News & Views Some Neat Shareware
News & Views Software Review


by Mike Hendry

Originally published in News & Views March 1999 issue.

Copyright 1999 STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter. For permission to reprint this article, contact the Managing Editor.

I learned to shy away from shareware in the old days, when it was usually written by one programmer and distributed relatively untested. At best, it usually wasn't very useful, and at worst it wrecked your machine. Things have changed since then: those lone programmers have formed companies, and market forces have caused the good stuff to rise to the top. I haven't changed much, however. I am still very shy about shareware, and critically evaluate its usefulness before I consider trying it. I also judge a piece of shareware by the quality of the company's web site and by whether the hackers are trying to steal it. I've come across two programs that I find very useful, and I think many technical communicators will, also.

PicaView

PicaView, by ACD Systems ($26, www.acdsystems.com) puts a graphics viewer in the right-click menu of the Windows 95 Explorer. As shown below, if you right-click on an image file, PicaView displays a thumbnail of the image, along with the format and dimensions of the selected image in the context menu. PicaView works in Explorer, My Computer, Find Files results, and File Open/Save windows. PicaView supports BMP, DCX, GIF, Animated GIF, IFF-ILBM, JPEG, PCX, Photo-CD, SoftImage PIC, PNG, PhotoShop PSD, SGI, TGA, TIFF, and WMF image formats. It saves a great deal of time when you're working with graphics files. You can browse for a file and immediately see thumbnails, rather than having to open up all the files in an application until you find the one you are looking for. It also performs the following functions:

  • Image display. If you select the thumbnail image in the context menu, PicaView will open the image full-size in a new window. You can zoom the image in and out, and scroll images that are larger than the screen size.

  • Printing. PicaView lets you print images either one at a time or as a batch. You can also print just a selected part of an image.

  • Contact sheets. When you select more than one image and right-click on the selection, PicaView adds a Print Selected command to the context menu. You can then configure the Print Setup window to print out the images as thumbnails.

  • Format conversion and rotation. You can convert one image type (PCD, TIFF, etc.) to another (BMP, JPG, etc.), batch convert a group of files at once, and also rotate JPEG images without any loss in image quality.

  • Copy to clipboard. You can copy an image to the clipboard, or, from a full-size-window view, copy a selected part of an image.

  • Wallpaper. You can turn any image, or a selected part of an image, into Windows desktop wallpaper, centered or tiled.

PicaView is a great help to anyone working extensively with computer graphic files.

CSE HTML Validator

CSE HTML Validator, by AI Internet Solutions ($29.95, www.htmlvalidator.com) checks the syntax in HTML files and notifies you of any problems. If you've ever edited an HTML file by hand and had half of it disappear on you because you forgot a bracket, you can really appreciate this program. Since I still use Notepad extensively as my HTML editor, I was eager to try it. However, with all the tools we use that automatically produce HTML, I was skeptical about HTML Validator's general usefulness. I was soon convinced otherwise, though. I ran an HTML file generated automatically from Microsoft Word. A seventy line file came up with seventeen errors and seven warnings, including nesting errors, special character errors (e.g., "&"), and errors in accepted style.

HTML Validator also makes suggestions for improving style and shows where your file is not compatible with HTML 4.0. I found this feature especially useful and enlightening. In addition, you can batch validate multiple HTML files, and right-click and validate from the context menu in Explorer.

Note: Let me know how useful this was to you. Is there too much Internet stuff? Not enough? Vote on the subject of the next column! HTML Help, Visual Javascript Developer/Debugger, Updates on Voice Dictation. Or suggest something that would be useful to you. Email me at MHendry@bee.net.

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Posted April 27, 1999 (dls)