HTML is the lingua franca of the Web. If you publish anything online, that's the format your text will end up in. But while easy for browsers to render, HTML isn't always easy (or fun) to compose. Some content management systems, like Wordpress, solve this problem by offering a WYSIWYG editor that lets you edit visually. For those who prefer the simplicity and ubiquity of plain text, Markdown is the way to go—and MarkdownPad Pro is a simple editor that lets you compose Markdown and view your results instantly.

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When one thinks of document editors, it's usually Microsoft Word and Google Docs that come to mind. But in the world of word processors there are marquee names, and then there are some worthies not yet in the limelight. Advanced cross-platform document processor LyX has its merits. LyX is free and Open Source. LyX's workflow is something of an adjustment from Microsoft Word, but learning it can pay off. The results are similar to professional typesetting.

Document processors are usually WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). LyX is WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean), though the frontend does not differ much from any other document editor. The way LyX controls the layout of the document lies in the background, where it uses powerful typesetting markup language LaTeX.

The idea is to separate the content from its presentation. Precise control over layout is a must for academic and scientific authoring. This is where LyX comes into its own. LaTeX is complicated. LyX is the friendly GUI. The program handles the final presentation, leaving the writer with only the business of writing the content. The end result is a more attractive and consistent document.

LyX is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with unofficial ports for OS/2 and Haiku. For a fresh installation on Windows, opt for the 200MB bundle, which is fully functional and includes the complete LaTeX distribution (MiKTeX) and a bibliography manager. A 35MB update installation is available for older versions of LyX with LaTeX already installed on the system.

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For a coder, using a text editor or an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is almost a political statement. Even choosing between a text editor and a complete environment (debugger, code hints, and all) is a big choice, and may have a major impact on your coding style, productivity, and comfort. If you're an IDE kind of guy, JetBrains is famous for its highly evolved environment. But if you prefer the simplicity of text editors, Sublime Text is way up there with the very best. At $70, it is also incredibly expensive for a text editor–in fact, it's $21 more than JetBrains' excellent WebStorm JavaScript IDE. But for those who prize a simple approach with plenty of power under the hood, it might be worth it.

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In our everyday lives, we use a number of different programs to edit the various file types we work with. There's Word for DOC files, Excel for XLS files, PowerPoint for presentations, image editors, video and music players, PDF viewers, Hex editors, ZIP expanders, and the list goes on. Most of us use a separate program for each one of these purposes and never stop to think about it. Free Editor claims to open for viewing and editing all the aforementioned file types, and more, all by itself.

Free Editor, as you can gather from the name, is completely free to use, and according to its support pages, can open and edit 75 different file types, including Microsoft Office files, other document files, image files, Windows files and coding files. I chose to start my tests with simple DOCX and XLSX files, and took Free Editor through its paces. I was immediately impressed by how lightweight and responsive it felt; there was no hanging and no waiting, and aside from a weird but harmless error message which appeared every time I opened a Word 2007 file, I could edit any file I chose to.

For Word documents, Free Editor supports all the basic editing functions such as formatting, images, links, tables, numbered or bullet lists, find and replace, and more. The table toolbar is especially easy to use, and surpasses even Word's native table tools. The editor also includes a spellchecker, which is a nice touch. While Free Editor managed to show any DOC and DOCX file I fed to it, it failed to show figures and images that were already in the document.

With Excel files, things get a bit trickier, as Free Editor does not include Excel's formula bar, which makes it next to impossible to use formulas. While you can insert any formula you wish, there are no helpful suggestions to help you along, and after entering a formula and getting a result, there's no easy way to know which formula is written in the cell. Surprisingly, Free Editor does include more advanced editing options, such as conditional formatting—but with an oversight as big as the missing formula bar, it's just not enough.

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You may not be a coder or a Web developer, but that doesn't mean you don't know exactly how you want your new application or website to look and feel. Trying to get to that perfect look with just words can be a frustrating experience for both client and developer. A good interface mockup is worth a thousand words, and you don't have to know how to code to create one. In fact, it doesn't even have to cost you anything: Free utility Pencil contains everything you need to create serviceable mockups for websites, desktop applications, and mobile smartphone apps.

If you've ever used a mockup utility, such as free Lumzy or $79 Balsamiq, Pencil's interface will be familiar. The bulk of the screen is taken up by a canvas, and a toolbar lines the left edge of the window. The toolbar is full of widgets you can put on your canvas, neatly divided into categories like Basic Web Elements, Windows XP Widgets, Android ICS, iOS UI Stencils, and more. In Pencil terminology, each category is a collection of "stencils."

Pencil ships with many stencil collections, and its Google code repository contains even more, all freely available. For any given project, you're likely to need only one or two sets of stencils, and Pencil makes it easy to hide stencil sets you don't need. And just like Lumzy and Balsamiq, the sidebar includes a quick-search box letting you instantly filter the list down to just the UI element you need ("button" and so on).

To test Pencil, I used its included Android ICS stencil collection to quickly prototype a single screen for a hypothetical Android app showing PCWorld's top stories. I got mixed results: The collection includes beautiful stencils for Android's status bar (the top part of the screen) and navigation bar (the bottom of the screen), but they were the wrong width for my project and there was no way to resize them. Other stencils, such as those used for tabs and list items, could be easily resized. I ended up creating my mockup out of just those stencils, omitting the top and bottom of the screen. Not ideal, but workable.

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PowerShell Plus is an IDE (Interactive Development Environment) for PowerShell, which is Microsoft's high-end scripting/batch processing language. As such, it is focused on the needs of the network admins, DBAs, and so forth, who regularly use PowerShell, as opposed to a more generic IDE such as Eclipse. Idera has released PowerShell Plus—formerly a $200 commercial program—as freeware, with no feature limits, upsells, or other gotchas that sometimes accompany a pay-to-free conversion.

PowerShell Plus offers a clean, easy-to-understand interface that adheres to standard Windows guidelines. There is a good deal of flexibility in which of the many panes and tabs are displayed, and this can be set on a tab-by-tab basis: Each tab open in the main window has its own set of configured controls, so you see exactly what you want to see for each document you edit, within some limits.

Setup and installation are incredibly painless. I'm used to spending some time configuring paths and permissions before I can get a development environment running smoothly, but PowerShell Plus was the epitome of plug-and-play. Granted, I configured it for single-user work and did not have to deal with some of the enterprise-level features, but it was among the easiest installations I've ever performed on a program of this type.

The function set of PowerShell Plus is solid. All of the expected development features are there, such as multiple editing tabs, integrated debugging, the ability to write extensions to the tool itself using PowerShell, syntax highlight, code completion, and so on. The editor lacks the overwhelming bells and whistles seen in some tools, such as UltraEdit, but it does what it has to do. There are a few odd quirks—although it has an automatic formatter (to get all the braces and indentation lined up), the user can't define the rules used to format; if you don't like PowerShell Plus's code style, that's that. Another feature I like in an IDE, conditional breakpoints, is not included in this release, but is scheduled to come in the next major release early next year. A free product which is updated with new functionality, also free, is a good buy.

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One of the great things about developing for the Web is the low barrier to entry. Many tutorials are available online, and you can learn about CSS and HTML from any website just by inspecting its code in any modern Web browser. Best of all, when it's time to start coding, any plain text editor--even Notepad--can do the job. So why should you spend $49 on WebStorm, a development environment for JavaScript, HTML, and CSS? The answer is that it might turn you into a better developer.

WebStorm's impressive Live Edit feature is new to version 5. With Live Edit, you can look at your page in Google Chrome as you're editing, and any change you make in your code is instantly reflected in Chrome. You don't have to save the page, nor manually refresh it in Chrome–the update process is just seamless, and is simple to set up, requiring just a free Chrome add-on. Live Edit also works with CSS and JavaScript, and vendor JetBrains put together an impressive video demo showing how the feature can be used to quickly put together a working JavaScript application.

If you come to WebStorm from an editor such as Notepad++ or Vim, you will quickly recognize that WebStorm is not a text editor. Sure, it has a slick text editor component with autocompletion, code folding, and more; but that's only part of the picture. You aren't supposed to pop a CSS file into WebStorm for a quick edit and be done with it: WebStorm is an IDE, and IDEs work with projects. So the first thing WebStorm wants you to do is to import your existing work as a project. If you maintain a live online site, that means downloading your work and creating an offline project.

The next logical step is to put the project under a version control system, as serious developers usually do. WebStorm is well integrated with several version control systems, including the ever-popular Git. Its VCS menu lets you check in revisions, browse the repository, create and apply patches, and more.

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Journalists, bloggers, and designers will find desktop search engine CCFinder (free for basic service, $10 for Plus version) handy because it makes finding legally reusable images on the Internet quick and easy. Photographers can attach one of several different Creative Commons licenses to their images to let online viewers know it is OK to reuse them, and in what way. The CCFinder software aims to take the sting out of the work of finding such images.

Operating CCFinder isn't a problem. Just enter your search term (as you would with any other search engine), choose which filter you want and press "go." The images that match your search term and filter will then be presented and you can click on one to see it in a much larger size.

On the larger image screen, you are presented with the various terms and conditions for that image so you don't run afoul of the photographer's wishes and misuse the image. You are told if you need to attribute the image to the photographer or not, under what circumstances the image can be used (commercial or non-commercial), and whether or not you can alter the photo in any way.

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Lazarus (so named because it's an older project, reborn) is a full-featured graphical IDE for Free Pascal, an open-source implementation of Object Pascal. While the Lazarus developers politely ask that it not be called a Delphi clone... if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. This should not be considered a slam. I found it because I went looking for a free or low-cost Delphi clone, because there's a powerful market niche for one.

Lazarus uses a lot of free-floating windows, instead of the more common frame-and-dock model favored by Eclipse and Visual Studio. This can sometime be confusing during development; it's easy for windows to slip under other windows, and arranging screen real estate optimally can be tricky. This is a matter of taste and habit, of course. I had more difficulty getting used to the manner of placing controls on a form, which is one of the main functions of a RAD tool like this. You click an icon on the tool palette, then click on the form. You don't drag an icon, or see a visual indication on the form that you're about to place an element, until you click, although the toolbar does show a selected item. Not deal-breaking, but odd; I expect more visual feedback in modern programs.

It is worth praising the palette of items contained by default in Lazarus. All the classic controls are there (button, radio button, grid, and so on), as well as a number of useful, less-common, controls ( icon grids and trees, common dialog boxes, and database connectivity tools). It must be noted that the components are not 100% identical to their Delphi counterparts, and some fairly basic functions, such as high-level drag-and-drop support, are not yet fully implemented. The Lazarus wiki details the key differences.

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Web app Lifetick offers a systematic way of making long-range goals--like taking a trip around the world, losing weight or running a marathon--a reality. But it doesn't pay enough attention to simple day-to-day tasks.

Lifetick starts you off on a gradual, structured approach. You must first set what Lifetick calls your "core values." These come before your long-term goals: they are what make you set those goals. For example, if one of your dreams is running a marathon, one of your core values probably has something to do with fitness or wellness. You can set up to 10 core values, although most people would probably not need so many.

After considering your core values, it's time to set some goals. Each goal relates to a core value, and can have a priority (high, medium, low). Lifetick also asks for a due date for the goal, as well as for your motivation (why you want to accomplish this goal). Finally, Lifetick asks if the goal is SMART -- specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-specific.

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In Web page design, the popularity of Adobe's Flash multimedia platform is nose-diving, while HTML5 is skyrocketing. That transition is causing websites and website designers to find better ways of incorporating motion and interactivity, and Adobe's new Dreamweaver CS6 ($399 as a stand-alone program, as of 6/1/2012; also part of Adobe's Creative Suite 6) provides an array of tools to serve up HTML5-based designs on smartphones, tablets, and desktops.

Fluid Layouts, Fluid Design

All website traffic is growing, but mobile website traffic is growing the most quickly. Dreamweaver CS6's new Fluid Grid Layout tool helps you design for devices of all screen sizes, from smartphone to tablet to desktop. The previous version of Dreamweaver helped you build "media queries"--code in a master HTML file to direct traffic from devices of different screen sizes to different CSS files--but it didn't provide much help in figuring out how to set up each of those CSS files for the different screens.

For a Fluid Grid Layout, you use a simple wizard to set how many columns you want for a smartphone, a tablet, and a desktop; indicate the size of the columns; and Dreamweaver creates the HTML5 file and an associated CSS3 file. Then you use a menu command to add containers for blocks of content and rearrange them on a grid. Dreamweaver takes care of the coding--at least, for a while; as with almost any Dreamweaver operation, you'll end up poring over the application's code view to make changes in your content. Adobe cautions against fiddling with the Fluid Grid Layout code--it's just too easy to screw it up. By the way, Adobe TV has excellent video walkthroughs of this new feature and of many others.

Fluid Grid Layouts are supposed to give you a starting point for an adaptive design. That is, you build your content once, and then the Web pages on which that content lives will reconfigure themselves to display the content properly on any size screen. This is known as adaptive design, and you can test it on any website by opening it in a desktop browser and then resizing the browser window, from smartphone size to standard desktop size. Does the content on the page just sit there as you resize, or does it reflow, based on the size of the window? If it reflows, then it's probably an HTML5-based site, and it will likely work well on any kind of device.

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According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, when someone visits your website, you have 10 seconds to capture their attention before they decide to move on. Having a fresh slide show lets you combine images, animations, and bold typography to catch a visitor's eye and get them to click deeper into your site. SlideDeck (starting at $79 for a single site) is a sophisticated WordPress plug-in that lets you create high-quality, customizable slide shows that can pull in content from all over the Web, including Google+ Images, Instagram photos, Twitter timelines, Vimeo videos, and much more.

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Advanced Web Ranking ($99) is a cross-platform application with a beautiful interface and one major purpose in life: To help you get great search engine rankings. It does this using an array of different tools letting you inspect your website and search engine performance from various angles.

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