Topical Articles and News
Ramblings, ravings and juicy gossip about various topics
Topical Articles, News and Juicy Gossip
This section of the site contains articles about various topics and news items.
Topics and News
- The Return of thefreecountry.com
- Nimbda Worm: Defending Your Site From the Nimbda Worm
- What is default.ida? Defending Your Site From the Code Red II Worm
Free Programming Resources
- Free Source Code and Programming Libraries
- Free Compilers and Interpreters for Programming Languages
- Free Programming Tools
- Free Online Programming Documentation, Frequently Recommended Programming Books
- Free Emulators and Virtual Machines
Free Webmaster Resources
- Free Perl CGI Scripts
- Free PHP/Perl CGI Script Hosting
- Free PHP Scripts
- Free Web Hosts, Budget Web Hosts
- Free Tutorials and Articles for Webmasters
- More Free Webmaster Resources
Free Security Software and Sites
- Free Spyware/Adware/Trojans/Keyloggers/Hijackers Removal, Detection and Prevention Tools
- Free Antivirus Software
- Free Secure Deletion Tools, Disk and File Wipe Utilities, Destructive Erasing Software
- Free Anonymous Surfing
- Free Encrypted Email, Encrypted Chat
- Free Encryption Software, On the Fly Encryption, Steganography, Public Key Encryption Software
- Free Personal Firewalls
- Free HIPS (Host Intrusion Prevention Software) and Application and System Monitoring Utilities
- More Free Security Software and Sites
Free Utilities and Software Tools
- Free Video Editors (Free Video Editing Software)
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free Digital Audio Editors, Free Sound Editing Software
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Utilities
- Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free Image Authoring and Editing Software, Free Drawing and Painting Programs, Photo Editing Tools
- Free Partitioning Software (Copy, Resize, Move, Create, Convert, Undelete Partitions)
- Free Fonts for Programmers, Webmasters and Designers
- More Free Applications, Utilities and Software Tools
New Pages on thefreecountry.com
- Free Start Menus for Windows 8
- Free Online Editors and Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Free PHP Compilers: compile PHP scripts to native code, .NET or Java bytecode
- Free Embedded Web Video Player Scripts/Code
- Free Image/Photo Slide Show JavaScript
- Free GUI Builders, Application Builders and Rapid Application Development (RAD) Software
- Free Mail Servers (Email Servers / Mail Transfer Agents)
- Free Autorun/Autoplay DVD and CD Menu Creation Software
- Free 3D Software Box Image Makers
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free Antivirus Software and Free Online Virus Scans
New Pages on thesitewizard.com
- How to Change Fonts, Text Colour and Size with Dreamweaver CS6
- How to Insert Images into Your Website with Dreamweaver CS6
- Dreamweaver Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS6
- BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Create a Website with the BlueGriffon Free Web Editor
- How to Add a Contact Form (Web Form) to Your Website Using Dreamweaver CS5.5
- How to Reserve a Domain Name. Do You Need a Web Host if You Want to Reserve a Domain for Future Use?
- What's the Difference Between a Content Management System (CMS), a Blog, a Web Editor and an Online Site Builder?
- Dreamweaver CS5.5 Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS 5.5
- HTML Tutorial - Learn to Design a Website using HTML
- Should I Learn HTML or Just Use a WYSIWYG Web Editor? Pros and Cons of Using a Visual Web Editor vs Learning HTML
- How to Centre a Background Image or Photo on Your Web Page Using KompoZer
- How to Create Rounded Corners for Your Box Borders in CSS
- How to Centre a DIV Block Using CSS
- What is MySQL? What is a Database? What is SQL?
- How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form
- How to Install Apache 2.2 on Windows Vista
- What is HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Perl? Do I Need to Learn Them to Create a Website?
- How to Design a Two Column Layout for Your Website Using CSS
New Pages on HowToHaven.com
- How to Shut Down Windows 8 (Full Shutdown and Normal Hybrid Shutdown)
- How to Set Up a Standard User Account (or Limited Account) on Windows Vista and Windows 7 for Daily Use
- How to Slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 3 to Create an Integrated XP Setup Disk with SP 3
- How to Back Up Your Hard Disk in Windows
- How to Securely Prepare Your Old Computer for Disposal
- How to Work Around the Missing Up Arrow Button in Vista's Windows Explorer
- How to Create a Bootable "Live" Windows Rescue CD
- How to Delete Undeletable, Locked, Busy or Currently In-Use Files in Windows
- How to Record or Save Streaming Music or Audio
Popular Pages
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup CD/DVD on a Preinstalled Windows System
- Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free Spyware/Malware Removal, Detection and Prevention Tools and Sites
- Free Antivirus Software
- Free Device Driver Backup and Extraction Utilities
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free DVD/CD Emulators, Free Virtual CD/DVD Drives
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software
- Dreamweaver CS5 Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS5
- How to Design and Publish Your Website with KompoZer
What's New
Stay Updated (Free)- Keep track of what's new on thefreecountry.com with your news reader
by pointing it to
thefreecountry.com's news feed
.
Note: for historical reasons, this What's New column also includes information from
thesitewizard.com's news feed
and HowToHaven.com's news feed
.
- New page: How to Shut Down Windows 8 (Full Shutdown and Normal Hybrid Shutdown). Can't figure out how to shut down Windows 8? Or perhaps you really want Windows 8 to do a full shutdown and not the partial hibernation that it currently does when you invoke "Shut down". This article shows you how to do these things.
- New page: How to Change Fonts, Text Colour and Size with Dreamweaver CS6. At some point or other when designing your website, you'll probably want to change the fonts, put words in bold or italics, modify the text colour or even make words bigger or smaller. Find out how you can do this in chapter 3 of the Dreamweaver CS6 tutorial.
- Do you fancy creating an app (be it a game or some other application) for your Android smartphone or tablet, but don't want to have to go through a lengthy computer programming course? Now you can, and you can even do it (ie, create the program) on your smartphone itself. Or if that's too troublesome, you can also use a computer (Windows, Mac OS X or Linux). Check out the latest graphical language to be added to the Free Educational Programming Languages page. (Don't be deceived by my listing it in the education page. It's actually a usable language. I listed it there because it can be used to teach programming to children as well.)
- Another open source 3D game engine has been added to the Free Games Programming Libraries and Source Code page. This one lets you create both Windows and browser-based games, and comes with a suite of development tools that you can use to design your game world (eg, terrain, forests, roads, rivers, materials, particles, etc), a scripting language, networking support (so you can create multiplayer games), and so on.
- If you want to start a website and maintain it wholly using your web browser, check out the latest software to be added to the Free Content Management Systems (CMS) PHP Scripts page. Loosely speaking, Content Management Systems are programs that let you design and update your website from a browser without needing to install a web editor on your computer.
- Are you looking for email software? A new program has been added to the Free Email Clients page. Email clients are programs that let you read and write email on your own computer without relying on a web-based email service. Since your email is stored on your own computer, you will never run out of space (unless your hard disk is full), nor do you have to worry about the online service being inaccessible or closing down.
- New page: How to Insert Images into Your Website with Dreamweaver CS6. Find out how you can add pictures and a logo to your website with the Dreamweaver CS6 web editor, and optionally, how to centre ("center") your logo and align the pictures so that words wrap around them. This is the 2nd chapter of the Dreamweaver CS6 tutorial.
- New page: Dreamweaver Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS6. Have you always wanted to create your own website but didn't know how? This Dreamweaver tutorial takes you through the steps of designing a complete multi-page website using the famous Dreamweaver CS6 web editor.
- Microsoft Expression Web 4 has now been added to the Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page. Yes, you read the implication of my previous sentence correctly. This WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editor, which you can use to create a website, is now available free of charge. Get it while it's still obtainable.
- New page: Free Start Menus for Windows 8. Have you been inflicted with Windows 8? Are you hindered by its user interface? Help is on the way with these Free Windows 8 Start Menus.
- If you fancy installing your own web email facility on your own website, check out the newest addition to the Free Web Mail PHP Scripts (Email Clients) page. This one supports MIME, HTML email, unlimited users, multiple sender identities, an address book with "find-as-you-type" facility, and so on. A web email facility for your own website can be used either to provide a convenient interface for you to access your email, or alternatively, if you're bent on conquering the world, allows you to set up a competing service to overthrow Gmail.
- Added another console program to the Free Command Line Shells page. This one is not strictly a standalone shell but a wrapper that allows you to run other shells (like the Windows command prompt, Powershell, etc) in tabbed windows. It also enables you to select text the way you do in a text editor (instead of the normal awkward way of the default shell). If you feel frustrated and crippled using the command prompt or console window on your system, check out this page to find numerous other more powerful alternatives.
- If you are looking for software to burn (ie, create) CDs or DVDs, check out the newest two computer programs to be added to the Free CD and DVD Burners and Copying Software page. One is for Mac OS X and the other for Windows. Both the programs can create data discs, audio discs as well as video discs. (And if you don't like them, there are other free programs listed on the page as well.)
- If you are looking for an audio codec that handles speech and music, is open source and royalty free, take a look at the newest entry on the Free Lossless and Lossy Audio Encoders / Compressors page. Loosely speaking, audio codecs are software that reduce the size of audio files while attempting to preserve as much of the original audio quality as possible. They are also able to decode the compressed file so that it can be played normally.
- Tofrodos 1.7.12 is now available. Sorry for the quick succession of versions. With this release, all bugs known to me have been fixed.
- Tofrodos 1.7.11 has been released. Tofrodos is an open source computer program for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X (and other systems) for converting text files between the DOS/Windows and the Unix/Linux/OS X formats. It is useful if you have to work with files transferred from these systems.
- The new free Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Express, featuring the latest versions of their C++ compiler, Visual Basic compiler, and C# compiler, has now been released. If you're thinking of writing computer programs in C++, Visual Basic or C# on Windows, check it out.
- New page: How to Change the Fonts and Text Colour on Your Website using BlueGriffon. Find out how you can change fonts, use bold and italics as well as modify the colour of your text on your website using the free BlueGriffon web editor.
- A new free and open source font from Adobe has been added to the Free Fonts page. This is a high quality sans-serif font that is designed for legibility and comfort in reading.
- New page: How to Add Pictures and a Logo to Your Website Using BlueGriffon Web Editor. Find out how to insert images and a website logo to your website using the free BlueGriffon web editor. This is the second chapter of the BlueGriffon tutorial series.
- New page: Free Online Editors and Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Are you looking for an online web editor where you can create a website just using your web browser? Or perhaps you are a programmer who needs to collaborate with others, and want an online IDE where you can write programs, and test and debug it together with others on the Internet? Or maybe you're on the road and just need to tweak some web page or computer code, but don't have access to your own computer. Check out this new page where you can get online web editors, programmer's editors and IDEs, all for free. Now you can develop programs and websites without even leaving your web browser.
- If you want to create a web-based database application that can directly access your data via a browser (even from a mobile phone using Android), check out the newest addition to the Free / Open Source NoSQL (Non-SQL) Database Servers and Engines page. Your application can be written in JavaScript and will use HTTP to access the database.
- Are you tired of the clumsy and inefficient way that you have to operate when you use the default Windows explorer for doing things like copying files between 2 folders, comparing files/folders, or viewing the inside of archives? Check out the newest addition to the Free File Managers and Graphical Shells page. Those using other operating systems, like Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD, can also find replacements for their default file managers.
- If you have created your own website and want to manage the DNS for your domain name yourself, take a look at the newest entry on the Free Dynamic and Static DNS Services and Name Servers page. The listed service also provides dynamic DNS for those who want to host a website on your own computer.
- Are you looking for a way to create a PDF file? Or perhaps you are thinking of publishing an ebook and are considering the different document formats that you can use for the book. A new software for creating PDF documents has been added to the Free PDF Converters, Editors and Printer Drivers page. Like many of the other freeware listed there, this program also lets you password-protect your PDF file, prevent copying/pasting, etc.
- Do you like tinkering with operating systems ("OS") but find the major open source OSes to be too large and complicated to figure out? A new tiny operating system for the x86 processors has been added to the Free Alternative Operating Systems page. It fits into less than 64KB of memory, can be used from a USB flash drive, a floppy or a CD, and is written entirely in assembly language. Check it out.
- New page: BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Create a Website with the BlueGriffon Free Web Editor. BlueGriffon is a free and open source WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") web editor. Unlike the other free web editors around, this one contains an up-to-date engine that supports the modern HTML and CSS constructs used on the Internet today. Find out how you can use this web editor to design and create your own website in this BlueGriffon Tutorial.
- Have you accidentally deleted a file that you now want to use? Check out the newest software to be added to the Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software page. This program can recover files removed from hard disks, USB flash drives and memory sticks, which means that it can handle files deleted on computers, digital cameras, smart phones, and other such devices.
- New page: Free PHP Compilers: compile PHP scripts to native code, .NET or Java bytecode. Are you looking for a PHP native code compiler, one that can produce an executable file (eg, .exe or .dll for Windows), that you can distribute without your revealing your source code? Or perhaps you're looking for some way to speed up your PHP programs and figure that a script compiled to machine code may help. Check out the new Free PHP Compilers page for some free and/or open source solutions.
- New page: What Banks Need to Know Before Getting a New Domain Name. I was interviewed by the American Bankers Association's Bank Marketing Magazine on the things that banks need to be aware of when they get a new domain name. An edited version of that interview is now available online.
- New page: Free Embedded Web Video Player Scripts/Code. Do you want to put up videos on your website but don't want to use a free video sharing service like YouTube? The free video player scripts on this page let you embed a video player that your visitors can use to view movies and video clips on your site. Besides the usual features, some of them can also handle playlists, useful if you plan to put up a lot of clips. These scripts not only support modern browsers that handle HTML5, but they also automatically fall back to using a Flash player should it be necessary, so that your videos will always work.
