While the PDF file format is a great tool for sharing documents while retaining their formatting and for assuring that documents aren’t changed (contracts, for instance), sometimes you need to use the text from a PDF. You may need to copy a paragraph, a page or more, and edit it in a Microsoft Word document, or in another word processor or text editor. While you can select text in a PDF, chances are that this text will be seriously munged. You’ll often see odd breaks, or no breaks at all, and styles will be lost. There are ways, however, that you can convert a PDF to formatted text. Here’s how to do this.

Microsoft released on Wednesday a Firefox browser add-on extending HTML5-based video on the company's Windows 7 OS.

Sencha began offering on Monday Sencha Touch, an HTML5-based mobile application development framework for touch-based devices. The company also detailed plans for an upgrade to its Ext JS JavaScript framework.

Representatives of Microsoft and Adobe on Tuesday both espoused their companies' love for HTML5 technology at the HTML5 Live conference held within a few blocks of New York's Times Square, even though the vendors offer technologies perceived as HTML5 competitors.

Google will end Gears, an open-source plug-in project it launched two years ago to allow Web applications to function even when a computer isn't connected to the Internet, according to a statement from the company.

Showing again the power of Twitter for quick social organizing, Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday was forced to defend itself against complaints that its market-leading Outlook e-mail program wreaks havoc on rich-HTML e-mails.

Google's attempt at rallying developers, ISPs and others to increase the speed at which the Internet operates focuses less on rip-and-replace and more on a set of best practices that includes compression techniques, optimized JavaScript code and Web graphics, and reductions in HTML file sizes.

While it's impossible to sum up the thousands of enhancements and bug fixes both big and small, the Firefox 4 beta version brings the browser that much closer to taking over everything on the desktop. There are fewer reasons for anyone to interact with an extra plug-in or the operating system. Remember when people cared about whether a machine was Windows or Mac or a Commodore 64? Remember when software needed to be written in native code? Those days are fading away quickly as the browser is more able than ever before to deliver most of the content we might want.

Last week's online protest against Microsoft Outlook is turning out to be a tempest-in-a-Tweet.