There's lots of places on the web that provide utilities to develop and distribute software for free. You don't need to spend all your money to get compilers, installation programs and reference books if you intend on becoming a developer. I do all of my programming and website building on a rather ancient Pentium 75! A software developer that uses lightweight, freely downloadable utilities is also more mobile, with less reliance on one specific machine that holds one's precious software. With Internet "hard drive" storage now widely available, you can upload everything you need in one place and work from just about anywhere!

Along with being a site for X.App, I would like xapp.8m.com to become a resource centre for all those looking to create software cheaply and easily. On this page you will find links to products and services that you'll need for the entire process, from programming to distribution to website developement. I'll try to add links as quickly as possible. I hope you find this useful, and feel free to send me your own links for consideration! In the future, I hope to have more information regarding specific topics and languages that will get their own links on the menu.

• Free Compilers and Interpreters
• Free Graphics Utilities
• Download Sites

Developer City. Located on a larger site named thefreecountry.com, this is an outstanding site to find not only free compilers, but countless other programming tools like libraries, setup utilities, and compiler toolkits. Broken down into several distinct categories, with a nice summary given for each link. A must-visit for those looking for free programming tools!

Idiom Consulting's Free Compiler List. Located on ISP Idiom Consulting, this is a nice list of more obscure and specialized language compilers.

Visual Basic Control Creation Edition. Microsoft provides this version of Visual Basic free of charge! Provides many of the features that all versions of VB have, except that your projects can only be compiled as ActiveX files (though you can always use X.App to turn them into executables :)). If you don't know much about programming in ActiveX, this program provides wizards and a language structure that make it easy!

The Lazarus Project. Lazarus is a programming library that, combined with free compiler FreePascal (links provided on their site), lets you program in Delphi for absolutely free! They already have a complete compiler, and are quickly creating an IDE to going along with it. I have not yet tried out Delphi, but I've heard good things.

Euphoria. A free language that I really don't know too much about, but it is very compact and seems to be full of features, allowing users to develop GUI applications pretty easily. There appears to be lots of support for this language.

Envelop VB Compiler. I have never tried out this product, but it is supposedly a 32-bit compiler for Visual Basic, and is completely free! I'm pretty sure they've stopped updating it, though I don't know up to what version of VB it supports. If anybody has more information about this program, please let me know.

Free Graphics Utilities There are plenty of free programs that you can use to create graphics, and convert between formats. I'll list the ones that I use, along with places where you can find more products:

Microsoft Paint. Microsft's paint is a decent, lightweight (and free) program that you can use to create bitmaps. There's not a lot of the features found in full commercial programs, but if you have simple graphics needs it will do just fine. If you need to convert to GIF format, see GiFFY below.

GiFFY. A terrific little tool that converts bitmaps to GIFs, and makes the backgrounds of images transparent if desired. Tiny and free! The link here goes to the SoftSeek page for GiFFY, which provides links for downloads and the author's website.

Ultimate Paint. New versions of this product are shareware, but you can still download old freeware copies of the program. A very complete painting program that lets you save in several different formats.

PrintKey 2000. A great little utility that stays in memory and pops up whenever you capture the screen. Lots of editing and sizing features, and the re-sizes look very nice. Completely free!

Download Sites There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of shareware and freeware sites where you can submit links to your files. The trick is finding the ones that people visit and download from, and sites that will add your programs quickly, instead of taking a month of processing. This is a list of some of the sites I've sent software to, along with my personal views on them based on my experiences. I've organized them into shareware/freeware, and freeware only (though many of these sites are freeware in name only, and lots of their software is still shareware and demos):

Shareware/Freeware:

CNET's Download.com. They get more visitors and downloads than anybody else, but they seem to be taking even longer than usual to put up new files. I've been waiting on a few for a good two months, and absolutely nothing I've sent them in that time is up! Plus they deleted one of my existing files, which will take forever to correct. If you want a site that gets lots of traffic, you might want to check out Freeware32 instead (your program doesn't need to be freeware; most of the software there isn't).

ZDNet's Hotfiles. ZDNet's download site is popular and very complete. I used to have a lot of problems with them, but lately their service has been much improved. Their file submission procedure is completely overhauled, and now allows you to provide them with an URL to your file, rather than uploading it yourself (a BIG time-saver). They still upload the file to their own server, which means that you'll have to give them a new file each time you update. Kind of annoying, but they put up new files very fast, within a week of submission and probably sooner. They still appear to be stubborn with reviews, but other than that it is now definitely worth it to send your files here.

SoftSeek. Somehow affailiated with ZDNet, but they have a completely indenpendent list of shareware (and no crazy reviews). They seem to take an awfully long time to add new programs, but they're a well-designed site that appears to be rather popular. They claim to be more selective about the software they put up, but I don't think they're overly strict or anything. Very much worth sending your files to.

SoftwareNow. A very nice-looking site that seems to be growing in popularity. You may not get a lot of downloads just yet, but it's worth sending files here anyway. They take 1-2 weeks to be added, and they have a nice feature that lets you set up an account (for free), so you don't have to re-type all your personal info each time you submit a new file.

SuperShareware. A nice little site that gets a suprising number of downloads. New files are displayed prominently, and best of all, your submitted files are displayed right away. They also offer a user account feature.

32bit.com. A well-designed site that put up file in a day or less, but unfortunately seems to get zero traffic. You'd think from the way it looked that it gets lots of visitors, but this doesn't appear to be the case.

EveryFILEintheworld.com. Not the nicest looking site, but they put up downloads pretty much right away, and have lots of prominent links to new files. They get a good amount of downloads, too, at least for a smaller shareware site.

Freeware Guide. A great resource for shareware and freeware sites, as well as other free services on the web. They have many more shareware links than this site, and fewer long-winded reviews.

Freeware only:

Freeware32. A great place to send your programs. They add stuff right away, display it prominently for a week (organized by day of submission), and you really get tons of downloads! If you've made a freeware product (or shareware, for that matter), definitely send it here.