I've often tried alternatives to the Windows Explorer file browser. If a person could keep adding more features to it, it'd actually be a great tool instead of the same old Explorer it's always been. Explorer Breadcrumbs is one of those add-ons that really does help. I like it and so far it's been pretty stable. This may not be true on some systems, so be sure to set a restore point before trying it out.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Rather than navigating step-by-step through your folder hierarchy -- view your folders quickly and go directly to any location with a single click.
Explorer Breadcrumbs is an add-in for Windows Explorer which contains a contextual series of buttons that allows you to quickly see and navigate through the entire folder hierarchy without leaving the current window.
Features:
1. Saves time navigating through folders and files
You know Explorer, it's the file browser that pops up when you double click on "My Computer" on Windows systems. Most folks are either happy with Explorer the way it is, or they either don't know that there are alternatives. I've tried several free Explorer replacements and this is one of the best. I wasn't expecting much but I was really impressed by super fast previews and awesome file searching. To try out the search feature I searched for all exe's on my C drive and it found them in an amazing 72 seconds. For this feature alone, I may replace the My Computer icon with Xyplorer.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
XYplorer (formerly TrackerV3) is an Advanced File System Explorer targeting everybody who is looking for a real alternative to the Windows Explorer. Features: Tabbed Browsing, High end find files engine with tremendous power and amazing speed, Instant preview of image, Thumbnails of image files , Instant preview of installed and uninstalled font files, Instant preview of HTML, MHT, PHP files, Instant display of complete file/version information for each selected file, Various revolutionary highlighting features add more visual grip to the folder tree, File Info Tips and MP3 Info Tips, etc., etc...
Network Traffic Monitor is an easy way to check to see what applications are connecting to the internet and how often. I was really surprised to see all the ports that a web browser listens on. NTM is fairly small and also gives you the ability to export it's monitoring to a text log.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Network Traffic Monitor shows you which processes in your machine are causing TCP/IP network traffic, how much traffic that is, and over which IP ports this traffic takes place. For each process it can show detailed information, including the path to the process executable. Network Traffic Monitor can give you a historic overview of the network traffic since the application was started, and save that info to a file for later examination.
I have a tough time passing up the chance to try out different web page editors. I've seen PageBreeze recommended by several people so I finally tried it. I'm pretty rusty when it comes to page design but PageBreeze's WYSIWYG editor really makes it easy for even a beginner. I did have some problems editing one old HTML page and the save feature seemed buggy and slow. That could just be a fluke so I can still recommend you try it if you need a good editor.
One last feature that may convince you to try it is that it includes a drag and drop HTML form builder. The author of PageBreeze also offers a free form submission service so you can quickly get feedback from visitors to your web site.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
A full-featured but easy to use visual (WYSIWYG) HTML editor for creating web pages.
Our freeware visual editor is actually powered by Microsoft Internet Explorer. So you can always be sure you are seeing exactly what you will get.
Color-coded HTML source (tag) editor. You can switch between HTML source and visual modes at any time with a click of the mouse, and any changes you have made will instantly be reflected in both modes.
Preview mode lets you instantly see what your finished web page will look like in Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Included webpage templates and direct access to hundreds of free website templates to give you a fast start on creating a great looking site.
Drag-and-drop Form Builder makes it fast and easy to create powerful web forms.
Built-in integration with our form processing service, so you can make your web forms work almost instantly with no programming, scripts, or technical knowledge required.
Built-in in integration with our web knowledgebase, so you can easily add a 24x7 customer service system that will answer your customers' questions instantly.
A person named "dhuser" has written a nice little review of Little Setup Builder. I rarely need this type of utility but I'll definitely try this one next time I do need one.
Review from dhuser:
Who is this app designed for:
- Software Developers
- New Users Wanting to Distrubite Their Products.
The Good
- Good program, easy to use
- Many Features
- Different Languages
- Installer Project Samples Given w/ Program
The needs improvement section
- I found that when I inserted an image into the installer (on the left side), I could not remove it from the dialog box.
Why I think you should use this product
LSB is one of the best installer tools I have found... Used it many times to package software
How does it compare to similar apps
It contains most of the features any software develper would want from a product.Generates EXE files.
Conclusions
LSB is a great tool, and along with other products, it works well.
Little Setup Builder is a setup-maker. That is, it builds a program that will be able to ship your application on a target computer and that will set up its environment for allowing your program to run properly. Such setup will follow the 'Windows installation guidelines' (a set of rules and suggestions that wants to plan the appearence and the behaviour of a compliant installer). It should be able to guide the user through the whole setup process, allowing him to understand what he is doing about and how to manage some possible errors.
Loved it. Played for about a half hour. Challenging but not too hard for newbies.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
Asteroids+Plus is what Asteroids always wanted to be when it grew up. Utilize an arsenal of weapons and missiles against the alien armies that are bent on annihilating Earth. Pick up bonuses and take out asteroids and aliens to increase your score. When you're ready, face the ultimate alien boss in a final showdown.
Why would you want to use something other than the default Adobe Reader to view PDF documents online? I can think of two reasons, size and security.
Size?
Do you want to download and install the 27.5MB Adobe reader or the slightly less than 1MB Sumatra reader? I guess that depends on what you need it to do. If you just want to see the PDF file, I'd say Sumatra is fine. It's also a portable application that you can copy to a floppy disk or USB thumb drive to run on any PC.
Security?
I see security update notices on the Adobe Reader so often that I tend to ignore them. That's not good. Who knows when the update you didn't get will bite you in the rear? Sumatra doesn't do anything except view the PDF. That makes it almost bullet-proof from a hacker's point of view. It's also an Open Source program which makes it even harder to hack since so many people look at the code and offer their advice on making it even safer.
click to expand picture
Quote from the website
What is Sumatra PDF?
Sumatra PDF is a slim, free, open-source PDF viewer for Windows.
Why another PDF reader?
Sumatra has a minimalistic design. Simplicity has a higher priority than a lot of features.
It's small and starts up very fast.
It's designed for portable use: it's just one file with no external dependencies so you can easily run it from external USB drive.
John Hood wrote me this week about the change in Daylight Savings time. It's here early this year and it seems that our PCs didn't know about this. I asked John what problems it could cause ...
John said:
Your computer clock and calendar will be an hour off for three weeks in the spring and one week in the fall. Not earth-shattering, but inconvenient; waaay less than the media hype surrounding it. Media is treating it like another Y2K.
The facts about the “Daylight Savings Bug”
The Scoop: It’s a lot of news hype. It’s not a bug, it’s just an update (unless you consider an Act of Congress, a bug).
I have Windows. Do I have to update? Reading Microsoft’s page on the matter, is an exercise in frustration.
Here’s my rundown, based on reading, meeting discussions of IT admins and general scuttlebutt.
Note this is only for Windows. If you have other Microsoft products, you’ll have to check and update them separately.
1: How to find out which version of Windows you have right-click the “My Computer” icon and go to “Properties”
Under “System” the listing of the Windows version and the service pack level.