Quatrux English

PHP Designer 2006

2006-06-06T19:51:00.000+03:00

For a long time I am programming/writing PHP scripts and it is important for me what kind of software I am using. I started with simple text editors on Amiga OS, but when I moved to Linux I really liked Bluefish. Nevertheless, I want to present a freeware PHP Editor, which is very powerful and works with Windows 98/2000/NT/XP - PHP Designer 2006, there is older 2005 version and of course the first version released in 2003 about which there is no point to discuss anymore.

PHP Designer is a powerful freeware PHP IDE often used for writing PHP, but you also can use it for reading, writing and editing HTML, CSS, XML, SQL, Javascript, Visual Basic and so on.. Professionals and Novice users can use it without any problems, it is made that users would feel more comfortable and would create, edit, analyze, optimize and publish different PHP applications much faster - All in one program. PHP Designer 2006 has various features for PHP developers: very nice syntax highlighting for PHP, HTML, CSS, XML, JS, VB, JAVA, C#, different SQL and of course Multi, which highlights most of the formats in one file, I only had problems with XML inside PHP scripts; very nice File Browser; Tabs, for fast change between files they are saved using sessions; built-in FTP, that you could automatically upload files to your server; it can use your php.exe interpretor, with which you can test, debug, execute PHP scripts; great panel for classes functions and includes - very useful if you have a lot of classes and functions and includes in one file; built-in PHP Manual; built-in tools and hints which makes your job easier; support for Windows, Unix, Mac formats; different managers such as ToDo Manager, Project Manager and etc. But one of the most important features is built-in functions which you can use for your applications; full PHP library. Don't forget, that you have a lot of Options to choose from and can customize a lot, but personally I almost prefer the default, I only changed several things from time I installed it.

However, there are some things which I don't really prefer, it is a quite simple debugger, which is using IE engine and shows the result of php.exe, I hope in further versions of PHP Designer more features will be taken from Zend Studio. Personally, its not a problem for me, because I have installed WAMP on my computer (Windows Apache MySQL PHP)and I can easily test my scripts in a browser. Another thing why people don't choose this program is because of its speed when changing between tabs, it is quite slow, even though PHP Designer is very stable and doesn't use a lot of resources from your computer, but I got used to the speed and it is not a problem for me anymore. In addition, I would like to see more options on session saving, something like in the Internet browser Opera.

I can add that this software application was written by Michael Pham from Denmark, he is currently 22 years old student (he was born on February 1983) He has experience with Delphi, Java, C / Linux, PHP, HTML, CSS and SQL.. He started with simple HTML editor when he was about 15-16 years old. He saw a lot of perspectives on the Internet and by little help from others he started PHP Designer the second time, his dream is to make PHP Designer the best free PHP IDE environment,but he does confess that he didn't get rich out of it. Furthermore, he needs to do his studies, his jobs and also look after his family so he can't stay full-time on PHP Designer, but nonetheless he is chap!

More about PHP Designer 2006

Free Pascal

2006-04-13T13:40:00.000+03:00

I must admit, that often I am using Free Pascal to compile my written programs, so I thought that it would be a great idea to write something about it. I really don't like Borland Turbo Pascal, which we need to use in School and as I know on the Information Technology Exam we will be using Free Pascal, so I don't see anything logical here.. Personally, for me Pascal programming language is quite poor, it is old and not comfortable, but quite easy to learn that we could understand the basics of programming, but currently, when we have so much programming languages such as Java, VB, C# that aren't alike to the best C, C++ and Assembly, but .. (Microsoft is Shit, don't use C sharp and DirectX) .. if you want to make your code multi-platform.

To get back to the Topic, Free Pascal (aka FPK Pascal) is an 32 and 64 bit professional Compiler, what is great, that it is available for different processors, like Intel x86, Amd64/x86 64, PowerPC, Sparc. The 1.0 Version, which is discontinued supports the old m68k CPU and works on Amiga Classic Computer, BeOS, SunOS, QNX and the current stable version is targeted for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X/Darwin, Mac OS classic, DOS, Win32, OS/2, Netware (libc and classic), Solaris, SkyOS and MorphOS - which is Amiga Related Operating System. Current Stable version is 2.0.2, but you can use the developer versions, which you can call beta. Free Pascal has a lot of features, as I know, when Borland announced that Turbo Pascal will be discontinued (Delphi appeared) one Student wrote his own Pascal Compiler which had excellent support for TB 7.0 code and later his personal project grew to a big one as we see Today. New versions support Delphi features as well as Delphi (classes, rtti, exceptions, ansistrings, widestrings, interfaces) Moreover, it supports MacPascal to assist Apple computer users. Lets don't forget that Free Pascal support function overloading, operator overloading, global properties and similar features. Lets remember that Free Pascal is Open Source Software which you can download free from SF.

More about Free Pascal

Audioscrobbler Plugin

2006-04-09T11:04:00.000+03:00

It was a quite long time I was writing at this Blog, I was quite busy with other stuff, but today I thought it will be useful for you to know about the Audioscobbler plugin for your media players such as Quintessential Player and similar. Audioscrobbler system is a database, which tracks the music you are listening to and exactly stores everything into the database from your sent metadata and creates statistics about your music. It is stable and you will not see it, because everything works in the background, unless you configured something differently or some error appeared about which you will be notified. Even you should be interested to what you are listening, to see your favourite song, album or band. Furthermore, from your statistics you can get recommendation to related bands and music of your taste.

You can install Audioscrobbler plugin for your favourite Media Player, as I know Audioscrobbler is supported for these Players: Winamp, Quintessential Media Player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, Yahoo! Music Engine, Yahoo! LaunchCast, Foobar2000, QCD, J. River Media Center, AlbumPlayer and MP3Toys by installing an extra plugin, which you can download free from Last.fm website. Every name of the song and other meta data are sent to Audioscrobbler server and are added to your profile, to get your own profile you just need to register with last.fm and in your player enable the plugin with your username and password. From this database, you can do a lot if you have the knowledge, you can use this data as a text file or xml data.

It is important that your mp3 music metadata would be valid, but because the data is checked, some of your songs might not appear in the database, last.fm listings, it is using the MusicBrainz.org database, which in the future will be even more advanced, it just removes bad songs. If you want to look at an example, here is My Profile.

By the Way, Last.fm together with Audioscrobbler offer much more, an Internet Radio is available as their service, through which you can transmit your own music or listen to other people, maybe even to your friends, who has a similar music taste, you just need to download their radio player and install it, it is light and does not take a lot of resources. Moreover, last.fm is offering a service, with which you can show your stats on your personal website or Blog, you have a lot of choice how they will look, you even can create your own style through the last.fm site, you will be able to use simple html code or javascript to show the recent tracks or anything you choose. In my opinion, I think you already are interested to use Audioscrobbler, so it is time for you to visit their sites.

More about Audioscrobbler

The Developers of Audioscrobbler Site

Quintessential Player

2006-03-13T07:46:00.000+02:00

I think that most of you are using your computers to listen to music, now it is very convenient to use mp3 format, of course the audio cd is still popular, but I think with time people will use them less and less, because the market now is full of mp3 players.. Well, you use WinAmp or even worse WMP (Windows Media Player) don't you ? but I really would recommend you to change your player, but personally I don't have anything against WinAmp, but thinking wisely it needs a lot of changes to make, for the performance of this software, the usage of resources and the speed is to big and of course making it more comfortable. That is why I think you need to look at Quintessential Player, else known as QCD.

Quintessential Player is fully skin-able audio player for your desktop, which is using plug-in architecture to make it as simple as possible, but with full of features. You can use the minimal installation or choose a lot of add-ons such as variety of visual effects, library functions, DSP filters, language packs and other plug-ins to make this player more advanced. Quintessential Player is able to play different audio formats: MP3, MP3 Pro, Ogg Vorbis, WAV and even Windows Media. Furthermore, it supports CD ripping, MP3 encoding, CDDB integration and cross-fading. Also Quintessential lets you to listen streaming audio from broadcasting services like Shoutcast and Icecast.

Other players might bring more of your attention, but it would be very hard to beat Quintessential Player for them, its efficiency, stability and flexibility. Very customizable and is made to work with almost all plug-ins. I would like to remind that this application is totally free, but closed code, that is why it beats all the other players. Stylish and fast, very comfortable interface, which you just like after some seconds.. it is more resource friendly and has more features than WinAmp. QCD has a large selection of different skins, which you can use without opening your browser and downloading them, due to it has an integrated skin browser where you can manage your player skins, amazing, isn't it ? The User Interface and menus are not confusing at all, it is very easy to understand everything, you will quickly get used to it, but I know that changing software sometimes is hard, but you will just need to get used after a while and I know you won't want to use anything else again.

Even though QCD isn't updated for quite a while now, it works well with Windows OS, there is no reason to update it, because the developers are working on QMP (Quintessential Media Player) which can do much more, I tried it and I really liked it, it has more of everything I told above, but as only beta version is available, it is not so stable to use it frequently. Sometimes when I am listening to music it quits/freezes.. But I think I will wait with patience until the full stable version of QMP arrives. I encourage you to not get scared of the default skin when you install the player, because there are plenty of them online - easily you can change them. I would like to add, that for your convenience, the usage is really comfortable and much better than WinAmp's, it even has a tray icon through which you can control your music, I don't know, but never listening to music and controling it wasn't so marvelous.

More about Quintessential at their website.

7-zip File Manager

2006-03-07T20:47:00.000+02:00

Often you are needing to archive a lot of files to archives, usually you are using the simple and quite old ZIP format or the quite popular RAR, which is quite slow comparing to the compression ratio. And the software you need to use is not for free and usually cost a lot of money which is not worth your money. 7 Zip File Manager is a free open-source application which supports most of the, almost every format available, but what I miss, is support for LHA and LZX formats, which I need to use quite often. So forget about WinZip, WinRar and others..

7-Zip main features: High compression ratio in new 7z format with LZMA compression. As I mentioned 7-Zip is free software distributed under the GNU LGPL. The supported formats for packing and unpacking are 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR, and it only unpacks RAR, CAB, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM and DEB. For Zip and GZip formats 7-Zip provides compression ratio that is 2-10% better than ratio provided by PKZip and WinZip. Currently there is no way to use unACE, because the authors written dll unace.dll works badly and it requires a powerful wrapper to be written, also in the future this application is planning to support ISO format, because now there are a lot of problems with this format, often we use the expensive Nero or the Windows default ISO burner, which burn your compact disks, that it only works on your own computer. Very comfortable and powerful UI (User Interface) and more.. 7-Zip is stable with the Operating Systems Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP and is ported to Linux and FreeBSD too.

To use archives is really good, especially now, when computers are so advanced, in the past I remember I also needed to compress different files, using XPK or PP format, that files would take less space in the floppy disk, now that might sound funny though.. It is very convenient to compress the files, which you rarely used, because it is better for the hard disk - one bigger file is better than lots of small files, especially when stupid Windows OS is reading all the files from inside while browsing. You can archive the files with a password too, so you will have the access to it and no one else. TAR format is really great, it stores all the files into one archive and does not compress them, this is very fast, I personally stored all my installers into one big 2 GB file and when I need something I just open the file like a list with the manager and browse it, copy the file I need and thats all, very fast and comfortable and just because of 7-Zip. Of course, there exist much more similar programs, but this in my opinion is one of the best, but if you still would like to pack using RAR, you will have to use something additionally, but I don't see the point to do it.

More about 7-Zip File Manager

Gaim

2006-03-07T20:10:00.000+02:00

Gaim is a multi-protocol Instant Messenger Client, it supports most of the most popular protocols, such as MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, Jabber and of course IRC, but I would nor recommend you to use Gaim as an IRC client, due to it is not so comfortable to use it for this purpose. Furthermore, other protocols, less popular in the world: Gadu-Gadu, SILC, GroupWise and the Zephyr network. Moreover, Gaim works on most operating systems, but mainly it is used on Linux, BSD, MacOS X, but it also works great for Windows, you just need an GTK engine installed on your system. It is quite stable, you just need to know how to use it after a while, to use it as you want, there are plenty of plugins and themes written for it.

Aren't you fed up having lots of different software, which are used to connect to different protocols, that to chat with your friends or etc. ? Gaim can connect to all those protocols at one time, so you can talk on MSN and AIM without needing to load another software and use more memory, isn't this just so convenient ? I think a lot of whom were dreaming about this in the past, and so the dream came true. Eventually, this has some difficulties, different protocols has different features, but Gaim did that you could use all of the features, which other applications are offering and even until now the application is under further development to improve it. You can send files, use away messages, but there are some unique things such as notifies, sounds and much more.. it is just hard to list them. Gaim perfectly works in your tray bar, you can work with your computer, be online without the opened windows and configure everything the way you need. It is best if you have already some knowledge how to register on different IM protocols.

I am using Gaim for a quite long time now, though it was my first and last real IM client, I fully am satisfied with what it offers, what is the best, that it isn't as bad as other programs, and is a free application, open source. I know that there are beta versions, with more features and abilities, I tried - the old version is capable of doing everything I need, but oh well, we will look what will happen in the near future.

You can get Gaim from their Project Site.

Skype

2006-02-23T21:21:00.000+02:00

In Lithuania IRC really got popular, especially the aitvaras network, but for some time now, when people start using different chatting alternatives, about which hardcore IRC users don't really speak with a smile in their face. But in my opinion, alternatives have different good things, same as bad too. This time I will present Skype. I think that Skype is a well written application and what is great, that it is available for free, but it is closed source, I think that is good, it is much harder to crack it or to integrate a virus and stuff, I mean much better for security issues of the user. You don't need to pay for it or search for any cracks and serial numbers if you can't afford buying software.

Skype is very comfortable and it thinks about the user and his convenience, it is quite fast and very stable, I never had any problems using Skype. Skype has a chat, contacts, who see you online or offline, what is superb, that usually there are 2 or 4 millions users online from all the world. But that is not the point, you have your privacy and they can't see when you're online or offline unless you set the Skype me mode. The main thing Skype is used, is VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) usage, you can call other people, who are using Skype, it is like phone calls on the Internet, but what is wonderful, that there is a feature to call to ordinary phones and cells, but it is not free, but really is quite cheap all you need to do is use SkypeOut. Remember, that calling emergency calls is not working, because it is not a phone alternative. One of the feature which is very useful, it is voice mail, which you can use when you're offline or away/busy from your computer.

Skype works on most of the popular Operating Systems, such as Windows, Linux, MacOSX, PocketPC.. It is very easy to use, if you want to speak, you need to have a microphone, also it can send and receive video, but you'll need to install an webcam, the quality is not the best, but it works and it depends from the camera it self, but the sound has really big quality and furthermore everything is very secure, the talks too, because an hashing method is used while sending the data. One more serious feature is file transfer, it is really very fast and comfortable and works between different platforms, the sizes of the files is not relevant, but what I miss is the resume ability, because sometimes the file transfer freeze and you need to resend the file from the beginning again.

Well, I am just offering to use this "another chatting software", I liked it due to I often forget that I am talking with some one on IRC, because I am quite busy doing something else, like programming or reading and while chatting on Skype it is almost impossible to forget about it. I would like to add, that it is possible to talk with a lot of people, not only in private, the same are with calls. A lot of who started using Skype for business and really managed to lower their expenses for telephone bills, due to the sound quality is high and all the frequency are used which are heard by the human ear and letters C and S will be two different letters and will not sound like one. This kind of things worked earlier too, we saw it on television, but never it was so easy accessible for regular users, Skype made it possible and they don't ask anything from us, no money, no ads, what is just glamorous that there are now spyware, viruses and even Spam! No Spam! but I have heard about some viruses, so be careful, but don't really worry, just look who you add to your contacts and don't do wild things with your webcam :D

More at Skype website.

Filezilla

2006-02-19T22:42:00.000+02:00

A lot of whom have heard about FTP, but not much people know how often they are using it or how exactly it works. FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is required for file transferring, but telling the truth you don't need to get deeper into this. Most of the servers are offering FTP access to the files, but now, when the 3 epoch of web has come, there appeared a lot of different and useful new alternatives, which made FTP not a such useful thing. But we still use it widely. So why not get all what you can out of FTP ? A lot of who are using Windows Explorer to connect to FTP server, but it is slow, not comfortable and even worse, has only few lame features.

Filezilla, is one of the FTP clients that I would really recommend using, it is fast, user friendly, does not need a lot of resources, the main thing is that it is free and open sourced. It is very stable and can have two types of database storage - XML and Windows Registry. But it's not only a client, Filezilla can be an FTP Server, but I would rather use other applications as FTP servers. Filezilla can send and receive files from/into the server, it has support for SSL/SFTP and even GSS. It has an automatic ASCII/BINARY method recognizer, it can use different proxies and firewalls while connecting to the server. And of course the simple functions like keep alive, chmod, passive and active modes, it remembers file transfers too, which is very convenient. It has a very customizable configuration, that it would suite the new users and of course the advanced ones. A very easy to use site manager where you can make a list of all your ftp servers/sites and with a few clicks connect anytime. At one time you can run as much Filezilla applications as you want, it depends on your RAM space, it even can limit the speed for you, if you need it.

So I encourage you to try it and get used to such an FTP client and forget using Explorer, because it really is a big pile of shit, you'll see how much faster your files will start downloading and how everything will become much better. Filezilla has caching abilities and has a similar file browsing like Explorer for local host. You're using Opera integrated FTP client ? not bad, but only for browsing, but not for receiving or uploading files and often connecting to the server. Well, you can try other ftp clients and could choose one out of them, which you liked better, but everyone I know who used Filezilla has left it as their main FTP client, so don't waste your time, use Filezilla and let someone else waste his/her time searching for the best FTP client out there.

FileZilla Project page

Opera

2006-02-15T21:23:00.000+02:00

It still is strange for me, that there are people, who are using Internet Explorer.. or they are very lazy to change something or browsing for them do not mean anything at all, or maybe they do not understand that browsing the web can be much more comfortable and pleasant. Furthermore more secure using something else than IE. I understand that at the beginning it can be really hard to get used to something new, but when you try, you start to understand that it is much better than something you used before and you think how could you be using that bullshit before.. This time I will talk about a browser which about half year back became a free application, it is Opera, the name can sound silly, but it is like that, I don't think that names matter very much, especially if it is so popular and a lot of whom know it, because they have started their service since the year 1995.

I used to be Mozilla Firefox fan, when Opera still was a non free application, I am not saying that Firefox is a shitty software, but believe me, it is much slower, uses much more resources, more RAM and it loads slower too; large pages scroll slower, I made some tests before and Opera won even three times in some things, it is slower when you change between tabs, it really is noticeable when you are using a high resolution like: 1280x1024, besides after using Opera, QT interface got really nicer for me. I know that Firefox 2 is coming and other updated Firefox versions got better. There are rumors that those are much faster, I tried them, they are faster, but Opera still is far more superior. Telling the truth Firefox is much more powerful with all its Addons and Extensions, which really are useful, but guess what ? they slow down the application. On the other hand, everything is great if it is not using IE engine, IE in my opinion can only be used for pages which does not work in other browsers (Crappy pages which should not be visited at all) So, people make the conclusions yourself. There are plenty of other browsers that might bring your attention, for MacOS it is Safari and of course for Linux OS, best on KDE it is Konqueror, it should be similar to Explorer on Windows, but it is much better, as a matter of fact it is very very fast, I have done some CSS tests. Opera and Firefox also work with Linux, but you know what ? Firefox is slow there too.

Opera is one of the most powerful Internet applications, it does not only browse the web, but has its own IRC client, it can read Feeds, such as RSS and Atom, has an Email program, FTP browsing, powerful bookmarks and of course you can control almost everything, due to the customizable configuration/settings. If your computer is not a so called bitch computer and you're the only person who is using it, you can store your cookies, remember wand logins and watch your history. The security is great, you're fed up with spyware, viruses and all that similar bullshit which you get while browsing the net ? Opera is safe, and you can safely browse interesting porno pages, but it is a disease.. Opera has new features like SVG, VoIP support, it is the first step into the new Internet, because XML and XHTML is quite old things now, but IE seems to be so old that the support for it still is almost missing.. I think you heard about the new IE version which will be published together with the new Windows Vista ? but it just stole the features from other browsers.. Microsoft is a big company which like to plagiarise, but they know how to make money out of stupid people.

More about Opera

Privoxy

2006-02-15T17:57:00.000+02:00

Today I thought to talk about Privoxy, so this will be my little presentation of it, which in my opinion is useful. I think you are fed up with all the ads on the Internet ? so called spam, banners, popups and other bullshit on the widely used Internet, I think you could continue living without it much better in this cruel world. Privoxy is the software that can help you, it is a web proxy which is capable of filtering the content to secure your privacy, to change the incoming content, even control the cookies and of course to get rid of all the ads and other bullshit which comes from the Internet.. Privoxy has a very customizable configuration, you can edit everything the way you need, but often for a regular user the default settings are alright. By the way, Privoxy can be used for personal usage and for all the network installing it on the main server.

So, where can you get this really good piece of software ? download the latest stable version from the main Privoxy website and install it in your computer. Privoxy is available for most of the Operating Systems, such as Windows, Amiga, Linux, Apple.. You should know how to install the software on your OS, for Windows there is a very easy to use installer.. After the installation you will need to use it as a regular Proxy in your browsers or whatever you want. If you're using Opera or Mozilla or maybe even the pathetic Internet Explorer, then find where the Proxy settings are. For Opera -> Menu: Tools -> Preferences; Advanced, Network -> Proxy Settings. For Firefox -> Menu: Tools -> Options; Connection Settings and for IE somewhere in Internet Options, search near the Connections.. Don't worry and don't give up, write 127.0.0.1 and change the Port to 8118 where you will see HTTP, SSL or HTTPS Proxy. I also recommend you to not use the Proxy for "localhost,127.0.0.1,*.lan" Well, now just save and try to access the Internet, a site which you know has lots of banners and enjoy the browsing again without any bullshit..

What to do if you're already using somekind of a Proxy and you want to use Privoxy too ? That is not a problem at all, you will only need to edit your Privoxy configuration a little bit by using forward command, just forward to your proxy, everything is clearly written in the configuration file. By the way, if sometimes you want to look at the ads, you can just temporally disable proxy, usually the setting is in your browser, choose Direct connection or disable proxy servers or something similar, if you're not stupid then you will find it. If you have any problems, please comment here or even better, try to find your answers on the main Privoxy website given above.

Hello

2006-02-15T17:28:00.000+02:00

As I started using this service more widely, I really started to like it, so wanted to create an English version of my Blog, I won't be translating anything, but I will try to write the same information and maybe much more. Posting takes lots of my time, but content is really good, having lots of content is great. I Don't really like to plagiarize, but sometimes I need to do it, because there is no other choice.

So as you understand or maybe not if you did not read my old Blog, I will be writing mostly about software, especially free one, does not matter, closed or open source. There are a lot of software to choose from, but most of it sucks, so I will try to point to the better software, it will take time, but I hope I will succeed. Nevertheless, don't worry I will be writing about different Operating Systems, Hacking and Security issues too. ;)