Rating: 5 pick

Version tested: 4.1

Description: ColorPic is a free app that allows you to pick any color from the screen and displays its code in HEX and decmial. It features a versatile color mixer and the ability to create and save color palettes. It also offers a number of others functions such as a customizable magnification area and the ability to snap to the nearest websafe color.

Most people working with websites and/or with design will invariably need a “color picker” program that can identify the color code of any pixel on screen. There are many such free programs, but of all that I have tried ColorPic is by far the best. Here’s what I like about it:

• Allows you to store captured colors inside pallets which you can come back to later (to the tune of 16 colors per pallet). You can create as many of these as you like.
• Snap to nearest websafe color: once you grab your color a little “websnap” button will appear close to its code on the ColorPic interface. Clicking on this will snap to the nearest websafe color. Very cool.
• Magnifier: this is available as part of the ColorPic interface. You can increase/decrease magnification or overlay a grid.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.05

Description: HTML GUI Tidy is a graphical user interface for HTML Tidy, a program that automatically optimizes HTML/PHP source code and fixes a number of common problems. It also arranges code so as to give it a reasonable indent-style layout.

I am not a programmer nor a developer, but ever since starting Freewaregenius I have learned a bit of HTML and occasionally found myself having to change, modify, and/or add countless parts of code. At times I would need to do something that was over my head or would have a problems with my site that would lead me to seek the help of our hotshot programmers at work. Typically, the first things these guys would go is dump my code into their favorite text editor then proceed to fix the visual layout; separating chunks of code, inserting and maintaining a hierarchy of indents and margins that just made the code look good and comprehensible. They then will go down the code removing unneeded code and checking for beginning and end tags to make sure all of these are present and correctly placed. In most cases, this exercise alone would either solve the problem or at least make it apparent what it was.

What GUI Tidy/HTML Tidy promises to do is essentially the exercise above. It will allow you to dump your code into the ’originial code’ tab, process it, then generate a new code inside the ’optimized html’ tab with the implemented corrections and optimizations. This tab also contains a third window that contains errors and information on where in the code they were found.
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Rating: 5

Version tested: 1.0.1 (6) beta

Description: Windows Live Writer is a true WYSIWYG blog authoring tool that can be used to write and edit blog postings (including pictures) locally and then post these online. It supports a wide range of blogging platforms including Windows Live Spaces, Wordpress, and Blogger. 

Let me start by saying flat out that I am in love with this program, mainly because it allows me to work on a blog posting locally and publish it when I’m ready. Here’s what you need to know about it.

Notable features : 

• WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get). It will download your site’s CSS and is able to preview exactly what your post will look like when published. The editing interface looks really good and is very well designed.
• Built in spelling checker.
• Instantly switch from normal view to the HTML code and to ‘web preview’.
• Tags Tags Tags! Enter tags straight from the Windows Live Writer interface. For Wordpress check out this plugin that will work with the Windows Live Writer tags for both tag and metakeyword support.    Read more »