Best Free Tools for Programmers

Specialized tools and tutorials, select the language:


Programming languages AspectJ - Basic - C - C++ - C# - Eiffel - Java - JavaScript - JavaFX - Pascal - PHP - Python - Rexx - Ruby - Scala - Scriptol - Tcl - HTML - XML - XAML - XUL - SQL

IDE (Integrated Development Environment) / RAD (Rapid Application Development)
Set of free RAD (Rapid Application Development) tools by Borland for several programming languages: C++, C#, Pascal, Assembler. May be used to build commercial products.
IDE for several languages including Java and PHP with a built-in server. (Java)
Multi-languages IDE to integrate various programming tools. You can add other tools. (Java)

Graphical User Interfaces for Cross-platform Programs
XML based toolkit for graphical user interface (GUI). Displayed by Firefox or standalone with the XulRunner runtime. Hard to master. (All systems)
Markup language for user interfaces design, easier than XUL. The site provide a Silverlight tutorial. See also the XAML card. (Win/Lin).
GUI widely used for applications. (Win/Lin)
A library for game programming using all resources (sound, video, devices) of the computer, for any language, any OS. Use OpenGL, DirectX. (Win/Lin).
Complete GUI. (Win/Linux). Formerly wxWindows.
GUI with a binding for GDI and Open GL. (Win/Lin)
This GUI library is a wrapper to OpenGL and convenient for graphic programs.

Utilities for Programmers
Complete installer, can add your program on the desktop, provides an uninstaller for your program, into the archive that is bigger than those of above. Open source.
Archive manager. Can build, extract, convert ZIP, BZ2, TAR, GZ, CAB archives and the new 7z format. Manages also CD images
7-Zip is open source and has a linux version, P7Zip.
Produces a HTML/Latex/XML/Man documentation from source files.
Compresses binary executables and shrink them up to 30%.(Win/Lin)
Give to old programs the look of new Windows XP applications. (Win Vista/XP)
XML based replacement for make and makefiles. (PHP)

Graphical Tools
Drawing program compatible with Photoshop. Supports layers. A lot easier to use than Gimp. (Win).
Image viewer, recognize almost any format plus video ones: Mpeg, Divx (Win/Lin)
Vectorial graphical editor allowing to make SVG files (Win/Lin).
Screen capture. Delimits a windows or a region.(Win)
Landscape editor with photographic quality.
Expert level
Drawing program, open source replacement for Photoshop. Despite that it is bugged under Windows has interesting features. (Windows / Linux)
3d visualization tool, open source. (Win/Lin).
Most powerful 3D ray tracer. Programming required. (Win/Lin)
3d image maker.

Web Programming
Tools to make web pages automatically : generates meta tag for keywords and description from the content of the page. Open source. (Win/Lin)
Test HTML page for malformed code.
Tool to help in creating a blog or even any website. (PHP and MySQL)
Small Ajax and Gears framework with the main functions: load XML, text or HTML contents, post a text or command to the server.
Check a website for broken links. (PHP). See also Xenu's link (Win)
Modern big websites are built with a CMS (Content Management System) as Joomla, Drupal, Xoops for portails, phpBB or punBB for forums, Wordpress for blogs.
Scriptol is a modern, powerful object-oriented language, and is very easy to learn Generates PHP programs, web pages or binary executables. (Win/Lin)
More at the Scriptol page.
The PHP interpreter and the tutorial. More tools for PHP on the PHP card...

Editors (Text, HTML, XML)
Wysiwyg HTML editor. (Win/Lin).
Complete editor for any programming languages including HTML and XML. Internet features. Several foreign languages supported. (Win).
Cross-platform tabbed code editor. Extensible with plugins.
XML editor with sub-tree selector and validator. (Win)
XML and XSLT editor and validator. (Win).
Online RSS editor, build the feed of your site with a selection of articles. (All). Requires PHP 5.
Perfect to write manuals with images, supports HTML and PDF. (Win/Lin/Mac).
More tools and infos on the HTML card. Languages may have specialized editors also.

Web Tools and Online Services
Use Spyware Doctor included in the Google Pack above to detect suspicious cookies and Cookies Manager will delete them.
However, note that most cookies hold passwords, do not delete them.
Upload files on the net. (Win).
For updating a website from local files, a command line FTP synchronizer is well suited.
Check your web pages for validity, according to the HTML 4 standard. You can check also XML and CSS.
Check your home page with several browsers and display it on the site for some times.
Reports backlinks to each page, to the webmaster of the site only.
Online interface with various tools to check a website. Extensible by adding new tabs from the setup panel.
List of tools and services for webmasters.

Tools for SQL Databases
Database designer. (Win/Lin).
Local server with MySQL and user interfaces to databases. (Win)
Manager for MySQL. (Win/Lin).

Other Tools
Windows version of all Unix tools. (Win)

Documentations and Tutorials
Lot of tutorials about HTML, XML, etc... ont the W3 consortium site.
C++ tutorial with exercices.
All Open GL tutorials.
Complete tutorial on OpenGL with examples and sources for each compiler.
Formats of files, sources and other resources for programmers.
Fonts and tools.
See at each programming language on top of this page for specific tutorials.
Labels:  Win)dows,Lin)ux, Mac)Intosh, Java or PHP: all OS, Nothing: Windows

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