Web-based software: steps to freedom

Posted on March 11, 2009 | Category: software

One of the perennial questions about moving to Linux is if it has the equivalent of the software that the questioner can’t live without.

In my own case I hesitated before I blitzed Windows because of the dozen or so websites I look after both for myself and my friends. How would I check how the site looked in IE? Of course there’s always Wine, an excellent project, and I tried that for a while, but didn’t bother to install it when I upgraded to Intrepid Ibex.

Then, how to check broken links If you have a site with over a thousand links, as I have in Irish Culture Guide, for example. With Windows I used the excellent Xenu’s Link Sleuth (TM).

Naturally I checked its website to see if it had a Linux equivalent

No, I won’t make a Java, MacOS, Linux, Knoppix, Ubuntu, Beos, Palm, C64 or SAP version. Don’t even ask! (However I have been told that it will run faultlessly under Red Hat 8 and Ubuntu via wine, and under Crossover on a Mac )

The poor developer (Tilman Hausherr) must be swamped with requests.

The thing is, of course, that more and more software is web-based. And I’ve found two that are a godsend for anyone who does a lot of work with websites. Some professionals may turn up their nose, though I can’t think of a reason why they should.

IE Net Renderer

Dead Links

Their names say it all, I think. Dead Links warns that it will tag a link as dead if it takes too long to load, and a rule of thumb is that if it is the domain name, eg http://www.domainname.com, it’s unlikely to be dead.
This is a sensible compromise between accuracy and speed.

So. two more steps along the road to freedom.

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