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RobW
2nd Feb 2009, 06:52 pm
Software I'd like

These are software utilities that I would like to have. I've done some on-line searches but I never seem to come up with anything quite right. (You know how pickey you can be when you are looking for free software? It's so irritating that no one has written a program that does 'exactly' what you want!). I should be grateful to know if anyone knows where I can find this software - if it exists?

Links pages maker

Every site has sets of links to related sites and where you have a lot of urls it's better to create a different page for each category. However, it's a chore having to copy every link by hand. It would be nice to automate the process as much as possible. FF has a little built-in bookmarks database that you can use for collecting urls and giving them titles and descriptions. You can also organise the links into nested trees of folders - each folder with its own description.

What would be really useful is a utility that reads the database and turns it into a set of pages of annotated links that can be used on your website. In fact FF does export the database to an HTML file but it's a flat file containing nested lists - each folder becoming a heading in the single HTML file. Not very helpful.

There are dozens of programs around that will make you pages of links but all the ones I've found insist on layout and colours of the programmer's choice. What you really want is a utility that outputs simple HTML files with no fancy markup so that you can just insert your own link to a CSS file for styling. Even better would be a system that takes a template designed by you and styles each page using that template.

Site grabber

A site grabber takes an entire site off a web server and copies it onto your client PC along with all the relative links. You end up with a fully functioning replica of the orginal website running on your PC. This is useful for backing up a site but it is also helpful to be able to analyse the structure of a site off-line and to see how scipts work. Anyone had experience of running a site grabber that they would be willing to recommend?

Colour schemer

I would welcome some help in finding a really good colour schemer. I've not yet found one that is simple and straightforward enough yet. Can anyone recommend one?

Image map software

When I created my 'The Journey is the Reward' webite I used image maps to create hot-spots on my images. I found a bit of software that would take the image and allow me to define areas. It then returned me a list of coordinates for the imagemap in my web page. Unfortunatly the piece of software that I used was on free-trial and the period has now run out. I would like to find a simple bit of software that will do the job and is FREE! Any suggestions?

David
4th Feb 2009, 04:08 pm
There are lots of scripts available for making links pages - just a few here: http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Link_Indexing/index.html

:)

David
4th Feb 2009, 05:49 pm
Oh, and there are 1 or 2 site grabbers here: http://www.ohloh.net/p?q=site+grabber

RobW
9th Feb 2009, 08:20 pm
Thanks for those suggestions. I shall follow them up. I notice that the latest ver of FF uses SQLite for its bookmarks database. It occurs to me that this might be another way of creating pages from the FF bookmarks repository. Mind you - it means mugging up on SQLite.

RobW
9th Feb 2009, 08:45 pm
Tahmina put me onto an FF add-in called... Screengrab - http://www.screengrab.org/ Seems to work well.

David
9th Feb 2009, 10:32 pm
Tahmina put me onto an FF add-in called... Screengrab - http://www.screengrab.org/ Seems to work well.

That looks like a nice little add-in but if you really want a screen capture app I'd recommend Snagit (http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp). Not free but excellent. For me, it's a "must have".

RobW
9th Feb 2009, 11:23 pm
Since posting this list I've come across 2 free pieces of software:

Screen Hunter
http://www.wisdom-soft.com/sh/index.htm

and

Webshot
http://www.websitescreenshots.com/

I think the latter is better as it gives you the whole page - not just the current window - and the quality of the image is good too.

However, this is purely image capture. The site grabber I am talking about copies a whole site from the server to your PC. Of course you could raise a query about the ethics of such an operation!

Tom
10th Feb 2009, 09:12 am
I used to use FrontPage as a site-grabber but it seems to have joined the Dodo.
Re colour harmonies - have you tried using Photoshop
http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-blog/06/11/adobe-kuler.html