Tavern Forums

While we are on the topic of sharing ways to get things done better and faster, I'd like to offer some of the things I use (and you should, if you dont).

http://www.forevergeek.com/2004/12/make_firefox_faster/
A firefox speedup, for those that dont know it. Any number above 30 makes very little difference, unless you have 50Mb Broadband, or higher.

Named Colours/RGB/Hex values
Is what it says. Lists pretty much every known RGB/Hex and 'Named' colour for use on the web.

http://www.supercook.com/
For those of us that have to cook, but can never think what to do.. Insert your ingredients, highlight what must be used (optional), then search through the recipes it gives you. Better than just living off noodles and beans on toast..

Now for a few programmes I've been using for years:

Revo Uninstaller
A simple programme that makes uninstalling programmes that bit better. It checks for left files and registry keys that Windows Installer alone will not remove. I'd remind you to be careful when deleting registry keys - as some programmes (Dawn of War and the expansions for example) share some keys.

CCleaner
Cleans up dead registry files and internet files - such as temporary internet files, cookies, etc. You can choose what to delete, by checking relevent boxes.

VLC Media
Like WMP, but uses far less memory to run. Simple, effective and you can use it to convert music (although Rojerton's found programme SUPER© is much better.)

Foxit Reader
A PDF reader that I've found loads quicker than Adobe's shitty PDF reader.

Allways on top maker
Does what it says on the tin. You activate it, then with any window you want to keep on top, you highlight then press the relevant code. It locks it to the front of your screen, making data transfer/ keeping your porn ontop easy. To then cancel it being ontop, highlight and input the code again.


Feel free to comment and add any programmes you use that make your day easier. All of the above are free to download.

Alarm
It's an alarm clock that runs on your computer. It's a really tiny file and you can set either a bland noise to wake you or set any wav file you have on your computer so you can wake up to some nice music. I have it on my laptop and use it as my alarm clock for everything.

Yea its worth a sticky, ill put up some programs later. Ill throw this one up for the older operating systems. XP,2000 ect.

Taskbar shuffle, allow you to shuffle programs and order them how you want on the taskbar.
http://nerdcave.webs.com/

The ultimate efficiency tools for building instructional documents (if you build documents at work).

Literally this stuff cuts my workload in half, all the time.

Faststone Image viewer is at least 40k times better than the windows image viewer. Plus it has built in tools to crop, rename, resample, convert, and whatever you want. Oh, want to do a batch version of any of those operations? It does that too.

Faststone Capture is the ultimate screenshot utility. It will backup screenshots to file, lets you take size constrained shots, whatever you want. It owns the world.

http://www.faststone.org/

SUPER converter. Converts anything that is media to anything else that is media. Nuff said. If any player can play it, SUPER can convert it.
http://www.erightsoft.com/SUPER.html

NetScan is a beast of Networking power. Ever want to just force your windows box to connect to a network share, or just freaking list shared folders on other computers, but your stupid "Network Neighborhood" is just too gay to do it. Well punch it in the proverbial face with NetScan. NetScan will search for all the everything on an IP range and let you take advantage of the services directly from it's interface. It is awesome.
http://www.softperfect.com/products/networkscanner/

Ever have any problems using your burner, at any time? Well get ImgBurn. It is literally the pimp of CD Burners. If you use Nero, or DeepBurner, and you get a batch of crap for crap DVDs that don't know what speed to burn at, just use ImgBurn, you can force it to burn at any speed your drive can spin at. Plus it has the ability to DO ANYTHING.
http://www.imgburn.com/

Ever notice that viewing html files, c# files, XML files, and even crappy "nfo" files is less than good in Notepad? I like notepad more than the average bear, but really, I need something that goes beyond. Enter Notepad 2. It is awesome. It does syntax highlighting for almost anything, plus it can do rectangular text selection. What's that mean you ask? Well, suppose you are doing up some HTML, and you've got some crap-ass tags down the middle/left/right of the document. You can't just select them because there's other text on the same line as them.
ex)
<face><meatball></dinocopter>etc etc etc
<face><meatball></dinocopter>etc etc etc
<face><meatball></dinocopter>etc etc etc
<face><meatball></dinocopter>etc etc etc
<face><meatball></dinocopter>etc etc etc
Suppose you want to copy just the meatball tags to somewhere else, or delete them, or whatever. Well, hold down ALT, click, and drag. Bam, you're selecting in a rectangular shape. Oh, you can also control the opacity, but I never do that anyway.
http://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html

Ever have a network device that you can't figure out the IP, or subnet, or anything of. Let alone figure out what protocol it's using? Well, use Wireshark, because it's the king of packet analysis. I've solved countless problems with wireshark (Formerly Etherial).
Once I had this obscure second hand device that a guy at work needed to install at a customer's facility, but we couldn't figure out the subnet of the dang thing to get it programmed. We needed some crazy programming cable, so he ordered it, we tried to use the cable, but turns out, that cable was gay. So, I plugged the device into my laptop, opened up WireShark, and waited, bam, IP address sniffed. Win.

http://www.wireshark.org/

Media player classic. If you want something prettier and more basic than VLC media player, I recommend the no-install, insanely light weight media player classic. It looks like the old Windows Media Player v2, and is the greatest hero of them all.

http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/

Dependency Walker. Ever want to know what DLLs a file is using? Yeah, I always want to know that, that way I can figure out what the hell is going on when I compile something and it's not working in it's new directory. Well, Dependency Walker has saved countless villages of stacked stewardesses with it's dependency crawling might. What else can you do with it other than figure out what applications need what dlls? You can find out what functions a DLL provides. So, if you want to know how a cool function was implemented, you can crawl the app, find the linked dlls, and explore the function names that are provided by the dll. Bam.

http://dependencywalker.com/

Resource Hacker.

When I was but a lad, and things were built heavily using standard windows resources, Resource Hacker was indispensable. I used it first when I was in grade 10 to remove all the ads from my install of ICQ 99B (the best version of ICQ). It literally lets you edit the forms in many different applications. Deleting picture boxes that contain ads... links to paysites, etc.

http://www.angusj.com/resourcehacker/

Spybot Search and Destroy.
Spybot rapes spyware in the face, but in addition to that it also lets you edit your startup list. Kill running processes, remove browser redirects, and other fun stuff. Plus it can delete locked files, which is what I like to use it for. The secure file shredder is epic, it'll unlock a file that cannot be deleted, and delete it anyway. Take that.

http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html

CDisplay. If you download comics (manga) from the net, you need CDisplay. You can easily pile through rar'd, zipped, or whatever'd images at breakneck speeds with simple right, left, up, down, page down, page up, controls. The fullscreen option is the most appropriate thing ever.

http://cdisplay.software.informer.com/

Want linux style desktop control without the hassle of having explorer running 4 times? Then get Dexpot. It gives you 4 virtual desktops that you can switch between with simple key combinations. It's great for multi-tasking. Suppose you have a source control server running and you don't want to close it, or have it clutter your desktop, just deskpot it over to desktop #4, then you can do your programming in desktop #3, have your reference documents on desktop #2, and your e-mail/calendar at the ready on desktop #1.

http://www.dexpot.de/index.php?lang=en

I have countless more, because I do so much techy stuff at work that I literally need new ninjaware every second. I'll post more if I feel like it.

I found this useful:

http://www.real.com/realplayer

Lets you download any movie embedded in a page somewhere.

(26-01-2010 05:12 PM)MSJ Wrote: [ -> ]

(23-12-2009 06:24 PM)Dbow101 Wrote: [ -> ]Yea its worth a sticky, ill put up some programs later. Ill throw this one up for the older operating systems. XP,2000 ect.

Taskbar shuffle, allow you to shuffle programs and order them how you want on the taskbar.
http://nerdcave.webs.com/

Just installed this at work where I always have over 10 programs running at the same time and it's amazing. Takes less then a minute to download/install and it works right out of the box.

Dexpot is infinitely more useful.

I have at least a metric scad of windows open at all times, Dexpot gives you virtual desktops, which equates to you having up to 20 taskbars.
You can control everything with quick hotkeys or context menus, or even a nice tiled view that lets you select which desktop you want to view.

I keep all my source control apps in the taskbar of desktop 1, the programming environements in desktop 2, streaming audio in desktop 3, and whatever in desktop 4 (like forums). Keeps the taskbar uncluttered, organized, and superior.

It's less than 2Mb and uses zero memory.

Plus it's great if you want to avoid the annoying "restart windows for updates to take effect" warnings. Just strand that nuisance on an unused desktop.

Oh, you can also apply rules for auto-sorting of desktops.

It is THE best workspace unclutter beast available. Period.

Easy navigation between windows, I never use this. I always use Win+Right/Left.


Easily send a window to a different desktop. Yes, those other options you see aren't illusions.
Oh, everything has a quick key shortcut too.

God mode:

Right click desktop, create new folder. Rename folder 'GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}' (minus the ' ')

http://club.myce.com/f3/windows-7-god-mode-306979/

Works for Vista upwards.

Pretty useful for finding where windows hides the crap you used to know where it was. Check it out.

Oh crap this is crazy. It's called Winmerge. If you're ever looking for differences between two files then here's your tool.

At work, I get a data dump of all the configurations of our equipment per day and sometimes I have to backtrack and figure out what parameter was changed on a certain date.

So I take Winmerge, pop in an old txt file and a newer version of that txt file and BAM, it highlights what changed in the file. You can quickly jump to the different changes by holding alt and off you go. I'm sure you can do much more with this, but I have yet to discover all of its functionality.

http://winmerge.org/

Just a note, minmerge is included in scads of software packages, most people already have it on their PCs.