2007-05-15

Two Free Apps I couldn't work without

I know it's not CAD, but, there are other programs that we need to make it through our days.

My husband
is always checking out new applications... sometimes installing them on my pc when I'm not looking and making me an unwitting guinea pig.
BUT! at work, where I am the only one choosing programs for my pc, I keep these two old favorites that he recommended to me awhile ago.

Gadwin Printscreen -
Options! There are options! (but, not too many! like some applications)
You can hit printscreen, select your area, hit enter... and you're done! You've set up a directory and these screenshots are sent right there, naming themselves in a sequence. If you're working along, you can quickly capture each step, and collect the images later.

Before Gadwin, I'd Prnt Scrn, open my photo editor, paste as new image, make selection, choose crop to selection, then save. WAY too many steps there.

Try out this freebie, I think you'll like it (if not, check out the hyperlink in the second paragraph of this post, to a BLAUG entry by my Dear Hubby and see what else he mentions).

Ditto clipboard extension -
You can copy multiple bits of text, etc at a time, and paste to your heart's content. There are a million ways that I use this at work and at home.

One that sticks out in my brain is the AUGI Annual Salary Survey. I calculate those numbers using excel. There are just reams and reams and reams of data, I've got some formulas that count up/average out/total, etc. But, those just aren't very pretty spreadsheets to look at, so I use simple forms to report the results that are posted on the website. I used to copy, switch files, paste, switch back, copy, switch files, paste, etc, etc, etc. UG! That took forever. Now, I can just go through and grab each result I need and paste them in as I need them.

Another thing would be answering questions in discussion groups... you find a few websites that could help and copy the URL's and perhaps a snippet of pertinent information (applicable text, or a knowledge base ID number for when someone does a site redesign, invalidating your URL's). Take everything you need from one page and paste, paste, paste the information much more quickly.



I hope you find these great FREE applications as handy as I do. I appreciate all of the work that developers put into these freebies for all of us to benefit from.


Oh, another cool freebie that I was just using today; this one is a lisp routine from Dotsoft's FREE STUFF page which "Exports TEXT objects to an ASCII file in the order they are selected."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the recomendations. Both of these apps look like they'll come in handy. And it's good to see your blog's back to normal.

Mistress of the Dorkness said...

Thanks! :-) They will come in handy, trust me.

UG, *mostly* back to normal. I lost all of my pretty new template adjustments, and I have to go back and redo my tags. I'm really thankful the content was restored, but, all of the other bits of the site took a lot of time and I hate to have to redo them (apologies to those RSS readers that are seeing these re-tagged posts come in as 'new'!)

J said...

I like using ALT+PrintSCRN to capture the 'current window', then pasting directly into apps but the options seem great to have too...
-J
http://cad-vs-bim.blogspot.com/

Mistress of the Dorkness said...

alt+printscrn was always my most commonly used method of capture, to reduce cropping, etc; but, I am enjoying the greater freedom of being able to window any portion I want.

:-) Choice is good.