It's easy for Windows users to forget that WinZip isn't the only file-compression utility in the world. Like its better-known competitors, the free 7-Zip unpacks a host of archive formats, including ZIP, TAR, GZ, and its own 7z format. Unlike WinZip, though, it can create TAR and GZ archives, which are commonly used on Unix and Linux systems.
The program's ability to shrink files was stunning. In tests, 7z archives were up to 40 percent smaller then their ZIP equivalents, although compression did take longer, and the highest compression settings can hog system resources. Advanced options include the ability to create solid and self-extracting archives, and to adjust the compression level and password protection. The program also has a command line module. Though the main interface is overly simple and looks like it was designed for Windows 95, it's not hard to use and fairly self-explanatory. The context menu options, which include "testing" an archive, indicate that 7-Zip should be taken seriously.
7-Zip is fine for casual users with a bit of computer savvy, but it's especially well-suited for developers and anyone else who moves between the Windows and Linux/Unix worlds download video How to Zip and Un-Zip a file using 7-zip
7-Zip: Downloading, installing, and configuring 7-Zip!
Each task requires a different environment and GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window. Pressing the tab key will toggle them hidden.
GIMP features a great fullscreen mode allowing you to not only preview your artwork but also do editing work while using the most of your screen estate.
Photo Enhancement
Numerous digital photo imperfections can be easily compensated for using GIMP. Fix perspective distortion caused by lens tilt simply choosing the corrective mode in the transform tools. Eliminate lens' barrel distortion and vignetting with a powerful filter but a simple interface.
Digital Retouching
GIMP is ideal for advanced photo retouching techniques. Get rid of unneeded details using the clone tool, or touch up minor details easily with the new healing tool. With the perspective clone tool, it's not difficult to clone objects with perspective in mind just as easily as with the orthogonal clone.
Hardware Support
GIMP includes a very unique support for various input devices out of the box. Pressure and tilt sensitive tablets, but also a wide range of USB or MIDI controllers. You can bind often-used actions to device events such as rotating a USB wheel or moving a MIDI controller's slider. Change the size, angle or opacity of a brush while you paint, bind your favorite scripts to buttons. Speed up your workflow!
File Formats
The file format support ranges from the common likes of JPEG (JFIF), GIF, PNG, TIFF to special use formats such as the multi-resolution and multi-color-depth Windows icon files. The architecture allows to extend GIMP's format capabilities with a plug-in.
Thanks to the transparent virtual file system, it is possible to load and save files to from remote locations using protocols such as FTP, HTTP or even SMB (MS Windows shares) and SFTP/SSH.
To save disk space, any format can be saved with an archive extension such as ZIP, GZ or BZ2 and GIMP will transparently compress the file without you needing to do any extra steps.
Finally, a top-notch WYSIWYG web page program for the rest of us! Now there's no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities.
KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs.
KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive
professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding.
Reliable technology inside
KompoZer is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla; it's a super-fast, very reliable, standards conformant engine maintained on a daily basis by a wide community of developers. Its remarkable support of XML, CSS and JavaScript offers the best authoring platform on the market. Its architecture based on XUL makes it the most extensible editing tool ever.
KompoZer is a stand-alone tool; hence its small size and fast speed.
Those who are familiar with the DreamWeaver interface will feel right at home with KompoZer:
WYSIWYG editing of pages, making web creation as easy as typing a letter with your word processor.
Integrated file management via FTP. Simply login to your web site and navigate through your files, editing web pages on the fly, directly from your site.
Reliable HTML code creation that will work with all of today's most popular browsers.
Jump between WYSIWYG Editing Mode and HTML using tabs.
Tabbed editing to make working on multiple pages a snap.
Powerful support for forms, tables, and templates.
The easiest-to-use, most powerful Web Authoring System available for Desktop Linux, Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh users.
Details about key features and capabilities
FTP site manager
With KompoZer, all the sites you have specified in your Publishing Settings become browseable in a sidebar. You can get a tree view of a site, la Explorer's folders pane, or a one-dir-only view, la Explorer's directory view. It is also possible to filter files and show all files, or only HTML documents or image files. The browsing area also allows to show for each file its size and the date of last modification.
A new color picker
KompoZer has a new extended colorpicker, more conformant to what most users are used to. Set a color from its red blue and green components, or its hue saturation and brightness. Or just use your mouse to pick up the color you want.
Tabs!
One of Mozilla Firefox's killer features is now available in KompoZer! Have one window only on your screen and edit several documents at once, each document having its own Undo/Redo stack! Just glance at the tabs to know if a document needs to be saved or not!
CSS editor
Create stylesheets easily and manage the styles attached to your documents. You can see your style settings applied '"live" to the document you're editing.
A dash of style(s)
With KompoZer, right-click on any element in the hierarchical toolbar at the bottom of the window and set directly its style properties.
Customizable toolbars
Just customize your toolbar and show only the buttons you want/need.
Forms
Take advantage from a XUL-based UI to edit all your forms, and edit all your form elements.
Cleaner markup
KompoZer contains some machinery to get rid of most of those annoying
. Combined with the ability to call W3C's HTML validator from within KompoZer you'll make valid, clean documents.
XFN
When you create a new link to an external resource, or when you edit an existing link, you can now add XHTML Friends Network information to say that the owner of that resource is someone you know and trust.
Visible marks
In a complex page layout, you often need to see visible carriage returns and block borders. KompoZer can now do that for you. And of course, everything is controlled by a CSS stylesheet so you can customize those marks and replace them by your own.
Table/Cell resizing rulers
On the left and top side of the opened tab you will find the convenient table resizing rulers which will help you easily adjust the size of rows and columns in any table in the web page you design.
Automated Spellchecker
The integrated in-line spellchecker will underline all misspelled words as you type to ensure correct spelling throughout the entire web page.
Avira's AntiVir has been a player in the security world for some time; however, in 2008 its status boomed because of its remarkably strong detection rates. It still remains near the top of independent antivirus efficacy tests, but while the 2009 version more or less kept pace with the competition, the 2010 edition isn't quite as good as it could be. Both longtime and new users alike will note the pop-up ad that appears whenever a program update is downloading; it has been the unaddressed focus of critical and user dislike for several years. While the occasional ad that interferes with a user's work flow used to be considered tolerable for effective free security, that's no longer the case. Avira's lack of a silent-running entertainment-gaming mode is also noticeable, since so many free and paid competitors now offer the mode.
Except for the most cosmetic of changes, the app's interface is unchanged from version 8. There are new icons on the program's toolbar, a new static image background, and that's about it. The main window offers a left-side navigation menu with drop-down menus and a central pane to see more detailed information. AntiVir opens to the Status menu, informing you of your last scan, your last definition file update, whether the real-time guard is active; however, Avira removed the premium upgrade link in this version. The Events screen logs changes to the program and the Reports tab keeps a history of threats--information from both sections can be exported.
New features are a bit thin in the free version of Avira 10, too. A new generic-repair mode really just takes the choice out of how Avira tells you about the threats it has discovered. In version 9, you could be informed about them in the middle of a scan or at the end; however, now only the latter is available. Windows 7 users now have the capability to run a scan as an administrator directly from the interface, which is a smart, but minor improvement. Avira's installation sequence has been revamped, and now only takes users through five windows. Theoretically, this means it's a five-click installation, but new users will have to complete the registration form. However, its installation file unpacking process appears faster, and you no longer have to reboot after the install.
This isn't to say that AntiVir Free 10 isn't stuffed with robust features. The program offers a wide selection of scan customization, letting users fully scan both internal and external hard drives, run a preloaded scan--for rootkits, for example--or customize a scan. On a real-world computer, the full scan took about 1 hour and 12 minutes, which is average. Avira includes antispyware protections, scanning tech that can crack open "locked" files, improved internal security to prevent AntiVir's files from being maliciously altered, and one-click threat removal--baby-sitting was taken out in the last version.
The Local Protection and Administration navigation options reveal the Scanner, Guard, Quarantine, and Scheduler features. Combined with the Configuration button located at the top of the central pane, users can customize scans as necessary. When Avira quarantines a file, its information is on display along with options to scan it again, restore, delete, and e-mail the file to Avira. The apps rebuilt heuristic engine retains the same choices from the previous version had, and it can be turned on or off in part or in full and offers three intensity levels. Not counting the lively user forums, Avira's included help features are good for a free antivirus app, with mouse-over information on each feature. The scheduler, once a major Avira selling point because it was light-years ahead of other free security suites, has now been caught up to by its competitors.
AntiVir 10 doesn't require a special uninstallation tool, unlike many competitors do. In the end, Avira's free suite makes for an excellent backup suite, but its competitors have since caught up with or surpassed what it can do.
