Appendix B Tools

This appendix lists many of the tools and resources that we have found helpful. It is by no means a full description of all the tools available for working on the Web, but it should get you started and lead you to other useful information.

Many of the tools listed here are shareware or freeware and are available for downloading from a variety of sites on the Internet. Some of our favorite download sites include the following:

• http://www.hotfiles.com
• www.tucows.com
• www.windows95.com
• www.download.com
• oak.oakland.edu
• www.davecentral.com

HTML/Script Editors

Notepad	This very limited text editor is included with Microsoft Windows. It is sometimes referred to in jest as "Visual N++."
Allaire HomeSite	Contact www.allaire.com. This extremely flexible text editor is one of our favorites. It contains a variety of useful Web features, such as color coding of tags, powerful multiple-file search and replace, automatic tag completion, HTML validation, integration of Microsoft Internet Explorer, site and project management tools, an optional WYSIWYG view, and automatic insertion of width and height for images.
Microsoft FrontPage	Contact microsoft.com/frontpage. This suite of Web tools includes a WYSIWYG editor that outputs some of the highest-quality HTML of any WYSIWYG editor. Unlike many WYSIWYG editors, FrontPage 2000 does not modify any HTML that is hand-entered by the developer.
Microsoft FrontPage	Contact microsoft.com/ie. This WYSIWYG editor is part of a full installation of Internet Explorer. FrontPage Express is somewhat limited, but it is free and easy to use.
Microsoft Visual InterDev	Contact msdn.microsoft.com/vinterdev. This Visual Studio-based tool is a full-blown development environment that lets you easily create interactive Web sites with database connectivity based on Active Server Pages (ASP).
Microsoft Script Debugger	Contact msdn.microsoft.com/scripting. This useful tool is for debugging script and lets you trace the execution of your code and set breakpoints as well as track the current values of variables
Adobe PageMill	Contact www.adobe.com. This WYSIWYG editing tool includes a limited edition of the Adobe Photoshop image editor and a lot of clip art and animations.
Sausage Software HotDog	Contact www.sausage.com. This popular HTML editor includes a variety of wizards for easy document creation as well as colorcoding and support for third-party plug-ins.
SoftQuad HoTMetaL PRO	Contact www.softquad.com. This HTML editing tool provides three editing environments: WYSIWYG, WYSIWYG withHTML tags, and color-coded text. It also provides built-in HTML validation to ensure that your HTML code is correct.
Allaire Cold Fusion	Contact www.allaire.com. This tool enables you to easily create data-base-driven Web sites.
NetObjects Fusion	Contact www.netobjects.com. This site management and design tool allows you to work with a Web site as a whole, helping you manage everything from the individual pages to the over-all style of the site.
Macromedia Dreamweaver	Contact www.macromedia.com. This was one of the first WYSIWYG environments to produce Dynamic HTML.
Microsoft Office 97	Contact www.microsoft.com/office. Support for HTML output has increased dramatically in Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office can be handy for many Web page needs.

Image Editors

Adobe Photoshop	Contact www.adobe.com. This image editor is the great-granddaddy of them all, and it has become the standard in the graphic design industry.
Microsoft PhotoDraw 2000	Designed for business graphics editing needs, this newcomer is easy to use and includes over 20,000 images and pieces of clip art.
Macromedia Fireworks	A graphics program designed for the Web, Fireworks lets you work with your graphics in vector format before outputting the final image.
Jasc Software Paint Shop Pro	Contact www.jasc.com. This shareware program is very useful and comparatively inexpensive. It includes many extra tools such as built-in screen capture and batch conversion utilities as well as an image browser.
The GIMP	Contact www.gimp.org. The GNU Image Manipulation Program is a powerful, freely distributed image editor for UNIX. It includes a scripting interface and many other advanced features like multiple undo/redo. There are projects under way to port this program to the Windows platform.
Equilibrium DeBabelizer	Contact www.equilibrium.com. This tool is useful for batch-processing graphics.
Alchemy Mindworks Graphic Workshop	Contact www.mindworkshop.com. This inexpensive suite of graphics tools includes an image browser and a batch editor.
Microsoft FrontPage	Contact www.microsoft.com/frontpage. This product includes an image editor, an animated GIF editor, and a variety of other graphics tools such as an image map editor.

GIF Animation Tools

Microsoft GIF Animator	Contact microsoft.com/imagecomposer/gifanimator/gifanin.htm. This tool, which is included as part of Microsoft Image Composer (a component of FrontPage), lets you create an animated GIF from a series of other GIFs, and it will also convert AVI movies into animated GIFs.
Right to Left Software Animagic GIF	Contact rtlsoft.com. This tool optimizes animated GIF files. We have used it to compress an animated GIF to less than 2 percent of its original size, with no loss of visual quality.
Alchemy Mindworks Gif Construction Set	Contact www.mindworkshop.com. This flexible GIF editing tool lets you exercise precise control over a GIF. It includes a vari-ety of wizards to assist in the assembly of animations and alsolets you go directly into the guts of a GIF.

Screen Capture Utilities

Microsoft Windows	Some of the most basic screen capture tools come with Microsoft Windows. Simply pressing the Print Screen key copies the entire screen to the clipboard, from which you can paste the image into any image editor. Pressing Alt-Print Screencaptures only the currently active window.
Microsoft HTML Help Image Editor	Contact microsoft.com/workshop/author/htmlhelp/download.asp. This free capture utility is our favorite. It makes it very easy to capture everything from individual components of a window to a single application window to the entire screen. It includesgood cropping tools and bit depth converters.
Hyperionics HyperSnap-DX	Contact www.hyperionics.com. This tool creates still screen captures in a variety of formats. It allows you to capture DirectX games, the cursor, or an entire window (even parts thathave been scrolled off the screen).
Pedagoguery Software Gif·gIf·giF	Contact www.cafe.net/peda/ggg. This tool captures animated GIFs of actions performed on the screen. The resulting files are quite small.
Hyperionics HyperCam	Contact www.hyperionics.com. This tool creates AVI animations of actions performed on the screen.

Multimedia Tools

Adobe Premiere	Contact www.adobe.com. This movie editor is an industry stan-dard. It supports output in all standard digital video formats,including AVI and QuickTime. An animated GIF plug-in is available from the Adobe Web site.
Macromedia Shockwave, Flash, and Director	Contact www.macromedia.com. Together, these tools allow the delivery of high-quality, interactive multimedia sites over the Web, including streaming, vector-based animations with audio.
Sonic Foundry Sound Forge	Contact www.sonicfoundry.com. This full-featured sound editing tool supports many types of compression and file formats, in-cluding WAV, AVI, and NetShow ASF.

References

The Web offers many useful information sources. The SBN Workshop included on the companion CD of this book is an excellent reference; the online version, which is updated periodically, can be found at microsoft.com/workshop. At the time of this writing, the content on this site is scheduled to migrate to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) at msdn.microsoft.com. The list that follows provides some additional resources. (Of course, given the changing nature of the Web, it is possible that some of these sites will be unavailable when you try to reach them.)

www.w3.org	The official Web site of the leading Web standards body. Here you can find the complete specifications for many Web standards, such as HTML, CSS, HTTP, XML, DOM, and so on.
microsoft.com/sitebuilder	This site contains articles, references, and downloadable tools for building Web sites. Content for this site is scheduled to migrate to msdn.microsoft.com, the Microsoft Developer Network Web site.
msdn.microsoft.com/scripting	Microsoft's scripting reference and tutorial site.
developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/communicator/jsref/index.htm	Netscape's JavaScript reference site. This site contains many excellent examples.
www.gamelan.com	This site is dedicated to Java, JavaScript, ActiveX, and other Internet technologies.
www.wdvl.com	The Web Developer's Virtual Library. This site contains useful information for Web designers, such as referencesfor and introductions to HTML, graphics, Java, and so on.
www.jars.com	This site contains many Web-based programs and source code listings.
	Another great site for examples and how-to information. Covers everything from electronic commerce to HTML to JavaScript.
www.webreview.com	This site covers all aspects of creating Web sites, from graphic design issues to the technical aspects of maintaining a large-scale site.
www.zdnet.com/devhead	From Ziff Davis, a publisher of computer magazines and books, this site contains many references and includesarticles and how-to information written by some of the industry's biggest names.
msdn.microsoft.com	Microsoft Developer Network. Contains hard-core references for developers.
microsoft.com/data	Great site for information about data access technologies,such as ADO.
JavaScript: The Definitive Guide	Written by David Flanagan and published by O'Reilly & Associates, this is a great reference book on JavaScript.