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Free Photo Editing with Active Pixels

Mitch — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:19:32 +0000

Good photo and image editors are hard to find, especially when you want to find them for free. When you find one thought that is not only free, but also shares a lot of the same features as Photoshop – then that is something to sing about. Active Pixels is that freeware download.

Here is a little more about the free download from the developers:

Active Pixels is a unique Image and Computer Graphics editor offering users a wide variety of possibilities in the fields of Image Enhancing and Image Editing and in the field of Computer Graphics.

Using the editor you can perform various tasks, from simple basic tasks to complex tasks; you can edit existing images, create new works based on existing images, create new works from scratch and more.

It is well worth trying out. Just look at this amazing interface!

Pro: Very nice and professional looking interface

Con: Not much documentation can be found on it

Download Active Pixels | Visit Active Pixel’s Web Site

Overall, I would say Active Pixels is worth trying out. Not sure if it will replace the warm spot I have for Paint.net, however if you didn’t like Paint.net, then this is one more alternative free image and graphic editor to try.

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Take Better Web Site Captures with WebSnapshot

Mitch — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:42:15 +0000

What is a web developer to do when they need a screenshot of a web site, or part of a web site that they can use? The Adobe Air application, WebSnapshot, makes getting screenshots of web sites a painless process.

To use it, all you have to do is enter the URL for the web site you want to capture, and then press the button labeled, “Snap”. You have the choice of a thumbnail image, a browser image or a full page image to save as your capture in question. By default the captures automatically save to your desktop but you can tweak WebSnapshot to change that via the Preferences link.

Thanks to WebSnapshot, capturing any web site layout is as easy as paste, click and post.

How do you download WebSnapshot? You can pick it up on this page, however the download link isn’t exactly clear. You’ll want to click on the top screenshot of it, where it says, “Install Now” underneath. You’ll also need Adobe Air installed too.

By far, this is my favorite way to capture screenshots. Download WebSnapshot today, and see if you agree.

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Wizzypage – Great (and free!) Web Site Editor

Mitch — Mon, 25 May 2009 11:59:35 +0000

Looking for another alternative to your bland free web site editors out there? If you are looking to try something new, give Wizzypage a shot. This WYSIWYG editor provides true what you see is what you get editing abilities.

Here is a little more about how it works from the developers:

Wizzypage allows the user to add, position, and edit content "areas" using a series of mouse-click activated popup menus. These areas can then be dragged around and resized on the design surface to explore alternate layouts. Wizzypage’s text editor automates basic html coding chores like font and paragraph formatting or the assignment of background colors and images.

It also has a built in spell checker and FTP uploader, which are always nice to have handy in any WYSIWYG editor.

Want to see some examples? Check out these test sites:

As you can see, there is a lot to love here – and this plan would be perfect for a hosting plan like our Basic or Business ones. You can download Wizzypage for free (tested to work on both Windows XP and Windows Vista), via at Wizzypage.com.

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Excellent FTP Client – CrossFTP

Mitch — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:33:43 +0000

By Mitch “Return to the Wacky Names” Keeler

I am always looking for new and exciting programs to share with you, however with FTP clients – it is hard to find one that hasn’t been seen before. I have a great love for FileZilla – however CrossFTP has recently been suggested to me – so I thought I would take a look.

Overall, using CrossFTP has been an enjoyable experience. The interface is your basic FTP client look and feel, and the program is very lightweight and I would give it two thumbs up.

Some of the features include the ability to:

Use tabs to have many connections inside on window
Compress, extract, and browse archives
Web and normal file search

Plus all of the standard features you expect to see in an FTP client.

+ Download CrossFTP for Free!

I would highly suggest this program as another great free once to use to get file to and from the server. If you want a few more features – you can always upgrade to the pro version.

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Link Checking with Xenu Link Sleuth

Mitch — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 13:11:14 +0000

By Mitch “Link Crawler” Keeler

Finding broken or inactive links in your web site can be a painful thing for any big web site to do. If only you had your own little crawler that would check through all of the links to make sure that all of them were in working order. Well thankfully there is such a free program, or I would have lost my sanity doing this by hand a long time ago.

Xenu Link Sleuth is a free program, that does a great job checking web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on “normal” links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets.

Xenu Link Sleuth Pro: Makes a painful process a whole lot easier.

Xenu Link Sleuth Con: Could use a more user friendly interface.

Download Xenu Link Sleuth! | Visit Xenu Link Sleuth’s Web Site

If you need any help in installing or using the product, be sure to check their official web site for more information in that regard. I think that Xenu Link Sleuth is yet another freeware download you can not miss if you spend a lot of time and money managing your own digital empire on the Web.

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Web Developer for Firefox

Mitch — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 12:31:47 +0000

By Mitch “The Developa” Keeper

When you talk about awesome tools for Firefox to make your web development job just that much easier you can’t overlook the Web Developer toolbar extension. The best thing about this freeware download is that it mixes two great things into a handy tool to keep close at hand (Firefox and the Web Developer tools).

Once installed the addon will add a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools. You can mess around with CSS, forums, resize the window, view the source and more. For a total rundown it might be best to check out the official site for every single feature because there are just too many to name right here, right now.

Web Developer Pro: The king of the mountain when it comes to Firefox/web dev tools.

Web Developer Con: Kind of bulky toolbar, but can always be hidden away.

Download Web Developer! | Visit Web Developer’s Web Site

The Web Developer toolbar for Firefox is a must have for those of us out there that both use Firefox and spend a lot of time hacking away at web sites, trying to make them better than they were. It has all the tools you would ever want right there in one simple toolbar and it will not cost you a penny to use.

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CSS Tab Designer

Mitch — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:34:59 +0000

By Mitch “All About the Tabs” Keeler

When it comes to having a solid navigation, that looks good as well you can get no better than a few well styled tabs. Now with the power of HTML and tossing in some CSS you can have awesome tabs on the side or top of your web page. With CSS Tab Designer though, you won’t have to lift a finger to get them made.

CSS Tab Designer takes all the hard work out of designing your own CSS styled tabs for your web site navigation. You can pick from over 60+ styles and colors, and it generates strict XHTML compliant code to copy into your domain.

CSS Tab Designer Pro: Makes creating CSS powered lists as easy as picking what you want and filling in the blanks.

CSS Tab Designer Con: I wish I could create a whole web site like this.

Download CSS Tab Designer! | Visit the CSS Tab Designer Web Site

Truly a unique freeware download, this software will help you create a CSS powered list and tab that will require you learning absolutely no programing or designing knowledge. When your friends and family go check it out, they will think you are a web designing master and as long as you don’t blab, you don’t have to tell them about our secret.

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Cascade DTP

Mitch — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:43:05 +0000

By Mitch “Has Cascading Style Too!” Keeler

If your in the need for a style sheet creator that does a ‘bit of everything well and says “Free!” in big blog letter on the price tag, then you might be the perfect candidate to try out Cascade DTP. This free program allows you to visually layout and design a CSS powered web site with little to no effort at all.

Cascade DTP pushes itself as a composition tool for the web that harnesses both the powerfulness of cascading style sheets with the ease of use that any other WYSIWYG or HTML editor would provide. It also has addons that can help you extend the usefulness and flexability of it even further.

Cascade DTP Pro: Easy to use, lightweight and free!

Cascade DTP Con: Might need to know some about CSS before you get started.

Download Cascade DTP! | Visit Cascade DTP’s Web Site

With full control over the design, a live preview feature and the ability to save designs without publishing them (to work on a project in private) Cascade DTP is an impressive freeware CSS editing application. If you need an example of the type of site you can build with this tool check out Cascade DTP’s official home on the Web.

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Web Picture Creator

Mitch — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:16:05 +0000

By Mitch “Galleries are my Thing” Keeler

Lets say you have a folder of images on your desktop and you are just dying to get them on the Web. Now you could just upload them to your Lunarpages hosting account, but where is the fun in that? You want to create a neat gallery that your friends and family members can view right? Web Picture Creator allows you to create easy to publish albums of your own.

Point the program at your pictures, and it will help you with the messy side of resizing, coding and HTML generation. You can add descriptions to each image, edit the thumbnail sizes and output a web site worth checking into.

Web Picture Creator Pro: Very easy to use, perfect for beginners.

Web Picture Creator Con: Wish there were more options for editing the final gallery created.

Download Web Picture Creator! | Visit WPC’s Web Site

If you need an absolutely free way to create a gallery of images for the Web, the Web Picture Creator is worth trying out. You can create a very simple photo or image album, and your friends will think you spent hours on generating your final project. Don’t tell them your secret though, let them think your an HTML guru for a day or so.

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Gsitemap – Google Sitemap Creator

Mitch — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:51:03 +0000

By Mitch “Mr. Google” Keeler

I highly encourage all the webmasters that I know to create a Google Sitemap for their web site. This way you can submit it to Google and they have a fool proof way of checking your web site content. Sometimes though, when not using a content management system like WordPress or Joomla it can be hard to create this sitemap on your own. That is where a helpful download like Gsitemap comes into play.

Gsitemap gives you the tools necessary to create a Google Sitemap that can be used with your Google webmaster account to help improve the indexing of your web site in the powerhouse of search engines. From link to link, the program spiders though your content and collects everything Google might need. Once you are done, you can FTP it up to your hosting account and let Google know about it.

Gsitemap Pro: Makes it very simple to create a XML sitemap

Gsitemap Con: Wish it had an upload feature, where all I would need to do is plugin my FTP info

Download Gsitemap! | Visit Gsitemap’s Web Site

This program is a simple and free way to get yourself a golden ticket into Google. Some of the other features included are gzip compression, view by last modified, change the frequency and the priority of pages. If you have a static site and you need to create an XML sitemap, there is no program that does it better than Gsitemap.

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Paint.NET

Mitch — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:28:47 +0000

By Mitch “The Painter” Keeler

I guess you could have a web site without graphics, but it would be rather dull. If your in the search for a free image editor – search no longer. The best image editor out there right now for free is Paint.NET.

Some of the features include: working with layers, frequent updates, special image effects, all the photo editing tools you would ever need and also an in-depth history option. Paint.NET is totally free and provided to you as open source software.

Paint.NET Pro: Awesome image tool, hard to believe this is all free!

Paint.NET Con: Might take a little while to get used to using the product.

Download Paint.NET | Visit Paint.NET’s Web Site

I would say this free download is as good as Adobe Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, the Gimp and beating Microsoft Paint with an image editing stick. To follow the development of the product, I would also suggest checking out and subscribing to their blog. Paint.NET – as far as free image editors go is the king.

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Free CSS Toolbox

Mitch — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:26:33 +0000

By Mitch “Stylin’ & Profilin’” Keeler

Have you been looking for a freeware productivity suite of tools to help you with your CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)? There are many programs that promise good results, but the only free one that delivers well is Free CSS Toolbox. It is a simple CSS editor, formatter and beautifier.

The usefulness of this product does not end there. It can easily re-format your CSS code, adjust somebody else’s CSS to fit your style of formatting and will also check to make sure your CSS code is valid. This free tool does a little ‘bit of everything and does it all well.

Free CSS Toolbox Pro: Very user friendly interface the helps you along the way.

Free CSS Toolbox Con: Might want to upgrade to the paid product Rapid CSS 2007 if it doesn’t cover all your needs.

Download Free CSS Toolbox! | Visit Free CSS Toolbox’s Web Site

The Free CSS Toolbox gets the job done, and does so in a manner that is not confusing nor hard to master.

Bonus: If you need more features and support, you might try out their professional end solution, Rapid CSS 2007. It delivers much of the same with even a few more features to love.

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Windows Live Writer

Mitch — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 17:13:19 +0000

By Mitch “Alive and Well” Keeler

Programs that promised to help me update my blog stopped being interesting the first time I tried one. Why? None of them seem to do it all. That was my point of view before I found Windows Live Writer and I have to say, I am happy that Microsoft was able to make me give this software genre another chance.

Windows Live Writer is great. All you do is plug in your WordPress information, and it figures out and does that rest of the work for you. Then you can write you posts as you would in any other word processor-type program. You also can format images, save drafts, edit tags and categories and more.

Windows Live Writer Pro: Best blog updater program out there – by far, for Windows.

Windows Live Writer Con: For some reason, you can’t center images. Have yet to figure that one out.

Download Windows Live Writer! | Visit Windows Live Write Web Site

The icing on the cake is the various previews you can generate. You can edit and write via the standard interface or via an interface that gives the appearance that you are writing there on your own web site. The Web Preview feature is also good to show you what the post’s format will look like once it goes live.

I can’t say enough good things about Windows Live Writer. If you are blogging on your Lunarpages hosting space, then you really need to give this free download a shot.

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Porta – Lightweight Gallery Tool

Mitch — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:31:11 +0000

By Mitch “Not Going to Make a Porta Potty Joke” Keeler

If you are looking for a lightweight program that will help you create a great looking photo gallery look no further than Porta. Porta can turn any directory filled with images into a neatly formatted photo album for the web.

This program is not only lightweight, it is also fast, simple to use and it produces pages that are simple in nature. They are not cluttered up with a lot of junk you do not want or need and look absolutely awesome in any modern web browser.

Porta Pro: Super easy to use. If you can fill in text boxes, you can create a beautiful gallery.

Porta Con: Wish it came with a way to upload the images to the server.

Download Porta! | Visit Porta’s Web Site!

The hardest thing about using Porta is browsing to the directory your images is in. That is it! The rest of the process is so easy I can not put it into words. You can also caption pictures and put in a footer message too (such as a copyright notice). Overall I have to say I am super impressed with Porta and would suggest it to anybody who needs help creating a simple gallery of images.

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SmartFTP

Mitch — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 15:55:32 +0000

By Mitch “Smart FTPer” Keeler

Please note: SmartFTP no longer has a free version.

I remember SmartFTP being one of the first really professional looking FTP clients I ever used. Even today, the visual aspect of the product is second to none. It is not just eye candy though. SmartFTP also has man features that make it one of the best free FTP solutions out there today.

It supports multiple connections, transfer queue, proxy/firewall support, drag and drop uploading, custom commands and a lot more. Check out their full list of features to get a better idea of what all this product does.

SmartFTP Pro: The visual design of the product is just hands down better looking than most in the same category.

SmartFTP Con: I remember being nagged a lot by having the unlicensed version. Eventually you learn to ignore it.

Download SmartFTP | Visit SmartFTP’s Web Site

It is free to use for personal use, and if you do use it and enjoy it – you can purchase a yearly license $36.95. That will cure some of the nagging that it does when using the unlicensed version. Give SmartFTP a whirl and see if it does the job for you.

It is a secure and efficient FTP program.

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HAPedit – PHP, HTML and ASP Editor

Mitch — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:51:17 +0000

By Mitch “Likes to Edit” Keeler

What does HAPedit stand for? It is an editor for HTML, ASP, and PHP. It is a win32 text-mode editor useful for all developers of dynamic web pages.

Some of the included features for this freeware program include: syntax highlighting for html/PHP, HTML/ASP, JavaScript, CSS and SQL; page preview in browser; project manager; PHP code “compilation”; edit html tags; code completion; preview images; SQL console; FTP Manager; Code Explorer and more. It does a little bit of everything and does it as good as any other text editor you might find.

HAPedit Pro: The tabbed interface is nice and the layout is familiar.

HAPedit Con: Just gives you the basics, others might be looking for a bit more in an editor.

Download HAPedit! | Visit HAPedit’s Web Site

Over all this download might not be my top favorite HTML editor, but it does offer a nice alternative if you are not happy with some of the other more popular solutions out there. It gets the job done and it will not cost you a single cent. What else could you want from a piece of software?

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Quanta Plus

Mitch — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 14:50:36 +0000

By Mitch “Quanta Leap” Keeler

Some people have been angry because I haven’t reviewed any Linux friendly applications here. Well, I decided to make them happy and do a little write up about Quanta Plus.

This freeware download is much more than just your standard HTML editor, it is a full blown web development environment. With its design based around how people deal with editing rather than just tossing in as many features as they could, Quanta Plus takes the cake as an awesome text editor for your web site files.

Quanta Pro: Out of all the ones I have reviewed, Quanta Pro has the best organization of features.

Quanta Con: Some of the more advanced features can seem a little scary. If you are using Linux as your computer’s OS it might not be so scary to you though.. :)

Download Quanta Plus! | Visit Quanta Plus’s Web Site

Quanta Plus is yet another award winning text editing masterpiece that is hard to beat. The only downside to this product is it is one that only the Linux people will be able to use as it has not yet been ported over for Windows users. It is part of KDE, a Linux desktop environment, released in the Kdewebdev package.

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Matrix Y2K

Mitch — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:48:52 +0000

By Mitch “M2K” Keeler

I remember Y2K just like it was yesterday. Computers were suppose to stop working, cows were going to produce cheese instead of milk and other oddities were suppose to happen. None of them did of course, and everything was just fine and dandy. Speaking of fine and dandy, that is also how I would describe the HTML editor – Matrix Y2K.

The free download offers all the usual features such as: HTML Tidy, Documents manager, Tag Library for PHP and HTML, quick access to commonly used tags, completion proposal, multi-document interface, syntax highlighting (highlighters can be adjusted and personalized), search/replace, character map.

Matrix Y2K Pro: Quick, Lightweight, and the 3 pane interface is nice.

Matrix Y2K Con: Wish there was more support documentation on the web site for it.

Download Matrix Y2K! | Visit Matrix Y2K’s Web Site

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CoreFTP – Neat Free and Cheap FTP Client

Mitch — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 13:35:26 +0000

By Mitch “FTP(it is my middle name)” Keeler

CoreFTP might be overlooked by some, but it too is a grand way to get your files from your PC to your hosting account and back the other way. If fully supports all the FTP bells and whistles and has both a great paid and free version.

Features for the CoreFTP download include site to site file transfers, auto try failed transfers, one click transfers, keep alive functionality and more. It also has a site manager where you can keep all your own web sites and favorite FTP sites saved without having to re-type your information each time.

CoreFTP Pro: Simple 2 pane interface is easy to use and understand.

CoreFTP Con: Interface could be a little more on the pretty side.

Download CoreFTP! | Visit CoreFTP’s Web Site

They offer both a free and a paid version of the product. If I was to make a top ten of my favorite FTP clients, CoreFTP would at least be in the top five. It is a client that gives you a reliable way to update and maintain your own digital domain.

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Notepad++

Mitch — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 15:49:26 +0000

By Mitch “++” Keeler

It might have an odd name (what is wrong with just Notepad +?) but don’t let the name fool you. Notepad++ is an excellent replacement for Notepad and will help you with your HTML coding issues. It supports WYSIWYG editing, syntax highlighting, auto-completion, multiple documents, drag and drop and more!

Notepad++ Pro: If you can figure out how to use it, one of the best notepad replacements out there.

Notepad++ Con: Not for the faint of heart, might confuses new people more than help them.

Download Notepad++! | Visit Notepad++’s Web Site

An open source jewel in a treasure trove of un-found freeware chest, this application is one you should at least try to see if it is something you would like using full time. There will be no need for Windows Notepad any longer. Notepad ++ is here to save the day.

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