Thursday, February 18, 2010

Free Desktop Productivity Tools

Carpenters must keep an organized work space so they can find their tools and work efficiently. Developers are no different, except instead of a peg board our tools hang on a task bar. There are three tools in particular that I've come to depend on and, unlike expensive carpentry jigs and fixtures, these are completely free!

ClipX
How many times have you copied something to the clipboard only to realize you just replaced something else you needed? Considering how integral the clipboard is to software development it's amazing there hasn't been more innovation in how we copy and transfer values. With ClipX you can now keep a clipboard history and with a simple keystroke (CTRL+Shift+V) paste any text or image from history.

TrayIt
If you're like me you probably need a number of applications throughout the day and it doesn't make sense to close them down only to open them right back up next time. My task bar used to get cluttered with programs waiting to be used until I found TrayIt. Now I can minimize those apps to the system tray so they use minimum real estate and I know exactly where to find them. TrayIt makes it easy to create profiles for specific applications and is extremely flexible.


AutoSizer
So much of our time is spent rearranging windows. This can be especially annoying when you find yourself having to move the same window over and over. AutoSizer takes the headache out of window placement by letting you specify the size and placement of each window once so you never have to do it again. Make that annoying popup appear minimized or messages appear in the corner of the screen.

2 comments:

  1. Gaines:
    I'm going to use CLIPX and really enjoy it. I teach online and sometimes have 3 sections of the same course. And of course I do lots of CUT and PASTE . . . and you are so right: many times I just had something on the clip board and replaced it. Now with CLIPX I'll be able to go back through history on the clip board and make life easier.

    And I'm not sure about TRAYIT ... but I may try it next. I have windows7 and I love the way I can open multiple folder, jpgs, txt and email messages along with multiple other sites -- and the bar at the bottom serves as a ready try to click on the items.

    Blessings on you!

    dr.m.

    matt37076@yahoo.com

    P.S. I'm your old CIS prof! :) :) :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You might be interested in http://www.fadsoft.net/AlwaysOnTopMaker.htm and http://www.launchy.net/ launchy doesn't really beat out windows key and type now with vista but I still like it, I'm used it it, and I don't even really use a task bar much anymore when I run windows.

    ReplyDelete

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