Forensics

Hardware

Software

Driving

Walking

Leisure

Random

HTML Home
Software Home




Tools for the Job


KompoZer
No, I have no idea why there's a capital "Z", but there is. However, it's too annoying to type, so from now on it will be lower case. Kompozer is the main tool I use for designing and coding the site (and the later pages on my old one). I've tried a couple of other freeware tools: Trellian WebPage and another whose name I can't even remember. But I like Kompozer the most, because even I can use it and work out what is going on. The last version (0.7) was a tad buggy, but the latest release seems a lot more stable. Best of all, I like the various modes you can view in: "Design" (where you put stuff into it), "Source" (where you view the code), "HTML tags" (where you can see things like divs and table outlines etc) and "Preview" (which shows how it will look when published).

And of course I stick with freeware because this is a non-commercial site so the massive cost of Dreamweaver isn't warranted.

PhotoShop Elements
The pictures are processed with PSE9. The biggest problem I have with it is the ongoing issue of Colour Profiles. When I first installed PSE9 (before that I used PaintShop Pro 7) the first thing I noticed was that all my pictures looked grey and washed out. After a lot of googling, I eventually traced it down as a colour profile problem: Windows was using a default profile, not the one for my specific monitor. Once I removed the default profile and forced Windows to use the correct one, everything looked fine. Then I upgraded the computer, and had to install all the software from scratch. The correct profile is in use, the screen adjustments have not bee touched, but everything looks grey again. Even loading the image without a profile makes no difference. But everything else looks fine.

Apart from that PSE9 is fine, and in particular the batch processing function has been very useful: pictures moved from my old website need to be shrunk slightly to fit the fixed 960 pixel width of this site, and there are a lot of pictures.

Notepad
Whenever anyone asks on the web what the best tool for writing HTML is, some wags always say: "Notepad". Well, technically it is the best, but of course most people asking the question really mean "easiest that produces a good result". The only time I ever use it is to print code, if I need to see what is going on and need to annotate it.

FireFTP
Of course you need an uploading tool, and I use FireFTP, along with FireFTP button so I have a button on the toolbar in Firefox. I'm not sure if FireFTP has a button now, because I'm so used to installing the add-on version I keep forgetting to check after the main program is installed.