Favorite software

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.”
Pablo Picasso

When maintaining this list I favor software that is free, open-source, extensible, supported by an active community, and cross-platform (Mac, Linux and Windows).

Firefox is probably the best browser available today. Internet Explorer may still be prevailing and Opera may be faster and more standards compliant, but nothing can compete with the community provided plugin system that Firefox offers. My favorite plugins are:

• Firebug | Amazing plugin which is a must for all web development. Javascript debugger / profiler, HTTP tracing, real-time HTML/CSS/Javascript editing.
• Foxmarks | Synchronizes bookmarks across multiple computers.
• DownThemAll | Download accelerator.
• Download Statusbar | A nice alternative to Firefox’s builtin download manager.
• Web Developer | A must for all web developers. (Though Firebug handles most of its functionality)
• FireGestures | Mouse gestures
• IEView | Open pages in IE.
• Google Toolbar | The best feature is the highlighting of search terms on result pages.
• Password Exporter

Other interesting extensions: Aardvark, GreaseMonkey, Link Checker, ColorZilla ....

Customization tips: Disabling PDFs

For Internet Explorer, the following plugins should be mentioned:

• Google Toolbar
• Internet Explorer Web Developer Toolbar

• GMail | Read you mail online. Everywhere.
• Google Spreadsheets
• Google Calendar
• Dropbox | Excellent sharing of files between multiple computers. With revision history.
• Browsershots | Shows how a web page looks in almost all browser.
• Virus Total | Scans a file with several anti-virus engines.
• Bitdefender online scan | Virus check (IE only)
• Todoist | Very nice To Do list.

• SubVersion | Excellent version control. See also Tortoise SVN - GUI for windows and the free Tortoise Book
• Visual Studio 2008 Express
• SQL Server 2008 Express
• Process Explorer
• TCPView | Shows network connections.
• The Regulator | Excellent regular expressions tool
• .NET reflector | MS IL Decompiler.
• MS Fiddler | Monitoring Proxy (http sniffer)
• VMWare Player & Server | Free virtualization.
• Qt 4 GPL/LGPL Version. | Perhaps the best widget toolkit.
• Ideogramic UML | Nice application.
• WireShark | Packet sniffer (formerly known as Ethereal). Excellent for debugging socket communication.
• AstroGrep | Nice Windows GUI for Grep. Allows you to perform regular expressions searches on multiple files. It is free, and comes with a nice clean interface (and Windows Explorer integration).

• Open Office. OpenOffice is a becoming a huge and monolithic application and it is still way behind Microsoft office. It seems a bit like the orginal Mozilla browser (the complete application, with E-mail client and HTML-editor) which was all to bloated. What I could hope for, was a simper, modular and plug-in based system with more community feeling to it.
• Paint.Net | How MSPaint should have looked.
• ArtRage | Excellent freeware painting program. Simulates real brush strokes better than anything I’ve seen.

What I miss:

Paint.Net is nice but not on par with Adobe Photoshop. Especially its text and font capabilities are poor. However, it is a project in development.

• 7-Zip | A free, but by no means lesser, archiver than WinRAR or WinZip.
• UltraVNC | Remote Control of computers. I prefer this to RealVNC.
• Notepad++ | Nice lightweight editor.
• Picasa 2 | Picture Viewer. Nice UI.
• Google Desktop | Hard Drive Indexing. (Notice: It takes a lot of resources)
• MS Adware | Adware scan.
• AutoRun | Controls which programs to run.
• FileZilla | Excellent FTP client and server.
• Truecrypt | Virtual Drive Encryption.
• Media Player Classic | Excellent DVD (and all other media formats) player. Non-bloated and effective.
• Unlocker | Allows you to delete locked files.
• CDBurnerXP | CD/DVD Burning.
• System Information for Windows | Tool for displaying system information, file locks, open HTTP session (and the responsible process), ... (See also CPU-Z)
• DVD-Shrink | For backing up DVD’s.
• HandBrake | DVD to MP4 converter (useful for creating iPod content)
• CloneDrive | Mount ISO images as virtual DVD drives.
• Sandboxie | Run applications in a sandbox.
• HxD | Freeware Hex and Disk editor.

• Stellarium | beautiful constellation images and sunsets.
• Google Earth | 3D View of the world
• MAME | Arcade Emulator
• WinUAE | Amiga Emulator

• Open Command Prompt Here | (From MS PowerToys).
• Image Resizer | (From MS PowerToys).
• Folder Size