Review: Dashlane is a robust password manager with a gorgeous interface

Dashlane With its simple interface and myriad of features, Dashlane is a powerful password manager anyone should consider.

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A password manager is a must. Unless you're using the same password for everything (not recommended) or have a truly phenomenal memory, your productivity can benefit from a place to store all your passwords and easily use them whenever necessary. There are several strong players in this field, such as LastPass and KeePass. Dashlane (free for basic version, $20/year for Premium) aims to take on both.

Dashlane is a robust password manager with additional room for your various IDs, credit cards and other payment methods, receipts, and notes. It comes with an auto-fill feature for online forms to which you can add different addresses, phone numbers, and other personal information you're tired of typing repeatedly. There are two features that make Dashlane stand out when compared to both LastPass and KeePass: Its beautiful and easy-to-use interface, and its optional cloud syncing.

The Security Dashboard analyzes your database, alerting you of weak, recurring, or breached passwords

Setting up Dashlane is exceptionally easy. LastPass and KeePass are both fairly easy to use, but they have nothing on Dashlane. The installation process takes you step by step through setting up the program, with clear instructions and smooth guidance. After choosing your master password for Dashlane--unlike LastPass, there's no "password reminder" here, so you must remember it or lose access to your database--Dashlane will install itself on your browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer are supported), and will lead you through trying out its different features and interface elements.

If you're already using a different password manager, you can import your database into Dashlane pretty easily. The import tool supports databases from Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer, LastPass, 1Password, RoboForm, PasswordWallet, KeePess, and custom CSV files, but the tool is a little finicky. For example, my KeePass CSV did not contain a filled-in URL field, as this is not mandatory in KeePass. Dashlane ignored every password that did not come with a URL, leaving me with no way to import my large password database into Dashlane. Fortunately, Dashlane can automatically add new credentials upon logging in to websites, so after using it for several days, most of my oft-used passwords were transferred to Dashlane without much effort on my part.

On every new login, Dashlane will offer to automatically save your credentials

Dashlane's strong yet subtle browser integration makes logging in to websites a seamless operation, but doesn't add unnecessary clutter to your browsing experience. Once a password is stored in Dashlane, it can log you in automatically every time the website is loaded, or auto-fill the credentials without logging you in. If you're opening an account on a new website, Dashlane can generate a strong password for you right from your browser, and store it in your database in one fell swoop.

You can categorize passwords and other information for easy access, and a small blue impala icon in a browser text field will alert you to the fact that Dashlane can auto-fill this for you. If you have more than one account with a website, more than one email address you like to use, etc., clicking the blue impala will open a dropdown menu where you can choose the desired information.

One of the most important aspects of a password manager is security, and with Dashlane, you can select your level of paranoia. Your database is encrypted with AES-256 encryption, only you know the master password to decrypt it, and you can enable Google Authenticator for extra security. Unlike LastPass, where everything is in the cloud, automatic cloud syncing and backup is a Premium feature in Dashlane, so free users don't have to worry about it.

Even if you're a paid customer, however, you can easily opt out of cloud syncs, meaning your password database is only stored locally, just like with KeePass. Unlike KeePass, though, Dashlane's free mobile apps can be managed as separate databases, so you can access your passwords on the go without worrying about constant cloud syncs. When enabled, Dashlane syncs happen every 5 minutes, and there's no way to control or reduce this frequency.

The Premium version also includes Web access to your data from any browser, anywhere

Dashlane is an impressive password manager with some excellent features and a beautiful interface. It does require a certain amount of trust in the company, especially when using its syncing options, and for $20/year, its Premium version is expensive when compared to the alternatives. Nevertheless, it is the perfect password manager for the less tech-savvy, and even the experienced are sure to enjoy it, if only for the merits of its interface. It's available in Android, iOS, and Mac editions, in addition to the PC edition I reviewed.

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Review: iCookbook turns your Windows 8 laptop or tablet into a gorgeous cookbook

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Endlessly tweaking his workflow for comfort and efficiency, Erez is a freelance writer on a mission to discover the simplest, coolest, and most effective software and websites to make tomorrow happen today.
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There are few things more appetizing than gorgeous, high-resolution photos of delicious food. Cookbook editors have known this for years, and the modern cookbook is bursting with full-page glossy photos showcasing the recipes. iCookbook is a $5 cooking app for Windows 8  that takes this aesthetic and brings it to life with thousands of photos, each leading to a beautifully typeset recipe.

Windows 8's Modern UI is all about tiles, and iCookbook uses them to good advantage. Every recipe is represented by a tile bearing a photo and caption, but they're not all the same size: The main screen is subdivided into several categories, each with a large centerpiece tile and three smaller tiles below. These categories let you browse recipes by dish, ingredient, theme, cuisine, occasion, and brand.

iCookbook’s main screen surfaces recipes using beautiful, bold imagery.

If one of the images on the main screen catches your fancy, just click to open the full recipe. But if you'd like to drill deeper into a category, you can click its header and find yourself in a submenu with vertical tiles, one per subcategory. So click Dish, and you get Appetizers & Snacks, Beverages, Breakfasts & Brunches, and many more. Click a subcategory, and you'll find yourself in a screen full of alphabetically sorted tiles, each for a recipe in that subcategory. There are often more recipes in a subcategory than can fit on the screen, so you can scroll to see more – horizontally. In fact, all scrolling in iCookbook is horizontal. This can be strange and distracting at first, but such is the way of the Modern UI.

iCookbook lets you easily and visually browse recipes by several different categories.

With thousands of recipes available, search is a must-have feature. At first I just tried typing, expecting a search bar to pop up with my first keystroke, like it does in the Windows Start Screen and Windows Store. When that didn't happen, I brought up the Windows 8 Charms bar and clicked the Search icon. That did the trick, and I was able to quickly search for recipes.

When you pull up an individual recipe in iCookbook, you get a larger version of its photo first. It starts off blurry, becoming sharp after a few seconds. Next to the photo, you'll find important information about the recipe, such as its level of difficulty, how many people it serves, how many calories are in a serving, how long it takes to cook, and its average rating (you can also set your own rating for the recipe). Some of these values are underlined, which means you can click them for further information. For example, you can click a recipe's calorie information to get a full breakdown of nutritional values. This is great information, but unfortunately, you can only use some of it for filtering: There's no way to search for all cookie recipes that are marked as "Easy," for example. There’s also no way to adjust quantities (turn a 9-person recipe into a 2-person one).

The recipe view uses large typography, so you don’t have to set your laptop or tablet too close to your work area.

Right by the recipe information you'll find a list of ingredients and notes, often with branded ingredients (2 envelopes FLEISCHMANN'S RapidRise Yeastand so on). Some of the more complex recipes, such as Apple Cinnamon Rolls, have complex ingredients with recipes of their own, such as Apple Filling or Cinnamon-Sugar Topping. These say "(recipe follows)", but there's nowhere to click, and no way to actually get to that ingredient's recipe. Even manually searching for "Apple Filling" didn't bring up that recipe, instead yielding a long list of apple cakes. The vendor is working on a solution for this.

Each recipe has interesting metadata, but it can’t be used for filtering.

Fortunately, not all recipes are this complex, and many are self-contained, so you just need a single recipe to make the dish. Once you find such a recipe, you can scroll (horizontally) through each step as you work through the recipe. Steps are displayed with large, bold typography, each ending with a small "What's next" note so you know what's coming. The large typography means you can set down your Windows 8 laptop or tablet somewhere in the kitchen and glance at it every now and then while cooking without having to put it in harm's way.

You can quickly search through recipes using the Search feature build into Windows 8.

ICookbook was fast and responsive in my testing, with search results, categories, and individual recipes all coming up instantly. Animations were smooth, except for the home screen, which had a jumpy, stuttering transition every time I brought it up. If you're looking for some culinary inspiration and love photos of food, this is a great app to try out.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the Windows Store, where you can download the latest version of the software.

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