Web Resources page
Version of July 19, 2006. All links checked July 16, 2005, or later. I became aware of most of this through www.tudogs.com. They send out a weekly newsletter, if you are interested. They have a rating system, and provide brief annotations. You can download many of the items mentioned on this page, and more, from their site. Registration is required.
I have become aware of another list, which I haven't explored thoroughly, but it looks good. That is The 46 Best-ever Freeware Utilities, which covers many of the categories below, and is more up-to-date than this page.
Please let me know about links that don't work, or links to add. If a link doesn't work, I suggest a Google search using the title words in the description I have given. Let me know of other problems, please. The material that may be found through the external hyperlinks below is not the responsibility of, nor necessarily endorsed by me. I have not tested all the items listed. Thanks, Martin LaBar.
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Help with software required in the SWU Desktop Design course Sites that offer lots of useful free stuff Freeware firewall and antivirus software Free Office alternatives (you read that right!) (This includes freeware HTML editors) Free alternatives to Photoshop and other graphics programs Creating web sites accessible to the disabled Utilities that increase your search engine visibility Free sites that will check your HTML Controlling how others can use your material
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Information on recycling computers and peripherals
Help with required software (This section related to the Desktop Design Course, as taught at Southern Wesleyan University, as of Fall 2004. However, it should be generally useful.)
Online training with many common software applications from Indiana University.
Adobe product training (registration required)
Good-Tutorials.com Photoshop tutorial page
Photoshop allows other developers to produce plug-ins. These can be installed, generally in the C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Plug-Ins\Filters folder, and will show up as Filters. (They won't show up if you are using Photoshop when you install--you will have to exit and re-start Photoshop.) This site is one source of such, hundreds, in fact. I won't pretend to have evaluated all of them. Harry's filters, from The Plugin Site, are probably more useful.
Exploring the Photoshop Lighting Effects Filter from Webreference
Flash
Free website development guide claims to have tutorials on Flash, Dreamweaver, and more
Macromedia's Web Sites devoted to Macromedia Flash and Flash Developers
Flashkit's Flash Tutorials
Macromedia's Fireworks TechNotes: Fireworks web sites
Macromedia Dreamweaver Support Center
Microsoft's FrontPage technical support
Western Civilisation Property, Ltd.'s Cascading Style Sheet tutorial.
Joe Gillespie's MetaMaker (helps create meta tags)
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Freeware firewall and antivirus software
Home PC Firewall Guide is the most complete source of reviews of free (and other) firewall and antivirus products, and some others.
avast! 4 Home is a freeware Anti-Virus program which has received some good reviews.
Hackfix's reviews of anti-virus software, including freeware. Includes links to download. (Warning: This page was last updated in July 2004, and therefore is of limited usefulness. For example, it doesn't include the ZoneAlarm anti-virus product.)
ZoneAlarm, freeware firewall. (Free to individuals, $19.95 per computer for business users. If you are on a secure network you shouldn't need a firewall, but if you are accessing the Internet by telephone, you should probably have one. This one has gotten good reviews.)
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Free alternatives to Office, including HTML editors apparently at least partly compatible with Office files: (Warning--these are serious downloads!)
EasyOffice, which comes in more than one version. One such used to be a freeware version, but that appears to have been discontinued. There is a "tiny version," which is free.
602 Pro PC Suite, which may also be downloaded here.
Arachnophilia is a careware HTML editor. The author says that he wants users to:
. . . stop whining for an hour, a day, a week, your choice, and you will have earned your copy of Arachnophilia. Say encouraging words to young people, make them feel welcome on the planet Earth (many do not). Show by example that we don't need all we have in order to be happy and productive.
Arachnophilia, unfortunately, doesn't seem to have been updated since 2002. It doesn't recognize Firefox as a browser. It's still usable, however.
Easy HTML is a freeware HTML editor, with some help. So is AceHTML freeware.
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Free graphics programs, some of which could serve as alternatives to Photoshop
PhotoPlus 6 (requires free registration for an activation key)
The GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program)
Web Search sites I recommend
Google (Note the Images tab)
AltaVista (you can search for images, or for audio, or for video)
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General Desktop Design sites
About.com Desktop Publishing links (annotated links)
Builder.Com's Web Development Library
EarthWeb has a section (currently on the left side of the page, and called Web Developer) with links to Javascripts and HTML goodies
Microsoft Typography links page
The Ultimate Electronic Publishing Resource
Web Page Design for Designers: (link to his Resources page)
WebDesign Helper, with lots of templates, graphics, and other goodies
Will-Harris house has sections on design and type
CreativePro (mostly up-to-date news about DTP)
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Making web pages accessible to the disabled
National Cancer Institute's Usability.gov
O'Reilly Network's primer for accessible web pages
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Utilities that increase your search engine visibility
TouchGraph Google Browser shows you graphically how a page is "seen" by Google. Requires Java.
Free sites that will check your HTML
W3C HTML Validation Service checks your web pages for conformity to official HTML standards. Pages that don't measure up may still do what you want them to.
Mozilla Firefox is a freeware browser. A web developer extension toolbar for Firefox, available free from another location, can be very handy. For example, you can go to www.msn.com, then click on Images>Display Image Dimensions, and discover that whoever developed this web page uses 0 x 0 and 1 x 1 images. This sort of thing can be useful for analyzing other web pages quickly, or analyzing your own.
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Allowing
Rights to your material
Creative Commons is an organization that
allows you to post various kinds of licenses on your web site, such as use only
if you attribute this to me, or use if you don't change it, or only for
non-commercial use.
Dictionaries
and Acronym finders
Webopedia
is a good computer dictionary. It also includes acronyms.
There are on-line computer (Computing dictionary, NetLingo, whatis) and acronym dictionaries.
LearnThat.Com has definitions, including basic computer terms.
Color
Color Matters by J. L. Morton
Color from WebReference. Has a link to Colorizer, an on-line tool for determining color coordinates.
Color Psychology, from LearningNetwork.
Rich Franzen's SIH Color Wheel
Color Scheme tool, created by a Czech web designer. This allows you to choose between several types of scheme, and also shows you how a person with various types of color-blindness would see your scheme.
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Design
The On-Line Visual Literacy Project
Web Page Design for Designers (on-line periodical)
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Megapixel (on-line digital camera review source)
CNET Digital photography center (reviews)
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Fonts (some free) (see also General DTP sites)
About.com directory of free and other fonts
The Dingbat Pages
TypOasis (has dingbats, as well as fonts)
Microsoft Typography Information on fonts, and on Microsoft fonts. Also as a font utility or two.
On Snot and Fonts (I don't name 'em, I just report 'em!)
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Graphics
JPEG 2000 graphics format
Article from Wikipedia
on JPEG 2000
Photos
Free
Stock Photos.com
ImageBank (biological images)
Flickr has a search page, which allows you to search through photos posted by many individuals, and, probably, by companies. I believe that those returned by the search are all for public use, although, to be sure, you can click on a thumbnail, and see whether the photo says "public" or not. I believe you have to become a Flickr member, but would suggest that you join. Registration is free, and you can post your photos for others (for example in your family) to see, and restrict who gets to see them. I have never received so much as unsolicited e-mail from Flickr.
USDA Photography Center (has many photographs, and they are copyright-free) To quote from their FAQ page:
| Q - How can I get
permission to use photos found in the USDA Online Photography Center? A - You just got it. All photographs in the USDA Online Photography Center site are in the public domain. You may use them as you wish, with our blessing, however they may not be used to infer or imply USDA endorsement of any product or position. Neither should they be used to distort the reality of the image they portray. |
The US Geological Survey has many images. I suggest a Google search for USGS volcano images, or the equivalent.
National Park Photographs - "thousands" of public domain photos. Clicking on the link gets you the picture in an approximately 4 MB PhotoCD format, downloaded to your computer, which Photoshop can open. Clicking on the thumbnail gets you the picture on-screen in .JPG format, so you can right-click and copy or save. "Credit photographs to the National Park Service."
Easy Thumbnails, freeware which creates thumbnails.
Images of the World. Has the following use policy:
| For personal,
non-commercial, charitable and educational use only. If you want to use my pics for a school or university project or charitable purposes the answer is yes, but please add a link to my site and let me know You can use the following code if you wish:
Please Note that the Images of Cambodia are Copyright SAO Cambodia. Please ask them if you want to use the Cambodia pics - Thanks. |
Other graphics
Animation
Patch
Microsoft Design Gallery Live
Berkeley Digital SunSite Image Finder
SmartMorph from MeeSoft (page uses frames--link to SmartMorph is on the left) morphs two pictures into an animation.
TuDogs has Clipart and Animation pages
You can embed a Google Map in your web page, providing you keep the guidelines provided by Google.
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There is a freeware 3-D graphics program, POV-Ray, available. I have not seen a review of it, or tested it myself, but it seems to be of some interest, and entirely free.
Audacity is an open source (meaning free, among other things) sound editor. Among other things, it will let you split sound into more than one clip, or combine two sounds into a single clip. It doesn't open all sound file formats. It is supposed to recognize .WAV, .MID, .AIFF, and .MPG, and a couple of others. I personally had to use JetAudio to convert a .MID file to .WAV before I could use it, perhaps because of the size of the .MID file.
JetAudio is a freeware sound program, which, among other things, allows recording of sounds and broadcasting over the Internet. It also does conversions, for example from .wma and .mid to .wav. It won't convert .ram files. JetAudio is a relatively large download--about 14 Mb. Warning--although this program converts .mid to .wav, the resulting files may be too large to use as web files.
MP3myMP3 is a freeware program that is supposed to record anything you can hear with your computer to .mp3 or .wav form. It is supposed to be adware and spyware free.
WavePad is another good freeware audio editing program, from NCH SwiftSound.
Microsoft Design Gallery Live (Change the Search bar, near the top, to Sounds. Some are .wav, some .mid, which Flash won't use. You can right-click, and copy that way.)
samplenet features a large collection of MP3 files.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service has a page of free .mp3 and .wav files of animal and bird sounds.
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"If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware." from the SpyBot pages. SpyBot is freeware that checks your computer against a database of known spyware.
SpyChecker will tell you whether one of a thousand or so programs that you may be asked if you want to download is, in fact, spyware.
SpyWareInfo offers news about spyware and has an on-line spyware checker.
On-line graphic generation
(these sites make buttons, 3-D text, and the like, while you wait--which isn't usually very long.) Example:
This one was done in CoolText. I confess--I edited the file in Corel PhotoPaint, turning it into a GIF with transparency. That's all I did, however.
Web Page Hosts
The Freesite: Free web pages (listing of some available services, with comments)
Yahoo! Geocities
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Freeware Utilities
All of the utility programs in this section are freeware, or at least had freeware versions available at the time this page was written. Please e-mail me about new candidates for this page, or about programs already listed that are no longer freeware. Thanks.
Freeware Publishing Site. Lots of free utilities.
Ad-aware is a program that searches for programs on your computer that are generating advertisements. (You've probably got a few, without knowing it.) It allows you to back up all items, which is a valuable feature--some programs that you may want to use, such as NetAnts, create advertisements, and generally you can put up with them.
Bulk Rename Utility can do marvels with what its name suggests. For example, you could rename all those weird digital camera names, such as JSC2223.jpg, JSC2224.jpg, and the like, to Jan's wedding1.jpg, Jan's wedding2.jpg, etc., with a few keystrokes.
Buttons and Tilez for creation of (what else!) buttons and tiled backgrounds.
CoolRuler (freeware on-screen ruler--shows how many pixels, inches, etc., an object is. Can be marked, moved, etc.)
Dawn (freeware which converts e-mail addresses between several different formats)
Disk Investigator (Freeware which shows you the contents of a disk, or a file, in hexadecimal, or as a text file. Allows searches for data in either of these forms. Also allows you to undelete a file.)
Extended Character Map -- enhanced character map, of course. Main advantage is that the characters are larger, so you can actually read them.
Mozilla Firefox is a freeware browser. A web developer extension toolbar for Firefox, available free from another location, can be very handy. For example, you can go to www.msn.com, then click on Images>Display Image Dimensions, and discover that whoever developed this web page uses a 0 x 0 and 1 x 1 images. This sort of thing can be useful for analyzing other web pages quickly, or analyzing your own.
Good Keywords "finds the perfect set of keywords for your web pages," according to a review by Tudogs. (See Search Engine Buddy, below)
Icon Maker (icon creation) at SoftSeek.Com
Microsoft Typography area
File Splitter is a freeware splitter that lets you split large files for storing on diskettes or e-mailing. (Also lets you put them back together!)
Divij is another freeware file splitter
Fresh Download freeware (not even ads) download manager. For large downloads--resumes interrupted downloads, etc.
Thank God, I have never used it, but PC Inspector File Recovery may be able to rescue files that you can no longer access in the usual fashion.
PDF995 is a freeware .PDF file creator. It works by creating a printer driver on your computer. Choose the PDF995 printer. DON'T check the Print to File box. Just “print.” A .PDF file will be created. The program does create pop-up .HTML ads.
Search Engine Buddy checks your HTML for optimizing your likelihood of a search engine listing. Makes suggestions on metatags. See Good Keywords, above.
Simple OCR is ad-free freeware which is supposed to translated scanned text from a graphic into text.
StuffIt Expander from Aladdin Systems. Compresses and uncompresses files. Versions available for Windows, Linux/Unix and Macintosh. (Warning--this may not really be freeware. The last time I tried to install it, it asked me for a license number, which, of course, I didn't have. I aborted the installation.) ZipGenius, below is real freeware
XN View is a free graphic file format converter.
ZipGenius is a free compression and de-compression utility.
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FileZilla is an open source, freeware FTP program. Also available here. There is also a FileZilla Server. I personally use this program frequently, and find it relatively easy to use, and effective.
Seagull is freeware FTP software for home use.
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RSS & Blog (creating and
maintaining a web diary) tools
Bloglines is not a blogging tool,
but it does serve as a one-page gateway to RSS feeds and blogs that you choose
to subscribe to through this Internet service. I use it every day, for, among
other things, Dilbert, a daily Bible reading, reviews from PC Magazine, and
science articles in the New York Times. You can search for new feeds to
add, or copy and paste the URL of an available feed. Also recommends new feeds,
based on your current subscriptions. Lest there be any doubt, I like it!
Blogger is software that lets you create a Blog, and it hosts your blog for you. You can get fancy, but, basically, all you have to do is register (free) and start typing.
Flickr is also free, up to a 10 Mb per month upload limit. This is a photo host site, that lets you upload photos. After a photo is uploaded, you can click on the dialog box for the particular photo, and go to the page that shows different sizes of this photo. Select the size you want. Code is automatically generated, which you can copy and paste into the HTML panel of Blogger, which means that you can show photos on your blog. Graphics other than photos are accepted.
List of RSS Aggregators, both server- and client-based, from Harvard Law School. This page is frequently updated, and notes important developments in RSS, such as new sources of feeds.
See my page, introducing RSS feeds and blogging
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EPA page on recycling computers and other electronic equipment
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Notes: 1) Annotation means a brief description of important features.
2) The material that may be found through the hyperlinks below is not the responsibility of, nor necessarily endorsed by, the author. It is provided to for the use of anyone else who finds this web page, and can use any part of the information.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
The purpose of this is NOT to prevent use by
others, but to prevent other users from restricting free use. I claim no
ownership of materials in the above material which are quotations from other
sources.