Mini-reviews on the forum

This page collects various reviews that have been posted by users on our forum. They represent the views of the poster and not necessarily the views of the site administrators. To browse a more complete and up-to-date collection of mini-reviews, check out the mini-review section of our forum here.

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Mini-reviews on the forum

This page collects various reviews that have been posted by users on our forum. To browse a more complete and up-to-date collection of mini-reviews, check out the mini-review section of our forum here.

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Bookmark Docs - MiniReview

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I found out about Bookmark Docs through a thread here. 

From the site:
Bookmark Docs lets you precisely "bookmark" any places in various documents and then quickly return to them whenever you need, and do all that in a unified manner.  Add bookmarks and hyperlinks to Microsoft Office Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, CHM, and MSDN documents, and to Web pages.

I've seen many bookmark managers over the years (and have bought more than a few), and haven't found anything that really satisfied my needs, so the idea was interesting to me.  The installation was professional and seamless, though you will want to pay attention to the options at the end; Bookmark Docs by default does not put an icon on the desktop, but does want to run at startup, so set your options accordingly.

...

I foresee that this will become one of those applications that I come to rely on heavily.  Though there are a few niggling areas that could be enhanced, it does what it sets out to do, and really is a timesaver.  I give it my recommendation.

Click here to read the full mini-review now..


Mini-Review: First look at the Scrivener Text Outliner Beta

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Scrivener is a tool for writers.

It's basically an rich text outliner with a very nice gui, and the ability to show/edit summaries of a folder's content (the corkboard), and of course the ability to export/compile all those entries as one document (images not supported)

It is still in beta. Initial impressions are good, but I have been able to crash it by importing an image (I have yet to see can I reproduce that), and I have found a bunch of minor bugs. In general it seems well behaved though and very usable.

Click here to read the full mini-review and view links and videos..


StartSSL.com Certificate Provider: Mini-Review

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I want talk a little bit about about StartSSL.com, a company that provides SSL Certificates.  They actually do a lot of things under the umbrella of StartCom, but I'm only going to talk about SSL services here, and in particular, SSL Certificates for web sites.

Preface: An Introduction to SSL Certificates

SSL Certificates are a source of much frustration for small companies and indie website operators.

The idea of SSL Certificates is a good one.  They offer a way for users who connect to your website to have some assurance that you are who you say you are -- that the person running the website they are connecting to is really the person in charge of the organization they say they are, and that they aren't being tricked by someone who has intercepted their connection to the web (man-in-the-middle style attacks).

But web browsers (firefox, internet explorer, chrome, opera, safari, etc.) have decided to combine this idea of verifying the identity of the company running a website with the mechanism for establishing a secure connection protocol from your browser to the website (https).  Secure connections can be very important in preventing neighbors and snoops from discovering your login passwords, etc. as you browse the web.

Unfortunately, the way that web browser makers have combined these features has results in a real dilemma for small developers and indie website administrators.

Click here to read the full mini-review now..


Stylizer 5.1 - a sophisticated CSS editor

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App NameStylizer
App URLhttp://www.skybound.ca
App Version Reviewed5.1.10.1119
Test System SpecsWindows 7 on a Dell Vostro 1510, 3 GB RAM, about 13 GB free hard disk space
Supported OSsMicrosoft Windows, Mac OS X
Support MethodsE-mail, forum (while e-mails are answered rather fast)
Upgrade PolicyPay per upgrade to a new major version (next would be 6.x): C$ 29.99
Trial Version Available?Free trial version for both OSs available, it does not support multiple browsers though
Pricing SchemeC$ 59.99 per license (includes 1 laptop and 1 desktop)
(A "desktop" is a system without a battery attached during the activation process, so if you only own two laptops, feel free to remove the battery for a few moments.)
Screencast Video URLhttp://www.skybound.ca/stylizer/videos/

Intro:

Stylizer is probably the most advanced CSS editor I have ever stumbled upon. As it lacks a way to edit local CSS files, it follows a completely different approach than Rapid CSS, CSSEdit and all those "alternatives". Basically, you take a website and do some WYSIWYG modifications without having to type everything into a boring text editor window.

After startup, you only have some kind of a browser window with (modifiable) toolbar buttons and (not modifiable) menus. Enter a website or a local HTML page there to make Stylizer parse the included style sheets and the Stylizer controls appear. See the screenshot above to get a clue how it actually looks.

Click here to read the full mini-review now..


Wibiya: Website Toolbar Utility (Web Review)

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Wibiya is a great, free toolbar utility, that you can add to any website, blog, or forum, quickly and easily.

The toolbar itself, is not like the one's you will be thinking about (The one's that fill up the top of Internet Explorer).  Instead, it is one, that sits at the bottom of your website (The pages you choose to put it on) and can be minimized by the user.

With handy utilities like the 'Facebook Like' button, Google Translate, Games, Share and Chat (And much more), that do not take the user off your website, your visitors will have even more reason to come back, day after day.

Click here to read more and discuss..


Board Game Review Site Roundup

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As some of you know I've caught the board game bug.  More than playing them I enjoy reading about them and thinking about the different mechanics and game design ideas.

I'd like to start a thread collecting various sites and blogs that review board games.  Here's a few to start us of -- fellow board game fans please add more.  I'll link directly to the sites or to DC threads about them:

Click here to read more and discuss..


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