaps non-existing) microphone when you unplug your webcam. When you plugin the webcam again, this setting will remain like that (unfortunately). Maybe they will fix this rather sooner than later. Perhaps it's wise to leave the webcam always plugged in, so you'll probably have less issues.

It's easily solved by going to tools - options - audio settings. Choose the right microphone with the combobox. Often you see a description like webcam microphone when you open the combobox. Choose this microphone and speak some words. The green volumebar will be moving when you've choosen the right microphone. Next important step: click the Save button and you're done.

Computer Q&A

I like the site of Leo Notenboom where Leo explains a lot of common computer related questions and he answers these. See for yourself, I'm sure you'll find a lot of great tips from him. Another site which I like is SchoonePC, however it is in dutch language. Also a lot of useful tips can be found on that site.