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My favorite FTP, Screen capture, IM and window management apps for Windows


Question

As I'm using both Mac/OSX and Windows 7 for my work I always had a big issue in finding a good screen capture application that will allow me to quickly take a snapshot in Windows in the same manner as I do in OSX (combo keys and being able to select a region). I always had trouble finding as some of these apps on Windows never seemed to match that simplicity of OSX screen capture.

Don't get me wrong, they have tons of options and are in many cases more advanced than default simple OSX screen capture but the reality is that I wanted to capture in PNG, a region of the screen, quickly capture it without having the app show up with additional options and me having to use mouse and so on (just a quick combo of keys I needed), it creates a file for me or puts the screenshot in clipboard and then alternatively uploads to my server and gives me back a quick URL so I can post on the web super quickly.

Also, I have tried EVERY SINGLE FTP program on WIndows and after using SmartFTP and CuteFTP and WSFTP and whatever haha.. They are all super overcrowded and nowhere close to simplicity of Panic's Transmit for example.

So with the latest reinstall on my new machine of WIndows 7 I was looking to finally solve these 2 problems or issues if you will. I couldn't believe that in the world of Windows there weren't apps that were as good or better than OSX versions.

And I FOUND THEM.. so I'm sharing them with everyone here

FTP that is actually working on both OSX and Windows (which is a huge help especially with FTP bookmarks):

Cyberduck (available both on Win & OSX and Open Source)

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FastStone Capture app: The absolute best of the best programs I have ever used. They nailed EVERY SINGLE ONE of the things you might want.

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And for those who can't live without Expose coming from OSX (I won't lie, I did kind of get used to it), this app is identical, GPU accelerated, super light and fast and actually has even more options how to stack and show Expose-like windows.

Expose for Win7 app is called Switcher 2.0

and WOW, Trillian has improved so much that it's crazy.. it's been a while since I used it but damn. I installed it and that thing does EVERYTHING you can ever imagine. If you haven't tried it try it.. it's the best IM app I've ever seen and I owned the previous one Trillian 4 or something and it was slow and buggy but this one. Crazy fast, supports devices and keeps your logs in the cloud so it's all sync-ed and has Android, iOS, Blackberry, OSX, Windows versions. Very impressed!

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Switcher 2.0 is EXACTLY what I was missing, as a recent re-convert back to the PC world. Thank you so much.

I use Notepad++ for my (quite limited) FTP use, or the built in Windows FTP, however it's nice to know that Cyberduck is now for Windows, too.

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There is also a program called ZScreen - (Google it) I use it for my screenshots, lets you assign shortcut keys to like crop shot, active window, selected window etc and also can upload to all the major image hosting sites including FTP you might want. Also can tweet your image when you do it and lots of other things!

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I use Greenshot for screen captures on a Windows machine. As you've mentioned, I don't need a separate application for Mac OS X, it's already there.

As for an FTP service, I use Filezilla. Cross-platform, and it does all that I need it to.

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Cyberduck looks great. I don't have any need for an FTP client, but I'll keep it in mind.

For a freeware alternative to Faststone, PicPick offers a very similar set of features (excluding screen recording). For capturing Aeroglass in alpha-transparent PNGs, I use Shotty.

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Cyberduck is quite good.

Regarding the SS app, a lot of the shortcuts are set by default.. The only thing you can't do it automate the actions following the capture (just posting this for interest sake :))

Trillian has improved dramatically recently. I am a Trillian Pro user, so I get conversation synching (a paid feature), however it doesn't support offline messaging properly with MSN, it often loses parts of logs, it doesn't support certain file transfers, you can't past an image directly into it etc etc.

That having all been said, it's faster than WLM, so it's worth a try >.<

I run 3 WLM accounts out of Trillian simultaneously :)

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Cyberduck looks great. I don't have any need for an FTP client, but I'll keep it in mind.

For a freeware alternative to Faststone, PicPick offers a very similar set of features (excluding screen recording). For capturing Aeroglass in alpha-transparent PNGs, I use Shotty.

Xinok, you should try SnapDraw, is FREEWARE now:

http://www.crossgl.com/asc_overview.htm

http://www.crossgl.com/asc_features.htm

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no links? :p

I've been looking for something like faststone capture for a while, thanks!

edit, oh its not free, lol.

FastStone Capture (screen capture) v5.3 is last free version - still around if you look. For me, it works in Vista hm prem x86 & x64. Also used it in XP x86.

ONCE in a while it hangs now - mainly on printing directly from prgm, but copying capture to another app, then print works fine. But closing it / restarting during rare hangs is VERY fast. In Vista, haven't seen any other problems. FastStone's own editor & all the options it has are quite good (for me). Maybe uninstalling / reinstalling would fix my hanging problems.

Capturing "scrolling" screens in Firefox 4 had some probs, but not in FF 5. No idea if it works in Win 7 - Pic Pick would be good to try.

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