Month: October 2010

  • Freeware Quick Cliq Is An Innovative Launcher And More

    Freeware Quick Cliq Is An Innovative Launcher And More

    Quick Cliq, packed into a single executable, is an interesting launcher and productivity tool. It incorporates launching files, folders, URLs and emails with an enhanced clipboard utility and the ability to keep text snippets as memos. It also supports a number of Windows manipulation features.

    The program interface is launched by choosing the Add/Change item via its tray icon or via – the configurable – Win+Z keys. The options for configuring hot keys and mouse gestures are found under the settings menu. Other settings include enabling features such memos and setting colors and such things as adding the program to the Windows context menu.

    The program is divided into four main sections or features each launched in it own configurable way. They are described below.

    Accessing the Main menu: hold right mouse button and move mouse down or the aforementioned Win+Z if using the keyboard. Here you can create quick launches by adding folders, files, URLs, and email addresses in a sort of a list that will then be available for using the same mouse gesture or key combination.

    Windows menu: hold right mouse button and move mouse right or Win+C keys. The Windows menus allows you to hide or show windows and a few others settings like choosing to keep a window on top. When windows are hidden any one of them can be previewed by hovering over their name in the windows list while pressing the Ctrl key.

    Memos menu: hold right mouse button and move mouse left or Win+A keys. Add as many memos as you need and then send them to clipboard or automatically add them to the current open window.

    Clips menu: hold right mouse button and move mouse up or Win+X keys. This is where the program is on the innovative side of things. In addition to holding up to nine clipboard items it is possible to append or add data to any one of the existing clips. As the tutorial video on the developer site shows suppose a user needs to copy only certain paragraphs from a long page or text into a new clip. Using Quick Cliq instead of repeatedly selecting the text and then pressing Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V while going back and forth between the long text and the new clip or document the user can press Ctrl+1 (the 1 represents the numbered clip item so it could be any of 1 to 9) to copy and then press Alt+1 to paste, all without leaving the original long page or text. Then to append or add to the clip (clip 1 in this example) other text can be selected and added to that clip or document simply and only by pressing Ctrl+Win+1.

    Quick Cliq is in active development and in addition to the video tutorials it is also a good idea to follow the developer blog. It requires Windows XP as a minimum.

  • Freeware TSR Watermark Image Protects Your Images

    Freeware TSR Watermark Image Protects Your Images

    TSR Watermark Image is a freeware tool for adding text, images or watermarks to your images. TSR Watermark Image makes it easy to watermark a series of images because it works with a source folder – where the images may reside. The user can then configure the destination folder keeping the originals untouched.

    The output format, quality, transparency and – the preservation of – EXIF data can then be configured. The position of the watermark itself can also be configured from nine placement options like center, lower left and others. After placing it in one of the nine locations TSR Watermark Image also offers additional control over that location via the ‘relative offset’ settings.

    Finally one can choose to do watermarks by using or overlaying another image or to simply add a text watermark. One useful additional feature is that a user can change the size of the watermark relative to the original images’ sizes so that one can choose to watermark a smaller or larger portion of the images. When adding a text watermark the font, color and style of the text is configurable as well. Note that by default TSR Watermark Image adds the watermark at a 270 degrees angle (see image), this may or may not be the best angle but as with everything else this is also configurable.

    TSR Watermark Image is free for personal use and also available in a portable version.

  • Freeware Font Manager: dp4 Font Viewer

    Freeware Font Manager: dp4 Font Viewer

    dp4 Font Viewer

    dp4 Font Viewer is a small no-install utility that provides lots of information about the fonts (TrueType (TTF) and others) installed on a Windows system. When running the program provides a count of fonts installed on a drive, either in the default (for example C:\WINDOWS\Fonts) or other locations. It is possible to print a font list or a complete preview of a chosen font. In the latter either a full list of characters or one’s own text can be printed. The Font menu includes options to install or delete fonts from within dp4 Font Viewer, to view any fonts’ properties or even to generate a bitmap image of the font preview. The aforementioned install option also a includes ‘make available’ which lets the user work with fonts temporarily.

    Additionally dp4 Font Viewer has many filtering options to narrow down installed fonts by class (serif, sans serif, symbolic and others), weight class (bold, thin, light and others), width class (various condensed types) and monospaced fonts. Fonts can be previewed in different sizes from 7 to 144 pixels.

    dp4 Font Viewer is also available in a native 64bit version.

  • Texter: Freeware And Attractive Text Editor

    Texter: Freeware And Attractive Text Editor

    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.