Articles tagged with: 'install'

Mozilla Firefox is the guide's choice of web browser, and has a long and interesting history. Originally the Mozilla project was the developers name for the Netscape browser, which was eventually released as an open source project. The browser was later heavily modified, and released to the world as Mozilla Firefox.

The new browser enjoyed an immediate success, introducing tabbed panes, and new security features. One sign of this success was that it caused Microsoft to develop and release a new version of the Internet Explorer browser with similar features.

Mozilla Thunderbird is probably less well known than its sister browser application, Mozilla Firefox, though it shares much of the same history. Indeed, it also shares much common code from Mozilla Firefox, which allows it to use the same web page rendering engine, and extensions (add-ons) manager.

WengoPhone is a VoIP client, less well known than Skype, but which provides more or less the same functionality, while being multiplatform, open source, and using standard VoIP protocols called H.323 and SIP.

The information available in Wikipedia is somewhat dated, however, the project has evolved since it's first appearance in 2005, to become a stable and complete application. One word of caution though – WengoPhone doesn't work very well with low bandwidth Internet connections, such as dial up modems. You'll need to have an IDSL or ADSL high speed connection.

OpenOffice.org has a long history. It started life as Star Office, a German commercial competitor to Microsoft Office. It was then bought by Sun Microsystems Inc who later released the source code as an open source project. Many developers became involved in the project, and version 1.0 was extremely popular.

Since then OpenOffice.org has been restructured to use the Oasis Open Document Format, and is currently reworking the source code to allow developers to produce their own extensions more simply – a feature which has made Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird very popular.

OpenOffice.org provides very stable file importing and exporting facilities for most popular commercial file formats, particularly Microsoft Office, and provides a complete office suite solution. An interesting thermometer of its popularity is the number of books that have been published recently, and, at least in Europe, that OpenOffice.org can now be used for the European Computer Driving License.

FreeMind is a simple mind mapping tool, written in Java, by Jörg Müller. Mind maps present hierarchical lists, using nodes and edges, displayed graphically. I personally find it easier to prepare a graphical project outline, rather than a formal high level project specification.

Additionally, it is easier to start building a graph, rather than preparing a text document – it can help get over the “blank page” writing block that most people suffer from occasionally, and it is easier to add, delete, or move elements around. Finally, it provides a succinct overview, which can be more easily absorbed by colleagues. FreeMind is an open source implementation, which has been well received by users and industry critics alike.

The GIMP is another excellent and successful open source project. It was originally developed for the Linux operating system, but is now available on most of the major operating systems, including Windows and Macintosh OS X.

It provides a series of powerful image processing tools, and is more sophisticated, and thus more complicated than normal painting type programs. It is generally compared favourably against top line professional commercial image processing software.

Windows only: Frequently, downloadable files from the Internet, or attachments to emails, are in compressed archive format. Having a file compression and archiving utility program is therefore an essential tool.

Not only can you use this type of utility to decompress files you receive, but you can also use it to package (and reduce the size of) a selection of your own files that you want to send to others, conveniently and safely.

Igor Pavlov has written a simple open source program that has become a favourite amongst Windows users.

Java is a programming language developed by Sun Microsystems Inc. By using a Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for each operating system, programmers can, at least in theory, develop software which will then run on any operating system that has a JRE available.

In addition to being necessary for a Java program to work, the JRE can also adds functionality to your browser, via applets embedded in a web page. Java also extends the functionality of the OpenOffice.org office suite.