Page History

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If you are a Windows XP user, refer to this supplementary older list which compensates for programs that are not part of Windows 7 or do not work in Windows XP.

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1. Kitty - Takes the actual Putty code base and improves the interface with the following key features. For a quick setup you can download my personalized kitty setup which contains a configuration file and adjustments to the defaults per my note on Putty. Here are the details of my personal configuration file,
   1. Portable option - instead of Windows Registry saves to local file in the directory
   2. Transparent Windows (CTRL-Up Arror and CTRL-Down Arrow)
   3. CTRL-F7 Pin Window to always be on top (useful with Transparency and especially with second or third monitor)
   4. Improved sizeable session manager, but still not as good as Putty Connection Manager
2. Putty - I find this to be the most reliable compatible and universal. However, the interface is dated and Kitty is much better. I only install this today to run with Putty Connection Manager. Generally I adjust the defaults to:
   1. Window - Columns = 100, Lines of scrollback to 2000
   2. Window, Translation - Received data assumed to be in which character set: UTF-8
3. Putty Connection Manager An updated tabbed and tree based listing interface to Putty (no install, though it does use the registry consider talking to this developers about not doing this)
   1. For convenience I create a manual package. Just download the manual package and unzip to your "Program Files" and then execute puttycm.exe.
4. ExpandDrive (create a map drive over SSH for easy development)
5. BitVise Tunnelier
   1. No Putty Integration (console included is not as universally compatible)
   2. GUI for tunneling
   3. Hides in System tray
   4. Does not support drag and drop from desktop
6. Firefox US version for compatibility + plugins, 
   1. Highlighter by Terry Yen - My favourite highlighter but it no longer works with Firefox 3.6.3. Update, the latest working version is now at http://netticat.ath.cx/MyAddons/MyAddons.htm
   2. Highlighter TexMarker Go - The simplest alternative I found (I don't like the other ones that might slow down my system
   3. MM3-ProxySwitch - Simple UI for switching proxies but still a bit too complicated for novices.
      1. After install Right click on white space beside the help and choose Customize
      2. Scroll down and look for the mm3 icon
      3. Drag icon to where you want on the browser, I put it on the right of my address bar
   4. Spell checking in forms will only be enabled unless if you have a dictionary. Right-click on a form field and Add Dictionaries...
   5. Disable anti-virus scanning on downloads
      1. about:config
      2. browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
   6. New Tab Homepage - show homepage on new tab create.
   7. English Canadian dictionary or whatever dictionary you want and change it to the default.
7. TCP View (Systernal utility to watch all open connections, good for network troubleshooting)IE 6 (If in VM do not upgrade for testing purposes) .
8. Proxy Switcher Lite ( - only free decent utility to quickly proxy switch )in IE.

Developer Utilities

General

1. eWatch ieWatch (watch all details of traffic flow in browser)
2. Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers where I manually bundle Java and Tomcat.
3. TortoiseSVN + configure to integrate with Araxis
4. Adobe Photoshop 7.01 - Small and light and does everything I need compared to the newer editions.
5. Tail for Win32 - Nice tail utility which can watch files. Got it from Dimitri.
6. JAD (JAva Decompiler)
7. WinTask - Record Windows actions as macros. Great for repetitive testing of websites.
8. Notepad++ - Recommend by Shawn. No installer required. No install necessary. There is also an option to make it portable so nothing is kept in the registry. It's on their FAQ. More neat options,
   1. "Alt + Left Mouse Click" puts you in Column Mode Select
   2. To select columns without using the mouse use ALT+SHIFT and the cursor keys

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