To help us all in our daily activities concerning the Internet, I would like to share this great find I encountered: 14 Internet Downloadable Tools (most of them freeware).

Ad-Aware (Free)

Security is a main concern when we go online, that is why Ad-aware is here to offer you protection from PC threats that includes viruses and spywares. It allows you to scan your PC and alerts you when it has detected threat(s). It also allows you to put these threats into quarantine and/or delete them. It is a good idea to have more than one protector, becuase not all scanners find all threats -- just make sure they are all compatible.

Advanced Lan Scanner (Free)

If you have a network at home or at work and is sharing a single Internet connection, this downloadable freeware is for you. It has a powerful scanning capabilities. You can use it for troubleshooting Internet connections, network configurations and even security purposes when connected to the Internet.

Bandwidth Monitor 2 Lite (Free)

Are you a fan of downloading and/or uploading files? Bandwidth Monitor 2 Lite is for you -- it allows you to check your current bandwidth usage over time by displaying that usage in a constantly changing chart (it can also be displayed in text).

Comodo Firewall Pro (Free)

Comodo Firewall Pro protects your PC from inbound and outbound threats. It also protect selected files and folders so that malwares cannot get into them nor alter them in any way.

Digsby (Free)

Communication is very essential from the very start and with different types of messenger popping up, we can't be thankful enough. Digsby is a universal instant messenger that allows you to interact with friends and family who uses other types of instant messenger (eg. YM, AOL IM). It also surpasses these other types of IM because it allows you to check your social networking sites and even emails from web-based mail site not associated with your IMs.

eMail Tracker Pro (Price: $29.95 (15-day free trial))

Unsure if the emails you're receiving are legitimate or not? eMail Tracker Pro gives you a set of tools for examining any email messages that pops into your inbox -- tracing back to its true point of origin and showing you the IP address and location of the sender, thus allowowing you to trace whether the email has been tampered. It also provides contact information for the domain from which the message was sent to that you can report any abuse.

Prompter (Free)

Are you the type of person who has multiple web-based mail accounts, just like me? Oh, yes! And it really takes my time opening one type of email to another -- I got Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Windows Live Mail (it's kind of required in my field of work). Well, ePrompter neatly solves our problem. It allows us to open all our web-based email accounts, check for new mails, compose and even deletes messages; and also tells us how many new messages we got from each emails.

FileZilla (Free)

Many individuals and businesses continue to use file transfer protocol (FTP) as a way to share files because it does not block large file transfers. FileZilla is an excellent FTP client that combines simplicity with a robust feature set and it's interface is easy to use.

FlashGet (Free)

Are you a fan of downloading? FlashGet is for you -- a great download manager that speeds up the process because it uses multithreading, keeps you safe and helps you organize your downloads, allows you to find downloads via many different protocols.

Foxit Reader (Free)

Most of online documents are in Adobe Acrobat format, thus you need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open such documnents; but Adobe Reader takes much time to download and is also prone to crashes. To help us with this, Foxit Reader is here -- it's small and loads much faster, thus doesn't take up much memory when used; it is also not prone to crashes.

Free Internet Window Maker (Free)

Familiar with cache files, browser history, auto-complete information, cookies? These are traceable trails you get to leave behind after an Internet activity, which might be critical in terms of security purposes. To ensure security and privacy when using the Internet, Free Internet Window Washer allows you to remove these traceable trails; it also removes traces of application activity, such as which files and/or folders were recently opened.

PingInfoView (Free)

Pinging a website is like contacting this site to check if it's alive and responds to the ping request. PingInfoView allows you to ping multiple web sites simultaneously; on any schedule you set and displays the results in a graphical interface.

SMTP Diagnostics (Price: $12 (30-day free trial))

Are you handling SMTP servers? Are you encountering problems about it and have no idea what is wrong? SMTP Diagnostics is for you -- it performs a complete set of diagnostics on your SMTP connection and provides an in-depth report about any errors.

VisualRoute 2008 Lite (Free; also with for-pay versions)

VisualRoute 2008 Lite is a command line tool which allows you to display the route you take to contact a web server or other Internet device in a visually appealing way. It also shows a map of every hop, and graphs it accordingly against a background that shows reponse times. Highlighting a hop allows you to see important details, such as pachet loss and speed.

What are you waiting for? Why don't you try these Internet downloadable tools and see how it can ease the burden of everyday encounter with technology. Just make sure to take the necessary actions to ensure the security of you and your PC. Happy downloading!

1. Pixel Display

   I have observed that there is always a difference on the amount of pixel being displayed - at least one pixel. Nothing can be perfect, and looking at the same website on each browser, you get to see no difference at all. But when you get a closer look at it (in between frames or image spaces), you will see that pixel difference.
   
   Sometimes, due to the browser's different pixel-fetching, arrangment of letters in a paragraph also differs. Some of the letters, especially if it contains hypernation, moves up-down as you shift from IE7 to FX.

   • 1.1. Font Display

     I guess this is probably due to the pixel display of the two different browsers. In Internet Explorer 7, you can see up-close the "emboss-styled" texts. You can easily spot the difference if you are using Firefox's IE Tab Add-On. Upon switching from one tab to another (from IE7 to FX), you can see how the font's display changes from "embossed" to "un-embossed" states.

   • 1.2. Horizontal and Vertical Spacing Display

     This is again, probably due to the pixel display of two different browsers. As I have mentioned above, opening same sites on two different browsers would only seem to display the same buttons, frames and image spaces. However, upon close inspection, you can easily spot the difference by using Firefox's IE Tab Add-On. For super-techies, you can see the difference by overlaying screenshots (e.g. Photoshop CS3) or by manual screenshot pixel measurment to measure the exact distance or pixel difference.

2. Loading Time

   There is definitely a difference between the two browsers in terms of loading time. Since loading time testing is included in our procedures, I was able to observe how Internet Explorer's loading time is much quicker than that of Firefox. On average, there is around 2 seconds per page difference - given that things or elements are on its usual or normal behaviour.

3. CMS Compatibility

   A Content Management System (or CMS) is a program used to create a framework for content of a website. Our company is one of those who are using this tool; and one thing I observed is that some of the functions created (specifically buttons), doesn't work well with Firefox. During one of my testing, I experienced non-functional buttons. I thought at first that this was one of our developers mistake - but later found out that it was due to the tool's incompatibility with Firefox. It was explained to me that some of the heavy-coded scripts embedded on the CMS cannot be properly read by Firefox. But so far in IE7, things worked out just fine.

I am not saying nor implying that one browser is much better than the other. My point here is to simply share my web tester experiences with the two browser giants.

Now my question is, why can't they just follow strict standards (or atleast in proximity)? I mean, I've read some articles in which these two browsers have corresponding or equivalent add-ons and other stuff, but how come in terms of the things I've mentioned above, there is really a difference? It would have been much easier on everyone else's part -- users, developers, designers, and as testers, as well.