Topic awaiting preservation: Your Favorite Software

What are your favourite software programs and why -- on any os, any platform? I'm asking this simply to discover better ways of working, and improving our productivity Name as many categories as you can. The idea is to find good software

Here's my list:

Movie Player: MPlayer for Linux. Undoubtedly.
Lightweight and fast and feature-rich, supports a huge variety of formats.

Text Editor: KWrite for Linux
Good tradeoff between features and lightweightedness. Syntax highlighting, line numbers, collapsible functions etc.

Word Processor: Microsoft Word for Windows
I haven't used much of the Linux ones. I like KWord though.

Image Viewer: GQView for Linux
Lightweight and very fast. Excellent Interface. For me, it beats ACDSee.

Image Editing: Photoshop for Windows
Features and speed and interface.

Mp3 Player: Winamp 2.x for Windows/XMMS for Linux
Winamp3 is s-l-o-w. Noatun is good and has excellent Winamp3-style skins but has poor ease of use.

Game: Unreal Tournament 2003 for Linux/Windows
Purely personal taste. BTW, anyone running Quake on Linux here?

OS: None so far.
Linux is very close, but not there. I need it to be faster -- and to play all my games
Windows lacks features and lacks powerful software but has far better hardware and driver-support for instance -- this is strictly my opinion though

Web Browser: Mozilla for Linux/Windows
Built-in download-resuming support, ad blocking, and lots more. IE sucks!
I still haven't tried FireBird though...

Mail Client: I don't know coz i don't use any.

Window Manager (Linux): KDE 3.1
Gnome lacks features. WindowMaker is very fast but lacks features. Enlightenment is the best-looking (out-of-this-world!) but focuses too much on looks and less on functionality. Blackbox is something I'd really like to try -- if any of you can get it running, please tell me.

Download Manager: FlashGet for Windows.
Anyone know of a good Linux download manager?

... that's about my list. What's your favourite software? Add any category you please. The focus is on finding good software

Movie Player: PowerDVD
Text Editor: VIM
Word Processor: Microsoft Word
Image Viewer: XP
Image Editing: Photoshop
Vector Drawing: Adobe Ilustrator
Mp3 Player: Winamp 2.x
Game: Civilization
OS: Win XP or OS X, I like features out of both, but neither completely
Web Browser: IE
Mail Client: Outlook, We're on an exchange server

-tiki, cell 478

[This message has been edited by tikigod (edited 06-27-2003).]

Microstation v8 - The best mapping/engineering program I have been using every day for 6 yrs.

Internet Explorer - Don't understand why anyone would use something different.


.quotes.

hmm...

text/code editor - textpad - ease of use, lightwieght, very customizable.
ftp: smartftp.
image viewer: thumbs plus. Power, quality.
graphics/photo editing: PS/illustrator. - self explanatory.
media player: windows media player. I hate winamp....too lazy so far to search for something better.
browser: Mozilla (don't understand why anyone would use IE ).

MP3 player/converter: dBpowerAMP
DVD player: hmm...I used to use powerDVD, but now I prefer winDVD ever since powerDVD wouldn't run on my Win2000 Server.
Browser: Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla (in order of preference)
ASP.NET Editor: Web Matrix
Java Editor: jGRASP
Messenger: SCIM
Math Software: Maple (I have the Demo of Version 8)

Movie Player: PowerDVD + DVD Region Free
Text Editor: EditPlus
Word Processor: Microsoft Word
Image Editing: Photoshop
Mp3 Player: Winamp 2.x
Game: Mohaa
OS: Win XP
Web Browser: IE
Mail Client: Outlook Express
Worksheets: Excel
Video Editing: Vegas Video
Sound Editing: Sound Forge
Burning CDs: Nero
Font Management: Extensis Suitcase
Image management: Drive Image
Partition management: Partition Magic
Anti-virus: Norton
Compressor: Winzip
and others...

Movie Player: Power DVD
Text Editor: EditPlus
Word Processor: Microsoft Word
Image Editing: Photoshop
Mp3 Player: Winamp
OS: Win XP
Web Browser: IE
Mail Client: Outlook Express
Burning CDs: XP and MusicMatch
Image management: ACDSee

:::11oh1:::

My favorites are many:

MED --Text Editor
WS_ftp Pro -- FTP
Ahead Nero -- CD Burning
WinGrab --Screen Capture
filzip --File Archiver/dearchiver
Gozilla Full -- Download Manage


My 3D tools:

Deep Exploration -- Image/3D view and convert
Accutrans -- 3D object convert
Lightwave 7.5 -- 3D model/Edit/Render
Poser 5 -- Human Render
Imagine -- 3D model/Edit/Render I use it for 3D compositing
Organica -- Meta Object Modeler
Bryce -- Landscape Render
Vista Pro -- Landscape Render
Daylon Leveller -- Landscape editor
Ultimate Unwrap UV -- UV map editor
Milkshape 3D -- Low Poly 3D
TextureMaker -- Seamless Texture Editor


Desktop Pubishing:

InDesign & Pagemaker -- Page Layout
Streamline -- raster to vector
Illustrator 10 -- Vector Illustration
Freehand 9 -- Vector Illustration
Photoshop 7/Imageready -- Image Editor
Acrobat -- PDF generation
Ghostscript -- Postscript Rip and PDF generation

Video and Animate Effects:

Video Vegas -- Video editor
Aura DV -- Video paint
WinImages/WinMorph -- Animatable FX and Morphing

Asset Mangement [Images]: IMatch

HTML & Web Applications:

Max Beauty ++ (I love this program. Too Bad I have to turn off the chicks.)
Adove GoLive 5.0 and HotMetal Pro -- WYSIWYG Editors
Flash MX

Sever Applications:
FoxServ -- Nice package includes Apache,PHP,mySQL,modPerl ect...
ActivePerl -- GGI perl
ImageMagick -- Graphic Lib
Bulletproof FTP --Ftp Server

Games:
Serious Sam Second ed.
Battlefeild 1942
Delta Force(Blackhawk Down)
Operation Flashpoint

OS:

Primary workstation: Windows XP Pro
Rendering Slave: WinME
Web and Game Server: Win2K
Beige Mac G3: 0SX/9 (very slowly)
Linux (Ghostscript): Redhat 8 (old pentium pro.)

OS: X
Player: iTunes
Browser: Safari
HTML/PHP/CSS/etc-Editor: Taco HTML Edit
P2P: Acquisition
Image Editing: Photoshop
Messenger: Proteus
FTP: RBrowser
Best OS X tool: DragThing

I'm seeing a lot of IE in the browser category... not to turn this thread into a discussion of a specific program, but since we're mostly web designers, why would you use IE for anything except testing? Maybe I'm nearsighted, only living in my own head, but the more I use and design for the web the more inadequate IE appears. The only argument I ever hear in favor of IE is "well, it displays web pages, so why would I want something else that displays web pages? Ooh, I can display em twice now. La dee da." My roommate's a "web professional," for instance, and he has no problem with noisy Flash popunders... I guess I just don't understand the mentality. Yeah, there are popup stoppers, but again, why get popup stoppers when you can just get a browser that doesn't do that? It's like the Mac OS, where you have to download a dozen third-party apps like DragThing and FinderPop before the OS has the capabilities it should have had in the first place.

Anyway, I'll mention a few programs people might not have heard of...

Robotype: an OS-level abbreviation-expansion program for Windows. I can set up Robotype abbreviations, then whenever I type that abbreviation, it expands into a full word/snippet. I use it for a lot of things; say I want to look something up on Dictionary.com, I type "dict asylum" (for example) and it expands to http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=asylum . Or I can type "md" and it expands to the Unicode entity for an em-dash (&#8212 . Or I type "snote" and it gives me a pair of dialogs to fill out, then automatically generates a <span class="note" title="my text">my other text</span> tag. Sure, you can do most of this stuff with program-specific shortcuts, but having one central program for it is very handy.

JEdit: This is my new favorite text editor. I've never found anything but HomeSite that handles the HTML/PHP hybrid with appropriate and seamless highlighting, but for all other code work JEdit is my new choice. It's as full-featured as any text editor I've ever seen, and its plugin architecture makes it rock even harder, turning it into a lightweight (non-crufty) IDE.

Natural Selection: Like Counter-Strike, this Half-Life mod stands on its own as a retail-worthy game. It's a team-based humans-vs-aliens game with a real-time-strategy twist. Each side needs to build structures to allow upgrades, gain new powers and equipment, and sometimes to defend or attack; and those structures and upgrades are governed by a resource system, so each side must capture resource points in a territorial war.

On the human side, most players act as first-person-shooter space marines, but one player takes on the role of "Commander," and views the map in a top-down RTS style. The commander gives build orders and waypoints just like in an RTS, and the other players carry them out. This provides an intuitive and hieratical means of organization that Counter-Strike (for instance) lacks.

On the alien side, there is no one commander (although teams work best if all players are following a single strategy); instead, the aliens communicate via a "hive mind." You can see all your aliens brethren no matter where they are on the map, and you receive mental warning and direction whenever they're under attack. This means that the aliens can very easily coordinate their motions and respond to invasion. Furthermore, as they expand, they can physically evolve into completely new lifeforms with new powers.

If you have Half-Life, get Natural Selection.

Cell 1250 :: alanmacdougall.com :: Illustrator tips

Movie Player: BS Player
Use far less ressources than any other program.

Image Editing: Photoshop
Simply becuase it's the most complete program.

Mp3 Player: Winamp 3
Highly customizable with a lot of useful features, and an incomparable filetype support.

Game: Unreal Tournament 1
The best quake-like so far... Pure efficiency, cool graphism (even if it begins to be outdated), and very quick. Don't ever try to speak to me about UT 2003, this game s***.

OS: Win2000 pro
Almost as stable as a Linux machine given you know how to use a computer, and a better compatibility with programs (being deprived of Photoshop ? nah...)

Web Browser: Opera 7
The most powerful (in my opinion), quick, customizable browser. And even htough it is sensible about Javascript, it is far more compliant than IE about CSS and PNG. PT, I totally agree with you about IE

Mail Client: The Bat
Ditto, one of the most powerful, complete and customizable e-mail client. VERY secure ! There are no problems of security with The Bat, don't worry about all those alerts for virus for Outlook than are launched if you preview a file... It simply doesn't work with The Bat. Furthermore, I love the ability to sort the incoming mails, especially puting automatically all the SPAM in a dedicated folder...

HTML/CSS editor: Dreamweaver MX
A very complete and powerful tool that helps a lot to write quickly the code. Nice template support too.

FTP : FTP Expert 3
Very complete FTP program. Perhaps not as much complete as Smart FTP, but less messy in my opinion.



[This message has been edited by Moon Shadow (edited 06-28-2003).]

Graphics -- Photoshop 4.0 .... 'nuff said..
3D Program -- (tie) Macromedia 3d Extreme (Does anyone use this anymore??) and Poser 4.0
MP3 player -- Audion 2.0... Customizable, beautiful skins.
Text Editor -- TexEdit Plus -- Good free ware.
Game -- (Tie) UT, Quake 3
Movieplayer -- Quicktime Mac of course.
OS -- Mac OS 9.1 It rarely fails me.
Browser -- IE
FTP -- Fetch 6.0
HTML Editor -- (tie) Pagemill 2.0, BBEdit 3.0... I use pagemill for layouts and bbedit for programming...

I know i have outdated programs, but considering the circumstances that I have gone through, this is all I have. When I was using my boyfriends PC I had the up to date photoshop and poser but not those are the only graphics programs that I have (ones listed above). Is it ok to practice 3D modeling and photoshop with these outdated programs? Just wondering...