OSSwin: Open Source for Windows

The OSSwin Project, at http://osswin.sourceforge.net/, is essentially a very long list of links to free, open-source tools available to Windows users.

All of the most popular open source tools are here: GIMP (image editing), Audacity (audio recording and editing), Filezilla (file transfer, or FTP), Firefox (browser), Thunderbird (email), and Open Office (a office tools suite, similar to Microsoft Office). But there are more esoteric tools here too, from CAD software and zip compression to firewalls and anti-virus tools. All free, all open source. Take a look!

VideoLAN Media Player

The VideoLAN media player (http://www.videolan.org/)is a free, open-source, cross-platform video and audio player that I've been using for close to a year now. It will play most DVDs, virtually all audio CDs, as well as web-friendly formats like Flash and the Windows .wmv format (a complete list is available at http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html). It has, in fact, played almost every media file format I've thrown at it, without requiring me to go online and find the applicable codec.

It's fast, and simple. It plays on Windows, Mac and Linux systems. It's a great alternative to Windows Media player, and I've made it my default media player for video and audio on both my personal and work computers.

Give it a try! You can download it here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/.

PortableApps.com

Their tagline is "Your computer, without the computer."

PortableApps (http://portableapps.com/) is a free open source platform that allows you to carry multiple applications around on a flash drive. The basic Portable Apps suite comes loaded with a web browser (Firefox), email client (Thunderbird), and office suite (Open Office), as well as calendar/scheduler, antivirus, audio player and more, all preconfigured to work portably. Just drop it on your portable device and you're ready to go.

A large number of optional applications are available as well - ALL free and open source - from digital Bibles to Audacity audio editing software and the GIMP Image editing program.

It allows you to carry around the files and documents you are working with too, so that, for instance, images you are editing using GIMP, or music you are listening to using Coolplayer, are stored on the same Flash drive as the PortableApps platform.

PortableApps takes mere minutes to set up, loads quickly, and is easy to use and personalize. A full list of apps it supports is available at: http://portableapps.com/apps.

ZScreen: Free Screen Capture Software

I mentioned today in a Connect training session that I changed a Word document to a .jpg image by taking a screenshot of it, as Connect allows you to import .jpg's, but not Word documents. I did not explain how I did that. Personally, I use SnagIt (http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp) for these kind of screen captures, but it costs $50.

A free piece of open source software that works nearly as well is ZScreen (http://brandonz.net/projects/zscreen/index.html). You specify whether you'd like to capture the entire screen, a specific window, or a crop of your desktop. You can set the hotkeys for the capture to whatever you want (a screenshot - created with ZScreen - of that menu is below), choose what folders you want to put your images into, and whether you want to bring them up in a photo editor after capture.


ZScreen doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Snagit, but it is fast and fr`ee and good at what it does. If you bring your captures up in an image editor like Photoshop or GIMP to modify it, you can do anything Snagit can do.

Password Safe

Password Safe (http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/) is a neat little open source password tool, that allows you to store and manage all your various passwords in one encrypted and secure place. All you need to remember is one master password.

With Password Safe, you can easily generate, store, organize, retrieve, and use complex new passwords, using password policies that you control. Once stored, your user names and passwords are just a few clicks away.


You can choose to store all your passwords in a single encrypted master password list (an encrypted password database), or use multiple databases to further organize your passwords (e.g. work, school, home).

Suggested by Andrew Riesel.

Notepad++ Source Code Editor

In the past I've always tended to code HTML and CSS in Notepad or Dreamweaver; to make small changes I'd just pull up the no-frills Notepad, if the was a lot of code to wade through I'd use Dreamweaver, because it indents and color-codes the code automatically, to help me find my way around.

I've always wanted to find something between those two options, though. A source code editor that has indenting and color-coding, but without all the unnecessary bells and whistles of Dreamweaver. Darrin Goodman steered me to Notepad++, which seems to be the perfect solution. It's a free, lightweight source code editor that color-codes and indents the code so you can find your way around more easily. Ctrl+Space will allow you to bring up the auto-completion feature, and you can easily preview the code in either Internet Explorer or Firefox right from the menu.

I've only been using it for a few days, and I'm already a convert. It works in many languages other than HTML and CSS, and has an advanced find-and-replace feature. There are also many plug-ins available to fine-tune it to your own needs.

To learn more, or to download Notepad++, go to http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm. And thanks, Darrin, for the recommendation!

A screen shot is below.

Cam Studio

I've been using Camtasia for years now to record and edit training videos. It's a video screen capture device, so you can record what is happening on your computer screen, and narrate, edit and add titles to the video.

There is a free, open source version of Camtasia called Cam Studio. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Camtasia, but it does has some nice features, like autopan and cursor highlighting. I gave it a test drive yesterday, and it worked quite well (the results are below). I talked to several eXtension agents who have been using it for some time now and were very happy with it.

The recording video output is .avi, but it comes with a tool which easily renders it to Flash video. I've included a video I made with Cam Studio below. It's a tutorial on defining a site in Dreamweaver.

Download Cam studio here. The link will also provide more information about Cam Studio.

GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a free, open-source image editor, similar to Adobe Photoshop. It's not quite as user-friendly as Photoshop, but if you're familiar with Phoroshop, you can find your way around in GIMP. Concepts such as selecting tools from a Toolbox palette (shown below) and building an image with a Layers palette transfer easily from Photoshop to GIMP.

Plus, it's free, and does some things better than Photoshop.

Because it's open source, there are plenty of free plug-ins and extensions available to help you customize GIMP to best suit your needs.

And, to help you out with the sometimes steep learning curve of both Photoshop and GIMP, there are archived tutorials available at:
http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/comptrain/copho.shtml

More information about GIMP, and the download it self, can be found at http://www.gimp.org/

Audacity

Audacity is a free, open source sound recorder and editor. It has easy, intuitive VCR-like controls for Record, Play, Fast forward and Rewind, and can export a sound file as a .wav or an .mp3 (use the File menu to choose what format you want). All you need is a microphone; plug it in to your computer's sound card, click the play button, and start recording. I used it to record my children singing Christmas songs a couple of years back and had it downloaded, installed and running in minutes.


To edit a sound file, all you do is select the section you'd like to cut by clicking and dragging inside the timeline, and hitting Delete. To combine recordings, use the Edit menu to cut and paste tracks together.

Visit the Audacity site for more information on on using Audacity.

Download Audacity here.

Filezilla

This has been around for a long time, and in wide use, but it's such a handy tool it's worth mentioning in this forum. Filezilla is a free, open source FTP tool. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, which basically means the set of rules used to transfer files from one computer to another. Versions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac.

You can download Filezilla here.

With Filezilla, you can take files from, and upload files to, a web server. If you are building a web site, you put in your Host (e.g. yuma.colostate.edu), Username (e.g. cwis392) and Password in the top Quickconnect bar (circled in blue in the screen shot below). You can usually leave the Port blank.

Click the screenshot to see a larger version of it.

Local files are on the left, and remote files on the web server are on the right. To upload, you navigate to the files you want to transfer by using the directory tree on the left. Select the files you want to transfer (use Ctrl to select multiple files), then right-click and choose Upload. To download files from the web server, navigate to the files you want to transfer in the right pane, and once you have the files selected, right-click and choose download.

Hint: to move up a level in the directory tree, click on the folder icon with the two dots after it, circled in red in the screenshot below.


If you are going to connect to the same server multiple times, you should use the Site Manager to save your login information. Go to the File menu and choose Site Manager. Click New Site (circled in green below) and put in your Host, Username and Password information on the right. Then, when you wish to connect, pull up the Site Manager and click Connect.