I Love Free Software » Programming Tools

Convert C# to Java Online: C#2Java

Ishan — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:00:38 +0000

CodePorting C#2Java is a free online application to convert C# to Java. This C# to Java converter lets you upload C# code, and converts that to equivalent Java code. You can upload complete C# solution, and that will be converted to Java in a few seconds. You can even specify solution path from online repository. In case some code cannot be converter, C#2Java lets you edit the code in the built-in code editor.

C#2Java is one of the best C# to Java converters that I have come across. This is a full fledged online application suite that does a darn good job at online conversion. What I like best is that you can upload your complete C# solution (in zip format), and C#2Java will convert entire solution to Java code.

Once the code is converted, C#2Java shows you the code in a beautiful code editor. The code is properly indented. In case it was not able to convert some code, it lets you edit that in the visual source code editor.

Once the conversion is done, you can download the converted code.

Here are some of the features of this Free C# to Java Converter:

Upload complete C# solution, and convert that to Java.
Very fast conversion.
Accurate conversion from C# to Java
Completely online, nothing to download or install.
You need to create a free account to start doing conversion.

I wasn’t able to test this application thoroughly as I don’t have a complete C# solution, but the application looks pretty good on the outset.

If you are an avid C# programmer, then do this app for a spin, and let us know how it performs.

Check out C#2Java.

Convert C# to Java Online: C#2Java was originally published at I Love Free Software

Font Comparison Software to Preview Text with All Installed Fonts

Ishan — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 17:00:36 +0000

FontViewOk is a free font comparison software that lets you preview text with all the installed fonts together. You can type any sentence, and this font comparison software will show how that sentence will look with all the installed fonts on your PC. This is very helpful if you are trying to find a particular font, but you are not able to remember the name. It also comes handy if you are trying to choose a font; side-by-side view of all the fonts together will give you a good comparison.

FontViewOk is completely free. To use FontViewOk, download the zip file. The download size is just 53 KB! Unzip the file, and run the application. Nothing to install.

How to Use Font Comparison Software to Compare Fonts:

FontViewOk is quite easy to use. Once you run the application, you will see the interface which shows default text in all the installed fonts. You can type any text that you want, and it will immediately show that with all the installed fonts. Apart from that, you can also specify color of the font, and size of the font. Some other formatting options include Bold, Italics, Underline, and strikethrough.

All these features make FontViewOk an important tool for designers to pre-determine which font will go best with their project. The formatting options further help in getting accurate assessment of the look n feel of fonts with selected text. Also check out Font Comparer.

This Font comparison software also lets you print text with all the installed fonts.

Download FontViewOk.

Font Comparison Software to Preview Text with All Installed Fonts was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Text to HTML Converter: MarkDownPad

Ishan — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:00:20 +0000

MarkDownPad is a free text to HTML converter that lets you convert text to HTML. You can just write simple text, and use built-in tools to format the text. MarkDownPad will then convert that text to HTML that you can export, and publish anywhere.

MarkDownPad is a nice tool for writers who need to publish their articles online, but are not well versed with HTML. This text to HTML software lets them concentrate on writing, and just use formatting options as they would normally use. When they are done with everything, it gives one click option to export text as HTML.

MarkDownPad comes with a nice “Live Preview” option. As you write, it will keep showing the HTML format of the article on the Right side. You can swithch off HTML preview any time (if it becomes too distracting).

How to Download and Install this Free Text to HTML converter:

Go to the website of MarkDownPad, and click on Download button. This will download MarkDownPad to your computer. The download size is less than half MB.
Double click on the downloaded file to start installation. At the time of installation, it will download some more files from the web (around 1.5 MB). The installation finishes quickly.
After that, you can start using MarkDownPad on your computer, and convert text to HTML.

How to Convert Text to HTML:

It is quite easy to convert text to HTML with MarkDownPad. Just open MarkDownPad, and start writing the text as you normally use. While writing, you can use formatting options available in the toolbar to bold text, italic, underline, list, bullet, etc. You can also use common keyboard shortcuts to format text (like, Ctrl +B to Bold text).
As you write, MarkDownPad will show you the HTML version of the text on the Right side. This is live preview of your text.
Once you are done writing, just go to the “File” menu, and click on “Export HTML”. This will export your text in HTML format, and will save in a file that you specify.

Also check out some other HTML editor that we reviewed earlier, like, AceHTML, and Kompozer.

Features of Free Text to HTML Software:

MarkDownPad comes with many nice features.

It comes with a “Distraction Free Mode” option. This option opens MarkDownPad in a full screen mode, so that you can just concentrate on writing, without getting distracted by background windows.
MarkDownPad comes with an option to render HTML in browser. So, before you even export HTML, you can use this option to see how your text will look in a browser.
Some of the tools provided by MarkDownPad include Bold, Italic, Blockquote, H1, H2, Hyperlink, Insert Image, Code, copy HTML, Bulleted List, horizontal rule, convert text to uppercase, convert text to lowercase, Insert timestamp.
It comes with a built-in CSS Editor to edit CSS of generated HTML.

I really like MarkDownPad as a free text to HTML converter. It is quite simple to use, very small in size, and totally free.

Download MarkDownPad free.

Free Text to HTML Converter: MarkDownPad was originally published at I Love Free Software

Google Programming Language: Dart

Siddhartha — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 13:00:44 +0000

Recently, Google launched its new programming language, Dart. Dart is a new structured programming language, based on classes. This new Google programming language comes as a replacement of JavaScript programming language. Google Dart supports web development and helps the developers to develop creative and attractive web pages.

Why Dart:

The basic reason to launch the new language “Google Dart”, is to replace the JavaScript from web development. This new language offers better performance and has the ability to support large scale web projects. This Google Programming Language is developed as a cloud based IDE environment, that offers cross compile option for developers. And can be compiled into ECMAScript 3 on the fly, that to is compatible with non-Dart browsers.

Google also unveiled the Dart language site that includes:

Open source tools
Program code samples
Tutorials
Libraries information, etc.

Here is a small program of Fibonacci series in Dart Language:

int fib (int n) {

if (n<=1) return n;

return fib (n-1) + fib (n-2);

}

main () {

print (‘fib (20) = $ {fib (20)}’)

}

Features of Google programming language, Dart:

Open source
Class based
Optional types
Libraries
Tooling

Google Dart includes several design goals, these are :

It is a structured and flexible programming language for web development.
It is familiar and natural to developers and hence it is easy to learn
Dart comes with full range of devices on the web – including iPhone, Tablets, Laptops and Servers too.
It provides tools and can run faster on all modern browsers.

Here is a video tutorial that gives a brief introduction about the working of Google Dart language:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Google Dart is a new Google programming language that gives a new platform for developing web based components. It is very easy to learn for developers and includes modern class programming language. You can also download the Dart editor. Also you can check out more about Google Dart.

Google Programming Language: Dart was originally published at I Love Free Software

Get .com Domain Name for Just $0.99 – Limited Period Offer

Ishan — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:46:56 +0000

Today I was surfing on 1&1 website, and noticed that they are running an offer for .com domain names for just $0.99. I thought there would be some catch, and they would ask me to buy hosting along with domain name. However, that wasn’t the case. They are actually offering .com domain names for just $0.99 for first year. To confirm this, I booked two .com domain names for myself, and paid just $1.98!

This is a limited period offer, but the website does not mentions how long will it last. So, rush over to 1&1, and grab a few domain names for cheap; before the offer expires. The best part is that you don’t need to use any coupon code.

And if you want to add hosting to your domains, you can always choose our favorite web host: Hostgator.

Let us know in comments which domain names you got :)

Get .com Domain Name for Just $0.99 – Limited Period Offer was originally published at I Love Free Software

Free Online HTML5 Editor: Maqetta

Ishan — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 19:30:55 +0000

Maqetta is a free online HTML 5 editor that lets you create HTML 5 compliant mockups online. The mockups are created in a form that they are publishing ready, and can be turned into live websites.

Maqetta HTML 5 editor is targeted as a tool for designers to create UI mockups for developers. However, instead of just creating screenshots of UI, designers can create actual HTML 5 compliant mockups using Maqetta. Those mockups can then be passed over to developers, along with all the underlying source code. Developers can either use that source code directly, or modify it add more dynamic functionalities, while still retaining the source code for key design elements. Things like CSS can especially be used directly.

This free HTML5 authoring software is a hosted application, and completely free to use. Maqetta runs directly in your browser, so you do not need to download or install anything to use it. If you want to create full websites in design mode, you are better off using Muse from Adobe.

How to use Maqetta:

To start using Maqetta, you can create a free account.
Once you sign up for free Maqetta account, it sends an email to verify your email address. Just click on the link in the email, and that activates your account.
After that, login to Maqetta. This will show the start page of Maqetta. Here you can choose what you want to do.

I started with creating a web page. It opened a window which showed controls on the Left pane, and Right side showed the actual web page as I was creating it.

Maqetta lets you create web page by just doing drag and drop. Just pick any control from the Left side, and drop it on your web page.

Maqetta also gives you an option to modify source code directly at any time, in case you are not able to accomplish something via drag and drop.
Once you are done, you can export your files, and pass them to your developers.

Features of Maqetta:

This free HTML 5 editor comes with several useful features:

Visual Page Editor: This is the main use of Maqetta. Essentially, you can create HTML mockups via doing just drag and drop. The visual editor also comes with features like redo, undo, cut, copy, paste, etc.
Define Application States: All the websites have some form of interactivity. It could be as simple as just clicking a menu item. In a design tool, it is not possible to code interactivity, but Maqetta provides a neat alternative to that. Maqetta lets designers specify different states for the website. A designer can choose how a webpage will look for a particular state. Controls can be enabled or disabled for different states.
Team Review: This is a very powerful feature of Maqetta, especially if you are working in a team environment. You can create your mockup using Maqetta, and then ask your team members to review that, and comment on that. This means you do not need to keep sending screenshots around for getting your mockup reviewed.
Theme Editor: This is another powerful feature of Maqetta. It lets you define theme using a set of CSS attributes that you can apply to widgets on multiple web pages. This makes it very easy to maintain a consistent look n feel across all pages of the website.
Mobile Authoring: Mobile Authoring holds lot of importance on Maqetta’s roadmap. At time of writing of this article, not much features are available to make website mobile friendly. It does provides an option to put a silhouette of various mobile devices (like iPhone) on your visual editor, so that you can design mockup using exact dimension.

To do more in HTML5, you can create HTML 5 animations, and convert Flash to HTML 5.

Verdict:

I have lot of hopes from Maqetta by reading about its features. The project itself was largely contributed by IBM in the beginning, and the source code was then made open source so that community can add to it. The application is still in its pre-beta at this time, and so have quite a few bugs, and lot of scope for improvement. While I was creating my mockup with Maqetta, the experience was a bit buggy. Even modifying the source code was slow. But all in all, I believe Maqetta holds lot of promise, if developers are able to deliver on the roadmap that they have promised.

Check out Maqetta.

Free Online HTML5 Editor: Maqetta was originally published at I Love Free Software

Download Muse from Adobe: Create Websites without Coding

Ishan — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 19:30:59 +0000

Adobe has launched a new design tool called Muse. Muse is a website design software that lets you design websites. Now, there are many other website design tools also out there (like WebPlus and WebMatrix), but what differentiates Muse is its focus on creating websites without doing any coding. Muse lets you create complex static interactive websites by just using GUI interface, and without doing any coding at all. It lets you focus just on the design, without worrying about underlying code. You can create complete websites using Muse, without writing even a single line of code.

Note: Muse is just the name of the project, and actual product name will be something different. So, if you land on this article after a few months, and are not able to find any reference to Muse on Adobe’s website, don’t be surprised.

Muse works with Adobe Air, and if you do not have Adobe Air installed on your computer, Muse will install it automatically. Muse works with both Windows, as well as Mac.

I really like Muse, primarily because of its focus on design. Unlike other website design software, Muse starts with the correct underlying assumption that each website has multiple pages. So, it lets you start with planning about your website as a whole. You can create master pages that define overall layout of all the pages of your website. Apart from that, you can also define settings that are applicable to throughout your website.

Once you have done site wide settings, you can proceed to design and modify individual pages of the website. Each page can look different than other pages. You can add interactive menus, custom shapes, background images, colors, tranparency, text, and lot more. And all this by just doing drag and drop.

Another interesting feature of Muse is that the interface itself resembles a browser. This means that when you are designing a page, you know that this is how it will render in an actual browser. On top of this, Muse takes care of creating code that is cross-browser compatible. So, you can just focus on the design, while Muse worries about ensuring that your site renders correctly in all the browsers. No need of cross browser website testing tools anymore.

Muse also lets you test your sites in a live environment. Once you have completed your website, you can choose to publish it as a test site online with Adobe (for free). You can even share URL of that with your friends and clients so that they can see the site in a live environment and give feedback.

And once you are done, you can simply export the entire site as HTML, and then upload it to your favorite Hosting provider by using any FTP tool.

Muse is completely free right now. But it will become paid early next year. It will follow a subscription model, and users will be required to pay around $15-$20 per month for using Muse. That’s not bad for designers as they can complete the websites on their own, without depending on programmers to convert their designs into live websites (no hard feeling for programmers; I am a programmer myself).

Go ahead and download Muse, and use it while it is still free. You might be able to create hundreds of websites, before it becomes paid.

Download Muse free.

Download Muse from Adobe: Create Websites without Coding was originally published at I Love Free Software

Banana Dance: Free CMS + Wiki Software

Ishan — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 19:30:17 +0000

There are lot of popular CMS, like, WordPress, Joomla, etc. And there are many wiki software. Banana Dance is an innovative software that is a combination of both: It is a CMS software, that has wiki features as well. So, you can create versatile posts, and add wiki style features as well. Banana Dance is open source, and completely free. It requires PHP, MySQL, and a web server to work – most of the hosting providers already provide this configuration.

Frankly, I am not aware of any other free software that combines both CMS and Wiki features (though, I am sure there would be a few out there). So, I believe Banana Dance fills an important void.

Here are some of the features of Banana Dance:

You can compose web pages in article style using HTML, or use wiki style.
It provides many user management features as well, like, user registration, user types, etc.
Banana Dance provides commenting features as well. Comments are threaded to show them in a logical order. It also has features to add ratings to comments, and classify comments.
Banana Dance comes with pre-set themes to easily integrate Banana Dance with your website.
It takes care of SEO aspects of articles as well.

To see a live example of Banana Dance, just go to Banana Dance website. The website itself is created in Banana Dance. Apart from that, it also has demo to see and try some of the features of Banana Dance.

I did not try Banana Dance myself, but the demo seems pretty interesting. If you are thinking about setting a website in which you are looking for features of a Content Management System, as well as Wiki, you can check out Banana Dance.

Banana Dance: Free CMS + Wiki Software was originally published at I Love Free Software

Absolute Color Picker: Convert Colors into Hexadecimal representation

Ishayat — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 19:30:14 +0000

Absolute Color Picker is a free color picker designed for web-designers and webmasters for converting colors into Hex representation. If you are a web designer, you can make your work easier with this free color picker. If you are a web-designer, your work mostly involves picking colors for color models and all. After picking the color, you have to convert it to HTML based Hex representation. Usually, it is not an easy work to convert colors into HTML based hexadecimal representation but this free color grabber makes the work easier. Moreover, it is compatible with most graphic packages.

You can select any color from the tabs available in Absolute Color Picker. You will find a certain aspect of a color selection in every tab and select the one you prefer. You can select colors depending on hues combination, color brightness/saturation or color palettes available on the software. When you choose a color, this free color picker instantly converts it to HTML based hexadecimal representation to make work easier for you. You can not only create different color schemes with it but also manage them with this free color picker.

The latest version of this free color picker features an eye dropper. Hold down the mouse button and click the eye-dropper and go to any point of the screen to get the color of that point. All the colors you have selected will be saved as history and there are 12 slots where you can save them. You can pick any color that is being displayed on the screen with screen eye dropper. But the best feature of this software is the HTML color conversion.

You can also try Color Seizer and VMN Toolbox reviewed by us.

Features of Absolute Color Picker:

HTML color conversion allows you to convert any color to HTML based Hex representation
Pick any color showing on the screen with Screen eye dropper
All your selected colors will be saved as history and you can save about 12 colors
Predefined color palettes
Color selection dialogs are customizable
Customize saturation, brightness, hue and other parameters separately.

Absolute Color Picker is available for download at Eltima’s official website. It’s only 1.28 MB in size and supports Windows 7, Vista, XP, NT, 98 and 95. Try Absolute Color Picker Free.

Absolute Color Picker: Convert Colors into Hexadecimal representation was originally published at I Love Free Software

Cactus Editor: Free HTML Editor

Jaya — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 20:30:41 +0000

Cactus Editor is a free and simple HTML Editor developed by OPG. It is a tiny portable HTML editor with a friendly user interface good for editing small HTML files.

As Cactus Editor is a portable software therefore you can easily store it in a USB drive, or external hard drive, etc. This application is shareware and free to use. You can share it everywhere you want.

You can also check out other similar software reviewed by us like DFM2HTML, PageBreeze and AceHTML.

The software is small in size so it will take less system space when installed. Also it is very simple to use and is free of adware. So, Download CactusEditor now and enjoy.

Cactus Editor: Free HTML Editor was originally published at I Love Free Software