Free tools
I have been interested in free tools for some time now. I think it all started when I installed Gentoo on my server.
I was so impressed with all the software you could find for the Linux OS. And they all where free. Why buy software when you can get them for free, and I am not talking about warez now. I am talking about free software that you can use, either as freeware or open source projects. I have also found out that there is not only freeware and open source projects for Linux, but also for Windows. So here are a list of software that I use that are free.
HTML Kit
Do not mind the name, you can work with HTML, CSS, asp, PHP, and SQL etc. It has a quite nice clean interface, a lot of features as Tidy, code contextual menus and code coloring. It has many extra plugins to add functionality and is small to download. Amazing software for such a prize.
Mozilla firefox
I must have for a web developer. Easy, small and great webstandard support. Comes from the Mozilla project and have now been branched out as an own web browser.
- Popup Blocking, do not allow popups as default.
- Tabbed Browsing, instead of having many windows you now only have one but with tabs instead.
- Smarter Search, Google is integrated as default. You can add a bunch of other search alternatives if Google is not enough.
- A Developer’s Best Friend, Firefox has a powerful JavaScript, CSS and Document inspector / console. The browser is one of the best browser of supporting web standards and CSS and XHTML.
- Extensions, the browser also have many extensions that can make the browser even better. For web development the web developer extension is great. For RSS feeds I use the the Sage extension. Mouse gestures is also available.
Mozilla thunderbird
Same as Firefox but is a mail client. Great and small client with a clean interface. Has all the features a mail client needs, as I see it without feeling to advanced.
JRuler
How may pixels is that heading? Is 750px really 750px in IE? What about ems, I heard that 1.0em is 10pixels on screen? Instead of guessing, use the JRuler, it is a ruler for the screen, it simply does a great job.
Gadwin print screen
Want to be able to quickly take screen dumps of either the whole screen, a window or a specific area? This tool is great, small and non-intrusive, it gives a preview of the area you want to take a screen dump of. You can either choose to save the dump to the clipboard or to a file. I think this program is the best in it?s category.
Apache web server
The number one web server used on the web by 68% of all web servers on the net (Oct. 2004). Works for both Linux, Windows and other OS’s. Can be kind of hard to install for a newbie as the server make use of a conf. file (text file) to make the preferences. When you get a hang of it, it is superior in all the option you have.
Smart FTP
Great FTP client for moving files to and from the web server. Easy and small client with a clean interface, updated quite often and have a lot features. Even FTP server specific commands and the possibility to encrypted transfers.
WinRAR
My favorite zipping software, have support for the largest zipping standards as .zip, .rar, iso and gzip etc. Can split larger files into smaller ones and make use of file crc validation.
XnView
Picture viewer ? la power. Can view most pictures (400) on the market, convert them and even fix them. Have a lot of other features as thumbnail export, twain import and picture browser.
That was a first list of programs that I use that I think is worth telling about. I would like to hear from you what you use, any other program that I have missed that is great for a web developer? It only has to be free.
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