First, if you're sick of Adobe Reader bloat, with the huge installer to download, mysterious services running in the background and long, long loading times, then the free Foxit PDF reader is for you. I uninstalled Adobe and bunged this nice light (under 3mb) program onto my machine instead. PDFs open so quickly it's almost like the golden days of Adobe 3 & 4.
Second, the giant killing web browser Firefox 3.0 is out today. I've been running the beta on my laptop, where it was noticeably faster than Firefox 2.x, but I've now upgraded my desktop PC to the stable release and it's lightning quick. Be sure to install the Adblock Plus and NoScript extensions and your browsing will be safe and pleasurable. (With adblock plus you select the subscription option at the top of the list. With NoScript, you'll need to enable Javascript for each of your regular websites - online banking, news sites, blogs, etc - but none of the other websites you might come across.)
Third, OpenOffice 2.4.1 is out. This fully-featured office suite is a large download (around 120 megs), and while it's not all that nippy to start up it's still a pleasure to use. I gave up on MS Office after using the '97 edition for years, and OO does everything I need - you get a word processor, spreadsheet, database, presentation app (similar to Powerpoint) and a DTP program for brochures, flyers, etc.
Finally, if you're looking for an antivirus solution, try AVG 8. There's an unrestricted free edition for personal use, although the first thing I'd do is switch off the safesearch browser plugin, since it's a drain on your bandwidth.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Showing posts with label software. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
yWriter 4 review
Just had an email letting me know of the first major review of yWriter 4.
Lots of pros, a good score, and only two cons. One of the cons (no submission tracker) is irrelevant, since I already have Sonar in the stable. The other ... well, I don't believe in hand-holding when it comes to software ;-)
Anyway, take a look at the review for more.
EDIT: Don't miss the new yWriter mailing list.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)
Lots of pros, a good score, and only two cons. One of the cons (no submission tracker) is irrelevant, since I already have Sonar in the stable. The other ... well, I don't believe in hand-holding when it comes to software ;-)
Anyway, take a look at the review for more.
EDIT: Don't miss the new yWriter mailing list.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)
Friday, November 16, 2007
Beta versions!
I don't often blog about my software, but I know a lot of you are using yWriter.
Over the past week I've been altering chunks of yWriter3 to make the file storage a bit less extreme. Right now it sprouts text files like weeds whenever you do anything, and I wanted to tidy things up a bit. So, I wrote a version which consolidates all these additional files into the main chapters.ini, scenes.ini and so on. I also added features to the characters sheet, and tweaked a few other things.
Then I went much further, and rewrote the entire storage system to use XML files. This was a major change, so last night I dubbed THIS version yWriter 4, keeping just the smaller improvements for yWriter 3.
yW4 isn't available yet, but you can grab a beta of new improved yWriter 3 here. A couple of points: 1, you need yWriter 3 installed before you can run the beta - instructions on the page I just linked to. 2, make a backup of your current project folder, all of it, before running the new beta. Just drag and drop the folder to create 'Copy of ---'. Then, if this version of yW3 messes up on your system, you just reinstall the original, rename the messed-up project to 'Messed up ---' and rename 'Copy of ---' back to just '---' Once you've confirmed it's all running smoothly again, you can then delete 'Messed up ---' (In all of these examples, --- is the project folder, not the yWriter folder.)
Also, if you want to hold off messing with betas until AFTER NanoWrimo, that's probably a good idea.
There's another beta I've made available too: RMP. That one's here, and the same warnings apply. (Although in this case events.dat is all you need to back up, and RMP2 won't harm the original.)
As for yWriter 4... I'm now using it myself instead of yWriter3. What that means is that future development of yWriter 3 has ceased, and all improvements and extra features will go into yWriter 4 from this point on. I'm expecting to release a beta soon .. it's working fine, but I really have to deal with Hal 4 and 5 before I take on more work.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)
Over the past week I've been altering chunks of yWriter3 to make the file storage a bit less extreme. Right now it sprouts text files like weeds whenever you do anything, and I wanted to tidy things up a bit. So, I wrote a version which consolidates all these additional files into the main chapters.ini, scenes.ini and so on. I also added features to the characters sheet, and tweaked a few other things.
Then I went much further, and rewrote the entire storage system to use XML files. This was a major change, so last night I dubbed THIS version yWriter 4, keeping just the smaller improvements for yWriter 3.
yW4 isn't available yet, but you can grab a beta of new improved yWriter 3 here. A couple of points: 1, you need yWriter 3 installed before you can run the beta - instructions on the page I just linked to. 2, make a backup of your current project folder, all of it, before running the new beta. Just drag and drop the folder to create 'Copy of ---'. Then, if this version of yW3 messes up on your system, you just reinstall the original, rename the messed-up project to 'Messed up ---' and rename 'Copy of ---' back to just '---' Once you've confirmed it's all running smoothly again, you can then delete 'Messed up ---' (In all of these examples, --- is the project folder, not the yWriter folder.)
Also, if you want to hold off messing with betas until AFTER NanoWrimo, that's probably a good idea.
There's another beta I've made available too: RMP. That one's here, and the same warnings apply. (Although in this case events.dat is all you need to back up, and RMP2 won't harm the original.)
As for yWriter 4... I'm now using it myself instead of yWriter3. What that means is that future development of yWriter 3 has ceased, and all improvements and extra features will go into yWriter 4 from this point on. I'm expecting to release a beta soon .. it's working fine, but I really have to deal with Hal 4 and 5 before I take on more work.
Simon Haynes is the author of the Hal Spacejock and Hal Junior series (Amazon / Smashwords / other formats)
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