JShot

JShot is useful if often capturing (parts) of a screen and needing not only a program that does the capturing but one that automatically uploads it to the web. JShot can capture full screens, active windows, rectangular sections, the task bar and the desktop among others. It has a built-in editor with undo and redo support in addition to adding text and other effects to the captured image. The image editor does a lot more including but not limited to lines and shapes and other operations like resize, rotate, crop, merge and blur.

JShot comes pre-configured to upload anonymously to imageshack but out of the box it also supports uploading to FTP, Skype, Twitter, Picasa and Dropbox. These require setting up login details using the configuration wizard (accessed via the Ctrl+F12 keys by default). For example the Dropbox plugin tries to open the dropbox site and add the capture to the your Dropbox’s private or public folder. The aforementioned configuration wizard (also accessible via the tray icon) includes settings for such things as capture delay – how long after clicking to capture does it actually happen – output format – default is *.png – and multi-monitor support and more.

Plugins can be developed to support other sites to upload to. JShot keeps a history of of its captures (View—>History). When installing the user can choose to integrate it to the Windows right click or context menu. JShot requires Java Runtime Environment 1.6 and is free for personal use.

 

Makagiga

Makagiga has a simple interface where it attempts to provide an everything at your finger tips type of experience. It comes with widgets to populate its window. The widgets include To-do, Notes, Calendar and Internet Search. Additional widgets can be downloaded (Edit—>Get More Widgets) and include the likes of a Digital Clock and Countdown timer, among others. Somewhat confusing it also supports plugins and no real distinction is made with its widgets. A separate menu (Tools—>Add or Remove Plugins) and window is used to download and use plugins such as an advanced text editor but then to get even more plugins one can click the Get More Plugins link on this same Add or Remove Plugins window. These additional plugins include such things as a chart generator, a Wolfram|Alpha query and others.

The ability to subscribe to RSS feeds comes already built-in and therefore Makagiga can be used as a news feed as well.

Makagiga requires Java and Windows XP at a minimum. Separate portable (use the run-portable.exe file) and Linux versions are available as well.

 

5Dfly Free Photo Editing And Viewer

5DFly is a freeware image viewer with a set of basic and few extra and useful features. It loads single images (after double clicking them) into a tabbed interface making working with several images easier. It supports creation of slideshows in powerpoint (*.ppt and *.pps) formats. 5DFly also has built-in support for uploading pictures to Flickr and Facebook.

5DFly can convert an HTML page to an image. Here the user enters an URL which the program fetches to an internal viewer and generates an image from. This, in effect, is an alternative method for grabbing web page screenshots, one which grabs whole pages all the way to the bottom without the need to scroll down for longer pages.

The more readily available elsewhere features of 5DFly are batch processing for resizing photos and others like converting to gray scale, cropping freely or to predefined sizes, rotating, removing red eye and others.

Of further note are the history features available in the individual image view which lets the user undo any operations done on the image and also a web page history to keep tab on sites visited (for the *.html to *.jpg operation for example) using the program. Copying images to the clipboard and setting them as wallpaper are also possible with 5DFly.

Upon installation 5DFly associates itself with *.jpg and other image formats without prompting the user for input and it sports a Mac-like theme or skin. These two shortcomings will not be held against it today however!

5DFly runs on Windows 2000 and newer versions.

 

Texter

Texter – not to be confused with Lifehacker’s text substitution and expander Texter – is a lightweight and attractive text editor with a few extras.

Texter’s few extras are as follows:

Encrypt a text file via the file menu.

Zoom in and out via the view menu.

Change the case to upper or lower and copy file name or file path to the clipboard via the edit menu.

Access to clipart, symbols, images and text from external text files via the insert menu. Date can also be inserted from one of many formats via the insert menu.

Change colors and fonts and create bullet points via the format menu.

Preview text in browser mode. Load a XML file or open the document browser via the tools menu.

The program options, accessible via the tools menu, include auto detection of URLs, configuration of the auto save setting, customization of the toolbar and others. A number of shortcut keys, such as InsertSymbol = Ctrl + F3, GoToChar = Ctrl + G and others are also available and viewable in the options.

Texter supports *.rtf as well plain text files, should run on all recent Windows versions and is GNU general public license software.

 

Image Tuner Freeware

Image Tuner is a lightweight freeware which works on images or series of images and applies a set of basic but simple and useful tasks to them. Pictures or a folder of pictures are added by dragging them into the program window or by using the Add Folder or Add Images buttons. The images will then be listed and previews of them can be seen on the top right. On the lower left a destination folder is chosen and any of the available options checked.

Pictures can be resized to one of many preset sizes in the available drop down or to a custom size by clicking the icon immediately to the right of the drop down list.

Images can also be converted to and from *.jpg, *.png, *.gif, *.bmp and *.tiff. The icon to the right opens up the program settings relevant to each format.

Images can also be renamed. In the text area one can for example type “picture_” (without the quotes). This will produce output images named picture_1, picture_2 and so on.

The Add Watermark option allows the user to browse to another image which will be overlayed or watermarked on top of the ones in the image list.

The program settings include options for each image format such as out put quality and others, as mentioned earlier, relevant to the image format. The settings also include positioning and transparency settings for the watermark option and also the option to maintain the proportions of the original images when resizing. Additionally the choice of filters and interpolations used to generate out put images are listed and can be chosen, these include the default and common Lanczos3 and others.

Image Tuner runs on Windows 98, ME, NT, 2000, XP, Vista and 7 including 32 and 64 bit versions.

 

AH Note Freeware Notepad Alternative

AH Note is a young entry in the notepad alternative universe. AH Note’s capabilities are all visible via its icons around the program interface. Its features, those not common to all simple notepad alternatives are listed below.

Copy options to copy the current file name and path. Indent selected text by 1 column increments. Add bullet points to selected text. Add images to any text document. Zoom in and out of pages. View the page in a browser and finally convert selected or all text to lower or upper case.

AH Note can open many text files formats and save them in its own native *.aht format in addition to *.txt, *.rtf and others. AH Note is obviously a young project, one area which makes that clear is the tool tips (hover the mouse over menu buttons). As of this review – version 1.0 – some tool tips are not properly labeled and are still the likes of ‘ToolStripSplitButton’, a mark of the programming language used to code AH Note. AH Note is one self contained executable file that doesn’t require installation, just download it and run it.

 

Hornil StylePix, Freeware Photoshop Alternative

Hornil StylePix is an impressive Photoshop replacement that is not only freeware but is only 1.5MB in size. The layout is similar to that of the expensive Adobe product. Not unlike other free Photoshop alternatives it supports a lot of the features or functions of the much bigger product and does them reasonably well.

Hornil StylePix’s features include the likes of lasso (free, polygonal and others and all with extra settings to increase, decrease, fill and generally work with the selected region), erase, spray and an easy way to draw shapes.

Walking through the program menu, the following are also available.

The file menu: Batch processing with control over output size, name, orientation and filter. Browsing, previewing and navigating folders from within the program. Setting images as wallpaper.

The edit menu: The usual series of tools like brush, clone, fill, color drop, text, zoom, transform, fix red eye and others. Here is also where one can use Hornil StylePix’s support for multiple undo levels in addition to the histogram.

The image menu: Rotate, resize, duplicate and crop.

The object menu: ‘Inserting’ images into other images and working with them as groups and then aligning, blending and layering (the image shows two pictures ‘grouped’ together)

The Filter menu features a list of filters including the likes of noise, sketch, glow, blur and others.

The view menu : Grid, ruler, and zoom. Also full screen mode and slideshow for the current image’s folder. This is also where the program options reside where the slideshow, interface grid, program skin and other settings are configured.

The Window menu arranges windows and preserves or saves the layout for future sessions.

A pro version with layer styles such as emboss, shadow and glow is also available. Hornil StylePix runs on Windows XP and newer PCs.

 

Listary is a windows program that helps the user search for and find files faster but it is not a normal search tool or utility. It is activated using the (customizable) Win+W keys and its interface consists solely of a small floating box (see image). When a list of files is open pressing the program hotkey and then immediately typing a few letters of the file name one can filter down to a file name and therefore locate it. The strength of Listary is that it supports many lists or windows, these include but are not limited to Windows Explorer, Task Manager, Registry Editor, Windows Desktop and the file Open/Save dialog box. The program options (accessible via the program’s tray icon) lets the user change the search mode to what it calls traditional search. In traditional search one must type the first letter of the file name – instead of any any letter in the file name, a feature of Listary’s Default search mode – to start a search. Listary also supports the use of wild card characters (* and ?) in its traditional search mode.

Typing / in the same floating box presents the user with a set of predefined shortcut or commands. These include opening the command prompt in the same directory as the open list or window, copying folder paths and others.

Additionally Listary reserves the Win+A keys to open the system’s default text editor so that the user can have quick access to a text editor. A good use of this Listary feature is when a text area (gmail’s compose email window for example) is active or in focus then the text editor will automatically contain any text already typed so one is ready to continue editing inside the text editor.

The aforementioned text editing feature doesn’t really belong to a program geared mainly towards search but is a welcome one. A video on the program’s homepage showcases its features with a few examples. The program runs on Windows XP, Vista and 7 and has a pro version with support for regular expressions and a few other extras.

 

XPad is a text editor with a compact interface and a good number of extra tools. The program can be run right after download with no need for an installation. The program’s menu surrounds its interface (see image).

The left hand side icons or menu are the usual New, Open File, Save, Save As, Print, Cut, Copy, Paste, Delete (the selected text), Find, Search Again, Replace and About. Of course all the usual keyboard shortcuts – Ctrl+P, Ctrl+S, etc. – apply as well.

The right hand side icons or menu is where the XPad extras can be found, they are as follows:

  • Word Wrap
  • Automatic Copy Selection To Keyboard
  • Multiple Clipboard, if activated or pressed it will hold a configurable number of clipboard items that are automatically pasted when they are highlighted or chosen from the generated list
  • Open system’s font selector
  • Text format, set any of Windows, Mac, UTF-16, Arabic Characters and many more for the text document
  • Filters for such tasks as removing spaces, converting HTML to text, converting tabs to spaces and more
  • Encode and decode Base64, UTF-8
  • Clean or remove clipboard content
  • Delete file securely
  • Open another instance of XPad
  • Open system calculator
  • Send current text as email, in my test the text was automatically copied to the email subject line with nothing in the body
  • Open (default) browser, if a URL is highlighted it will be loaded otherwise a blank browser window opens
  • Open an instance of Windows Explorer
  • Keep XPad on top, click the pin icon

    The final icon is for XPad’s configuration options. In it one can create a shortcut icon for the program, associate it with *.txt files (so all *.txt files open with XPad instead of Notepad or other system default text editor), remember last opened files and/or directory and the aforementioned multiple clipboard option. There is also a Window with a list of XPad’s hotkeys or shortcuts (see image).

    XPad is just over 1MB, it is only one single *.exe file (and one *.ini file to hold its settings) and should run on all Windows versions.

     

    Greenshot is a lightweight program to capture parts or all of the screen. When the program is running it will, optionally, take over the Print (or Print Screen) button of the keyboard. It also uses the Ctrl, Alt and Shift keys that when clicked in conjunction with the Print key capture the active window, the whole screen or repeat the last capture respectively. When the Print key is used on its own Greenshot presents the user with a cross hairs to capture, by dragging the mouse, any rectangular region of the screen. In the program’s Preferences one can toggle off the aforementioned hotkeys and therefore use Greenshot by right clicking its tray icon. It is also possible to ask the program to capture the mouse pointer (cursor) or not. There is also a setting called ‘Use interactive window capture mode’ however I did not see anything different when it is toggled on or off.
    There are various ways to control the actions of Greenshot after the capture is done. The Output tab in the preferences lets the user choose

    • to open a capture in the program’s built-in editor,
    • to copy it to the clipboard,
    • to send it to printer,
    • to show the save as dialog box,
    • to save it without any dialog box or
    • to email it

    The same tab has the pre-configurable settings for the ‘save it without any dialog box’ option where one can define the default location for saving, naming rules and image format and quality of the capture.

    The preferences’ Print tab includes such options as fit to page, rotate to fit paper orientation and center image.

    The built-in image editor (see image, captured using Greenshot itself) lets the user draw shapes (rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, etc.), write text or to crop the captured image. The editor’s Object menu and option, which saves *.gst format files, works as a sort of template or snippet. These *.gst files can hold shapes, arrows or text which can then be overlayed on subsequent screen captures or screen shots.

    Greenshot is fast and is a 550KB download and should work on all Windows versions.

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