Tools we use
(to design and maintain our own sites)
• Construction and quality checking
programs
• Windows XP Professional
• Microsoft FrontPage 2003
• EditPad Light
• Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator CS
• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Compupic32
• Xenu's Link Sleuth
Construction and quality checking programs
The designers of showtheworld.com maintain
several homes in various Internet neighborhoods. One thing
all the homes have in common is the software used to build
and maintain them. To visit some of
our other homes, check the directory at
About
Us.
Windows XP Professional
Windows XP Professional, SP2 is on all
of our computers. Even though Microsoft Vista is on the
market now, we can’t determine any compelling reason to upgrade
to it, especially considering the
high retail price. Regardless of the operating system on
your computer,
update it frequently with available security patches and service packs.
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Microsoft Expression Web (First edition)
We just upgraded to Microsoft Expression Web
to design, manage and post our sites. That is proving to be
a big mistake, but we’re struggling through it. Our previous
program, FrontPage 2003 was a pleasure to use. Expression
Web is a clunky, crowded “Page Design For Dummies” program
that will frustrate even the most advanced users of
FrontPage 2003.
EditPad Light (Version 5.3.0)
EditPad is an excellent and fast ASCII text
editor with more features than Windows Notepad, including
the ability to keep several files open at once. If you need
to make quick changes to Internet page HTML code or perform
a lot of “cut and paste” operations into site pages, this is
the program for you.
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Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator CS
We use Adobe Photoshop and
Illustrator to create or modify all of the graphics used at
our sites. These Adobe
products are tedious to learn but once you get the hang of
them, you will understand why they are the predominant
graphics programs used by professional graphic designers and
publishers.
Photoshop and Illustrator are expensive, so if you
only need to create or manipulate simple graphics and
digital photographs, pick up one of the inexpensive graphics
programs for $50 or less. As long as they can create and
manipulate .gif and .jpg files, they may be all you need.
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Microsoft Internet Explorer Version 7.0.5730.11
This will continue to be the the standard
browser used on the Internet. MSIE currently commands
approximately 85 - 90 percent of the browser market and is
FREE. Version 7.0 is even better than version 6; is more
secure and has new features like tabs. We test the homes we
build with Netscape Navigator and Mozilla Firefox, but for
all of our own Internet surfing we use the Microsoft
browser.
Compupic32 (Version 6.23.1364)
We use this excellent shareware program to catalog,
manage, view and sometimes even modify
graphics files. It comes with a number of advanced graphics
editing features, but we prefer it for the excellent way it
indexes and displays our graphics and photo collections.
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Xenu’s Link Sleuth (Version 1.2g)
Link checking is mandatory for a professional site.
Nothing aggravates visitors more than clicking on a link,
waiting 15 - 30 seconds, and then receiving the infamous
“404” error. On a large site you can spend the better part
of an hour (or more) checking all the links, or you can
obtain a program that does it for you in just minutes. There
is a variety of commercial link checking software available
with numerous features and unreasonably high prices, but
Xenu’s Link Sleuth does an admirable job for free.
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