Useful Freeware

Use Kaxaml instead of the XAMLPad

Kaxaml is a nice looking lightweight XAML editor, which features intellisense and live preview of your XAML files. It offers a split view, similar to XAMLPad, included in the Windows SDK. It igves you a chance to play with XAML without downloading the SDK, although for anything serious I would use you Visual Studio. Here is a screenshot to spice your appetite:

Create your own instllations with Inno Setup

Inno Setup can help you create your own installers and uninstallers. I have used Inno Setup in the past and recently and I have created an installer for 30 GB worth of data files and some custom scripting to detect installation folders, system config, etc. It is a very good install program with the most IMO worthy features as follows:

• Support for all windows versions (including Vista) – both 32 bit and 64 bit
• Choice of single executable or disk spanning
• Custom Setup types
• You can create custom pages for the installation
• Different compression types – 7-Zip’s LZMA compression has excellent compression ratio and fast decompression
• Integrated Pascal scripting engine
• Very good community support and variety of example script
• Many tools available to supplement the installer creation process (like ISTool, InnoSetup Form Designer, addons for downloading, license keys, etc.)

Overall excellent installer with a very small footprint. Strongly recommended!

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a must have text editor for people using programming languages. It is based 0n Scintilla component, which is very stable and relatively fast. It is a quick loading perfect replacement for notepad. The makers even include a launcher for complete notepad replacement. The support of many programming languages, Unix/Windows line separators, tabbed interface and many more made it my choice for a lightweight viewer for source files.

There are also a number of plugins for extra functionality.