Monday February 18 2008
Some Free Things I Use
Everyone has their favorite free softwares and web based services that they have accumulated so I just thought I would mention a few of mine here.
Web browsing
Well for me its Firefox and a matter of fact I am using the the beta version now. To get it to work like I wanted I got to use one of Firefox's most unique features the about:config screen.
Firefox excels in my opinion because of the amount of customization the user gets with extensions. Everything doesn't always work as intended though which brings me to another utility I've found useful every now and then.
File Compression
For me the program of choice in a Windows environment is 7-Zip and really not so much for its archiving abilities but its Windows Shell integration which allows me a quick way to view the contents of almost any compressed file I may have downloaded.
In addition to opening and viewing the archive files inside can be edited and then saved back to the archive which depending on what one is doing can be a handy feature sometimes.
Text Editing for scripts, webpages etc...
This is in my opinion one thing that a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at. When I say open a script file of some sort I want it viewable in a human readable format but when I close it I want it saved back to whatever format it was in unaltered with no questions asked including funky unix style carriage returns or whatever. My text editor of choice has become PSPad it does all those things and more. It has that same Windows shell integration feature that 7-Zip offers so it is always easily available and ready to use.
I've really only scratched the surface here as this program is really very feature full and I don't need a text/hex editor all the time. My exposure with it is rather limited in relation to its entire feature set, but for my needs it works easily and reliably.
Misc Graphics Tools....
As with text editing a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at this. I mean Linux has The Gimp which is also available for Windows but I don't particularly care for either version Windows or Linux. However the program is at least capable of providing a base off which to work with images though. Windows has Paint which on a good day almost just doesn't cut it. There is Paint.NET which is a vast improvement over Paint and as with all graphics editors has its own learning curve but can be used for most basic tasks. Now the program I generally use or the one I am most familiar with is PhotoFiltre which actually comes in two flavors a free one or a more capable studio version which is a a 30 day free trail shareware product. I can't speak about the paid version as I have only ever used the free version but I might give it a try eventually. Now recently I discovered another freeware offering called PhotosScape. and like Paint.NET and PhotoFiltre has the learning curve but yields some pretty high quality results.
Of the three if I could only pick one it would be PhotoFiltre but as I stated earlier it has more to do with familiarity than anything else. I am going to close for now but I plan on speaking to this subject (favorite free programs) in the future again. One more thing I included this post to the serving category as these and several other programs are very important to that end.
Web browsing
Well for me its Firefox and a matter of fact I am using the the beta version now. To get it to work like I wanted I got to use one of Firefox's most unique features the about:config screen.
Firefox excels in my opinion because of the amount of customization the user gets with extensions. Everything doesn't always work as intended though which brings me to another utility I've found useful every now and then.
File Compression
For me the program of choice in a Windows environment is 7-Zip and really not so much for its archiving abilities but its Windows Shell integration which allows me a quick way to view the contents of almost any compressed file I may have downloaded.
In addition to opening and viewing the archive files inside can be edited and then saved back to the archive which depending on what one is doing can be a handy feature sometimes.
Text Editing for scripts, webpages etc...
This is in my opinion one thing that a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at. When I say open a script file of some sort I want it viewable in a human readable format but when I close it I want it saved back to whatever format it was in unaltered with no questions asked including funky unix style carriage returns or whatever. My text editor of choice has become PSPad it does all those things and more. It has that same Windows shell integration feature that 7-Zip offers so it is always easily available and ready to use.
I've really only scratched the surface here as this program is really very feature full and I don't need a text/hex editor all the time. My exposure with it is rather limited in relation to its entire feature set, but for my needs it works easily and reliably.
Misc Graphics Tools....
As with text editing a default install of Windows (any version I've ever used don't know about Vista yet though) sucks at this. I mean Linux has The Gimp which is also available for Windows but I don't particularly care for either version Windows or Linux. However the program is at least capable of providing a base off which to work with images though. Windows has Paint which on a good day almost just doesn't cut it. There is Paint.NET which is a vast improvement over Paint and as with all graphics editors has its own learning curve but can be used for most basic tasks. Now the program I generally use or the one I am most familiar with is PhotoFiltre which actually comes in two flavors a free one or a more capable studio version which is a a 30 day free trail shareware product. I can't speak about the paid version as I have only ever used the free version but I might give it a try eventually. Now recently I discovered another freeware offering called PhotosScape. and like Paint.NET and PhotoFiltre has the learning curve but yields some pretty high quality results.
Of the three if I could only pick one it would be PhotoFiltre but as I stated earlier it has more to do with familiarity than anything else. I am going to close for now but I plan on speaking to this subject (favorite free programs) in the future again. One more thing I included this post to the serving category as these and several other programs are very important to that end.
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