FreewareVista Great Freeware
Freeware and free trials, tips and resources
Webmaster Resources
Applications and resources are readily available on the internet to anyone who wants to develop websites. The programs and resources noted here have been particulary useful to me. Also, if you're new to website design and development you may find these tools are some of the easier ones to help you get started.
CoffeeCup Firestarter (free Trial) - inexpensive, easy to learn and use tool for making Flash animations. The SuperRedBear Flying animations were made using this tool
Namo Web Editor (Free Trial) - a quality WYSIWYG web editor. Relatively easy to learn, very easy to use once you get the hang of it. It's very reliable...the last thing you want is a Web Editor that crashes...this is a solid, quality product.
NavStudio (Free Trial) - DHTML menu generating system - free to use if you link back to developer Open Cube. System allows precise design, resulting menus are light, fast, cross platform functional, and basically work great. The Super Red Bear menus are created with NavStudio
Flashation (Free Trial) - so you'd like to have some eye-catching buttons and menus on your website? The flashation system works and it's easy to learn - it's the only flash button creator I've found that one can jump into with no training, no study and have a nice set of buttons in 10 minutes.
HyperSnap (Free Trial) - have you marveled at cool screenshots. Now you can create your own easily. HyperSnap is so intuitive - learn and capture screenshots by just fumbling with interface buttons. Captures whole screen, virtual desktop, or a specified area. Note the handy targeting device at 'Capture'->'Region', guides for precise edge and corner capture. After capture you can crop and adjust quality to keep graphics light and save to numerous formats including Adobe PSD.
Fluid Dynamics Search Engine - easy to set up 100% pure Perl search engine script for your own site search engine. Operates locally with no dependencies. Quality documentation.
Web Link Validator (Free Trial) - fast, powerful link checker worth its weight in gold. As you accumulate more links, tracking and fixing broken links becomes a chore. Web Link Validator finds them and issues an easy to use report (shows exact page, exact link, the error, etc.). Has lots of sensible tools, such as 'Check Broken Links' - you can simply recheck the broken links.
Deep Log Analyzer (Free Trial) - this analysis tool sets up easily and provides an always fast and smooth one-click FTP server log file update. Use the handy calender tool to change statistic time frames with a single click. Monitors all robots - click to see what resources they accessed. Be sure to try the Pro version and download the extra reports.
Google Sitemap Generator - online service (Tarrant IT) creates a quality XML Google site map. This service seems to be the most intuitive of the online Sitemap generators we've attempted to use (means easy to use without reading help). See also this section for helpful info from Google and Google Sitemaps FAQ
XML-Sitemaps.com - another easy to use free sitemap generator to create Google sitemaps
Nvu - Freeware HTML Editor
Good Keywords - handy freeware tool. Suggests keywords, mispellings, plus phrase builder and more.
Website Design - Basics
HTML - from Webopedia
SuperRedBear Glossary - see also HTML Editor and WYSIWYG
How Web Pages Work - from 'How Stuff Works'
24 Hour HTML Cafe - on-line companion to Sam's Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours, get a Cup o' Joe and visit the cafe
Sam's Teach Yourself HTML in 24 Hours - very helpful for learning HTML basics
Namo Web Editor (Free Trial) - a new user often just stares blankly at a web editor........this is where to start........In Namo Web Editor go to 'Table' -> 'Draw Layout Box' and use your mouse to draw a box. Draw a 'Cell' inside the box using 'Table'->'Draw Layout Cell'. Then Right-click on the cell to open up Cell Properties where you can choose a color or set a background image. Click on the cell and you can type inside it.....
Tip - make sure you get the manual. It's likely to be the most dog-eared book you'll ever own. The Namo manual explains everything the software can do and is absolutely essential to help you through some of the intricacies that inevitably arise as you design your site.
A Namo manual is also available as a download.
Tip - learn a little bit of HTML. You don't have to become an expert - but when something isn't quite right or needs fine tuning, you'll be glad you know enough HTML to be able to sort it out easily.
Basic Tutorial on Frames
Using a PHP include
Color Help
Draac's Color Converter
Color Schemer
ColorMatch 5K - award winning handy tool to match colors, Internet Explorer only
Easy RGB
Namo Web Editor - in Namo go to Tools -> Color Sets
Nutrockers Web HTML Color Code Chart
4096 Color Wheel
Whytehouse
Graphics Help
Adobe Photoshop Elements
Swift Optimizer (Free Trial) - for optimization of swf files
LogoMaid - site for quality Logos, buy and download from the members area
Spinwave - jpeg and gif crunchers for optimized (faster downloading) graphics, free online version 30% compression
Xat.com Image Optimizer - jpeg, gif, png optimization
APlus Net - very reliable, helpful support staff
Cre8asite
Dani Web
HTML Forum
NamePros
Webmaster World
WebDeveloper
WebProWorld
Site Statistics
Here's some helpful pages explaining site statistics from: Webalizer & Industrial Quick Search
Deep Log Analyzer (Free Trial) - this analysis tool sets up easily and provides an always fast and smooth one-click FTP server log file update. Use the handy calender tool to change statistic time frames with a single click. Monitors all robots - click to see what resources they accessed. Be sure to try the Pro version and download the extra reports.
Google Analytics
Site Search
Google Free Web Search - add a Web search, a content safe search, or a search with user option to search your site, code is provided, a nice service to add to your site
Fluid Dynamics Search Engine - easy to set up 100% pure Perl search engine script for your own site search engine. Operates locally with no dependencies. Quality documentation.
Robots/Crawlers
Robots Meta Tag - provides control over where the crawler goes. The Inktomi robot defaults to 'nofollow'