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Five Free Apps for a New PC

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Did you get a new PC for Christmas? Blazing fast, with all the bells and whistles, perhaps with a shiny new widescreen monitor? I didn’t. What I do have is a brand spanking new Windows XP partition on my trusty old Macbook (thanks to Bootcamp).

Now I’ll admit: it was a fresh copy of The Sims 3: World Adventures, which runs much better on Windows than OSX, that got me here- but now that I am, I want to be able to do serious work on my Windows partition- with the help of these five apps, all fabulous and all free:

Notepad ++

A good text editor is probably the first thing I install on any new machine. Notepad Plus Plus has everything I need, from tabs to drag ‘n drop to macro recording. I love how lightweight it is, too- nothing fancy, but gets the job done wonderfully.

XAMPP

This was a no-brainer: with the heavy local WordPress testing I do, I use XAMPP on my Mac every day. That this gem of an app, which includes Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl, comes in a Windows version is something I’m truly grateful for.

WinSCP

Many people like Filezilla, a powerful and free FTP program, but I’ve always had a thing for WinSCP- it reminds me of back when I was doing all my work on a Pentium II (and paying a lot of money for 5 gigabytes of hard disk space!) It supports SFTP, has an integrated text editor, and stores your session information.

PHP Designer (Personal)

Among these apps, PHP Designer is my latest “discovery”- and now I have trouble imagining how I ever got along without it. It’s an IDE (or Integrated Development Environment) that makes PHP coding- even for non-programmers like myself- a breeze. It features a clean and simple interface, and wonderfully intuitive menus.

ScreenHunter Free

On OSX I rely on Snapz Pro X for my screen capturing needs, and was ecstatic to find ScreenHunter, a free and truly fabulous screen capture program for Windows. Installs in seconds, and does its job beautifully, allowing you to do everything from choosing what to capture, to where to save it, and more.

What are some of your favorite freeware apps?

10 Portable Apps for Web Designers & Developers

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I’ve posted before about web development freeware to download for times your workstation dies on you- and today I want to feature something even better: ten portable applications, to keep on a trusty USB drive. These are especially useful for workers who travel a lot, or even for the odd moments you absolutely must do work on a random machine that doesn’t have your usual apps installed.

  • Google Chrome (Win) and Firefox (Win / Mac)

    First up: portable browsers. Have these on your USB stick, and you’ll never be forced to use IE again.

  • Gimp Portable (Win / Mac)

    What I like most about Gimp is how easy it is to learn for someone accustomed to Photoshop. It installs easily, is very well documented, and is a powerful image editor. (If Gimp is overkill for your needs, check out my recent feature on online photo editors).

  • Inkscape (Win / Mac)

    Most designers are more dependent on Illustrator than Photoshop, which is why Inkscape, an Vector Graphics Editor, is such a killer portable app. It may not be as powerful (yet) as other Vector Graphics applications, but it will definitely get most jobs done- and it’s Open Source.

  • Filezilla (Win) and Cyberduck (Mac)

    I’m not sure what it is, but I always seem to forget to keep portable FTP programs with me- this in spite of the fact that my FTP program is probably the top third most-used application in my daily workflow. Filezilla, fast and powerful, is good for Windows- and for Mac my choice is the Open Source Cyberduck.

  • OpenOffice (Win) and AbiWord (Mac)

    Because most of my clients send me content in Microsoft Word documents, I always have either OpenOffice or AbiWord, both free apps which support MS Word docs, on hand. If you haven’t looked at OpenOffice lately, check out all the new features that make this office suite a true contender. Of course, you can always use Google Docs, although I’ve found that the latter won’t open some Word docs for me.

  • Nvu HTML Editor (Win / Mac)

    For emergency HTML editing, you can’t go wrong with Notepad, of course- but an app like Nvu is nice as well. I like to think of Nvu as somewhere in between the plainness of Notepad and the powerfulness of Dreamweaver. *Note: Apparently, Nvu Portable is no longer being updated. Try KompoZer (here or here) instead. Thanks, Uri!

  • SyncPAppX (Mac)

    Finally, I couldn’t complete this list without mentioning SyncPAppx, a nifty little app (for Mac users) that synchronizes Portable Safari, Portable Mail, Portable iCal, Portable Address Book, and Portable iChat to the ones on your local machine. It syncs user preferences for all these apps, which makes for a lot less headache.

Do you use portable apps?

Five Awesome Screencasting Tools

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IMHO, one of the best things about the Internet is having access to online tutorials. Whether you need to advance your PHP skills, discover what Google Analytics is all about, or learn how to customize your Twitter profile, it seems that there are video tutorials for nearly everything these days.

If you’re looking to create an online video tutorial (also called a screencast), you’ll need some tools to allow you to capture your actions and audio. These are the top screencasting tools I recommend:

JingProject (Windows and Mac)
If you’re new to screencasting, you simply must try out Jing. It’s free and very easy to use- and it records your audio as well (which is something other free software I looked at don’t do). Once you’re ready to get more serious with screencasting, their Pro version is just $14.95 a year.

Camtasia (Windows)
Many professionals swear by TechSmith’s Camtasia, and it’s easy to see why. This is powerful screencasting software, which takes you from recording to editing to publishing all in one place- and it’s used by some very big names (e.g. Google, IBM, Stanford University…). If you’re on Windows, this is definitely one to look at- they have a free 30-day trial, and after that it’s $299 for a single-user license.

ScreenFlow (Mac)
Until I discovered ScreenFlow, I was suffering from some serious Windows-envy (see Camtasia, above). But ScreenFlow, also a commercial application, is an amazing piece of software- and it’s made for Macs (specifically Leopard). It’s got gorgeous titling support, and the latest version allows you to produce WMV format recordings and create custom cursors. Little things that mean a lot. The app costs $99, and they offer a free trial as well.

iShowU HD (Mac)
shinywhitebox’s screencasting app, also made for Macs, might not be as snazzy-looking as ScreenFlow, but is powerful in its own right. There are two versions of the app, iShowU HD ($29.95) and iShowU Pro ($59.95), and it’s a good idea to view the feature comparison before selecting one. With features like on-the-fly scaling, full-screen OpenGL app support (World of Warcraft, anyone?), and the ability to embed watermarks, this is definitely one to look at.

Adobe Captivate (Windows and Mac)
Finally, if you’ve got the bucks, be sure to check out Adobe’s screencasting application. They call it “eLearning authoring”, and it really does seem to be targeted more for education purposes, giving you the ability to create quizzes with scoring among others. This is definitely for the serious screencaster, and also costs the most at $799.

Have you tried screencasting? What software do you use?

Friday Focus 06/26/09: Interactive Backgrounds

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Backgrounds are so called for a reason. They’re meant to support and complement instead of attract and distract. This week’s featured sites, however, provide a whole other level of interactivity and usefulness to backgrounds. You decide if they’re a good idea or not. Either way, they’re interesting concepts that can only be executed on the Web, so, enjoy!

Designs of the Week

Information visualization

World of Merix Studio

Showing clients/web resources/cities on a world map as a background is brilliant. I don’t think it’s been done this way before. If the movement gets too annoying, you can stop it with a click. The “worldwide” concept carries over to the Time Zones section, which shows both the current time in your area and theirs, as well as how long before their office closes—what a sensitive little idea!

Fix Outlook

Lots of Twitter-related sites that pull tweets on a certain topic are mostly text-based and don’t usually create a wall of avatars with random popup tweets in the background. When new tweets arrive, the avatars shift right as new ones appear. And as for the foreground? Good typography, contrast, colors, and use of icon. Another well-done one-page site.

Parallax effect

Milk

Flash-based, but definitely well done.

CSSSquirrel

Bright, fun illustration-based design. Fluid width too.

Maloca Estudio

I like that the parallax effect works whenever your mouse moves. The background is light and subtle enough to not be distracting.

Navigation

Alexey Abramov

The foreground and background fuse on the homepage, but when since the inner sections are loaded in a lightbox, you can still click on what is now the background. Anyway, very cute design elements, including the tilt-shift effect for the photographic background. And don’t you love the paper boat on the river? The greatness is in the details!

Lucas Hirata

I love what the copy says, which at the same time serves as the navigation to the inner sections of the site. And the background is literally made up of the designer’s portfolio. And it looks good!

Stephen Band

This effect might give some people a headache. But I like that the objects in the background can be any size or type—image, video, Flash animation, screenshot, poster, etc.

Siebennull

This one’s got more design elements for a polaroid photo collection metaphor, shadows and all. Not pictured: the designer’s latest tweet and an anti-IE6 disclaimer. One more thing about this effect: it works regardless of browser width.

Social Media Weekly

Applications, Workflow – One Day in the Life of a Web Designer
Great twofold guide for discovering helpful apps and formulating an effective routine for professional designers.

Design – 27 Must-Have Starter Kits For Web Designers
You don’t always have to start from scratch; you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Programming – How to properly “speak” HTM language
A nice little tutorial on HTML semantics.

Three Free Lifesaving Programs

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The hard drive on my trusty Macbook died on me yesterday, which means that I’m forced to use our old desktop PC for the next few days. This PC runs Windows XP, and is used mostly for browser testing and- of course- gaming. That means no Photoshop, no Dreamweaver, no Transmit… you get the picture. Work, naturally, must go on- so what’s a web designer with a temporary PC to do?

Fortunately, all our files are kept on several external hard drives- so although the nice man at Apple support told me all my Macbook data was irretrievable, there was no great loss there. Also, I made the leap from an email client to using Gmail exclusively a long time ago, so no lost emails either. Important documents for current projects are in Google Docs, important dates and to-dos on Google Calendar. My biggest problem, as you can probably guess, is not having my favorite Apps available to me for the next couple of days. Thanks to a few hours searching and downloading, however, I’m back to work with the help of these three programs:

Image Editor: Gimp
First up, of course, was finding a good image manipulation program. I had heard of Gimp before, but hadn’t tried it until now- and wow. Gimp blew my expectations out of the water- from layers to brush modes to opening my PSDs without a hitch, the program works beautifully.

Text Editor: Notepad Plus Plus
Next, I needed a good text editor for my HTML and PHP code. I usually use a combination of Dreamweaver and TextWrangler, but since I just needed a temporary solution, I figured Windows’ built-in Notepad would be good enough. Then I downloaded and tried out Notepad Plus Plus, which is like Notepad on steroids.

FTP Program: GoFTP
Finally, I needed an FTP program. I’d been using Transmit on OSX for so long, I’d forgotten what Windows FTP program I used to use. A quick Google search brought up the snappily named GoFTP, and I’m glad I tried it out. The program is fast- and I mean, really fast. Small. Unobtrusive. Just what I need from an FTP program.

And there you have it: three free programs that’s gotten me back to work quicker than you can say “failed hard-drive”.

Has this ever happened to you? What programs saved your life?

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