Tools

These tools are needed to view many of the movies and other "rich" media on the web.

Windows and Mac

	Acrobat Reader: Allows you to read PDF (Portable Document Format) documents. These are very common - Mac OS X has its own reader built in that works well.
	Flash Player: A common format for showing video and interactive web content.
	QuickTime: Allows you to be able to play many poplar audio and video formats found on the web. The download link also allows you to download iTunes if you like. My Portfolio page has a video on iTunes. There is a version of iTunes specifically for 64 bit versions of Windows.
	Real Player: Another common format for online videos.

Mac Only

There are a couple of Mac-only media players I suggest for Mac users. They allow you to view just about any media file you run across on the web, even if not designed to be "Mac-friendly".

	Flip4Mac: Allows for the viewing of most Windows Media Files.
	Perian: Allows for viewing of a very wide range of video formats; pretty much anything but Windows Media Files

 

Many Prescott Computer Guy customers use these programs - all are free and have served many people well.

Other Tools: Windows and Mac

	Firefox: Excellent web browser that can be used instead of Internet Explorer or Safari.
	FireFox Web Developer Extension: Adds many developer tools in a handy menu - absolutely essentual to any web developer as far as I am concerned.
	OpenOffice: For many people a great and free alternative to Microsoft Office.
	Picasa: If you have a digital camera this is an excellent choice for finding, organizing, editing, and sharing your photos (Windows or Mac, but Macs come with a similar program called iPhoto - also excellent)

Other Tools: Windows Only

	CutePDF: Allows saving almost any file you can print as a PDF (a file that can be read on almost any computer). (Windows only but Macs have the capability built in)
	IE Tester: A handy tool to see how web pages look in IE5.5, IE6, IE7 and IE8. It is not the most stable of programs, but it comes in very handy. For Mac users, or to see how your site works in even more browswers, you can use browsershots.org or Adobe's Browser Lab.
	UltraVNC: A useful tool for allowing people to remotely see and control your computer - with your permission, of course!

Other Tools: Mac Only

	DreamCatcher for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard): A tool that allows the easy spell checking of an entire website. It is excellent, even if a little quirky (it sometimes reports half a word as a misspelled word). Still, an excellent tool.
	DreamCatcher for OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard): The publisher's copy does not work for OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), but he very kindly updated a copy for me and told me I could share it. I do not know why he has not posted the updated version, but it has worked well for me.

If you think your Internet speed is slower than it should be, then this is a good way to be able to bring exact numbers to your Internet Service Provider (ISP). For best results, you should quit out of any other program that might use your Internet connection as you do this test, such as email programs (Mac or Windows).

Internet Speed Test