Free Programming Tools and Utilities
Editors, Debuggers, Help Authoring, Setup, Version Control, etc
Free Programming Tools / Resources
You can find tools, resources and utilities for a wide variety of programming tasks below.
If you don't see the category of tools you want listed in the index below, please check out the Miscellaneous Free Programming Tools page, a catch-all page for everything that does not have its own page. Note that compilers and interpreters, source code and libraries as well as documentation are listed separately on their own pages.
Help and Documentation
Text and Source Code Handling
- Free Programmers' Editors, ASCII Text Editors and IDEs
- Free Java IDE and Editors
- Free Online Editors and Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Free Text Search and Replace Utilities
- Free Text and Binary Comparison / Merging Utilities (Diff/Merge)
- Free Clipboard Extenders and Clipboard History Managers
- Free Source Code Beautifiers
- Free Version Control Software
- Free Interactive Regular Expression (Regex) Testers and Builders
- Free Static Source Code Analysis Utilities, Source Checkers (Lint)
- Free Programmer's Fonts
Debugging and Binary Code Management
- Free Debuggers, Static Source Code Analysis Utilities, Source Checkers (Lint), Bug Trackers
- Free Disassemblers, Binary and Hex Editors, Hex Viewers
- Free DOS Extenders (Protected Mode)
- Free Text and Binary Comparison / Merging Utilities (Diff/Merge)
- Free Executable Compressors - shrink your EXEs and Binaries
- Free Windows Resource Compilers, Resource Editors, Resource Hackers, Icon Editors
- Free File Patch Makers (for Delivering Small Updates)
Compiler Construction and Grammars
Miscellaneous
- Free 3D Software Box Image Makers
- Free Interactive Regular Expression (Regex) Testers and Builders
- Free File Patch Makers (for Delivering Small Updates)
- Free GUI Builders, Application Builders and Rapid Application Development (RAD) Software
- Free Make Utilities (Program Maintenance and Building Software)
- Free Setup / Installers / Uninstallers
- Free Autorun/Autoplay DVD and CD Menu Creation Software
- Free Command Line Shells
- Free Programmer's Fonts
- Free JavaScript Minifiers (Minimizers), Obfuscators and Compressors
- Free Java Resources and Tools
- Miscellaneous Free Programming Tools and Utilities
Engineering Software
Other Programming Resources
- Free Source Code and Programming Libraries - don't reinvent the wheel
- Free Compilers and Interpreters for Programming Languages
- Free Online Programming Documentation, Frequently Recommended Programming Books
- Free Emulators and Virtual Machines
Other Resources of Interest
- Free Security, Privacy, and Anonymity
- Free Utilities and Application Software
- Free Perl CGI Scripts
- Free PHP/Perl CGI Script Hosting
- Free PHP Scripts
- Free JavaScript, AJAX, DHTML and Web 2.0 Scripts
- Free Web Hosts, Budget Web Hosts
- More Free Webmaster Resources
- Free Tutorials and Articles for Webmasters
- Free POP3, IMAP, SMTP, Web Email
New Pages on thefreecountry.com
- Free JavaScript Minifiers (Minimizers), Obfuscators and Compressors
- Free Image Pop-Up JavaScripts (Where Image Overlays Current Web Page)
- Free Royalty-Free Stock Photos
- Free Solitaire Games
- 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 Autorun/Autoplay DVD and CD Menu Creation Software
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
New Pages on thesitewizard.com
- How to Add Pictures and a Site Logo to Your Website with BlueGriffon 2.x
- BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Design a Website with BlueGriffon 2.x
- What Should the Width of a Web Page Be?
- How to Move Your Website to SSL (ie, Convert from HTTP to HTTPS)
- How to Redirect a URL
- How to Insert a DIV Block and Other HTML Elements into a Web Page Using JavaScript
- Does the Price of a Domain Depend on the Name Chosen? Why do Some Domains Cost So Much?
- Do I Need a Web Editor if I Create a Blog?
- How to Use Web Fonts: CSS Tutorial
- How to Insert a YouTube Video into Your Website with Microsoft Expression Web
- How to Install and Configure Apache, PHP, Perl and MySQL on Windows the Easy Way (with XAMPP)
- Can you register a domain name directly with ICANN instead of through a middleman?
- Free Mobile-Friendly Two Column Layout Wizard
- How to Make Your Images Mobile-Friendly (Responsive Design)
- How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: Responsive Design in CSS
- Should I Use a Specialized Blog Host or Install My Own Blog Software?
- 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?
- 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 DIV Block Using CSS
- What is MySQL? What is a Database? What is SQL?
- What is HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Perl? Do I Need to Learn Them to Create a Website?
New Pages on HowToHaven.com
- How to Boot a CD or DVD in Windows 8.1
- How to Change BIOS Settings on a Computer with Windows 8.1 Installed
- 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 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
Popular Pages
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free Antivirus Software
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Software
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software
- Expression Web Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Microsoft Expression Web
- Dreamweaver Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS6
- 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 Add Pictures and a Site Logo to Your Website with BlueGriffon 2.x Find out how to insert pictures (including a logo) into your website using the free BlueGriffon web editor. This is chapter 2 of the BlueGriffon 2.x tutorial series.
- A dense linear algebra programming library that can fully exploit the power of multi-core CPUs and GPUs has been added to the Free Numerical, Mathematical, Statistics Libraries and Source Code page.
- Another computer program that can capture the text found on an image has been added to the Free OCR Software (Optical Character Recognition) page. This program recognizes a huge number of languages (eg, English, French, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Spanish and lots more) and can even translate those words to a language of your choice.
- New page: BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Design a Website with BlueGriffon 2.x. If you are thinking of creating a website, this BlueGriffon tutorial shows you how you can design a mobile-friendly, multi-page website with the current version (2.x series) of the free BlueGriffon web editor.
- New page: What Should the Width of a Web Page Be? I was asked by a visitor how wide his web page should be. This article addresses that question.
- New page: Free JavaScript Minifiers (Minimizers), Obfuscators and Compressors. This new page lists free tools that can shrink the size of your JavaScript code (sometimes referred to as "minify") as well as some that can obfuscate it (that is, make it hard to understand). They may be useful if you want to improve the responsiveness of your website or perhaps obscure your JavaScript from a casual inspection.
- New page: How to Move Your Website to SSL (ie, Convert from HTTP to HTTPS). This article deals with the issue of moving a website from HTTP to HTTPS. Besides discussing the pros and cons of the conversion, it gives a checklist of things that you need to remember to do. You can also read the guide if you are planning to start a website, and want a better understanding of what this is all about.
- Another source of free pictures has been added to the Free Royalty-Free Stock Photos page. This one has both scenery and people photos which are released under the Creative Commons Zero licence, which means that they may be used for any purpose without attribution or payment, even on a public website that you created.
- Two cryptographic software libraries have been added to the Free Encryption / Cryptographic Libraries and Source Code page. If you are writing software for the Internet, or any other type of software, these libraries allow you to add encryption support for your program without being a cryptographic security expert. (In fact, these libraries assume by default that you aren't an expert, and so have appropriate options selected by default. You can of course override them if you wish.)
- New page: How to Redirect a URL. I was asked by a visitor last week how he could set things up so that when visitors go to the old URL of a web page, they will automatically be sent to its new address. This article shows you how to redirect URLs using .htaccess.
-
[Updated] The Free Feedback Form Wizard
now supports the Invisible ReCAPTCHA test. With this facility, you can generate a contact form for
your website with a test
that only shows if Google cannot figure out if the sender of the message is a human or a spam computer program.
(Note that you can still generate a form without any CAPTCHA test, or one with the visible "I am not a robot" test. It's up to you. It's just a new option for those who want it. And it's all free.)
Find out more from my guide on adding a CAPTCHA test to your form.
- New page: Free Image Pop-Up JavaScripts (Where Image Overlays Current Web Page). I'm sure you have seen sites where if you click a thumbnail, a bigger version of the image pops up overlaying the current web page. Now you can implement this on your own website with these free image pop-up JavaScripts.
- New page: How to Insert a DIV Block and Other HTML Elements into a Web Page Using JavaScript. This article discusses one way to insert a DIV block (or other HTML element) into a web page using JavaScript.
- Two new scripts have been added to the Free JavaScript Calendar and Date Picker Scripts page. They allow you to add a date picker to your web forms, where users can click a date field and select a date from a calendar that pops up.
- New page: How to Insert HTML Code into a Web Page with Expression Web. Find out how to insert HTML code into your website (whether in the main body of the page or in the HEAD section) using the free Microsoft Expression Web editor.
- Does the Price of a Domain Depend on the Name Chosen? Why do Some Domains Cost So Much? This article discusses some possible reasons why the total bill you get for your domain name differs from the price listed on your registrar's page.
- Feeling nostalgic? An open source emulator for the old Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512k, Macintosh 512ke, Macintosh Plus, Macintosh SE and Macintosh Classic has been added to the Free 68k and PowerPC Macintosh Emulators page.
- New page: How to Hide Content or Data from the Search Engines. In response to a query from a visitor, this article deals with how you can prevent Google and Bing from indexing certain content on your website and displaying it in their results.
- Another game engine has been added to the Free Games Engines (Games Programming Libraries) page. It lets you build games for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS (ie, iPhones). You can even create web-based (ie HTML5) games with it for users to play on your own website.
- New page: Do I Need a Web Editor if I Create a Blog? I was asked by a visitor whether she needed to use a web editor like Expression Web or Dreamweaver if she wanted to start a blog. This article answers that question.
- A new program has been added to the Free File Comparison Utilities page. Such software typically display the differences between two text files so that you can see, at a glance, what has changed between them, and some can also merge the changes. (Note that the page also lists a tool that can compare two binary files and create a patch to update one to the other; useful for programmers wanting to distribute small updates to their software.)
- Another source code editor has been added to the Free Programmer's Editors, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Plain Text Editors. This one is an open source program from Microsoft.
- New page: How to Insert a Table into a Web Page (and Customize it) with Expression Web. If you want to display some information in a tabular format on your website, this article shows you how to insert a table and customize it using Microsoft Expression Web.
- New page: How to Use Web Fonts: CSS Tutorial. This article shows you how to use any font in your CSS (and not just the usual web-safe ones like Arial and Times New Roman) on your website. With modern browsers, it's now possible to use such fonts without running into the problem of visitors not having the required typefaces installed on their computers.
- Two new SFTP / FTP programs have been added to the Free FTP and Secure FTP (SFTP) Clients page. If you want to create a website and need software to transfer your files there, take a look at this page for numerous free programs that may fit your requirements.
- New page: How to Insert a Bullet Point (Unordered) List into Your Website with Expression Web. There are times when you want to put a list with bullet points appearing before each item into a web page. This article shows you how to do this. It also shows you how to use your own customized bullets instead of the default solid black circles. For example, you can use it to insert ticks before each point, like in a checklist, or arrows, etc.
- I have added 2 hosts to the Free File Storage Hosting page, which has, over time, become empty due to closures of the older entries.
- New page: How to Add an Automatically Numbered List to Your Website with Expression Web. Depending on what your website deals with, you may sometimes need to add a numbered list. This tutorial shows you how to insert an automatically numbered list using Microsoft Expression Web.
- Two new PHP scripts which allow you to conduct polls (where people can vote on an issue or whatever) on your website have been added to the Free PHP Poll and Survey Scripts page.
- New page: How to Add Google AdSense to Your Website with Expression Web. If you have seen Google advertisements (those "Ads by Google" things) as you surfed the Internet, and want to put some on your own website, this article takes you through the steps of inserting them using the Microsoft Expression Web editor.
- A new script has been added to the Free PHP Rating Scripts page. It allows visitors to your website to give a star rating to any item displayed there (such as pictures, videos, links, articles, or other content).
- New page: How to Insert a YouTube Video into Your Website with Microsoft Expression Web. For those who have designed a website and are wondering how to embed a YouTube video in one of its pages, this article takes you through the process of doing just that with the free Microsoft Expression Web editor.
- A fork (ie, spin-off) of the Open Watcom C/C++ project has been added to the Free C/C++ Compilers and Interpreters page. Like the original, this compiler generates code for Windows (16 bits, 32 bits and 64 bits), Linux (32 and 64 bits), OS/2 and MSDOS. (I assume the fork is because the original Open Watcom project appears to have stalled.)
- Are you thinking of starting your own website? Check out How to Create a Website. It takes you through all the steps of making a website, including designing it, putting it on the Internet, collecting credit card payments and inserting advertisements. The article has just been updated with the latest information on the web editors to use, as well as the browsers to test your site with.
- New page: How to Create a Contact Form with Expression Web. Find out how you can use Expression Web to add a contact (or feedback) form to your website so that your visitors can write to you. This is the final chapter of the Expression Web tutorial, so if you were waiting for me to finish the series before creating a website, you can now find all the chapters online.
- The source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0, as donated by Microsoft, is now listed on the Free DOS-compatible Operating Systems (MS-DOS/PC-DOS Clones) page.
