Google announced on tuesday 22nd of September 2009 the test release of Google Chrome Frame which is a plugin for IE that will make it HTML5 compliant.  The need came out of their effort to build the next communication tools (google wave) and they wanted to make life easier for their developers to accommodate IE that still has the lion share of the internet users. 

Webmasters and developers don't need a whole lot of money to spend on tools in order to work efficiently and be productive. Here is a list of free tools that help me run my everyday webmaster chores.

Notepad++

Dreamweaver and such designing tools might have become very advanced in the recent years but I am still far from satisfied with them. I prefer to do the coding with a simple text editor and be in total control of the code and not end up with unnecessarily long code. Recently I discovered Notepad++ which has the few bells and whistles that are desired by hard core programmers such as code highlighting, Regular Expression Search/Replace support, capability to extend functionality with plugins and nice depository of contributed ones. Worth your attention.

Everybody's heard of Photoshop; it's the world's gold standard when it comes to image editing software. Part of this is due to its age, and part to its capability. The web is a graphical medium, so it makes sense for people who run web sites to have a basic understanding of Photoshop.

There are two "standard" complaints about the application: it has a steep learning curve ( in part because it's so powerful - there are simply "too many" options for new users, who tend to feel overwhelmed ) and its price. In US Dollars, Photoshop CS 3 is $650, while the extended version goes for $1,000. This is mainly of use to people who need to manipulate images in 3D space, or movies on a frame-by-frame basis.

Photoshop Without Photoshop

Because of the high cost, we should start by looking at some alternatives to Photoshop. These run the gamut from open source freeware to closed source commercial applications - the competition - and, ironically, trimmed down versions of Photoshop itself. For the web designer on a budget, some other software to consider is:

The google algorithm is something that lots of webmasters wish they knew, every so often. Its well hidden from the public eye rightfully so, since it would be subject to a lot of abuse (more than it already is ??!!)