Review: Read and write PDF files easily with Foxit Reader 6

Foxit Reader 6 Foxit Reader is free, it's lightweight, and historically it has been less problematic than Adobe Reader.

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There's a lot to be said for software that just works. That isn't to say that Adobe Reader doesn't work, but it has a lot of baggage attached to it that Foxit Reader doesn't. As a result, Foxit is significantly smaller and faster.

The new ribbon interface for Foxit Reader puts the common functions in easy reach.

The actual functionality is pretty straight-forward. It reads PDFs, and it comes with a PDF printer so you can actually create PDFs for free, too. It supports a few optional features like filling out PDF forms, but for the most part it sticks to one task and does it really well. You have a choice between a modern ribbon user interface or a classic menu-and-toolbar interface. However, before you download, there are two important provisions.

First, Foxit Reader 6.0 will install adware into your browser by default, if you let it. It's opt-out, so as long as you uncheck the box during the installer, you can avoid it easily. When I installed it, I double-checked to confirm that the installer honored my opt-out preference.

Second, if you happen to actually need to open PDFs that contain Adobe Flash animations or 3D CAD drawings, you're still going to need Adobe Reader around for that. Fortunately, the vast majority of PDFs people use are pretty boring: user manuals, newsletters, maybe the odd Dungeons and Dragons character sheet. Foxit Reader is going to do the job perfectly for any of those.

Don't worry, ribbon-haters. You can enable classic mode in the settings.

If you've had bad experiences with Adobe Reader and want to try an alternative, Foxit Reader comes highly recommended.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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Review: Easily edit images and create collages using Fotor in Windows 8's Modern interface

Fotor Fotor is no Photoshop, but it's simple, fun, and works well for basic image editing.

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If Picasa has taught us anything, it's that not every image editor has to be Photoshop. Sometimes you just want a quick, fun way to enhance your photos, add some neat effects, and maybe create a collage or two. If that sounds like fun and you happen to be rocking a Windows 8 device, you should check out Fotor, a free photo editor that uses the Modern interface. It's fast, visual, and has virtually no learning curve.

Fotor makes it easy to add text overlays to images, but you can control the font size independently.

When you launch Fotor, it lets you open an existing photo to edit, or start working on a collage. It also comes with six sample photos arranged in an attractive grid, to get you started. The simplest way to get a feel for what Fotor is like is to click a sample photo. Do that, and you'll find yourself in the editing interface.

In editing mode, the image dominates most of the screen, and an editing toolbar lines the right side of the screen—opposite where you'd normally expect it, but in keeping with the Modern interface convention. The toolbar is subdivided into eight sections, six of which contain editing tools: Basic editing (color corrections), cropping, effects, borders, focus effects, and text tools. The other two sections let you open new files for editing, and save your work.

Fotor offers numerous effects, including crowd-pleasing Lomo looks

The color correction interface uses sliders, with live image updates: Just move the slider and see the change instantly. Cropping is similarly intuitive, with 11 preset aspect ratios, and a free-crop mode (to set your own aspect ratio). Just drag a frame across the image to set out your crop area, and click Confirm when you're happy with the composition.

Fotor's selective focus tool is the most nuanced one in the app, allowing for fine adjustments.

Image effects are divided into five categories, ranging from Classic to "Dark Corners" (i.e., vignette effects). While each category contains many different effects, individual effects cannot be adjusted in any way. Many of the image modifications are heavy-handed, and Fotor offers no way to tone down the amount of influence a given effect has. Also, you can't layer effects one on top of the other. You need to pick one effect for your image and stick with it. The Borders category is similar: There's a rich selection of borders, but you can't tweak anything, like the size of the margin or the color of a given border.

Fotor's collage mode makes it easy to pick a number of images for your collage.

One category that does offer fine-grained adjustments is the Tilt-Shift Mode, whereby you can apply selective focus effects to your image. Tilt-shift (a "miniature look") isn't the only option: You can also apply a center focus effect, where the subject appears sharp and surrounding detail is blurred out. Both center focus and tilt-shift effects offer many adjustments: You can change the tilt shift's angle, and change either mode's blur radius and virtual aperture size. Of all the tools Fotor offers, selective focus is the most nuanced.

Finally, you can also overlay your image with some text. The text tool offers a limited number of fonts (you can't pick from any font installed on your computer), and lets you pick one of several overlay templates, such as speech or thought bubbles. There is no way to control the font size independently of the template: You can only resize the text along with the speech bubble it's in.

In collage mode, it's easy to move images around, resize the different parts of the collage, or pick one several premade layouts.

All in all, Fotor does what it does quite well. It excels in being quick, and quick to master. Few features are cryptic, and none appear to rely on hidden toolbars you need to slide into view. If you want to edit images in the Modern user interface, Fotor is a great option.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the software to your system.

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Compare and synchronize PC files easily with FreeFileSync

As hard drives start to get bigger, it becomes more and more convenient to become digital packrats, stuffing files left, right and center into folders and assuming that they will be safe forever. But some of those files may be important, so what if your hard drive suddenly fails and you can't access those important files anymore? It can and will happen. So that's where backup and synchronization techniques come into play and one app that could help you out in this area is FreeFileSync (free).

You can easily view 2 PC folders in FreeFileSync, making comparing & synchronizing a one-click affair.Obviously you need another hard drive or server to back up to. But assuming you've got that side of things worked out, FreeFileSync ensures that your files get synced over from one drive/server to another.

When I installed it, the thing I immediately liked about it was it offered to give me a portable version. Since I am somebody who is reluctant to install too much stuff, this is a nice touch.

There are two big (and only) options in FreeFileSync, "Compare" and "Synchronize." They pretty much speak for themselves. There are two columns in the app. In each column, browse to the desired folder on your PC, hit either the "compare" or the "synchronize" button and then let the app do its work. It goes very fast, so don't go off making coffee, expecting it to take ages. It blitzed through the files I gave it to test. I was impressed.

One of the other features I liked, being an automation fan (and a lazy computer user) was the batch job feature. You are able to set it up so two folders are automatically synchronized with one another at a certain time, based on certain variables. So never again will I have to worry about my collection of David Hasselhoff pictures being accidently wiped. FreeFileSync will automatically sync them for me.

Some other nice features include detecting renamed and moved files and folders, copying locked files, copying Symbolic Links, and support for long file path names of up to 260 characters.

Sometimes you don't need bells and whistles to get the job done. Sometimes basic simple software is enough.

FreeFileSync is basic, it's simple, and it gets the job done.

—Mark O'Neill

FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization tool providing highly optimized performance and usability without needless user interface complexity.

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Look up Word Definitions Easily With the Dictionary.com Chrome Extension

Dictionary.com Extension is for everyone who isn't blessed with a memory like the Oxford English Dictionary. If definitions don't instantly and effortlessly spring to mind and you need an authoritative reference source to look up a word without a lot of extra clicking, check out this free and useful Google Chrome browser extension. It makes the whole word definition search a breeze without having to go to the Dictionary.com site itself.

Highlight a word on the webpage and it will appear in the search box along with its definition.When you install the Dictionary.com extension, a small box will appear in the top bar of your Google Chrome browser. This is your Dictionary.com search box and it is the first way you can use the extension. Simply type the word you don't know into the box and your definition will appear, as if by magic.

The second way you can use this Chrome extension is to highlight a word on any webpage and then click on the small box in the top bar. The highlighted word will already be in the Dictionary.com search bar along with the definition underneath. Impressed?

The third way to use the Dictionary.com Chrome extension is to highlight the word on the webpage and right-click with your mouse. You will see an option in the right-click menu that invites you to view the highlighted word on Dictionary.com, and this is the one time where you are actually taken offsite to Dictionary.com to see the word definition.

Dictionary.com extension for Google Chrome works as advertised. The search button is small and unobtrusive, and the extension is useful to all budding linguists.

If you find yourself looking up dictionary definitions all day, then I highly recommend installing this free extension to save yourself some time and inconvenience. Afterwards, you'll wonder how you survived without it.

Note: The Download button takes you to the Chrome Web store, where you can install the latest version directly into your Chrome browser.

—Mark O'Neill

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Create a Website Easily With Wix (Even the Free Version)

With the first Beta version of its original service released in 2008, Wix is no newcomer to the website creation arena. But Wix (free, Premium plans start at $5 per month) has just reinvented itself: Its previous offering was entirely based on Flash, and this current release leaves Flash behind for the power and ubiquity of HTML5. With the new Wix, you can create beautiful, modern-looking personal, portfolio, and business websites, without writing a single line of code and without running Flash.

Wix features dramatic, beautiful templates that make it easy to get started making a website.To start you off, Wix offers dozens of ready-made HTML5 templates, subdivided into categories such as Kids, Music, Fashion, Food & Drink, and more. There are also single-page personal profile templates, competing directly against services like about.me and flavors.me. The templates are beautiful, and don't look anything like Wordpress or other content management systems. Like Weebly, Wix uses Web fonts, so it's not all Arial and Times New Roman: Titles are sometimes rendered in playful script fonts, and some themes use with thin, all-caps sans serif fonts for dramatic impact. The templates avoid Lorem Ipsum, opting instead for placeholder text that's in plain English and more closely resembles actual copy. In the rare event that no template catches your fancy, you can always start with a blank slate and create your website from scratch.

Wix lets you customize individual components, such as image galleries.The Wix editor is a joy to use. Click an element, and you can drag it around, change its text, or edit its appearance. You can customize just about anything: A template I was editing used ribbon elements that appeared to "fold" across the left side of images. With the editor, I was able to change their direction and color scheme so that they folded onto the image from the right. Since everything is based on CSS, I only had to change one ribbon, and Wix applied the change across all of the others. For many elements, the editor offers presets you can pick from, but also lets you create your own settings from scratch for your own unique look.

Wix also makes it easy to create new pages and arrange them in the menu, as well as customize the menu itself. Pages are arranged by types, such as a gallery, text pages, a Services page, and so on. Unlike Weebly, Wix does not let you create a blog as part of your site, nor bring in other editors to help you author content and maintain the site.

Wix supports Web fonts, which means your website can break out of the familiar Arial and Times New Roman.The other side of the coin for Wix's ease of use is that you can't get at the actual CSS and HTML that drive your website. Even if you know what you're doing and want to customize things by coding, Wix will not let you do that: Everything is locked behind the editor. This also means that when you design you website with Wix, you are effectively married to the service. Wix does not support exporting your content, and monthly plans are relatively expensive for a simple web hosting service.

Wix does have a free option, but it displays a Wix banner at the bottom of your website and will not let you use your own domain name. Even the Connect Domain premium plan that costs $5 per month leaves the banner intact-to get rid of it, you must upgrade at least to the Combo plan, which is $10 per month. If you don't mind the rates (or the banner and Wix branding), Wix's new HTML5 version offers some of the best visual website creation tools I have seen to date.

Note: The Download button takes you to the vendor's site, where you can use the latest version of this Web-based software.

--Erez Zukerman

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Design a Kitchen Easily With IKEA Home Planner

I'm not an architect or an interior designer, but I sure like to pretend I am. I have plenty of ideas about how to improve my house, especially its 1970s-era kitchen. That's why I'm having so much fun with Ikea's Home Planner, a free, cloud-based application that lets me design the kitchen of my dreams--as long as it's filled with Ikea products, of course.

Ikea's Home Planner lets you switch between 2D and 3D views of the space you're designing.Ikea's Home Planner doesn't actually let you plan out your entire home; it's restricted to kitchen and dining areas. (Ikea does refer to it as the Kitchen planner in some places on its site, and also offers a Pax planner, a separate application that lets you design the interior of its wardrobe products.) The Web-based application can be a bit slow to load, but it's eminently usable.

When you begin a new project, you can choose to start from scratch, with a bare room,or, if that option seems too intimidating, you can opt to start with one of Ikea's pre-designed spaces. Luckily, designing a project from scratch isn't too difficult. You start by selecting the room shape, and Ikea includes enough options-- including those with indents and diagonal cutouts--to satisfy the needs of most people. You can adjust the size of your walls, but Ikea's measurements rely on the metric system, so if you're in the US, you'll have to get your meter stick out or be ready to do the conversions on your own.

Once the walls are in place, you add your windows and doors. You can click from a list of options (such as interior and exterior doors or interior openings); so many are available that I started to feel slightly overwhelmed. I felt even more so when it was time to add the real meat of the kitchen: cabinets, shelves, and appliances. The Ikea Home Planner is a lot like a digital version of the Ikea catalog, allowing you to choose between built-in cabinetry and free-standing items with names like Bjursta and Udden. If you find yourself lost in the endless options that the catalog provides--to say nothing of a visit to an actual Ikea store--you may find your head spinning as you try to decide whether you should use Tyda handles and a birch veneer, and if your handles look better on the right or the left.

But seeing all of the pieces placed in a virtual model of your kitchen makes the process considerably easier, especially when you switch to the impressive 3D view. Once your project is complete, you can print a copy or save the digital version to Ikea's server so you can access it when you're in the store. You cannot save a copy to a USB drive, as Ikea will not allow you to use these kinds of removable storage devices in its stores.

The Ikea Home Planner is a very cool tool that makes it easy for casual users to craft professional-looking designs. It's easier to use than home design products like HGTV's Home Design Software and Punch Software's Home & Landscape Design. But while these products have a steeper learning curve, they also offer exponentially more options, as both allow you to design complete homes inside and out. Ikea Home Planner will appeal to a much more limited audience, as it's limited to kitchens built with Ikea products.

Note: Clicking the Download button will take you to the vendor's site, where you can install this software directly into a supported browser.

--Liane Cassavoy

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