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Posts Tagged ‘Windows’

NexusFont is a free Windows application for easily managing fonts.

It is a very useful application specially when trying to decide "which font to use" for a specific text as it can "display outputs of a custom text with various fonts" in a grid.

NexusFont

The application has support for TrueType, OpenType & Adobe Type1 fonts.

NexusFont can help installing/uninstalling fonts, finding duplicates, anti-aliasing, renaming & more.

Also, it can export the preview lists as images which is a nice feature when sharing the options with clients, colleagues, etc.

LightShot is a simple & free tool which makes taking screenshots very easy.

With the click of a keyboard shortcut, a cropping interface appears where it is possible to:

  • set the area of the screenshot
  • make it fullscreen
  • copy to clipboard
  • upload to the net & get a link
  • edit it on a web-based service

LightShot

Most of the similar tools instantly take a screenshot of the area you selected before clicking any approve button. LightShot makes it kindly, waits for you to arrange the area, shows you the size of it & a click is required which is better to prevent wrong screenshots.

The tool can work in every computer as it comes as a Windows desktop application, a Firefox add-on & an Internet Explorer add-on.

IntraMessenger is a free application for that enables communication between communities, groups, companies or simply closed groups.

It consists of a client (for Windows) & a PHP-MySQL-based open source server to manage the whole communication.

The messenger is autonomous, but authentication (login + password) is possible from other existing databases like forums, groupware applications, e-learning systems, etc.

IntraMessenger

It can operate in 2 modes:

  • open community : everybody can see everybody, without add to contact list
  • groups only : everybody can see everybody (but only) is they are in the same group

IntraMessenger has a multilingual interface & it is a handy application for enabling web-based communities to communicate in the desktop.

StylePix is a free image editing software, an alternative for Photoshop or Fireworks, with numerous advanced features.

It has an intuitive user interface where all the controls can be selected easily.

Hornil StylePix

The software works with layers & offers multi-layer/group editing support.

Some features of StylePix are:

  • various selection types (auto-range, color-range & rectangular, circular, polygonal, lasso area selection)
  • batch processing
  • 30 different filters
  • thumbnail, histogram & waveform view for current image
  • & more..

StylePix works on Windows OS & consumes very few system resources, even the installer is ~800kb, which makes it an ideal solution for less-powerful computers or running from portable devices (a portable version exists).

Desktop IconFor a web application, It is always a good idea to provide access to it from other platforms like mobile or desktop programs.

As web designers/developers, desktop applications are harder to create considering they have a totally different environment.

In order to fill this gap, we can make use of site-specific browsers which enable us to lock a website inside an application-looking browser that can interact with the system tray/dock & display notifications.

Some usage examples for site-specific browsers:

  • displaying new orders, support tickets for an e-commerce website
  • showing system tray alerts when a new visitor visits your website
  • or even locking your whole application inside a site-specific browser and offering it as a desktop application.

To sum up, they simply help us convert a website into a desktop application. Here are free & mature tools for creating site-specific browsers:

Mozilla Prism (Win-Mac)

Mozilla Prism Site-Specific Browser

Prism is a very easy-to-customize tool that supports Windows & Mac.

Applications created can be:

  • minimized to system tray/dock & a navigation can be added there
  • set to display status messages & popups in the system tray/dock

Prism apps. will be running seperately from the browser & will stay alive even if the browser isn't.

P.S. You can also read a more detailed post about Prism at WRD.

Read the rest of this entry »

Paymo, a multilanguage & web-based time-tracking / invoicing application is giving away "20 Lifetime Invoice Accounts" (normally $9.99/month) to WebResourcesDepot users. Before any more details on that:

What is Paymo?

Paymo is a very functional application for anyone (whether you're a "one-man-army" or a "team that works on same/different projects") for tracking the time that is worked on projects>tasks, analyze that time & bill your clients accordingly.

Paymo

How does it work?

Users:

First thing to do is creating users (the application is totally free for up to 3 users). Considering every user may have different conditions, it is possible to set variables like workday length, timezone, week start day, etc for every user.

Clients:

It is necessary to define clients (this can be yourself for your own projects) in order to create the projects. This info is also used in the invoices.

Projects > Tasks:

That's the heart of the application, yet very simple to define & use.

Projects can be created by defining the details like: the client, budget hours, price per hour & users that will work in the project. After that, tasks can be created which are the main things that the application tracks the time of.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is easy to guess that most of the web designers/developers are not the fans of Microsoft.

On the other hand, lately, they are frequently creating interesting stuff for the community like the Web Platform, Expression Web SuperPreview & now WebsiteSpark.

WebsiteSpark is not a software, rather, it is a program that targets small web design companies & offers them valuable softwares to ignite their businesses.

Microsoft WebsiteSpark

The program has no upfront costs for 3 years & requires various amounts of payments depending on the products you want to use after that period. Also, you can quit the program anytime by only paying a $100 fee which is still acceptible.

The softwares included are:

  • 3 licenses of Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
  • 1 license of Expression Studio 3 (which includes Expression Blend, Sketchflow, and Web)
  • 2 licenses of Expression Web 3
  • 4 processor licenses of Windows Web Server 2008 R2
  • 4 processor licenses of SQL Server 2008 Web Edition
  • DotNetPanel control panel (enabling easy remote/hosted management of your servers)

For anyone willing to or already use Microsoft platforms to build websites, WebsiteSpark is definitely an opportunity to look at.

Tip: The program requires a referral program that can be obtained from network partners. If you don’t have one, you can e-mail webspark@microsoft.com to get a referral code quickly.

Last week, a post at WRD was announcing the giveaway of 5 Fanurio time tracking & billing software licenses ($59 value / license). The winners are selected & can be found at the bottom of the post. But before that, to remind:

What is Fanurio?

Fanurio is a beautiful software with an intuitive interface for easily tracking time that is spent on projects & billing them accordingly.

Fanurio

It is possible to define projects & sub-tasks. Then, the time worked on the projects can be tracked manually or with the help of a timer.

For teams, everyone can install Fanurio to their computers, track the time and export/import reports easily.

Create the invoices

From the moment you get a new contract until you are paid in full, Fanurio offers you the right tools to manage and bill all your work down to the penny.

It covers almost any billing feature you may need like rounding time "up, down or to the nearest specified interval" or applying discounts & more.

Analyze the performance

Fanurio helps analyzing the perfomance with the reports it generates:

  • payments: see all your open, un-paid invoices
  • timesheet: time recorded on a certain period, by project or client
  • project reports: howmuch money you made, howmuch money is unpaid, etc.

Also, reports can be exported to CSV or Excel for further analysis.

Fanurio works on Windows, Mac or Linux & doesn’t require purchasing new licenses when switching OSs.

And, the winners:

Here they are:

  • Matt (comment #75715)
  • Pritish Nandi (comment #75810)
  • christian (comment #77066)
  • GeeniUss (comment #75715)
  • paul rostorp (comment #76381)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone for joining this giveaway.

Fanurio, a flexible time tracking & billing software which is specially built for freelancers in mind, is giving away 5 licenses ($59 value / license) to WebResourcesDepot readers.

Details on "how to winning them" can be found at the bottom of the post. But before that:

What is Fanurio?

It is a well-thought software, with an intuitive interface, which can track the time that is worked on a project & help billing that job with almost no effort.

Fanurio Time Tracking

Track your time

The software enables you to define projects & sub-tasks. Then, the time worked on the projects can be tracked manually or with the help of a timer which also has a few reminders to help you start, resume or stop it automatically.

For teams, everyone can install Fanurio to their computers, track the time and export/import reports easily.

Create the invoices

From the moment you get a new contract until you are paid in full, Fanurio offers you the right tools to manage and bill all your work down to the penny.

It covers almost any billing feature you may need like:

  • when billing by the hour, you can round time "up, down or to the nearest specified interval"
  • apply discounts as a percentage or as a fixed value
  • price and units can be entered using two or three decimals for a better accuracy
  • for working with foreign clients, it can handle multiple currencies

Fanurio LogoIf you are subcontracting some of your work or if you are reselling some goods, you can also enter the purchase cost to know exactly how much you are making. Also, any other item like expenses for a project can be mentioned as well.

Unlimited number of taxes can be defined & certain clients can be marked as tax exempt.

You can see a snapshot of the invoices (which ones are paid, unpaid or overdue) instantly. For unpaid invoices, you can see how much was paid and the remaining balance.

Any type of custom invoice designs can be created & if desired, it can auto-number the invoices when creating them.

Analyze the performance

Fanurio helps analyzing the perfomance with the reports it generates:

  • timesheet: time recorded on a certain period, by project or client
  • project reports: howmuch money you made, howmuch money is unpaid, etc.

Also, reports can be exported to CSV or Excel for further analysis.

Fanurio works on Windows, Mac or Linux & doesn’t require purchasing new licenses when switching OSs.

How to win the licenses?

Commenting to this post is enough to join the giveaway & winners will be selected randomly via the query below on 23 September 2009 (1 week later).

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=1166 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck to all : ).

P.S. You can evaluate the product by downloading the trial version.

For every web designer & developer, refreshing the browsers to see the updates we make is a very common action.

XRefresh is a solution, specifically built for easing this process, which automatically refreshes browsers once an update to a file in our project folder is done.

XRefresh

It comes with 2 parts: a browser plugin (both for Firefox & IE) and an application (for Windows & Mac) which watches the changes made in the folders we mentioned.

Although it is handy for systems with one monitor, the best environment will probably be two monitors where the IDE & the browsers runs on each.

P.S. For Firefox, it requires Firebug to be installed.

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