Software
Free Trial Software
Productivity Suites
Microsoft Office
The University of Maine System now has an agreement with Microsoft that allows all of our students, faculty, and staff the personal use of certain Microsoft Office products.
The full MS Office package can be downloaded for Windows or Mac OS X on up to 5 personally owned devices.
You can access Microsoft's online, collaborative version of Office on any computer with an Internet connection.
Need Assistance? Call the University Technology Support Center 800-696-4357 or email techsupport@maine.edu
Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)
Aptana Studio
Aptana Studio is an open source development tool with support for: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Ruby, Rails, PHP and Python.
Eclipse
Eclipse is an open source IDE for both Windows and Mac for Java, C/C++, PHP developers and more!
Netbeans
From the Netbeans Website: NetBeans IDE lets you quickly and easily develop Java desktop, mobile, and web applications, as well as HTML5 applications with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. The IDE also provides a great set of tools for PHP and C/C++ developers. It is free and open source and has a large community of users and developers around the world.
Oracle Data Modeler
From Oracle's Website: Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler is a data modeling and database design tool that provides an environment for capturing, modeling, managing, and exploiting metadata.
Oracle SQL Developer
From Oracle's Website: Oracle SQL Developer is the Oracle Database IDE. A free graphical user interface, Oracle SQL Developer allows database users and administrators to do their database tasks in fewer clicks and keystrokes. A productivity tool, SQL Developer's main objective is to help the end user save time and maximize the return on investment in the Oracle Database technology stack.
SQL Developer supports Oracle Database 10g, 11g, and 12c and will run on any operating system that supports Java.
Text Editors
Notepad++
(America's Digital Goddess, Kim Komando, selected this application as the 1/13/2010 Download of the Day.)
As a student, you may already be familiar with Notepad (which is a plain text editor that is installed in the Accessories subdirectory in the Microsoft Windows operating system). Notepad++ can be described as "Notepad on steroids." It has the same easy interface as Notepad but is actually an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), which can be installed in the Portable Apps suite or as an individual application on your PC.
Notepad++ includes some useful Web Development features. Below are some of the highlights of Notepad++, but you will want to take time to review all of its features in order to experience the full functionality of Notepad++.
- Syntax highlighting. You can configure syntax highlighting for almost any programming language using the Style Configurator option in the Settings menu. Syntax highlighting color codes elements, attributes, values, and comments in the source document in a different color, providing a useful debugging technique.
- Save and close options. The Notepad++ menu bar contains two Save icons, one which saves the current document and one that saves all open documents. Two Close buttons (Close and Close All), which close the current document or all open documents, respectively.
- Browser display. From the Run menu, you can view the open document in either the Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browser. This is useful for checking the browser display in different browsers when developing a Web site.
- FTP Client. You must upload your Web pages to a remote Web server to make them available on the World Wide Web. Notepad++ contains its own FTP program, which allows you to upload and download files directly from the Notepad++ window. Select Plugins | FTP SynchronizeA | Show FTP Folders to open the FTP pane and create a server profile that maps the location of the Web folder on your remote server.
Textpad
TextPad is a shareware-licensed code editor / compiler that supports a number of programming languages such as Java, C, C++ and HTML with its intuitive interface and the ability to compile source code.
This is a great text editor for a beginning web developer who is familiar with the basic html scripting tags. TextPad has the ability to display a list of the current open documents, to save all open documents at the same time, to display line numbers, to wrap text, to spell check source code, and an option to modify preferences.
TextWrangler
TextWrangler is a free text editor for the Mac. From the website:
- Syntax coloring and function navigation for ANSI C, C++, Fortran, Java, Object Pascal, Objective-C, Perl, Python, Rez, Ruby, Tcl, TeX, and Unix shell scripts
- Automatic language guessing and User selectable per/document language setting for supported languages
- Integration with Mac OS X developer help
- Ability to function as an integrated external editor with Xcode
jEdit
J-Edit is a cross-platform text editor for the mature programmer. This is a great open-source software package that can be used for XML, HTML, Python, Perl, PHP and many, many more. Although it is not considered an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), it does provide all of the functions that one would expect from mature program editor: syntax highlighting, opening multiple files, enhanced cut and paste, code folding, integration with external tools, and File Transfer Protocol(FTP).
The real value of J-Edit lies in the development of a large number of plug-ins to extend the core functionality. The plug-ins are easy to install and manage using an open-source manager.
With the addition of XML plug-ins, J-Edit surpasses many XML-specific editors as a development tool. Its syntax highlighting, code completion, and text indenting features provide a comfortable development for XML programming.
An article by Scott Beatty entitled Use jEdit to Edit Your PHP" published February 8, 2005, provides useful information on download and installation, plug-in management, editor customization, and support resources.
Miscellaneous
EasyPHP
EasyPHP is a software package, including an Apache server, and MySQL database, and administration tools that you install on your flash drive. If you use PHP to develop your Web sites, you have probably found out that you can't view the pages locally; you have to upload them to a server. With EasyPHP, you simply place all your Web pages in the root Web folder (www) on your flash drive and open them in the browser of any computer. EasyPHP has the complete functionality of more robust production servers, so it is especially good for PHP development projects. You can modify the configuration files to enable or disable PHP features and configure your email specifications. You can use phpMyAdmin to interface with your MySQL database and set permissions for users.
Gadwin Print Screen
Gadwin Print Screen is a versatile screen capture program that takes a snapshot of computer screen data. What makes Gadwin Print Screen so exceptional? If you've ever tried to capture the contents of your computer screen, you probably used Print Screen, copied the data to the clipboard, and pasted the full screen into a graphic editing program. You probably wondered if the time spent was worth the effort.
Gadwin's ability to capture the full screen or any portion of the screen using a user-defined hotkey and capturing the shape and location of the mouse makes creating step-by-step user manuals and presentations a breeze. The captured screenshots can be printed out instantly, copied to the clipboard, saved to a specific folder, or even sent through e-mail.
Oracle Virtual Box
Virtualization is an essential skill for an IT professional. This application allows you to host virtual machines on your computer. You can host amultiple operating systems that use your host hardware but has a layer that integrates with the guest OS.
From the VirtualBox Website: Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4, 2.6 and 3.x), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD.
Wamp/MAMP(Mac)
Like Easy PHP, WAMP and MAMP, include an Apache server, MySQL database, and administration tools. They allow you to develop your Websites locally and test before upload. They do not include an FTP server.
Windows Grep
The primary feature of Windows Grep is to search files for text strings that the user specifies and display the results. Once 'Win Grep' locates the files, the files can be opened for viewing or editing or the text can be replaced with a different text string.
Win Grep is easy to install and comes with a Search Assistant for users operating in beginner mode. It can search plain text or unix-style text, which makes it the perfect program to search your program code.
I, personally, would be lost without Win Grep!