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For some writers, scribbling a quick draft before intensive editing is easier than trying to get things perfect the first time. For some artists, a rough sketch before putting in the all details is also preferred. WAP Prototype Maker provides the same functions for WAP site developers.

It is unfortunate that the program’s home page lacks the basic how-to’s or even an FAQ section. You really have to download and install WAP Prototype Maker to get a feel of how it works. Thankfully, a fairly informative Help option is provided in the menus. The instructions are simple enough that once read, you will be able to generate a set of WML pages in no time.

The almost plain vanilla user interface features a tree structure to create and arrange several pages. One or more texts, links and images can be attached to a single page, and their attributes can be changed individually. In effect, you get to see a visual representation of your site map.

You can also test and see how the WML pages look like by opening them in your favorite browser. Try to follow the links to test the navigation. Then, go back to the drawing board if you find anything you’d like to change. No programming knowledge is necessary to use the software itself. However, since the user will most probably need to edit the code at some point for polishing, it would be good to have a working knowledge of HTML at the very least.

WAP Prototype Maker is compatible with all versions of Windows.

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Remember when you launched your first link building campaign? You probably started out by submitting your site to hundreds of link directories. Of course, this process required you to type your site name, URL, description, and keyword list repeatedly. This could be fun for the first ten directories you submit to, but after realizing that you have to do this hundreds of times more, the process starts sounding tedious. Site Sub makes directory submission easier and faster to accomplish. Instead of typing up the required information over and over, you only need to enter it in Site Sub once, and just copy and paste after. It’s straightforward to use, which makes it great for beginning web site owners.

Site Sub is handy to have, especially since different directories have varying requirements. Some directories require a maximum of 200 characters for the description and keyword list, but others require 100 or 150. With Site Sub’s character count feature, you can easily tell if your site information is within the directory’s requirements. Those days of counting letters with your fingers are now over. The “Always on top” option lets you have Site Sub above other windows on your desktop, so you don’t have to go to the taskbar repeatedly to access your site details. You can also save your site details, allowing you to use Site Sub for multiple sessions until you run out of directories to submit to.

The application is also portable, so you can save it on your USB thumbdrive and carry it around in your pocket. This lets you work on your link building campaign anytime you want, as long as you have some free minutes and internet access.

Site Sub 1.0 runs on all versions of Windows.

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In soccer, the goal keeper guards his base and makes sure he stops rogue balls before they fly past him. This is exactly the principle behind the Form Field Validation Tool.

This online utility will give you the means to filter some of the most common data entry errors even before they are submitted, thus enabling the user to have a chance to make the necessary corrections. The intuitive interface makes it user-friendly. With its cut-and-paste simplicity, no programming experience is required.

There are four types of validations possible. One of the most useful is specifying the minimum and maximum character lengths permissible. By setting the minimum to 1, you can make sure a field is not left blank (a required field). Another one that’s often used is email validation, which makes certain that the structure of the email address entered conforms to standards. The third type limits the exact number of digits possible for a given field, which is useful for phone numbers, zip codes or dates. Optional characters can also be ignored so as to not count against this limit. Lastly, a value range can be defined to make sure the field entries are within acceptable quantities. For example, an age field can be arranged to fall only between 0 and 120, with other values considered extraneous. A customized error message can also be flashed so that the form user may know what to correct in the form fields.

This online tool can be accessed through all of the leading browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

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Sometimes you just wake up wanting to make your own favicon. If not, you probably wake up wondering what a favicon is - it’s the small icon that shows up next to your web page title on someone’s bookmark list. This shows up in common browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Opera. Adsen FavIcon lets you easily create these small icons for your web page. Don’t mistake it for just a favicon maker though, since it also makes icons for the applications running on your computer.

The Adsen FavIcon program interface is very simple, with the drawing surface just above the “Save” button. There aren’t any complex menus or commands for you to worry about. The different options are accessible via a straightforward drop-down menu. Users can choose between two icon sizes: 16×16 pixels for favicons, and 32×32 pixels for program icons. There are also several color depth options between 4-bit to 32-bit colors. If you don’t know how to incorporate favicons onto your web page, the application also includes some helpful tips.

So if you want your web site to stand out on someone’s bookmark list, or you simply want to redo the program icons on your computer, Adsen FavIcon makes these changes for you, trouble-free.

Adsen FavIcon runs on Windows 95 and higher versions

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Nvu (pronounced N-view) is a web site creation and editing program from Linspire. You can create web pages via HTML or WYSIWYG editing, and jump between both modes with a simple mouse click. This feature makes Nvu useful for both experienced web programmers and those new to web site creation.

A CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) editor is built into the application, allowing you to see any changes live on the web page you are editing. Pre-loaded style sheets also make CSS templates easier for those with no coding experience. If you find that you’ll use some tools within Nvu more frequently than others, you can also customize toolbars to suit your working needs. Best of all, a code validator tool ensures that your HTML code is valid and clutter-free.

Among its many features, Nvu also has an FTP site manager that lets you drag and drop files to your web sever, making it easy for you to upload new web pages as soon as you’ve finished them. Overall, the Nvu web site editor covers all the necessary stages of web site creation. This makes it an important addition to every webmaster’s toolkit.

Nvu runs on most Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X systems.

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If you’re the type of web publisher who’d rather hire a designer than figure out all the CSS stuff for yourself, save yourself some trouble by creating professional-looking menus with CSS Tab Designer. This easy-to-use application lets you visually design CSS-based menus and navigation bars for your site. All you have to do is select a style, input your tab items, and save the HTML file that you will paste on your web pages.

With over 60 styles and colors to choose from, you can use this application to create menus for several of your web sites. Expect more than static menus with CSS Tab Designer, because some styles are animated on mouse-overs. The tab templates also come in horizontal and vertical orientations, making them usable for most site designs. If you’re not ready with a list of your own tab items, a “Fill With Samples” feature lets you preview the style you’ve selected with some sample tab items. The application also lets you preview your finished CSS tabs on a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, Safari, and many others.

CSS Tab Designer works with Windows 98, XP, and Vista.

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Links Assistant won’t bring you your morning coffee, but it’s a helpful application that organizes your link building campaign. This program is a great solution if you’re fond of promoting your web sites via link exchanges. With Links Assistant, all the information about your link building campaign is stored in a database, and you can automate several of the repetitive tasks that come with the process. This includes writing emails, updating your link codes, and keeping track of important information.

You can save a database for each web site you own, and even separate your link partners into different categories. You can then filter them out by category, the status of your link exchange, and whether they’ve linked back to you or not. You can also save several types of email templates for link exchange requests, telling your partners that you’ve added their link, and a thank you letter. Links Assistant automatically places your name, URL, and your link partner’s information onto the email body. You can even create your own customized templates for other purposes.

Using Links Assistant requires some basic knowledge of how link exchanges work, but this isn’t a major obstacle to new webmasters since there are several how-to guides on the internet. The Links Assistant download page even links to an SEO guide that contains several helpful articles on link building. Once you’re familiar with how link exchanges work, you’ll realize how simple and straightforward Links Assistant is.

This program runs on Windows 98, XP, and Vista.

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Good Keywords is a simple keyword research application that uses results from the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool, Yahoo, Google, MSN, Ask, and Alexa. Even though you can get these results individually from each site, Good Keywords makes it easy for you to perform all your keyword research in one user-friendly interface. This means that if you usually spend hours doing keyword research from free tools, Good Keywords can let you accomplish this in minutes.

Apart from being a keyword research application, Good Keywords also has several tools that you can use to apply basic SEO onto your site. You can create keyword meta tags to use for your web pages. A built-in site popularity meter allows you to compare your traffic with competitors, and a link popularity meter checks the number of backlinks that you have. An additional feature for version 2.0 of the program also lets you create hundreds of keyword phrases from a list of words you choose - a relief for those of us who do this manually.

If you want to take your keyword list a bit further, a misspelled word generator tool gives you a list of misspellings that users are likely to input into search engines. This can be useful because some internet users have a tendency to make spelling and typographical errors. If you competition hasn’t targeted their web page for these inaccuracies, you can have an edge over them.

Good Keywords may have a small 500KB download size, but it’s definitely a keyword research heavyweight. It runs on most versions of Windows, including Vista.

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It’s true – FAQ Genie grants your wishes. That is, if you wish for a simple way to create and maintain an FAQ page on your web site. First of all, the program interface is intuitive and easy to understand. Even users with the most basic HTML knowledge can fully customize FAQ pages through FAQ Genie.

You can customize properties for your FAQ page such as the title, text format, and filename. There’s an available field for the header code so more advanced users can add META tags and links to external style sheets. A separate Q&A tab lets users write the questions and their corresponding answers. This feature will allow you to easily arrange the questions and change the font style according to your needs – you no longer need to mess with HTML to get your FAQ page up and running.

Users can save their final FAQ pages as a single web page or as framed pages. The Frames option can layout the frames vertically or horizontally, and it even gives the user control of how much space the Questions Frame will take up. As for the answers, they can be displayed either in the same page as the FAQ itself or in separate pages. This feature creates faster loading time for your FAQ page, since there will be separate answer pages for those tricky questions that have lengthy answers.

The downloadable application itself is 800KB, making it very light for even the slowest modems. The FAQ Genie homepage also lists several awards that declare the software free of spy ware, ad ware, and viruses.

FAQ Genie runs on Windows 95 and higher platforms.

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It’s unlikely that you’ll find an application with a more appropriate name. After all, the Easy HTML to Any Script Converter does exactly what its name entails – it allows users to convert blocks of HTML code or full HTML files into ASP, PHP, C#, JavaScript, JSP, Perl, Python, Ruby, VB, and VB Script. It’s like having your very own translator for web languages.

Although it’s not a must-have for novice web masters, the Easy HTML to Any Script Converter can prove to be useful for beginners and experts alike. For example, if you have identical blocks of HTML code on your web pages such as a footer, you can use JavaScript to display the same block of code on all your pages. This means that if you’ll want to edit your footer in the future, all you have to do is edit the JavaScript file instead of going through all those separate HTML pages. A more common use for the application is that you can encrypt the email addresses posted on your site so that spam-bots won’t be able to find them.

The program includes 10 built-in templates for the supported scripting languages. These templates provide the structure of your final generated script. You can also create your own templates, or edit existing ones if you want more flexibility from the converter’s output. Easy HTML to Any Script Converter is continuously under development, and new versions are available every few months. These new versions often include additional templates and bug fixes.

This application requires Windows 98 and higher versions to run.

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