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 Code Analyzers (Static Source Code Analysis Tools/Lint)
- Free Programmer's Fonts
Debugging and Binary Code Management
- Free Debuggers and 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 Software to Create Bootable and Multi-Boot USB drives
- Free Video Conferencing Software
- Free Geolocation Services
- Free XML Parser/Generator Libraries
- Free Android Emulators
- Free Social Network / Media Software
- Free Static Code Analyzers (Static Source Code Analysis Tools/Lint)
- Free JavaScript Minifiers (Minimizers), Obfuscators and Compressors
- Free Image Pop-Up JavaScripts (Where Image Overlays Current Web Page)
- Free Royalty-Free Stock Photos
- Free PHP Compilers: compile PHP scripts to native code, .NET or Java bytecode
- Free Image/Photo Slide Show JavaScript
New Pages on thesitewizard.com
- How to Restore the Style Properties Panel in BlueGriffon if It Disappears
- How to Use Small Capital Letters for Lowercase and Large Capital Letters for Uppercase (CSS)
- How to Change the Colour (Color) of Links on a Website with Expression Web
- How to Change the Colour (Color) of Links on a Web Page with BlueGriffon
- Why Can't I Make Up Any Domain I Want? Is There a Way to Do Away with a Registrar Altogether?
- How to Prevent Two or More Words from Being Split into Separate Lines (HTML/CSS)
- How to Add an Audio or Music File to a Web Page with BlueGriffon
- How to Start a List with a Number Other than 1 and Still Have it Automatically Numbered (HTML)
- What to do if a registrar quotes an exorbitant price for a domain
- How to Rotate an Image on a Website When Viewed on a Mobile Phone (CSS)
- How to Change the Message Shown Before the Comments Field in WordPress
- Can I Change My Website's Address to HTTPS Without Getting an SSL Certificate?
- How to Make a Button Run a Server-Side Script (eg, a PHP, Perl, or Python Script) (HTML)
- How to Add a (Self-Hosted) Video to Your Website with Expression Web
- How to Prevent Your Website from being Placed in a Frame
- How to Close a Browser Tab/Window with JavaScript
- How to Redirect to Another Web Page in PHP
- What's the Difference Between a Domain Name Registrar and a Web Host?
- How to Move Your Website to SSL (ie, Convert from HTTP to HTTPS)
- How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: Responsive Design in CSS
- What's the Difference Between a Content Management System (CMS), a Blog, a Web Editor and an Online Site Builder?
- 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 Solve the 0x80092004 Error When Installing a Windows 7 Security-Only/Monthly Update
- How to Record a Game Video
- 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
Popular Pages
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How to Create a Blog
- Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- 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
- BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Design a Website with BlueGriffon 3
- 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
.
- A new software development suite has been added to the Free Common Lisp Compilers and Interpreters page. This one can generate native code for Windows. For those who don't know what I'm talking about here, Common Lisp is a general purpose, dynamic programming language that you can use to write computer programs.
- New page: Free Software to Create Bootable and Multi-Boot USB drives. If you have ever needed to boot from a rescue disk, or an operating system installation disk, only to find that they are distributed in the form of an ISO file or CD/DVD media, these utilities allow you to transfer them, in bootable form, onto a USB thumb/flash drive. In fact, some of them can even create bootable drives containing multiple ISOs, with a menu that appears on startup, letting you select which to boot from.
- New page: How to Restore the Style Properties Panel in BlueGriffon if It Disappears. This article deals with how you can restore the Style Properties panel in the BlueGriffon web editor should you find it missing or not visible when you enable it.
- Another source of free SSL certs has been added to the Free SSL Certificates for Websites page. If you are wondering what this is all about, such certificates let your website be accessed using HTTPS instead of HTTP. For more information, read How to Move Your Website to SSL (ie, Convert from HTTP to HTTPS).
- New page: How to Use Small Capital Letters for Lowercase and Large Capital Letters for Uppercase (CSS). This article answers a question from a visitor on how to display a sentence so that small (lowercase) letters are shown in capital letters, but have a height shorter than the actual capital (uppercase) letters.
- If you are developing a DirectX 12 game on Windows, take a look at the newest program to be added to the Free Debuggers and Bug Trackers page. This one is from Microsoft, and is both a debugging and profiling/performance tuning tool.
- Updated: The Feedback Form Wizard has been updated to include an additional CAPTCHA option. This one is not only free, it apparently even pays you when your visitors solve the CAPTCHA challenges. For those wondering, CAPTCHAs are those "I am not a robot" or "I am human" checkboxes on forms, used to make sure that a human is at the helm, and not some spam robot.
Updated: How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form. The article on how to add a CAPTCHA to your contact form has been updated to include information on how you can use the newest CAPTCHA option (the one that potentially pays you for using them) of the Feedback Form Wizard.
- A new program has been added to the Free Static Code Analyzers (Lint) page. Such tools scan the source code for your program, looking for potential bugs and vulnerabilities (even before you compile and test it). The latest addition can handle programs written in Java, JavaScript, C#, TypeScript, Kotlin, Ruby, Go, Scala, Flex, Python, PHP, HTML, CSS, XML and VB.NET. (If you use a different language, such as C, C++, Fortran, there are other tools listed on that page that can scan those too.)
- A program that lets you create 2D animation and other artwork has been added to the Free Drawing and Painting Software, Image and Photo Editing Programs page. This one works on Windows, macOS and Linux.
- New page: How to Change the Colour (Color) of Links on a Website with Expression Web. This article deals with how to change the colour of the links on a web page using the free Microsoft Expression Web editor. It also addresses how you can change the colour of a link that has been clicked, as well as its colour when a mouse pointer is hovering over it.
- If you are frustrated with how clumsy it is to work with Windows Explorer, when you want to copy or move files between two folders, you may want to use one of these new additions to the Free File Managers and Graphical Shells page. One of them makes multi-panel (dual-panel or four-panel) Windows Explorer windows, and the other creates tabbed Explorer windows. And yes, you read that right. They actually reuse Windows Explorer for the actual windows.
- New page: How to Get the Hash (MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512) of a File on Windows Without Installing Anything. Sometimes, when you download a file, the website you get it from also lists its MD5, SHA1, SHA256 and SHA512 hashes, so that you can verify that the file you obtained has not been tampered with or corrupted in transit. This article shows you how you can check those hashes using Windows' built-in programs.
- Another program has been added to the Free Video Editors page. If you are looking for software to process your video file, whether to do something simple like split it into smaller segments or extract a scene, or something more elaborate like add special effects, watermarks, image overlays, and so on, take a look at the many free programs available here.
- Another web conferencing computer program has been added to the Free Video Conferencing Software page. This one was originally designed by Microsoft for academic learning and collaboration, but has since been released as open source software.
- Bored? A new program has been added to the Free Android Emulators page. Android emulators let you play Android games (and potentially also run other types of Android apps) on your computer.
- New page: How to Change the Colour (Color) of Links on a Web Page with BlueGriffon. There may be times you need to change the default colour of a link on your web page, for example, because the background colour clashes with it or renders it nearly invisible. This article shows you how to do it using the free BlueGriffon web editor.
- Two new sources of free certificates have been added to the Free SSL Certificates for Websites/Web Servers page. They may be useful if you are thinking of moving your website from HTTP to HTTPS.
- A new service has been added to the Free File Storage Hosting page. This one seems to have been around for quite some time and offers up to 10 GB space for files that you want to share with others, or just to back up on the cloud.
- A new interpreter has been added to the Free APL Compilers and Interpreters page. APL is a high level programming language used in a wide variety of fields, including scientific programs, financial software, robotics, neural networks, computer animation, etc.
- New page: Why Can't I Make Up Any Domain I Want? Is There a Way to Do Away with a Registrar Altogether? I was asked by a visitor why he couldn't dispense with a registrar and just make up any domain name he wanted. You may be surprised to hear that you can actually do that. But it won't do you any good.
- New page: How to Prevent Two or More Words from Being Split into Separate Lines (HTML/CSS). Sometimes you may want to keep a group of words on a web page together on a single line, rather than allowing the web browser to break them up and placed on separate lines if there's no space. This article shows you the HTML and CSS to accomplish this.
- Two more emulators have been added to the Free Amiga Emulators page. One of them runs in a modern web browser (which means it can work on Windows, macOS, Linux, etc), and the other works on the Playstation Portable (PSP). (For those wondering, Amiga emulators are software that allow you to run Amiga programs and games on your modern computers, by mimicking the original Amiga computers.)
- Another C compiler has been added to the Free C/C++ Compilers and Interpreters page. There are now about 32 C or C++ compilers on that page, and that's not even counting the ones listed separately for microcontrollers, PDAs, calculators and embedded systems. For those who don't know what these are, loosely speaking, C and C++ compilers let you create your own computer programs.
- New page: How to Add an Audio or Music File to a Web Page with BlueGriffon. BlueGriffon has built-in facilities for you to insert an audio clip or music file into your web page. This article shows you how to use it.
- GW-BASIC has been released as open source by Microsoft, and thus has been added to the Free BASIC Compilers and Interpreters page. For those not familiar with this program, it is a BASIC interpreter that was bundled with MS-DOS for umpteen years, and many people learnt ("learned") to write computer programs in those days by experimenting with it.
- New page: How to Draw a Rectangular Box Around Your Content in BlueGriffon. This article deals with how to use the BlueGriffon web editor to draw lines around text and/or images on a web page, so as to put them into a box, setting them apart from their surrounding content.
- Another free service has been added to the Free Source Code Hosting Services page. This one not only allows you to host software projects, but you can also use it to create websites containing free content on any subject. You can use your own domain name for the site, or the free web address they provide.
- New page: How to Insert a Bullet Point (Unordered) List with BlueGriffon. This article shows you how to insert a bullet point list (where each item on the list is marked with a solid black circle rather than numbered) into a web page using the BlueGriffon web editor.
- New page: Free Video Conferencing Software. If you are looking for video conferencing software, either to conduct virtual meetings, online courses, or even just to collaborate on a project or document, take a look at these free open source software. With these, you don't have to rely on third-party online services over which you have little or no control.
- New page: How to Start a List with a Number Other than 1 and Still Have it Automatically Numbered (HTML). What happens if you want to create a list of items, but don't want to start counting from 1 (eg, you want the list to start from item 4)? This article shows you how to do it, and still use the HTML ability to automatically number the list, and keep the numbers up-to-date even when you add items to (or delete them from) the middle.
-
Two new programs have been added to the
Free File Synchronization Software
page. One of them can even back up across a local network and the Internet. As everyone who has worked on a computer
for some time knows, it is very important to back up (at the very least) your data onto a separate device on a
regular basis, since computers can fail at unexpected times. Software like these are used to automatically
mirror the data on your main computer with your backup drive or system, so that it is kept up to date.
Note: if you want to back up an entire computer, and not just your data, please see the Free Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities page instead.
- New page: How to Insert a List that Automatically Numbers/Renumbers Itself with BlueGriffon. This article shows you how to add a list to your web page that automatically numbers itself. This way, you don't have to go through the whole list to renumber everything when you add to the middle of the list or when you delete items from it.
- A new SQL database server has been added to the Free Database Libraries and SQL Servers page. This one is column-oriented, potentially increasing its performance (over the usual row-oriented database management systems).
- New page: What to do if a registrar quotes an exorbitant price for a domain. One of my visitors told me that a domain name registrar quoted a "ridiculous price" for a domain he wanted, and asked if there was any way around it. This article answers that question.
- A Python compiler has been added to the Free Python Compilers and Interpreters page. This one works on Windows, macOS and Linux, and can generate standalone binary distribution packages for your program.
- New page: How to Rotate an Image on a Website When Viewed on a Mobile Phone (CSS). In response to a visitor's query, this article deals with how you can turn an image on its side when a web page is viewed on a mobile phone.
- Another PHP script that can generate CAPTCHA images has been added to the Free PHP CAPTCHA Scripts page. Such scripts are meant to be used in conjunction with forms on your website to cut down the amount of spam dumped into them. (For those who don't really know how to write PHP programs, or can't be bothered to write your own script, one quick and simple way is to generate a contact form, complete with CAPTCHA integrated using the Feedback Form Wizard. It's free too.)
