Jonathan Briggs Online

A few notes on the some of the software I enjoy using on my computer which is currently running Windows XP and Windows 7 as a dual-boot setup. All the software detailed below is available free of charge.

• Web browsing - I now use Lunascape, the world's first triple engine browser. For Windows users, gone are the days of needing more than one browser to be able to successfully navigate all websites. Lunascape includes the Trident, Gecko and Webkit rendering engines. These are the engines used by Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome/Safari respectively. Lunascape provides the capability to switch from one rendering engine to another on the fly, you can even have different rendering engines in use at the same time on seperate tabs. I find it to be straightforward to configure and at least as good as any of the other popular browsers.
• Email - I use the amazing but little known Foxmail. This program is developed in China  and provides all the facilities I need eg. renders all the emails I receive correctly unlike nearly all the other email programs I've tried, supports multiple accounts, provides comprehensive filtering should you need it, has a really clear modern user interface whose colour scheme and layout can be easily set to your liking, mailing lists which can be used to send emails to a group of recipients etc. However when first run the program will come up in Chinese - this is easily fixed by quitting the program, then navigating to Program Files, Tencent, Foxmail, deleting the chinese.lgb file and restarting Foxmail.
• Quick launcher - The Object Dock from Stardock, which is very similar to the dock on Mac OS X, is a great way to keep your desktop tidy while allowing quick access to regularly used programs and regularly accessed folders.
• Personal Information Manager, Notes, Passwords, Logins - I now use OpenPim. The big advantages for me of this program over many other notes programs are:
  1)  It has a pleasing modern user interface and is very easy to use.
  2) The search facility makes it easy to find notes corresponding to your search criteria.
  3) Either individual  notes or a set of notes can be easily password protected and encrypted.
  4) Last but not least it now has a Psion Jotter file import facility. To use this you must first convert your Psion Jotter database to a paged RTF file using nConvert. I then find it best to set the font you want to use in an RTF editor. Finally import into OpenPim.  This new facility, included with the just released OpenPim version 3.1, provides a great route for Psion users to take who like me may have many notes in Jotter format and would like to transfer them to a more up to date platform. Please note that nConvert does not, as far as I'm aware, run on the Psion emulator which I've been using on my Windows laptop for many years, you must run it a real Psion eg. a Psion 5MX or NetBook. Also note that nConvert strips any embedded  graphics, tables, and charts that may be in the original Jotter file. A free license code is now available for nConvert as it's developers long since moved on from writing software for the Psion platform.
• Compiling this website - Nvu. A very easy to use web page author but don't have too many pages open at once or it gets confused.