The Best Completely Free Tools We Use, What are the best free tools for anything web/editorial/new media Options

[glyn]

What are the best completely free tools that we use in our website/newmedia everything computer style world.


Here are mine:

Word Count PDF
This program will word count PDFs. (lovely!)
http://www.globalrendering.com/wordcount/wordcount.zip

PDF xchange viewer:
http://www.docu-track.com/home/prod_user/pdfx_viewer/
Great tool as it enables you to markup a PDF, as well as create hires outputs from the file. Basically it's like a free version of the professional suite.

Free Flash Based Photo Album -ZPhoto
This program will create a flash and html photo album just, point it at the folder of photos set the output sizes and batch it (just need a server to host)
http://0xcc.net/zphoto/index.html.en

Sam Spade: Advanced lookups
Great tool for lookups and crawling websites.
I can only now find the download on this page, not avail on samspade.org
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/downloads/index...amp;itemID=4709

Net Demon:
another great suite of net tools
http://www.netdemon.net/

FlashGet: download accelerator
If you're trying to download a file this program is very intuitive and speeds up the connection. For example, I download normally I get 150K/sec. With Flash get it pulls it down at 1,000K/sec. Goood queuing options, right click on a page and download all with FlashGet.
www.flashget.com/en/download.htm

Post and ye shall reap.



This post has been edited by glyn: Jan 24 2008, 03:46 AM

[bobbb]

Xenu crawler http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

FileZilla FTP client. http://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla

TidyGUI offline validator before going to W3C http://tidy.sourceforge.net/

PDFcreator a printer driver http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator

And something I discovered recently Server2Go. Carry your Apache server on a CD or USBstick. http://www.server2go-web.de/

This post has been edited by bobbb: Jan 24 2008, 04:37 PM

[saschaeh]

This is a great idea for a thread.

PIXresizer: convert between image formats (JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIFF), rotate images, convert to grayscale and resize multiple images in batch mode. A great companion for webmasters and digital photographers.

Download Here

[eKstreme]

What? No one mentioned Firefox yet?

My list:

Notepad++
Firefox
Seamonkey
IE7 (yes, shoot me)
Irfanview
Skype
PuTTY
SQLite Admin (the best interface out there)
The GIMP

GMail
Bloglines

And a few web apps I've written and writing

Pierre

[saschaeh]

IE7 (yes, shoot me)

I have recently switched to using IE7 as my default. (shoot us both)

[bobbb]

To eKstreme:

Why mention Firefox? Isn't that standard? You mean there is another browser?

Ah yes forgot about PuTTY

[saschaeh]

Firefox is not what it used to be. Finding it slower, resource intensive and it crashes - more so than IE7.

[eKstreme]

Bobb, surely if Firefox is standard, it should be on the list?

[Adrian]

Well if you're going to mention browser, Opera of course
Flocks kind of interesting as an FF alternative too.

Other apps:
Screenshot Pilot
IrfanView
Syncback
Colorpix (colour dropper tool)
7-Zip (zip file manager)
VLC media Player
Spybot - Search & Destroy
AVG Antivirus (though not free for commerical use)
Opcion (font viewer)
MediaMonkey (audio player thingy)
Last.fm player
Notepad++

[iamlost]

The iamlost Best Free Tools List

Note: Links added to meet revised requirements.
They were checked...but should any lead you to strange places please send a postcard.

Nothing beats a LAPP
Debian Linux - the open source operating system.
Apache HTTP Server - the open source web server.
PostgreSQL - the world's most advanced open source database.
PHP - general purpose scripting language.

Domain & Network Tools
Note: The ones in bold italics are not advised for the faint at heart.
BASE - PHP based IDS analysis engine.
LeechFTP - ftp client.
Metasploit Framework- platform for developing, testing, and running exploit code.
* You might like to read this first.
OpenSSH - secure access of remote computers.
PuTTY - secure access of remote computers.
Sara (Security Auditor's Research Assistant) - vulnerability assessment tool.
Snort - (IDS) intrusion, detection, and prevention system.
Tcpdump - network protocol analyzer.
Tripwire - file integrity checker.
Xenu's Link Sleuth - link integrity checker.

The Pretty Picture Stuff
AutoStitch - automatic 2d image stitcher.
Blender - 3d modelling application.
ColorPic - colour picker and colour palette creator.
Inkscape - vector graphics application.
Irfanview - view and edit most graphics formats.
The Gimp - (GNU Image Manipulation Program) raster graphics editor.

The Code and Copy Stuff
Notepad++ - source code and text editor.
OpenOffice - complete office suite.
RegexCoach - graphical WinApp for interactively experimenting with (Perl compatible regex toolkits like PCRE) regular expressions.

My Computer
7-Zip - file archiver.
Microsoft Virtual PC - create separate virtual machines/sandboxes.
TrueCrypt - encryption utility

Surf Like a Fox
Firefox
* DOM Inspector - inspect and edit the live DOM of any web document or XUL application while browsing.
* FireBug - edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in any web page while browsing.
* GreaseMonkey - customize the way any webpage displays using small bits of JavaScript while browsing.
* Live HTTPHeaders - View HTTP headers of a page while browsing.
* Sage - lightweight RSS and Atom feed reader for FF.
* Scrapbook
* Web Developer Toolbar
XeroBank Browser (TorPark) - Firefox variation with Tor on a USB flash drive - great for internet cafes.

Note: This is one area where free is very good but (S&D excepted) the paid versions (that would be another thread) are better.
If you need to play in bad neighbourhoods real-time protection is well worth the investment.
AVG (Free Edition) Antivirus
AVG (Free Edition) Anti-Spyware (formerly Ewido)
Spybot, Search & Destroy
ThreatFire (Free Edition) - Host based Intrusion Prevention System (HIPS)

This post has been edited by iamlost: Jan 24 2008, 01:47 PM

[tomnic]

A lot of good ones on the list so far!

A couple of my personal favorites that don't seem to have been mentioned so far include:

ConTEXT - my favorite programmer's text editor for Windows. I use this one just about every day!

JEdit - cross platform programmer's text editor. Can be extended via plug-ins. FTP plug-in can be very handy. Nice if you are stuck on a Mac .

Inkscape - Open source vector graphics editor.

As mentioned earlier I also love GIMP, Filezilla, Open Office, and Firefox.

[Ruud]

EverNote (60 day trail, reverts to freeware version)
PersonalBrain (idem)
Twhirl (Twitter client)
Windows Live Messengers (was: MSN Messenger)
Copernic Desktop search
RealVNC
Windows Live Writer
Colorcop
Pixelruler
Microsoft VirtualPC
FeedDemon (now free)

Google Reader
Gmail (hosted)
Google Documents (somewhat)
Google Calendar

ABC Amber LIT converter

Picasa
PhotoStory 3
SyncToy

[glyn]

STOP

Sorry to be a hustler - and I am certainly not a moderator - but can we have a little bit of thread etiquette as this is going to be useful reference, I'd invite you to provide a little description on the item and a link to the site is a must.

At the end of it all a moderator might feel like editing into a nice single post.

Sorry but come on guys

[SpostareDuro]

Although it would be more convenient for us to see live links to tools and suggestions, I know that moderators frequently have other responsibilities which can be time and resource consuming.
I am grateful for the tips nevertheless.

[cre8pc]

Would have to agree...those long lists are valuable even without a live link, which understandably would take the poster hours to go get.

This said, links are permitted as long as they're not self promotional link drops, as with keeping with House Rules.

Glyn's correct. This post could be turned into a great resource (with links), which could be posted in our forums blog if anyone has the time and wants a challenge (and credit for writing the post!)

[iamlost]

Links have now been added as per 'the voice of glyn' or peal of thunder or at least a loud noise from on high - I was going to say from 'a far' but that would be a bit eKstreme...

[swainzy]

I was going to say from 'a far' but that would be a bit eKstreme...

Very funny/clever iamlost!

Free simple photo editors/viewers:
Irfanview

Xnview

[eKstreme]

I was going to say from 'a far' but that would be a bit eKstreme...

Oh I've never heard that one before! Well played

[lee.n3o]

Web Development

Visual Web Developer 2008 Express
SQL Server 2005 Express

Development

Visial Basic 2008 Express
Visual C# 2008 Express
Visual C+ 2008 Express

[glyn]

What a great resource. Thanks to everyone that has participated in this thread. It's really handy to have so many great tools to hand.

Excuse my militance with the "stop" but it had the desired effect and I'm glad it shook a couple of people into going the extra mile.

Glyn.