Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by Issa Mirandilla, who writes about freelancing, writing, marketing, careers, personal finance and other business-related topics. Give her a nudge on Twitter or visit her website here.

After hours of researching facts and figures, organizing your notes like crazy, and hammering away at your keyboard, you’re finally done with your killer blog post. Congratulations for making it that far. Not all blog post ideas get turned into working drafts. Now, all you have to do is edit. That might take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour, depending on the quality of your draft.

Seems like a lot of work, eh? That’s not really an issue if blogging is nothing more than a hobby to you. But when your entire livelihood depends on your ability to churn out posts on a daily basis, spending too much time polishing each post is impractical and dangerous to your business.

Of course, quality isn’t something you should sacrifice, no matter how clogged up your blogging schedule is. To solve this dilemma, you can either hire an editor to clean up your work, or purchase editing software online.

But then, in those cases, there’s no real guarantee that you’ll get what you pay for. So what’s a blogger who’s strapped for time and cash to do? Why, use these free editing tools available online, of course!

Recommended Reading: Capture Your Readers! 8 Tips To Writing Engaging Blog Posts

1. After the Deadline

After the Deadline (AtD) doesn’t just flag and give suggestions for your spelling, grammar, and style. It also concisely explains the reasons behind the corrections given. That means that the longer you use AtD, the better a blogger you become!

According to the developers, AtD can:

• Recommend the right word 90 percent of the time;
• Detect approximately 1,500 misused words;
• Help you write clearly and concisely using thousands of rules in "Plain English" style
• Use statistics to find exceptions to grammar rules.

AtD is available as a plugin, add-on, or extension for platforms like WordPress, bbPress, Firefox, Google Chrome, OpenOffice.org Writer, and the IntenseDebate comment system.

2. ProWritingAid

Like AtD, ProWritingAid not only tells you what to improve, but also how to improve. It has the ability to generate a detailed analysis on overused words, sentence length, writing style, plagiarism, clichés, redundancies, "sticky" sentences, consistency, and the like.

Although you need to download the Premium version to enjoy all of its features, ProWritingAid’s free version is enough for most types of blog posts.

3. EditMinion

Don’t let the site’s inelegant design fool you. EditMinion takes only a few seconds to check your work for the usual signs of weak writing, like adverbs, overuse of "said", passive voice, ending with prepositions, tricky homonyms and more.

EditMinion generates a report card for your reference, and allows you to add "hashtags" for easier editing. As of this writing, though, the site is still in Beta stage, so use it with care!

4. HemingwayApp

Ever wish you had Hemingway’s terse yet punchy writing style? Well, your wish can come true now, thanks to the brilliant minds behind HemingwayApp. Here, your copy will be assessed based on readability, number of adverbs, number of complex words, and number of times you use the passive voice.

The app also detects spelling errors, although it’s not much help in the grammar department. In case you need to use it offline, a desktop version of the app is also available for $5.

5. WordCounter

Whether you want to check for keyword frequency, or you just have a tendency to be repetitive with words, WordCounter.com is the answer. As its name suggests, WordCounter counts and ranks words according to frequency. The apps is great for reducing redundancy and/or repetitive writing in your copy.

You can also include "small" words, use only root words, and adjust the number of words listed by the app. You can use this primarily as an analysis tool, checking your drafts as you keep honing them to perfection.

6. ClicheFinder

Do cliches drive you crazy? If "Yes", ClicheFinder might be a godsend for you. Just paste your post in the space provided, click the "Find Clichés" button, and presto! Every cringe-worthy phrase will be highlighted in red. You can either rewrite these phrases to make them sound simpler and fresher, or toss them into the back-burner like the blights on language that they are (har har)!

If you experience the message "Unhandled Exception: An unhandled exception was thrown by the application," don’t be alarmed. It’s possible that your text doesn’t contain any clichés at all, so the system’s going all wonky on you.

Wrap Up

Naturally, all these programs have their pros and cons. Tools are only as good as the people who use them, and these six editing tools for bloggers are no different. It’s still up to you to decide whether their suggestions/corrections to your blog post are worth it or not. In any case, here’s to effective and efficient editing!

Do you know other free, downloadable, and/or safe editing programs for bloggers that haven’t been featured here? Share them in the comments section!

JavaScript is an easy language to get started with, but to achieve mastery takes a lot of effort. Beginners often make a few well-known mistakes that come back and bite them when they least expect. To find which these mistakes are, keep reading!

1. Missing curly braces

One practice, which JavaScript beginners are often guilty of, is omitting curly braces after statements like if, else, while and for. Although it is allowed, you should be extra careful, because this practice can often conceal problems and be the source of bugs. See the below example:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

Although the fail() call is indented and looks as if it belongs to the if statement, it does not. It is always called. So it is a good practice to always surround blocks of code with curly braces, even if there is only one statement involved.

2. Missing semicolons

When JavaScript is parsed, there is a process known as automatic semicolon insertion. As the name suggests, the parser is happy to insert missing semicolons for you. The purpose of this feature is to make JavaScript more approachable and easier to write by beginners. However, you should always include semicolons, because there are dangers in omitting them. Here is an example:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

Because there is a semicolon missing on line 3, the parser assumes that the opening bracket on line 5 is an attempt to access a property using the array accessor syntax (see mistake #8), and not a separate array, which is not what was intended and results in a type error. The fix is simple – always write semicolons.

Some experienced JavaScript developers prefer to leave out semicolons, but they are perfectly aware of the bugs that this might cause and know how to prevent them.

3. Not understanding type coercion

JavaScript is dynamically typed. This means that you don’t need to specify a type when declaring a new variable, and you can freely reassign or convert its value. This makes JavaScript much easier to write than something like C# or Java, but you open the doors for potential bugs that in other languages are caught during the compilation step. Here is an example:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

The problem can be easily fixed by using parseInt(textBox.value, 10) to turn the string into a number before adding 10 to it. Depending on how you use a variable, the runtime might decide that it should be converted in one type or another. This is known as type coercion. To prevent types from being implicitly converted when comparing variables in if statements, you can use strict equality checks (===).

4. Forgetting var

Another practice that beginners are guilty of, is forgetting to use the var keyword when declaring variables. JavaScript is very permissive, and the first time it sees that you’ve used a variable without the var statement, it will silently declare it for you globally. This can be the source of subtle bugs. Here is an example, which also shows a different bug – missing a comma when declaring multiple variables at once:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

When the parser reaches line 4, it will insert a semicolon automatically, and then interpret the c and d declarations on line 5 as global. This will cause the value of the outer c variable to change. Read about more JavaScript gotchas here.

5. Arithmetic operations with floats

This mistake is true for nearly every programming language out there, including JavaScript. Due to the way floating point numbers are represented in memory, arithmetic operations are not as precise as you’d think. Here is an example:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

To work around this problem, you should not use use decimals if you need absolute correctness – use whole numbers, or if you need to work with money, use a library like bignumber.js.

6. Using constructors over literals

When Java and C# programmers start writing JavaScript, they often prefer to create objects using constructors: new Array(), new Object(), new String(). Although they are perfectly supported, it is recommended to use the literal notations: [], {}, "", because the constructor functions have subtle peculiarities:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

The solution is simple: try to always use the literal notation. Besides, JSarrays don’t need to know their length in advance.

7. Not understanding how scopes work

A difficult concept for beginners to understand is JavaScript’s scoping rules and closures. And rightfully so:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

Functions retain visibility to variables in their parent scopes. But because we are delaying the execution with a setTimeout, when the time comes for the functions to actually run, the loop has already finished and the i variable is incremented to 11.

The self executing function in the comment works, because it copies the i variable by value and keeps a private copy for each timeout function. Read more about scopes here and here.

8. Using eval

Eval is evil. It is considered a bad practice, and most of the times when you use it, there is a better and faster approach.

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

Code inside eval is a string. Debug messages arising from eval blocks are incomprehensible and you have to juggle with escaping single and double quotes. Not to mention that it is slower than regular JavaScript. Don’t use eval unless you know what you are doing.

9. Not understanding asynchronous code

Something that is unique to JavaScript is that nearly everything is asynchronous, and you need to pass callback functions in order to get notified of events. This doesn’t come intuitively to beginners, and they quickly find themselves scratching their heads on a bug that is difficult to understand. Here is an example, in which I use the FreeGeoIP service to fetch your location by IP:

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

Even though the console.log comes after the load() function call, it is actually executed before the data is fetched.

10. Misusing event listeners

Let’s say that you want to listen for clicks on a button, but only while a checkbox is checked. Here is how a beginner might do it (using jQuery):

(Play with our code editor on Tutorialzine.com)

This is obviously wrong. Ideally, you should listen for an event only once, like we did with the checkbox’s change event. Repeatedly calling button.on('click' button.on('clicked' ..) results in multiple event listeners that are never removed. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to make this example work :)

Conclusion

The best way to prevent mistakes like these from happening is to use JSHint. Some IDEs offer built-in integration with the tool, so your code is checked while you write. I hope that you found this list interesting. If you have any suggestions, bring them to the comment section!

In previous posts, we have gone through some WordPress customization that involve code addition in functions.php. These additions enhance the functionality of our theme.

Take our WordPress Login Page tutorial for example, we are able to redirect users from the default WordPress login page, wp-login.php, to our new customized login page, and also redirect them to another page upon logout.

However, after a while, the list of codes that we’ve added in the functions.php could pile up and get very messy. If you are experiencing this problem, we’ve got some tips here to help you tackle this.

Recommended Reading: Beginner’s Guide To WordPress Plugin Development

Creating Multiple Files

The first thing we can do to manage our codes is by separating a set of codes into different files. Say, we have a couple of new functions that alter the Login Page. We could store these codes in a new file rather than putting it in the functions.php directly.

Create a new file, custom-login.php (as an example), and put all the codes in it. Then, in function.php, refer to this file with require or require_once, like so.

 require_once get_template_directory() . '/inc/custom-login.php'; 

And that’s it. Note that this method requires you to be careful when separating the codes, otherwise you could break the site. You should also be very clear in naming the files, so that people who work on your theme – particularly, if you are working in a team – can quickly figure out the relationship between each file.

However, if you are not that familiar with PHP or are afraid of ruining the site when altering the files, try the next tip instead.

Code Snippet Plugin

Code Snippets is a plugin created by Shea Bunge. It provides a native WordPress GUI to add your code snippets, and run them on your site. In other words, instead of adding the code in functions.php, you can do it through the WordPress back-end administration.

Once it is installed and activated, you will find a new side-menu below the Plugins.

You can create a new code snippet, just as you would create a new post and page.

Click on the Activate button to use the code in your site. So with this, we not only store the codes but can activate them to function within the site.

You can also hit the Export button to download the code in a PHP file.

One of the advantages of using Code Snippets is that instead of having to input all the codes in thefunctions.php of the theme once again, the functionality of the codes will still be able to run, even if we have changed the theme.

Final Thought

Alright, those are the two tips that we’ve got. It is now up to you to decide on which one best fits your requirements. We hope you find these tips useful. If you know of any other methods, let us know in the comments.

Gone are the days when having moving images on your website meant having to use GIFs or Adobe Flash. The emergence of HTML 5 and its multimedia features has allowed designers to do without Adobe Flash or heavy, slow-loading GIF animations and, instead, use the native HTML5 video player. However, HTML5 only supports a few video formats, namely OGG, WebM and MP4.

If you’re keen on using HTML5 videos on your website, the most important step is, of course, converting the video files themselves into the right format. Here are 10 free apps that will help you do just that by taking all the hassle out of the conversion process.

Recommended Reading: HTML5 Videos: 10 Things Designers Need To Know

1. Miro Video Converter

Miro Video Converter is an open-source video conversion tool capable of converting any video format to HTML5 video formats (OGG, WebM and MP4). Miro Video Converter can also convert videos to the proper sizes and formats for a number of popular smartphones, including most iPhones and iPads as well as Samsung Galaxy devices.

Miro Video Converter works on a simple drag-and-drop basis. Miro Video Converter also supports batch conversion and resizing. Miro Video Converter is available for Mac and Windows, with Linux source code also available.

2. Handbrake

Handbrake is a free and open-source video converter that is capable of converting videos to MP4 files. While itdoesn’t support any of the other HTML5 video formats, it makes up for this by having a number of extra features such as title and chapter selection, chapter marking, subtitle support and a number of video filters such as deinterlacing and grayscale.

Handbrake features queued encoding and live video preview. The app also supports both Constant Quality and Average Bitrate video encoding. Handbrake is available for Mac, Windows and Linux.

3. Freemake Video Converter

Freemake Video Converter supports a large number of different formats, from the common video formats to the less common formats such as MTS, BIK and RM. Freemake also has support for audio and image files and can even turn these into videos as well. As far as HTML5 goes, Freemake Video Converter supports WebM, OGG and MP4.

Freemake also has presets for converting to mobile devices. Freemake comes with support for both CUDA and DXVA technologies, which will speed up video conversion if you have a compatible graphics card. Freemake Video Converter is available for Windows only.

4. Easy HTML5 Video

Easy HTML5 Video is an easy-to-use file converter to convert most video types into WebM, OGG or MP4 files. Easy HTML5 Video doesn’t provide a lot of quality customization options, only letting you set the video’s resolution and quality. You can choose whether to enable some HTML5-specific features such as autoplay, controls and whether the video loops.

Easy HTML5 Video’s publish tool exports your videos to a local folder or an FTP directory of your choice. You can also insert your video directly into a HTML file using the Insert to page export setting. Easy HTML5 Video is available for both Windows and Mac.

5. Sothink Video Converter

Sothink Video Converter supports most of the popular video and audio formats, including HD formats. The app supports WebM, OGG and MP4, and will even generate HTML5 video codes for you. Sothink Video Converter also has some video editing capabilities, such as the ability to trim video files, zoom in and change the quality of both the audio and video.

Sothink Video Converter supports batch converting. It also has support for multi-threaded video conversion, which will definitely help reduce the amount of time needed to convert videos. Sothink Video Converter is only available for Windows.

6. Any Video Converter

Any Video Converter is a video conversion tool with a significant amount of features. It supports many different file formats, including HTML5 video formats OGG, WebM and MP4. Any Video Converter also supports exporting videos for mobile devices. Any Video Converter also comes with the ability to download and save YouTube videos in multiple formats.

In addition to its conversion features, Any Video Converter also has some video editing features. These features include the ability to merge and split video files, add subtitles and special effects. Any Video Converter is available for both Windows and Mac.

7. DVDVideoSoft Free HTML5 Video Player And Converter

DVDVideoSoft’s Free HTML5 Video Player and Converter is a simple tool designed specifically for converting video files into HTML5-compatible video files. The tool supports all the common file formats, and exports videos in both MP4 and OGV formats. There are multiple quality presets to choose from, and the tool also lets you customize and create your own presets.

The conversion process also generates a HTML file alongside your converted videos containing code for a HTML5 video player. The player has four themes and will choose whether to play the MP4 or OGV files depending on browser. HTML5 Video Player And Converter is only available for Windows.

8. Gfycat

Gfycat is a web-based application that can convert GIF files into HTML5 videos. The major benefit of HTML5 videos over GIFs is that the former are smaller in size, plus you can pause and rewind HTML5 videos. It’s not a full-fledged video conversion solution, though; instead, it’s both a converter and a hosting service for GIFs and videos.

Gfycat automatically converts your videos into the required formats, and even has its own GIF Format Yoker (gfy) which automatically chooses formats according to the browser being used. You can construct your own video player or use Gfycat’s embed code to embed a gfy object on your page.

9. Online-Convert.com

Online-convert.com is a website with a large number of file conversion tools, including a healthy selection of video conversion tools. Amongst the video conversion tools on the site are tools for converting videos to OGG and WebM (VP8) format. The tools have a number of options that you can tweak, such as resolution and bitrate options, as well as the ability to change the audio quality and bitrate.

The tools also let you change the framerate of your video, as well as flip and rotate the video if needed. Another useful feature is the fact that the tools can work with files that are already online as well as files that are stored on Dropbox.

10. Apowersoft Free Online Video Converter

Apowersoft Free Online Video Converter is another online video conversion service. It supports converting to MP4, OGG, WebM as well as other common video formats such as MKV and AVI. It can also convert videos into audio formats such as MP3, WAV and even lossless FLAC. The tool offers a few video and audio conversion settings such as resolution and audio bitrate.

Apowersoft Free Online Video Converter also has some advanced options such as the ability to make the converted video slow-motion, create clips, flip and rotate the video, as well as add your own watermark.

This week it’s another RAPIDFIRE! We take listener questions and try to answer them as best we can within a 3 minute time constraint.

We talked about (roughly in order):

Q & A:

• 2:19 What’s the best way to release a tiny JQuery plugin?
• 6:14 My question is about Grunt and requireJS: if I concatenate all my javascript features into a single file, all of them will be loaded with 1 http request, right? So what’s the point of using requireJS?
• 13:52 What is the maximum number of javascript files that you should load on the same page?
• 21:02 I want to set a performance budget but have no idea where to start. Are there any good articles or pieces of advice you can give?
• 29:00 What’s the best way to learn JQuery?
• 31:35 What’s the best way to detect if something is visible in the browser’s active viewport?
• 38:29 Do you know of a port of Bootstrap that is more intended for a Grunt and Sass workflow?
• 41:50 I’ve been trying to figure out the right way to handle content hiding. Any advice or thoughts on this?
• 48:20 How do you handle a boss that gets upset when you ask him about which devices we’ll be supporting for a project?
• 51:20 Do you guys know of any cool sites/tools to see what percentage of people are currently using what browsers to get a general idea of global usage on a particular browser version?

Sponsors:

• 27:14 lynda.com The best online learning resource where you can learn about everything. Check out sweet courses like:
  • Lighting Design for Video Production
  • Animate a CSS Sprite Sheet
  • Responsive Typography Tips
  • Agile Project Management
  • Creating Hair in Maya
  • Go check it out and get a free 7 trial!
• 36:19 Environments for Humans: Responsive Web Design Summit Lot of great speakers talking about performance, techniques/tips, and strategy when dealing with RWD and workflows.
  • Topics include Sass tips, grunt, tool automation, responsive HTML emails, content strategy for designers, responsive wire framing, and much more. Speakers like Dan Mall, Brad Frost, Trent Walton, Jenn Lukas, and more. Use “SHOPTALKSHOW” to get 20% off any ticket combo!

Show Links:

• Shards JQuery Plugin
• Tim Kadlec – “Fast Enough”
• Dave Rupert – “A Brander Newer Blog”
• Treehouse
• CodeSchool
• Codecademy
• JQfundamentals.com
• Learning JQuery book
• CSS Tricks: A Complete Guide to Flexbox

Download audio: http://shoptalkshow.com/podpress_trac/feed/508/0/154220-105-rapidfire-24.mp3

Editor’s note: This is a contributed post by Jo Sabin, community manager, and Tara Hornor, freelance editor at DesignCrowd, a leading online graphic design jobs marketplace.

The most recent version of Adobe products, called Creative Cloud (CC), was released in summer 2013, but is available only as a monthly subscription. As such, not everyone has been thrilled with the new release. However, one nice benefit of a monthly subscription is the ability to subscribe to just Photoshop for a lower fee than to the entire kit and caboodle. But is it switch from CS6 to CC worth it?

Photoshop CC actually has a good handful of exciting new features, mainly, in the filters department. So, if you find that you use filters quite a bit, switching to CC is probably worth the monthly payment. If the extra filter features are something you can live without, then you are probably fine sticking with CS6. Take a look at the 16 videos below, though, to help you better decide which move is best for you.

Recommended Reading: 41 Nicest Photoshop Photo Effects [Photoshop Tutorials]

And if you have already committed to CC, then have fun trying out the tutorials and honing your Photoshop CC skills!

Adobe Photoshop CC – My Top 5 Favorite Features by Terry White
Learn quickly about some of the best features of Photoshop CC from Terry White, a worldwide design evangelist for Adobe systems.

What’s New in Adobe Photoshop CC by Everyday HDR
This video takes a quick look at the best new features in Photoshop CC. An excellent way to very easily see what the new version has to offer.

Photoshop CC Tutorials by Photoshop Training Channel
If you are completely new to Photoshop CC, then this tutorial is an excellent place to start. It gives an excellent overview of the new features, showing step-by-step how to use each.

Camera RAW as a Photoshop Filter and Playlist by FocalOnline
This first video in the playlist by Martin Evening shows how to use Camera RAW as a filter. See more videos on the Adobe Photoshop CC Tutorials playlist to learn more about the new features in Photoshop CC, including more Camera RAW functionalities, Shake Reduction, and more.

Camera RAW Retouching Improvements by PSDTuts+
This tutorial takes you through more than just using Camera RAW as a filter; it also shows how to use Spot Removal as a paint brush and Visualize Spots to find dust spots from the camera lens.

Smart Sharpen Improvements in Photoshop CC by PSDTuts+
Learn how to use the improved Smart Sharpen tool to clarify images and get rid of unwanted halos and noise.

Camera RAW Filter for Skin Smoothing by Whole Cloth Productions
Learn the benefits of using Camera RAW Filter for smoothing out skin in Photoshop CC, along with step-by-step instructions on how to do so.

Camera Shake Reduction by PSDTuts+
This is an excellent, well-done video showing how to best use the new Camera Shake Reduction feature in Photoshop CC.

Gauging the Best Sharpening Settings by Lynda.com
In this tutorial, you will learn how to decide on the best settings for sharpening an image in Photoshop CC. More free videos from this series are available on Lynda’s Photoshop CC video list, or with membership, gain access to the entire series.

Photoshop Air Brushing Tutorial by Roberto Blake
In this tutorial, Roberto shows how to create smooth skin undestructively using the right tools in Photoshop CC.

Photoshop CC Masking Tutorial by Roberto Blake
With this step-by-step tutorial, learn how to mask a model’s hair using Photoshop CC.

Photoshop Neon Glowing Lines Tutorial by Roberto Blake
First learn how to create glowing lines in Photoshop CC, and then follow some final steps for further enhancing the glow.

Masking with Pen Tool by Roberto Blake
Blake teaches you how to mask hard edges using the Pen Tool to make selections in Photoshop CC.

Black Diamond Text Effect by Ch-Ch-Checkit
Using Photoshop CC, learn how to create an incredible text effect based on the Black Diamond Speed Art text effect from DutchArtFX in 2010.

Rock Text Effect by Photoshop Training Channel
Learn how to create a realistic rock text effect in Photoshop CC using a rock texture and enhancing with effects.

Make an Animated GIF in Photoshop Using Cell Phone Videos by Photoshop Training Channel
In this extensive video, you will learn how to use Photoshop to edit videos using such features as adjustment layers and the timeline panel.