Cool Free Tools for Windows

If you like to tinker with your PC software or with Web page development, there are some free utilities from Microsoft that that might tell you more than you want to know——but I found them interesting. If you follow the link below you will see the list and how to download and install.

Five are listed at .NET Toolbox Picks

Two that I found most useful are:

1) the Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar, which lets you do such things as find out the color code behind Web page colors (you found a great Web page color on some page and would like to use it), resize Windows, validate HTML, view full details on Cookies that you didn't know you had (and clear them). For instance, I even though I regularly delete cookies, I found some hiding on my PC from places Web pages I never visited--in fact, never visited any pages that conceivable should somehow be linking to the cookie source. Once this toolbar is installed, close the broswer and re-open. Then you find it on the extra toolbars to the righ tof "Tools" -- marked by >>.

2) the Process Explorer, which gives you detailed information about the running system, going way beyond the Task Manager screen.

These are the only two I've installed and they seem to work perfectly. Obviously I can't vouch for them, but I didn't encounter any problems. There is also an XML Notepad that might help people indexing with XML I suppose.