Editor's Picks
This is an informal and completely unscientific list of the Editor's opinion of the ten hottest picks on this month's CD.
Disagree? Then drop him a line!
Editor's Picks This is an informal and completely unscientific list of the Editor's opinion of the ten hottest picks on this month's CD. Disagree? Then drop him a line! |
1. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.01 SP1
The latest release of this browser with the Service Pack 1 that includes bug fixes .
Create natural looking 3D environments with this powerful animator. Bryce's Natural Environment Engine mimics the laws of nature, creating realistic mountains, clouds, skies, fog and rainbows. Anyone familiar with Kai's Power Tools will instantly recognise the interface as being from the same developers, but it might take a bit longer to work out what all the controls are for. At its simplest, you can drag objects like mountains, rocks and water into the 3D workspace, and move or resize them. You can also apply atmospheric effects like lighting, fog and clouds. After this it starts to get complicated, but with patience the results can be spectacular.
Combines power and user-friendliness to make 3D rendering and animating easy. The scene wizard helps you get started with backgrounds and lighting effects. 3D objects can then be drag-and-dropped. Another wizard helps you create complex 3D objects. Colours and textures can be dragged from the large gallery of samples and dropped on to objects. The gallery also contains a wide variety of objects, realistic light sources, animation behaviours and still and moving cameras, all of which can be applied by dropping them on an object or in the right spot. A time line window helps you keep track of complex animated sequences. We highly recommend the BungieCam moving camera.
A 3D text animator that's powerful and easy to use. Bevelling, colour, texture, camera angle, background and animation style are all applied by dragging from the large range of examples and dropping on the text. There is a selection of pre-made examples which can also be instantly applied. As well as the usual movement effects, Ulead Cool 3D can do morphs and animated textures. Our staff managed a 3D banner with a moving texture that flips and changes colour all in under a minute. Morphing is as simple as adjusting the first frame and the last frame — the software takes care of the rest. The control over text formatting is tricky — size and spacing can only be changed by repeatedly clicking buttons, and only one line of text can be animated.
Create newsletters, flyers, business cards, brochures, and Web sites with this desktop publishing program. It features flexible wizards and automated design guidance to help you create professional-quality documents quickly. The familar Office Assistant provides help on any aspects of the program.
Pointix Engine is one of those utilities that makes using your computer a little bit easier. If there is one New & Hot program that every reader should install onto their system and try out for a while, it's definitely this one. It has absolutely everything.
The main feature behind the Pointix Engine is called a glick (short for glide-click). A glick involves shaking the mouse pointer in motions that are rarely used during normal operation. There is a clockwise glick, a counter-clockwise glick, as well as up-and-down and left-to-right glicks. A glick can open applications, documents or Web pages, it can execute keyboard macros, or display a customised menu with more options.
Along with the special Pointix Desktop Utilities and Office Utilities (which include things such as a calendar, alarm, and card file utility), I must also make special mention of the Pointix Scroll++ feature. Scrolling through documents and Web pages has never been easier. I think it's even better than Microsoft's mouse with the roller in the middle. All you have to do is hold down the right mouse button and it will scroll in the direction that your mouse was last pointing. It even has different scrolling speeds.
There are many programs available that use some kind of cache technology to reduce the amount of time spent downloading Web pages. In this case the cache technology used by Surf Express is called FASTore, and SmartFetch is the technology used to keep your favourite pages up-to-date automatically.
Surf Express learns which pages you visit most often and automatically checks these as you surf to see if they need updating. Surf Express works in the background but you can open its window and look at the statistics which indicate the percentage of pages you have accessed that have been loaded from the cache and what percentage have been completely downloaded from the Web.
FindCahe is a feature of Surf Express which is particularly handy. It allows you to enter keywords which are then looked up in previously surfed pages. This allows you to view whole pages after you have disconnected.
There have been similar Internet-cache applications in New & Hot before and there will undoubtedly be others in the future. Any program that can reduce the time spent on downloading Web pages is always worth a try, Surf Express may be just the answer for improving your time spent online.
FTP client that allows you to browse remote FTP sites as if they were on your hard disk. You can then drag-and-drop, copy or move files the same way you would with files on your computer. Features a bookmark list for you favourite sites, an auto-re-get feature for resuming interrupted transfers, and firewall support.
Pretty Good Privacy 5.5.3i is the latest international version of this encryption software.
PowWow is an Internet chat client. Individual users may chat in real-time, one on one, or as many as nine users can chat simultaneously. You can surf the Web as a group and exchange files. PowWow features text chat, voice chat, differently coloured text for conferencing, online gaming capabilities, and bulletin boards.
⌐ Australian Consolidated Press 1998