Tools recommended by the devs

[Joachim Müller]

Hey all,

the supporters and devs constantly mention tools in their postings that are useful when setting up or modifying Coppermine, so we decided to start a thread dedicated to those tools. Please understand that they are all "third-party", so the links may go down, the licenses they come with may change or other unexpected things may happen - we have no control over those apps! This thread is locked, so only devs can reply. Please don't ask questions on those apps here on the Coppermine board, but on the pages that deal with them.

App name	Type	Purpose	OS	Licence
phpMyAdmin	Web app	Database management	n/a	GNU GPL
mySqlDumper	Web app	Database backup/restore	n/a	GNU GPL
IrfanView	Client	Image viewer	Win32	Freeware (non-commercial)
Exifer for Windows	Client	EXIF manipulation/backup	Win32	Freeware
Crimson Editor	Client	Text file editor	Win32	Freeware
Windows GREP	Client	File searching	Win32	Shareware
SmartFTP	Client	FTP client	Win32/64	Freeware (non-commercial)
FileZilla	Client	FTP client	Win32	GNU GPL
THE Rename	Client	File-renaming utility	Win32	Freeware
Web Developer Extension	Browser plugin	Web development tool	n/a	GNU GPL
Web Accessibility Toolbar	Browser plugin	Web development tool	n/a	Freeware (Creative Commons)
Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar (Microsoft)	Browser plugin	Web development tool	Win32	?
Firebug	Browser plugin	Web developer extension	n/a	Open Source freeware
Bluefish	Client	Text file editor	POSIX compl.	GNU GPL
WinMerge	Client	Diff viewer	Win32	GNU GPL

[Joachim Müller]

Open-source web application that can be downloaded (for free) and installed on your webserver (easy installation). It comes with multiple language support. Your webhost may even provide this tool.

Features:
MySql database management tool that allows manipulating your database and running queries directly against your database.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Create database backups
• Edit config options (even if your Coppermine site's config panel is not accessible)
• Repair broken tables

Homepage:
http://www.phpmyadmin.net/

License:
GNU GPL (open-source)

[Joachim Müller]

Light-weight Image Viewer that supports many file formats, comes with various plugins and can be used to convert and manipulate images as well.

Features:
Easy install, available for all Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003. Rudimentary image manipulation (cropping, rotation, brightness, contrast, red-eye reduction, color-depth etc.), thumbnail view, slideshow, batch-manipulation, EXIF/IPTC-support

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Batch-resizing
• Conversion from exotic image types to web-safe ones

Languages:
English and German as default, many other languages can be downloaded optionally.

Homepage:
http://irfanview.com/

License:
Freeware for non-commercial use
Moderate cost for commercial use

[Joachim Müller]

Exifer is freeware and allows viewing and editing EXIF meta-data on the client (your PC). Key benefit is the option to backup exif info and restore it later. This is particularly helpful if your favorite image manipulation app is not capable to handle EXIF and strips the EXIF data when editing - you can restore the EXIF data from your backup after having modified it with your non-EXIF app.

Features (taken from the homepage):

• Supports EXIF (up to 2.2) and IPTC data in JPEG and TIFF files
• Reading and displaying of makernotes by Canon, Casio, Fuji, Minolta, Nikon and Olympus
• Backing up, restoring and comparing metadata (EXIF/IPTC)
• Editing of metadata (for JPEG files only)
• Inserting EXIF data from THM files (for JPEG files only)
• Creating/inserting/rotating EXIF thumbnails (for JPEG files only)
• Customizeable view of metadata
• Export/import of metadata (CSV, Canto Cumulus, descript.ion files)
• Renaming and redating with various formats
• Lossless rotation (for JPEG files only)
• Cropping (with aspect ratio)
• Watermarks
• Slideshow
• Runs under Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP (runs not under Windows 95)

Languages:
English and German

Homepage:
http://www.exifer.friedemann.info/

License:
Freeware

[Joachim Müller]

MySqlDumper is a web app that can be downloaded and installed on your webserver. It is meant to be used to create backups of your mysql databse (and eventually restore those backups). Particularly helpful if you don't have shell access to your webserver and regular mySQL backups fail due to time-outs.

Features:
A PHP-Script has a maximum of execution time; anything after above the limit (Usually sets to 30 seconds) will result in losing data.
Such behavior renders large database backup impossible.
Perhaps you already noticed how much of a problem it could be while using other tools.
MySqlDumper uses a proprietary technique to avoid execution interruption.
It only reads and saves a certain amount of commands and then calls itself via JavaScript and memorizes how far in the process it was and resumes its action from its last standby.

Languages:
English and German

Homepage:
http://mysqldumper.de/en/index.php

License:
GNU GPL

[Paver]

Windows GREP is an easy-to-use and powerful text-searching tool for all text & binary files.

Features:
Available for Windows 98x/2000/XP.  Pattern matching, sounds like, regular expressions, search & replace, HTML output, command-line interface, wizard assistant, Windows Explorer extension, list searching.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Finding text, labels, HTML for customizing themes
• Finding relevant code & following code for writing plugins & mods

Languages:
English only.

Homepage:
http://www.wingrep.com/

License:
Shareware - small cost

[Paver]

Crimson Editor is a fast & powerful text editor with syntax highlighting.

Features:
Available for all Windows 9x or higher, WinNT 4.0 or higher.  Syntax highlighting for loads of programming languages, column vs. list mode selection, natural word wrapping consistent with syntax highlighting, find & replace with regular expressions, macros, spell checker, built-in FTP client, changed-files detection, unicode support, save to Unix format.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Editing theme files, both PHP & HTML
• Creating & editing plugins and mods

Languages:
English only.

Homepage:
http://www.crimsoneditor.com/

License:
Freeware

[Paver]

SmartFTP is a fully-featured FTP client for Windows.

Features:
Available for Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, XP x64, and 2003 x64.  Multiple connections, auto-reconnect and resume broken transfers, global and local transfer queues with scheduling, FXP, custom commands, CHMOD, backup tool, drag & drop.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Transferring Coppermine to your server for initial installation
• Transferring photos to your /albums folder
• Settings permissions appropriately
• Applying mods, plugins, themes

Languages:
Multiple languages (20 or more)

Homepage:
http://www.smartftp.com/

License:
Free for Personal, Educational, or Non-Profit Use (no support)
Small cost for Commercial Use or to include support

[Joachim Müller]

FileZilla is a free FTP client that is available as open-source app (free of charge).

Features:

• Ability to resume Uploads/Downloads (if the server supports it)
• Custom Commands
• Site Manager with folders
• Keep Alive system
• Timeout detection
• Firewall support
• SOCKS4/5 and HTTP1.1 Proxy support
• SSL secured connections
• SFTP support
• Upload/Download Queue
• Drag&Drop
• Multi-language support
• GSS authentication and encryption using Kerberos

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:
Upload/download files to/from your webserver

Languages:
Currently, 18 language are supported

Homepage:
http://filezilla.sourceforge.net/

License:
GNU GPL

[Paver]

THE Rename is a freeware utility that will cover all your file-renaming needs.

Features:
Runs under Windows 95/98/98se/2000/Me/XP.  Rename files and folders.  Preview before applying changes.  Apply to prefix and suffix separately.  Global replace.  Extract and use EXIF and IPTC tags.  Toggle case.  Add serial numbers.  Undo all renames, even if you leave program.  Adjust file attributes.  And much, much more.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Get your photos ready to upload to Coppermine, for sorting and naming
• Add EXIF dates to filename for ease in identifying "Date Taken" of photos
• Replace forbidden characters like quotes and spaces before uploading

Languages:
Can support multiple languages - not sure which ones are available so far

Homepage:
http://www.herve-thouzard.com/

License:
Freeware

[Joachim Müller]

"Web Developer Extension" is a plugin for the Mozilla/Firefox browser that adds a toolbar to your browser window. Using this toolbar, you can view cookie information, view and manipulate stylesheets, form data, images. It is particularly helpful for web designers (or after all everybody who runs and maintains a website of his own).

Features:

• Disable: The disable features allow the disabling of various features including the cache, JavaScript and page colors.
• Cookies: The cookies features provide various cookie related tools including disabling, adding and viewing cookies.
• CSS: The CSS features provide various tools related to the CSS on the page including displaying the styles applied to the selected element and live editing of the CSS.
• Forms: The forms features provide the ability to manipulate the forms on the page including display the form details and populating form fields.
• Images: The images features provide various image related tools including finding broken images and outlining images.
• Information: The information features provide various informational tools including displaying element information and viewing the document size.
• Miscellaneous: The miscellaneous features provide various tools including displaying a ruler and live editing of the HTML.
• Outline: The outline features allow the outlining of various elements including block level and positioned elements.
• Resize: The resize features provide the ability to resize the window to pre-defined or custom sizes and to display the current window size.
• Tools: The tools features allow an unlimited number of configurable tools including validating the CSS and the HTML.
• View Source: source There view source features provide the ability to view the page source including viewing the generated source and viewing the source in an external application.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Fix cookie issues (especially when bridging)
• Find out what stylesheet class controls which section of the output

Languages:

• English
• Catalan
• Finnish
• French
• German
• Italian
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
• Russian
• Ukrainian

Homepage:
http://chrispederick.com/work/webdeveloper/

License:
GNU GPL

[Joachim Müller]

The "Web Accessibility Toolbar" has been developed to aid manual examination of web pages for a variety of aspects of accessibility. It consists of a range of functions that:

• identify components of a web page
• facilitate the use of 3rd party online applications
• simulate user experiences
• provide links to references and additional resources.

Benefits for the use with Coppermine:

• Fix cookie issues (especially when bridging)
• Find out what stylesheet class controls which section of the output

Homepage:
http://www.nils.org.au/ais/web/resources/toolbar/index.html
http://www.visionaustralia.org.au/ais/toolbar/

License:
Creative Commons License

[Nibbler]

I'd like to add bluefish, since it hasn't been mentioned yet.

http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/index.html

It's an unobtrusive editor for web developers with syntax highlighting, tabs, multiple charset support. Good for HTML, PHP, Javascript, XML.

FOSS available for Linux, FreeBSD, MacOS-X, OpenBSD, Solaris and Tru64

[Joachim Müller]

Microsoft has released a toolbar as well that has similar capabilities as the above mentioned toolbars. It can be used with IE6 or better (IE7 is supported as well) and can be used with Windows 2000 or better.
Currently (at the moment this posting is created), the toolbar is still in beta stage.

Features: (taken from the Microsoft page):

• Explore and modify the document object model (DOM) of a Web page.
• Locate and select specific elements on a Web page through a variety of techniques.
• Selectively disable Internet Explorer settings.
• View HTML object class names, ID's, and details such as link paths, tab index values, and access keys.
• Outline tables, table cells, images, or selected tags.
• Validate HTML, CSS, WAI, and RSS Web feed links.
• Display image dimensions, file sizes, path information, and alternate (ALT) text.
• Immediately resize the browser window to a new resolution.
• Selectively clear the browser cache and saved cookies. Choose from all objects or those associated with a given domain.
• Choose direct links to W3C specification references, the Internet Explorer team weblog (blog), and other resources.
• Display a fully featured design ruler to help accurately align and measure objects on your pages.

Homepage:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=e59c3964-672d-4511-bb3e-2d5e1db91038&displaylang=en

[Gizmo]

Firebug is a new extension for Firefox that I've found to be even more useful that the Web Developer extension.

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

While I haven't tried this yet, there's a Firebug Lite version that can be used with IE, Opera and Safari by adding a little javascript file into your html file which will open the console window in these browsers when you hit F12. Definitely worth a look.

Here's a screencast movie of Firebug in use.

[erostew]

WinMerge is an Open Source visual text file differencing and merging tool for Win32 platforms. It is highly useful for determing what has changed between project versions, and then merging changes between versions.

Features:

• Visual differencing and merging of text files
• Flexible editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers and word-wrap
• Handles DOS, UNIX and MAC text file formats
• Unicode support
• Difference pane shows current difference in two vertical panes
• Location pane shows map of files compared
• Highlights differences inside lines in file compare
• Regular Expression based file filters in directory compare allow excluding and including items
• Moved lines detection in file compare
• Creates patch files
• Shell Integration (supports 64-bit Windows versions)
• Rudimentary Visual SourceSafe and Rational ClearCase integration
• Archive file support using 7-Zip
• Plugin support
• Localizable interface via resource DLL
• Online manual and installed HTML Help manual

Benefits for use with Coppermine:

• Very useful when developing or applying mods.
• If you make a modification that breaks Coppermine you can compare the original file to the one you modified quickly and easily.
• Faster than searching source for your commented modifications.
• If you didn't comment your modifications this can be a lifesaver.

Languages:
Multiple localizations


Homepage:
http://winmerge.org/

License:
GNU GPL (open-source)