The following tools make my software development life easier:

1. SnagIt: Capture your digital lifestyle. Capture anything you see on the screen. Edit and combine those captures. Share them via your favorite applications. Organize and find them again later. The more you use SnagIt, the more ways you’ll find to use it. Want to get a laugh? Add a speech balloon to that photo of your cat and fire it off in an instant message. Need to make an impression at work. Capture that sales chart and point out important details with a sleek-looking arrow. SnagIt can turn a simple screenshot into a powerful information graphic. SnagIt is versatile, yet surprisingly simple.

2. Log Me In Free: It is a remote desktop application that allows you to access your PC (not Mac yet) from another PC via an Internet connection. Best of all…it’s free! It’s an invaluable resource for me, I can access my files and email at the home office.

3. FireShot: an extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer that creates and edits screenshots of web pages entirely. Press print screen and cannot grab the webpage outside of browser window? You need FireShot! Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify captures and insert text and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers. Screenshots can be saved to disk (PNG, GIF, JPEG, BMP), printed (NEW), copied to clipboard, e-mailed and sent to external editor for further processing.

4. browsershots.org : makes screenshots of your web design in different browsers. It is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl. When you submit your web address, it will be added to the job queue. A number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to the central server.

5. WinMerge: a Windows tool for visual difference display and merging, for both files and directories. Unicode support. Flexible syntax coloring editor. Windows Shell integration. Regexp filtering. Side-by-side line diff and highlights diffs inside lines.

6. MultipleIEs: Ever wanted to test your website in various versions of Internet Explorer? It is now possible to run Internet Explorer in standalone mode without having to over-write previous versions thanks to Joe Maddalone who came up with a way of achieving that in November 2003.

7. TortoiseSVN: an easy to use SCM / source control software for Microsoft Windows and maybe the best standalone Subversion client there is. It is implemented as a Windows shell extension, which makes it integrate seamlessly into the Windows explorer. Since it’s not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2008 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Some Minor Technicalities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.