Software We Like to Use

This is a page that lists the software Marinautics likes to use. We are just starting this list so it is far from complete!

Software Development

  • Microsoft Visual Studio
    This comes in many flavours. Even the free, Express version, offers a lot to the casual or hobbyist user. With the improvement in Express we may even consider it for some professional projects! Microsoft has now announced a Community Edition that adds a lot of the “for fee” capabilities into a package aimed at more sophisticated hobbyists and small business. Something to keep a watch on.
  • Eclipse IDE
    When we are coding PHP we turn to our trusty install of Eclipse. We have installed all the plugins that support PHP and Subversion (moving to Git) and can work quite well with code controlled by a remote Subversion repository.
  • SoapUI
    One of the most popular tools available for testing SOAP based web services. It can run standalone or as a plugin to IDEs such as Eclipse and NetBeans. To name just two!

Image Processing

  • Paint.NET
    Amazing bit of kit for the occasional crop and correction we need to do to an image. Works great for preparing images for web pages or for inclusion in Power Point presentations.
  • Microsoft Expression
    An incredible deal. The Expression set of software is now available for free download. And this is pretty powerful stuff.

Blog Content Editing

  • Windows Live Writer
    This free tool is fantastic for generating content for blogs – including the one on this site. It is what we are using at this moment to type up this list! It is too bad that it appears Microsoft is no longer actively developing this product.

Web Browser

  • Firefox
    Our default choice for web browsing has been Firefox. It is fast and convenient to use and used to have to best debugging tools with the Firebug plugin. Things have progressed since we last reviewed browsers and this may change. Watch this space.

Supporting Software

  • PTC MathCAD
    There is a free version of this amazing bit of software that lets you work with complex mathematical formula in a document centric manner.