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Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens...

Tuesday May 3, 2005

I seem to have acquired a mass of just the most amazing free software and resources and, seen as it's a bank holiday here in the UK today, I thought I'd have a slow day and spend some time enthusing about some of my favourite free gear:

Firefox and extensions

So it's a little bit buggy on my box these days, but lest I forget this is Windows and it still wipes the floor with any other PC browser. With a full arsenal of extensions at my disposal, I don't think I could live without Firefox.

My favourite extensions:

Textpattern and plug-ins

I have tried all the others but keep coming back to Textpattern. Why TXP rocks is a whole long post of it's own. Suffice to say, the enthusiasm of the community really is to be applauded and the results of this passion are now showing up in the form of some most excellent resource sites.

iTunes

A little bit of Appley goodness on the PC. I was a Winamp user up until iTunes but I couldn't ever go back I don't think. All I need now is an iPod!

Gmail

I really have given Gmail a battering these last few months all my mail is redirected to my Gmail account and I love it to bits. There's nothing overrated about this software, and if Google keep innovating (and adding storage space) the way they are at the moment it's going to be tough to beat. I also have 100 invites at hand, mail me if you want one.

Lipsum.com

Where would we be without good old lipsum.com, more Latin than you can shake a scholar at. And a history of Lipsum too, so you get to look knowledgeable when your clients ask what all the Latin shit is on their website comps?

Babel fish translation

Perfect fuel for my paranoia, what's he saying about me and in Japanese too. Babel fish does turn out some funny results sometimes, it's worth it just for that.

Dominey design Flash slideshow

Probably the only real reason I would open up Flash these days is to produce some sort of picture slide show but why bother when there's a corker going for free?

W3 Schools

W3 Schools has been a relatively recent discovery for me but it is an invaluable resource for mark-up and just a great place to start reading up on something new.

Skype

I have a client in America, Ooo aren't I the high flyer, but seriously Skype has made the whole thing so much easier, text chat, free phone calls, conference calls, file transfers. Amazing.

Standalone Internet Explorer

It's not that I really want IE 5, 5.5 and 6 on my machine but it's a necessary evil and saves me having old dodgy Windows 98 installs hanging around. Pre-packaged and ready to go thanks to Skyzyx.com

I could probably go on all day but times a movin' on. So what are your favourite free things?... Apart from sex!

Update

...Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

  1. Thomas B. Aschim

    1346 days ago

    How about recommended plugins for Texpattern?

  2. Denis Radenkovic

    1346 days ago

    Cheers John! : )

    Skype is great, but when I looked at the performance at CPU usage, it was around 40% !

  3. Chris McElligott

    1346 days ago

    For someone with such creativity, you think you’d be sitting in front of a Mac. I mean thats top of the list on the web designer check list….

    1. Powerbook
    2. Jeans and T-Shirt
    3. Scruffy hair and beard

  4. Jaakko

    1346 days ago

    Xscope for measuring, aligning and picking up colors. It’s abit buggy at the moment but folks at Icon factory said that new version should be available shorty after the release of Tiger. Oh it’s shareware but you can use it four hours and hours for free.

  5. Martin W

    1346 days ago

    Wait a minute

    ...So what are your favourite free things?... Apart from sex!....

    Are you saying sex is free!!! Damn the glamour of being a webdesigner!

    ;O)

  6. Fyr

    1346 days ago

    Wow – can I just say your blog template is absolutely beeyootiful. Did you design it yourself? I’ve been meaning to get into trying to do one for my own blog for months now, and I just haven’t found the motivation to just sit down and conquer it once and for all… sigh soon and very soon.

    As for free things? Certainly gmail and firefox... but lately I have been using Cygwin again (http://www.cygwin.com/) – it’s a wonderful tool that brings Unix to your windows desktop – it’s great for people like me who are constrained to using windows for work, yet have to interact with *nix servers almost minutely.

    Nothing else comes to mind at the moment, so I shall bow out saying kudos again on the design.

    YUSH

  7. Turnip

    1345 days ago

    The only one I disagree about strongly is W3Schools. Okay, it’s a good reference, but I really don’t think that they give a very good example of the right way to do websites. And there are a shit load of advertisements.

    I prefer HTML Dog.

    Apps I couldn’t do without:

    * Inkscape
    * amaroK (doesn’t run on Windows)
    * eSVN
    * jEdit

  8. Turnip

    1345 days ago

    Also, I agree that the HTML validator is really cool. However, I really really wish it did it to the DTD, rather than using TIDY, because I have had instances where the validator extension has said the page is valid, but it actually isn’t.

    I also find it rather annoying that it complains about some valid markup. (For instance, check out the double cite on Digital Proof.)

  9. jordan

    1345 days ago

    The only reason I still use winamp at all is because I have several hundred hours of music that iTunes can’t play (namely, tracker stuff—mod, xm, it… old-school represent!)

    I’ve been using iTunes to organise my music recently, and it completely beats the junk out of winamp. Too bad you can’t really skin iTunes, though…

  10. jaffry

    1345 days ago

    i probably couldn’t do without ColorZilla (“is it actually #fff? or is it #efefef?”) and Bookmark Synchronizer (really handy when you have more than 1 computer) for Firefox after having discovered them.

    and when it comes to free software, nothing beats Miranda for instant mesaging on the PC for me — it’s the closest thing to AdiumX for the wintel world.

  11. Karl

    1345 days ago

    I’m using Sage, Web Developer, ColorZIlla and need to remember to add Aadvark tomorrow at work. My full-feature text editor is Crimson Editor as I don’t really use design view in Dreamweaver, where a lot of us started I guess, any more. Winamp handles my music collection at work barely but it’ll have to do. I’d use Skype if any of my friends were anywhere near as interested in techy things as I am but I do have a gmail account to set up (thanks John! that was mighty quick…)

  12. Karl

    1345 days ago

    .... and of course I hit submit before mentioning spurl.net to handle my bookmarks as I can organise them into categories (I then squirt it to del.icio.us for good measure). :)

  13. Alex B

    1345 days ago

    Aardvark is definitely one of my new favorite little goodies.

  14. Graham Bancroft

    1345 days ago

    Just added Aadvark, great bit of gear, cheers. I use a little program called Pixie http://www.nattyware.com/pixie.html, a nifty little color picker for Windows. Gonna steel your #ffffff soon for a project, hope you don’t mind.

  15. Graham Bancroft

    1345 days ago

    Oh, another one is IBM’s aDesigner, very handy indeed.

  16. Jolo

    1345 days ago

    I enjoy too the stuffs your using, the’re all great and ease to use. Anyways, what’s your anti-virus? AVG? Norton? Kind to let us know….

  17. Chris Pederick

    1345 days ago

    Hehe – thanks for the vote for President! However, as an Englishman I’m afraid I’m ineligible unless Arnie has his way!

    I’m glad you find the Web Developer extension useful…

  18. matt Carey

    1345 days ago

    john—any chance of a gmail invite as i think its time i had a look at it.

    skype is becoming very useful all of a sudden

    carbon copy cloner has saved my bacon more than once

    zope is still my favourite free software ;)

  19. Kev

    1345 days ago

    In terms of extensions I find myself accumulating loads – all useful.

    Web Developer toolbar, FANGS (simulates screenreaders), AdBlock, LorumIpsum content generator, ieview, Sage, Link Checker, undoclosetab are my favourites.

    For software I use the brilliant HTML-Kit for all markup and I’m going to have a go at ditching Photoshop for the interesting looking GIMP Shop

    My blog is powered by WordPress as its more powerful with better resources and community than TextPattern. Its also much more a CMS than TP. I wish it had TP’s admin options though.

  20. Jolo

    1345 days ago

    @kev
    —Why ditch Photoshop?

  21. Anthony Casey

    1345 days ago

    Sage is a great FireFox Extension, I would second that as a valuable tool.

    One little app that I use a lot is ColorPic which sits on top of everything and lets you grab the hex of any colour anywhere on the screen, so you can build up nice savable pallettes. It’s got a high zoom viewer too, so you can grab colours to the exact pixel.

  22. Kev

    1345 days ago

    @John. Horses for courses mate. I installed TXP less than a fortnight ago and I really like the admin interface but trying to find information about what goes where or even one central location for plugins is vastly more work than WordPress.

    I’m quite comfortable in PHP so the tags don’t faze me and all the things you said in your last paragraph, if I undestand what you’re saying, WP1.5 does, so nerr ;o)

    @Jolo. I’m always keen to use and promote Open Source stuff and if it measures up to PS then I’ve saved myself a big wodge of cash :o)

  23. Graham Bancroft

    1344 days ago

    I think we all need a bumper Textpattern post, a real humbdinger, no holds barred, pants down type of thing…..okay, maybe not the last one.

    You know you want to Mr O.

  24. Jason

    1344 days ago

    Hey John!
    I’ve been meaning to write up an entry just like this for weeks. Thanks for the motivation. Check out my homage

  25. Matthew

    1344 days ago

    I’ve messed with GIMP some and have found that is doesn’t measure up to Photoshop in the least. It’s a fine bit of software considering what you spend on it (nothing) compared to what you spend on Photoshop. But if both apps are there for the taking and I can choose just one, it would be Photoshop every time. Nothing else compares.

  26. Nathan Smith

    1344 days ago

    Lipsum.com is the funniest thing I’ve seen in awhile. I had no idea that there was an entire site dedicated to generating dummy text.

    Skype.com is pretty awesome. We’re in the US, and my wife uses it to talk to her parents back in Estonia. There is a Skype office in Tallinn, Estonia. I’m hoping that when we move back there some day I can be connected with the whole Skype operation somehow. I’ve already sent them my résumé. :)

  27. Scott

    1344 days ago

    I would just like to say, you have one of the most beautiful blogs out there.

  28. dotjay

    1344 days ago

    As well as ColorPic, I also use Iconico’s Screen Calipers. I find it more flexible than the MeasureIt Firefox extension.

  29. Erki Esken

    1344 days ago

    Hey Nathan,

    As one of the developers I want to thank for the good words on Skype.com :-) If you move back to Estonia definately contact us – we’re always looking for passionate and professional people.

    As for screen measuring tools, I’ve used the free CoolRuler for quite some time. Not as powerful as Screen Calipers but still useful.

  30. kamicane

    1343 days ago

    Hey, and what about picasa2 ? It’s great software. The best picture manager for windows, and it’s free, too. She (picasa is a girl) also lets you preview and convert psds.

    And yeah, The Gimp cannot be compared to Photoshop, but it’s really useful to apply System anti-alias to text. Hinting is the key.

    Another fine Firefox extension is Linkification . Converts non-linked-links to real links. Useful, sometimes.

  31. AkaXakA

    1342 days ago

    I have some more firefox extensions which are just too good to not have:

    Some are quite subtle, such as ‘Full Screen Context’ and ‘Autoclose Bookmark&History Folders’. The latter auto-closes a folder when you click on another one, the former adds a full screen menu option.

    I presume the GMail Notifier is well known, I use it to save memory, but another one, ‘Scroll Anywhere’ isn’t too well known. It basicly lets you either add Adobe Acrobat drag-n-scroll to your browser or actually hold-right-mouse-button-and-scroll behaviour. (I know they seem the same, but they’re the opposite)

    Another favourite is ‘Zoomy’ which adds 3 text-resize buttons to your navigationbar – you can’t imagine how handy it is to read freakin-small-text designer sites. (like yours :P)

  32. Graham Bancroft

    1335 days ago

    Just got Sage what a great bit of gear I normally get feeds through Thunderbird but I like this very much indeedy and will use from here on in thank you

  33. darkestsello

    1303 days ago

    hi

    do you have any of the gmail invites left?

    cheers now
    Ds.

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