Really Useful Web Tools

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In creating a number of websites the following resources have proved invaluable. My heartfelt thanks to their respective authors!

Douglas Steven - revised 13 Oct 2007

HTML editor, verifier and more Arachnophilia does a lot. Not only does it colour tags but it analyses code, indents any or all selected tags, points up HTML errors, finds bad links, finds pages to which there are no links, uploads amended pages using its own FTP and more. It performs the work of at least four programs each of which I have paid for - and it's free! I have stayed with version 4 (the Windows version still on the arachnoid website) rather than later cross-platform version which I couldn't get on with at all.
Rename images with ease, a real gem Bulk Rename Utility enables me to rename images with ease - a delight to use, a real gem! Works perfectly with Windows Vista.
Bullzip Free Bullzip works as a printer driver to convert just about any file into PDF format, without fuss and bother. And it was ready for Windows Vista when it came out, unlike some old favourites which, six months after Vista was launched, were still not bothering to support Vista.
Liz Castro's really well thought out HTML guide Liz Castro's HTML for the World Wide Web is really well thought out. It is easy to use and to find things in. For the more obscure points a weightier reference work may be needed, but 90% of the time Liz's book provides the answer straight away. Now in its sixth edition, it incorporates XHTML and CSS and is supported by her excellent website.
For uploading web pages etc I have been using CoreFTP LE. for several years and it is improving all the time. It provides a reliable way to update and maintain websites and has a good feature list, no pop-up ads, advertising, spyware or registration. It is capable, secure, fast, compact, handy and free. Updates are easy - they just overwrite previous versions leaving the user's data intact.
Images manipulated with Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 Corel Paint Shop Pro Photo X2 is what I use to manipulate the size, hue, saturation, contrast, sharpness and perspective of the various photographs and pictures. It is a mature product, not entirely user friendly, but certainly powerful and worth having just for the way it handles changes in perspective. In version twelve, with a multicultural blend of Arabic and Roman numerals called X2, it at last works decently with Windows Vista.
Text editor for coding HTML webpages Professional Text editor for HTML webpages I have hand coded most of the pages on this website using hypertext mark-up language (HTML) and a text editor, Editpad. The simpler versions of this are free, though recently I have paid for and used EditPad Pro which has some useful extra features. It scores over Notepad with extensive Undo, the ability to search and replace with multiple files, colour coding of the different elements of HTML code, an optional spelling checker and so on - very nice to use.
Web hosting services Fast Picture Viewer is a tiny viewer that can (for example) be pointed at a folder and then all the images in that folder and all sub-folders can be browsed looking perfect and at great speed - a liberation after the usual Vista offerings.
Web hosting services Freedom 2 Surf I have been using f2s since June 2001 and found them reliable. On the rare occasions when I have had a problem it has been speedily and helpfully sorted out by telephone. I currently have twelve sites hosted with F2S. In 2005 they were taken over by Pipex Communications Plc and I am still happy with them.
Best FTP client! So many FTP clients look good at first but disappoint on more intimate acquaintance. Instead FTP Voyager gets better and better the more one delves into it. It provides for one button synchronisation between local and remote sites and can even lock the two together so that a modification at one end is instantly reflected at the other. A real pleasure - nothing seems to disturb its equanimity. It can even be viewed in simple mode when it hides all complications and just drags and drops with complete absence of fuss. Highly recommended.
alt= I started using Google when it was in beta and, from these small beginnings, it has rapidly become one of the fastest and most comprehensive of the search engines. Others are catching up and the early innocent simplicity is compromised, but it is still my first choice.
Bringing choice to our computers? Mailwasher Pro enables you to see you messages while they are still on your ISP's server. It learns whether messages are from friends or foes, colour coding them, so you can delete them without ever downloading them. The program offers a system for bouncing unwanted messages but using it is a bad idea and the risks of doing so are ignored. With that caveat, this is an excellent anti-spam tool - compact, easy to use and very effective. The free version has adverts and limited fuctions.
Pixie Color Picker Pixie is a neat, fast and tiny colour picker. Point at any pixel on the screen and it will tell you its x y position and the hex, RGB, HTML, CMYK and HSV values of that pixel's colour for use in other programs.
SnagIt Screen Capture TechSmith's SnagIt Screen Capture is a beautifully crafted and speedy screen capture tool. With its 'One Click' feature it hides away at the edge of the screen where it can be accessed instantly and immediately capture any screen, window, pane, object, or user-defined geometric or freehand shape. It will capture those long web pages and text documents that scroll off the bottom of the screen - and even video! Then there's all the things that can be done with the output, while profiles can be saved and reused to make recurring captures a doddle.
Clean up your Web pages with HTML TIDY from W3C TidyGUI.exe is a small but powerful HTML correction and tidy-up tool from W3C. It is free and does a neat job of fixing a wide range of problems and re-formatting your HTML code with warnings of errors that it can't fix itself. Find the latest version of Tidy.exe here.
Reliable link to very top of the page For some time I have been trying to find an all-purpose link that will go to the top of the page that works with XHTML (transitional) along with Internet Explorer 7 AND with Firefox as well. Messing about I stumbled on this: Reliable link to top of page? (that's right, a hash on its own) and it really goes to the very top - above any top margin where anchor's can't go.
Xenu checks the links Xenu is a tiny program that searches for broken links and also creates a site map. It's good to find such well thought out software dedicated to ease of use, simplicity and speed.
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