Good Freeware Stuff

For everything that's not in any way related to PureBasic. General chat etc...
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Psychophanta
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Psychophanta »

Can you use math formulas symbols, like integral, vectors, tensors, greek letters,...?
Can you export as .pdf with images, internal and external links, etc. just with the quality as libreoffice does it?

If yes, then there is moment to try it!
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com

While world=business:world+mafia:Wend
Will never leave this forum until the absolute bugfree PB :mrgreen:
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Kukulkan
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Kukulkan »

Hi Psychophanta,

you should try the new Beta 2016 version as it claims to have some enhanced PDF export: http://www.softmaker.com/english/ofw2016_en.htm
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Little John »

SynWrite

An advanced free, open-source general purpose text editor for Windows.
IMHO better than e.g. Notepad++ or PSPad. I had even bought UltraEdit some time ago, but since I discoverd SynWrite, I never used UltraEdit any more. :-)
http://www.uvviewsoft.com/synwrite/
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Kukulkan »

SynWrite looks fine, but I uninstalled directly. It trys to install to c:\SynWrite. If you force it to install to some good location, you need to install using admin rights as the installer is not able to elevate rights as normal. But then you realize that the program is trying to store it's settings into the program folder instead to users profile. This is like software in the late 90's. Thus, I can't recommend. If you know what you do you can give it a try, but not usable in multi user systems or with non admin users :( I wrote them an e-mail about these issues to their support address. Maybe they decide to follow Windows guidelines in the future?
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Little John »

Hi Kukulkan,

I agree with you, that's a quirk.
I'm using SynWrite as portable tool on a USB thumb drive, that works fine.
So I'm not affected by that issue, and I almost forgot about it.
I'm curious what the author of SynWrite will reply to your mail.
Last edited by Little John on Wed Jun 24, 2015 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by IdeasVacuum »

SynWrite looks nice, do you have a PB Lexer for it Little John?
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Little John »

When I discovered SynWrite, I searched for a PB lexer, but couldn't find one.
And I am too lazy to create one myself. :-)
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by Kukulkan »

The developer of SynWrite answered me because of my complains (see my posts above):
Hi, see pls
6.17.2030
* change! Now all INI files must be in [SynWrite]\Settings subfolder,
both for portable and usual install. App is always portable now. (Should
not be problems with "Program Files", since default install folder is
"C:\SynWrite"). File "portable.ini" not needed.
* change: Explorer moved into AddonsManager (some users see it hangs
app, hard to reproduce/fix)
In other words, "it's not a bug, it's a feature". Unbelievable :shock: I think it should not be that hard to realize if I'm running without installation (settings in program folder) or installed (settings in user profile). Sadly, they did not find such an easy solution and decided to better break any compliance with common rules. WTF? So what - I already uninstalled...
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by heartbone »

Many of us use the mega flexible Firefox web browser to navigate the internet.
I've been on board since Netscape, then Firebird, and have enjoyed the Mozilla browser tools very much.

Most of the Firefox users will have some add-ons installed, to customize the browser for more refined or new functionality.
There have been thousands of add-ons made to solve the user's wants and needs.

The main problem is, these add-ons quickly become obsolete.
Unless the developers continuously upgrade the software to accommodate the inevitable browser version changes, a specific add-on version will function properly only within one to a few Firefox versions.

Most here, being advanced users, will know about one or two of these tools described below.
But knowing about all four makes you a power user.

These add-ons are actively maintained, which is not a trivial matter.
The following Firefox add-ons are some of the best free software available, and all of their developers gladly accept donations.

NoScript
This little beauty is what inspired me to write this post.
A couple of years back I used to make a bit of extra cash by restoring peoples computers after infections.
But ever since I've started installing NoScript as a part of the fix, they've stopped needing my restore service.
And believe me, it was hard to convince them to use it and educate them how to use it. ★★★★★

Video Download Helper
You tell me, what other use could max out a terabyte sized hard drive?
I can't think of any, other than perhaps the EXTREMELY compulsive game collector or two.
Nothing, not even audio...
nothing other than saving videos could come even close to accounting for the consumer's high use of hard disk memory.

AdBlock Plus
For me it's all about reducing distractions. I love it.

UnMHT
One of Firefox's main shortcomings for me is the lack of being able to read a .mht file, or save the current page content into the .mht file format.
The add-on's authors are Asian, which probably explains the horrible English name.
Their browser utility is close to amazing. ★★★★★
Keep it BASIC.
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by RSBasic »

I use Firefox too.
My installed add ons:
Last edited by RSBasic on Sat Aug 15, 2015 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Firefox releases come far too often. I'm on v39.0 and skip m

Post by heartbone »

I was listing the add-ons that are the most useful.
However, I have these other (Good Freeware Stuff) Firefox add-ons installed.
The main reason behind installing these four add-ons is to maintain what I enjoyed about the original browser interface.

Hide Tab Bar With One Tab
Forcing the tab bar to always show was the harbinger of the stupid UI changes the Mozilla team made to move towards the Chromium style. Not even allowing it to be a setting was telling.

New Tab Toolbar Button Updated
Once the tab bar is hidden in single tab browser windows, this is needed to restore the browser's open new tab toolbar button.

Download Manager Tweak
The intent of Download Manager Tweak is in the name. It "tweaks" the Firefox download manager with small changes and doesn't completely redesign it. It makes some optional changes to its appearance and allows it to be opened in a separate window, a new tab, or the sidebar. Additional features beyond appearance include deleting a downloaded file and re-downloading a mistakenly deleted file. The various appearance changes can be disabled, if you don't like the look and just want it to open in a tab or sidebar. (DMT was broken by Firefox 26 or later. Firefox 26 uses a new download manager and the old one is no longer available. DMT needs large changes to start tweaking the new download manager. Firefox 30 broke another feature, which is for now fixed.)

Classic Theme Restorer
'Classic Theme Restorer' brings back appmenu button, squared tabs, add-ons bar, small nav-bar buttons, tabs below URL buffer, a few older buttons and more to Firefox Australis UI. Use 'Customize' menu to move buttons on toolbars. Restores many beloved tweaks REMOVED by the Mozilla dictators.
Keep it BASIC.
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by heartbone »

heartbone wrote:VLC
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html
Image
We all know about this great media player.
In an area where there is plenty of competition, over the past few years the VideoLAN organization has developed what seems to be the best and most comprehensive free media player.

Image
THIS ALBUM ART DISPLAY FEATURE IS GREAT and is the reason for my posting this message.
The art really enhances my music enjoyment and it is really interesting to see the old 45-RPM sleeves, album covers, and fan pictures that are selected for display.
5 thumbs up.
The latest build of VLC has added another great feature, movies resume playback where you last quit the player!!!
6 thumbs up.

I've been collecting since 1968. I have 45s & 33s, cassettes, and CDs that I've ripped. I am somewhat of an audio engineering expert when it comes to manually extracting pops from a digitized vinyl wave file or converting a hissy tape signal to clean audio. I have a 6,005 song library. Imagine my consternation if I were to "upgrade" to Vista 10 or have a Win7 install "upgraded", and have the following happen to me?

"I recently allowed my computer to update for the first time in months. What happened was during the (overnight-long) update, both I-tunes and the VLC music player disappeared along with my thousands of songs. (Loaded on from my CDs). Luckily, I had backups. NO MORE UPDATES EVER ! Or wire hangars either ! I will be switching to Linux soon. Thanks for the timely article." Bruno

VLC is the best free media player ever, and I imagine M$ would eagerly intentionally delete it from their OSes. You do know that they expect you to pay to play DVDs on Vista 10?

After spending too many hours messing around with the scores of settings which are available to create the many thousands of possible process control combinations, I finally discovered how to properly rotate a video and save it using the latest VLC version 2.2.1. If I had a web site I'd post the information.

(posted using the obsolete Firefox v 39.0 on Windows®XP)
Keep it BASIC.
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by heartbone »

In my quest to find the easiest way to put videos on my daughter's mp3/video player

I encountered the Video to Video Converter

This is a very well done free application.
I realize that VLC provides most if not all of this functionality and a whole lot more processing effects, but it is not very easy to figure out how to get at those powerful capabilities.
I really appreciate the number of easily available options in Video to Video Converter.
You can pretty much get it to perform most any normal video processing task that you can think of, including format conversions, rotations, flips, color, brightness, saturation, and hue corrections.
It is a stand alone (portable) utility that does not need to be installed, just unzip it and click the vv.exe file icon.
It handles practically every major format, except for the elusive AMV file format. (The lowend mp3/video player format, a.k.a. MTV format.)

Functionality 9.3
Usability 9.5
Overall 9.4
Keep it BASIC.
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by IdeasVacuum »

IdeasVacuum
If it sounds simple, you have not grasped the complexity.
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Re: Good Freeware Stuff

Post by ElementE »

Microsoft has a new cross platform code editor

Visual Studio Code
https://code.visualstudio.com/

One interesting feature is its support of GIT version control.

Could Visual Studio Code be made to support development in the PureBasic language?
Think Unicode!
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