Introduction
Deciding what to put on this page is a real pain. Should I promote my own applications or other peoples; should I promote useful utilities and, if I do, what constitutes useful.
Well, I decided not to worry too much about the issues, but to just promote those links that I think people will find useful or interesting. As a developer, I want to blow my own trumpet a little, so the first link is to the application I'm actively working on...
Lucidus Ltd - my employer and a joint venture web site between myself and one of the directors (who loves playing with graphics) - he does most of the pictures and I do the technical stuff to do with coding a web page. I prefer hand coding HTML, by the way.
Tools and Utilities
I've downloaded more tools and utilities than I can remember over the years and have discarded the majority of it within minutes. However, there are a few that have stood the test of time and that I feel deserve their place on my desktop and on the desktop of anyone who uses their PC seriously.
Screen Shots
One of the jobs I love is documentation. I know, most people hate it; if they even do it at all. However, I get a real buzz out of producing a professional looking manual to go with my applications. So, as a consequence, I have a need for a decent screen shot utility. Over the years I've made do with <alt><PrintScreen> and PaintshopPro.
However, the utility I have moved on to (and am most happy with) is TNT Screen Capture from ec-software. I found this while looking for a help authoring tool and was most impressed with the ease of use and the effects that can be applied to the screen shot at the time it is taken. This feature alone has saved me many hours of post-screen shot work.
It's not the only screen capture tool I use though. When I know I have a lot of post-shot editing to do, or I need a scrolling window screen shotted, I use Snagit. I find TNT quicker and easier to use for the day to day stuff but Snagit a hell of a lot more flexible when editing the screen shots.
Backups and compression
I do backups. I know that may seem strange to some people, but I do them because they're just necessary. On a weekly basis I backup to DVD using a very simple tool called Backup4All. I've actually gone through a number of backup tools over the years and Backup4All has proved to be the simplest to setup and use - I just pop a DVD in the drive before 12:00 on Friday and take it out again when the backup finishes. Best of all the backup files are Zip compatible, so I don't run the chance of losing my backups if they 'go-away'.
On a daily basis I backup any active projects I'm working on to a memory stick. I do this with the aid of Beyond Compare. Without this utility to determine what files have changed I probably wouldn't bother.
I couldn't exist without WinZip. No chat; just get it (and pay for it!)
Finding Stuff
While I don't use it every day, I have needed this utility on a number of occasions and it's always been worth its weight in gold. PowerGrep allows me to search masses of files quickly and efficiently and then allows me to quickly edit those files. It may not seem overly exciting, but when my employers bought the source code to a commercial ActiveX control and them asked me to make a "small" change, the ability to search the 200Mb of source and documentation was a major productivity aid.
Editors
I started life using KEdit as my main editor. Why? Well, it was a PC based clone of the editor I used on the mainframe so I was comfortable with it. Since then, I switched to UltraEdit and have not looked back since. I've never found anything that it couldn't do for me, it's quick and it's well supported. Well worth checking out.
Development Tools
I'm primarily a developer of software. I've been doing it since I was 20 and have come across a few tools. Some of the good ones are listed below:
Productivity Aids
MZTools is one of those things you download and forget about... right up until you work on a machine that doesn't have it. It's designed for VB "classic" (VB5/VB6) and provides the "Swiss Army Knife" of toolkits for the VB IDE. It takes bout 10 minutes to customise after which it just sits there and looks after you. Best of all, it's free and the developer provides exemplary support.
There is a version for VS.Net that costs money... it's worth it!
Internet Tools
I use the Net quite a lot. Being a lone developer with no one to discuss issues with, the Net provides me with a support network that money can't buy.
Unfortunately, it also provides me with more spam mail and exposure to viruses than I would like. MailWasher gives me a level of protection that no other product I have seen provides. It's a very simple concept in that it allows me to preview my mail before it gets downloaded. I then get to delete any mail I don't want or am suspicious of without having to download it from the server (so no chance of getting a virus). Simple. but effective.
When it comes to developing web sites, I use two tools with varying degrees of effectiveness. Dreamweaver/Fireworks are the 'big' tools I use. Fireworks especially for editing graphics. Dreamweaver, while an excellent tool for developing web sites, leaves me a little 'out of control', so I tend to use it mainly to organise the web site using it's templates and snippets facilities.
My preference, though, is hand coding web pages and that requires a different style of tool. I use BluMentals WeBuilder for this purpose. This gives me a simple HTML editor that comes with all the productivity aids I could wish for, including syntax highlighting of my HTML, CSS, PHP and JavaScript code. It also has a terrific CSS editor built in with all the drop-down lists that you expect of a developer tool.
The final tool is one of those things you never knew you needed it until it was installed and regularly updating your brain with utterly useles knowledge. An RSS reader. I started out using a commercial package that had patch support and that seemed to be stuck in a bit of a development rut. While looking for a replacement, I came across GreatNews which is everything the other one isn't. It's properly supported, actively developed and very easy to use (and FREE).