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IE is currently the only browser without Canvas support. There is a solid solution using Java applets for emulation. (Current excanvas solution uses VML which isn't fast enough.) The *problem* is that IE is not worth supporting. The longer developers bend over backwards for it, the longer it's going to hang around. That's why my game redirects you to a nice "get a real browser" page rather than using the Applet I developed for high performance Canvas emulation. I just can't make myself support that POS any longer. Especially with Microsoft's active attempts to ignore the standards in IE8. (Did you know that DOM2 Events support was closed out as "works as intended"?)

I included a few links that use highly experimental features that the WHATWG recently added to the specs. However, it's important to understand that these are not commercial apps. For the most part, the links I gave you are guys who pushing the envelope with their experiments. It's only within the last year that JS has started to gain some serious development traction.

And there will always be far less to explain to your boss about why your app doesn't work on XYZ browser version Q because of it's implementation of feature A isn't... blah blah blah, you get the point.

Thankfully, that's not really an issue any longer. Save for cutting edge experimental features (NOT required by any stretch of the imagination), browsers have become highly compatible with each other. There is no need to add special hacks any longer. Unless you're using IE, which is why (IMHO) its decline will accelerate over the next year as webapps continue to grow in sophistication.

Also, it's important to remember the topic we're discussing here. For development targeting the iPhone, JS and Flash are evenly matched. Or at least they would be if the iPhone had Flash. Same with the Wii. The Wii has Flash, but it's so outdated that Javascript is the best way forward. With more and more non-desktop devices having ports of browsers, but no Flash, the tables are already turning. That is what will help drive Javascript application adoption forward and place you in the position of explaining to your boss why you can't use Flex for projects in the future. The problem will only get worse as Adobe focuses on high-powered desktops while the market looks toward netbooks, smartphones, and game consoles.

Like this? Breakout is a fairly simple game that requires only minimal animation. That makes it relatively easy to program. That doesn't mean it can't be done better. The breakout example I linked to it pretty choppy once you slow it down to a reasonable speed.

I wrote a DHTML version of Pong a while back that is far superior. Here's a link. The underlying architecture was very primitive when I wrote it, not having features like the Canvas tag available. And yet it is one of the better Pong variations on the net. (If you don't mind my saying so.) The reason for its superiority is simple: 95% of people who write a game don't understand what makes games interesting.

In the case of Pong, nearly all variations are too slow and the AI consists of stupidly following the ball. Well, that's not very fun. The ball should bounce fairly quickly and the AI should respond like a human. How do you make AI respond like a human, though? Simple: It should not act robotic and it should make mistakes.

The AI for Pong stops moving the paddle when the ball is traveling in the opposite direction. This helps remove the "robot" feel of the opponent. Next, the computer is limited to the same rate of movement as the player. This gives the player a chance to sneak one by the computer. (Since the ball is faster than the paddle.) Finally, the AI has a bit of jitter in its algorithm. Rather than moving with the ball, it computes where the ball is expected to be. A random amount of jitter is then added to the computation so that the computer has the possibility of "misjudging" where the ball will actually arrive. By adjusting the jitter, the game can be made to play on easy, normal, or hard. (Use the options menu to set the difficulty. Though for some reason, the menu doesn't work on Chrome. So just be aware of that issue.)

Another game that is rarely done right is Tetris. Take the Jetris game in the "GameJS" link. It's a nice tech demo, but it's a sub-par game. And not because the game is of the "classic" Tetris variety. (My own Tetris game was of the same variety.) It at least gets the coloring right in that each piece is a specific color. (Though adhering to the Tetris standards for coloring would have been an improvement.) That's a good first step. The bigger issue is that the piece selection does not have a very good distribution of pieces. I regularly get three or four of the same piece in a row. That should never happen in a good Tetris game. Programmers need to take steps to ensure that the player will never get more than two of the same piece in a row. The Tetris "Bag" algorithm is a good solution to this that makes the game more fun. Another good trick is to ensure that pieces always arrive in the default rotation.

Anyway, the point of my rant is that the technology is rarely the problem. A good game programmer can make a fun game out of nearly any technology. An inexperienced game programmer with no understanding of what is "fun" can make any technology look like the problem.

Like this? Breakout is a fairly simple game that requires only minimal animation. That makes it relatively easy to program. That doesn't mean it can't be done better. The breakout example I linked to it pretty choppy once you slow it down to a reasonable speed.

I wrote a DHTML version of Pong a while back that is far superior. Here's a link. The underlying architecture was very primitive when I wrote it, not having features like the Canvas tag available. And yet it is one of the better Pong variations on the net. (If you don't mind my saying so.) The reason for its superiority is simple: 95% of people who write a game don't understand what makes games interesting.

In the case of Pong, nearly all variations are too slow and the AI consists of stupidly following the ball. Well, that's not very fun. The ball should bounce fairly quickly and the AI should respond like a human. How do you make AI respond like a human, though? Simple: It should not act robotic and it should make mistakes.

The AI for Pong stops moving the paddle when the ball is traveling in the opposite direction. This helps remove the "robot" feel of the opponent. Next, the computer is limited to the same rate of movement as the player. This gives the player a chance to sneak one by the computer. (Since the ball is faster than the paddle.) Finally, the AI has a bit of jitter in its algorithm. Rather than moving with the ball, it computes where the ball is expected to be. A random amount of jitter is then added to the computation so that the computer has the possibility of "misjudging" where the ball will actually arrive. By adjusting the jitter, the game can be made to play on easy, normal, or hard. (Use the options menu to set the difficulty. Though for some reason, the menu doesn't work on Chrome. So just be aware of that issue.)

Another game that is rarely done right is Tetris. Take the Jetris game in the "GameJS" link. It's a nice tech demo, but it's a sub-par game. And not because the game is of the "classic" Tetris variety. (My own Tetris game was of the same variety.) It at least gets the coloring right in that each piece is a specific color. (Though adhering to the Tetris standards for coloring would have been an improvement.) That's a good first step. The bigger issue is that the piece selection does not have a very good distribution of pieces. I regularly get three or four of the same piece in a row. That should never happen in a good Tetris game. Programmers need to take steps to ensure that the player will never get more than two of the same piece in a row. The Tetris "Bag" algorithm is a good solution to this that makes the game more fun. Another good trick is to ensure that pieces always arrive in the default rotation.

Anyway, the point of my rant is that the technology is rarely the problem. A good game programmer can make a fun game out of nearly any technology. An inexperienced game programmer with no understanding of what is "fun" can make any technology look like the problem.

http://www.quantumg.net/tetris.php

Needs work. Here's my version, complete with an adapter for Internet Exploder:

http://java.dnsalias.com/tetris/ie

(Mine is based on the NES version rather than the more modern Tetris versions, so use UP to rotate, DOWN to make it drop faster, LEFT/RIGHT to reposition the piece. If you use IE, click outside the block-drop area to make sure that it has proper focus as I have not finished the adapter.)

While not as pretty, there's also an online multiplayer version written in Javascript here:

http://www.wiicade.com/gameDetail.aspx?gameID=1063

That one is not mine, though the programmer did use my network technology. ;-)

http://java.dnsalias.com/tetris/ie/

Done. That will work in IE, FireFox, Safari, and Opera. Yet the code targets only the Canvas tag.

The one caveat is that the shunt does not yet have complete event passing. So you need to click outside of the falling blocks area for the keyboard commands to be read.

If browsers were a good application framework, we wouldn't need Flash, Air, Silverlight, Java applets, XBAP apps, XUL, etc, etc etc.

Newsflash! We don't.

Flash was never welcome on the web. It was responsible for some of the most horrific, unusable sites known to man. For the most part it has disappeared from common UI use. However, it did manage to find two major niches:

1. A standard for Web Video (because no one can friggin' agree on a standard)

2. Online Games

#1 may eventually be taken care of by the new HTML5 <video> tag. Unfortunately, the powers that be still can't agree.

#2 *is* taken care of. Javascript games already exist:

PentriiX Online Multiplayer
DHTML Lemmings
Hull Breach Online
Tetris using Canvas
Pac Man using Canvas

XUL is a Mozilla technology primarily used to construct Mozilla apps. It is not a web language per se.

Air and Silverlight are solutions looking for problems. The latter is supposed to be a Flash killer at a time when Flash is already at the end of its life. Smooth move, Microsoft.

XBAP is effectively the heavy-weight daddy of Silverlight. Except that it's not really a web app.

The sooner we realize that trying to build an "application" directly in html+javascript+whatever-server-side-tech-you-like is a losing strategy, the sooner we can move onto something better.

So what you're saying is, the sooner we shut down GMail, Yahoo! Mail, Google Docs, Google Maps, Digg, Meebo, and every other DHTML app in existence, the better off we'll be*?

* Ok, maybe in the case of Digg we would be, but that's the exception that proves the rule!

FYI, Screaming Monkey was already discussed in an earlier story.

Unfortunately, scripted manipulation of VML is too slow to be used for highly interactive web applications. Mozilla's solution is to bake its own native Canvas implementation into an ActiveX plugin that can be integrated directly into Internet Explorer.

The only problem is getting people to install the plugin. My own solution was to use the market penetration of Java Applets to develop a shunt that would render Canvas using Java APIs. (Note that the events system has not been completed in that demo. Make sure you click outside the block falling area so that the browser receives the keyboard commands.)

The same sort of shunt could be done with Flash 9 or Silverlight. Which would do a nice end-run around the problem of getting plugins installed.

But the controls are a little sluggish and the game was fairly simple, but over all it was really impressive for javascript.

But don't WiiCade developers have to pay Adobe $700 plus tax to get started?

Or can one develop a competent Wii game using only DHTML?

Of course, it won't matter. At least until some major browsers support it.

And it really won't matter until IE supports it.

AJAX apps are still not allowed to save data locally

Javascript is not fast/powerful/scalable enough to implement significant local logic (for example to encrypt most of the data that it stores on the server)

Even if users are comfortable with hosted data, they can not be thrilled over the fact that buying a top-of-the-line quad core computer does nothing to speed up their applications.

Saft will let you create search shortcuts that work in the same way as the 'keyword' field in a Firefox bookmark. Costs $12, though.

If you just want to use the Search box, Inquisitor will do it for free(as was already posted).

It is useful. That's why I installed Saft on my copy of Safari :)

Oh, boo hoo. Go play some tetris: http://java.dnsalias.com/tetris/

Developers of Web sites are oftentimes impressed by the more advanced functionality that can be achieved on a Web page using JavaScript. Yet these personal discoveries of JavaScript's power do not always motivate the developers to implement similar functionality on their own sites

<body onKeyDown="doSomeStuff()">

domelement.innerHTML = "<p>"+equation+"</p>";

function doSomeStuff(event) {...}
 
document.addEventListener("keydown", doSomeStuff, false);

var paragraph = document.createElement("p"); //this should really be a DIV
 
paragraph.appendChild(document.createTextEl ement(equation));
domelement.appendChild(paragrap h);

for(i=0; i<10; i++) doSomething(i);

for(var i=0; i<10; i++) doSomething(i);

function LightBulb(on)
{
    this.on = on;
 
    this.isOn = function() { return this.on; }
    this.setOn = function(on) { this.on = on; }
}
 
var mybulb1 = new LightBulb(true);
var mybulb2 = new LightBulb(false);
 
alert(mybulb1.isOn()+" - "+mybulb2.isOn());

Because that is what cheat codes and gameshark is for.

If you want iTunes to take the 640x480 H264 files use a modified MP4Box like Nic's at http://nic.dnsalias.com/NicMP4Box.zip
(That's for windows, but the source is at http://nic.dnsalias.com/NicMP4Box_src.zip, should be easy to compile for your flavour of *nix)

If you want iTunes to take the 640x480 H264 files use a modified MP4Box like Nic's at http://nic.dnsalias.com/NicMP4Box.zip
(That's for windows, but the source is at http://nic.dnsalias.com/NicMP4Box_src.zip, should be easy to compile for your flavour of *nix)

This program has been out for some time now and looks to be much more advanced than Teddy/Smooth Teddy/Magical Sketch.

http://archipelis.dnsalias.com/~archipel/index.htm l

Here's my opinion on the subject...

http://macbros.dnsalias.com/blog/they-are-taking-t he-hobbits-to-isengard/

Y

No - you don't smoke it. You _run_ it. A 'drinking club with a running problem' is their tagline and it's a wonderful way to get exercise, meet fun people, and have a beer "on trail."

About, history, etc. Also take a look at the dictionary.

It's a lot of fun. I'm a member of Sir Walter's Hash House Harriers in "The Triangle" (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, NC) and you can find all past hashes here. They've even got stats : (mine) , (all).

If you'd like to hang out with people with names like Ass Clown,
E'lickser, SpongeDick NoPants, Turns'Em Gay, Ball Me, Banger Not, Better Not Suck,Big Box,Blows the Hammer,Briar Breast ,BubbaGump, Buckafuffalo, Cheese Infection,Cock Cleaner,Condomint,Cracked Nuts, Endangered Feces,Finger Licking Good, Gigglegasm,Goes Down Hard, Mary Lou Rotten, and Photo Spread, find a local hash and run!

It's a world-wide thing that began in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1938 so there's probably one near you, regardless of the continent you live on. LINKS

Faster than geocaching - and they have beer! On-On!

No - you don't smoke it. You _run_ it. A 'drinking club with a running problem' is their tagline and it's a wonderful way to get exercise, meet fun people, and have a beer "on trail."

About, history, etc. Also take a look at the dictionary.

It's a lot of fun. I'm a member of Sir Walter's Hash House Harriers in "The Triangle" (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, NC) and you can find all past hashes here. They've even got stats : (mine) , (all).

If you'd like to hang out with people with names like Ass Clown,
E'lickser, SpongeDick NoPants, Turns'Em Gay, Ball Me, Banger Not, Better Not Suck,Big Box,Blows the Hammer,Briar Breast ,BubbaGump, Buckafuffalo, Cheese Infection,Cock Cleaner,Condomint,Cracked Nuts, Endangered Feces,Finger Licking Good, Gigglegasm,Goes Down Hard, Mary Lou Rotten, and Photo Spread, find a local hash and run!

It's a world-wide thing that began in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1938 so there's probably one near you, regardless of the continent you live on. LINKS

Faster than geocaching - and they have beer! On-On!

No - you don't smoke it. You _run_ it. A 'drinking club with a running problem' is their tagline and it's a wonderful way to get exercise, meet fun people, and have a beer "on trail."

About, history, etc. Also take a look at the dictionary.

It's a lot of fun. I'm a member of Sir Walter's Hash House Harriers in "The Triangle" (Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, NC) and you can find all past hashes here. They've even got stats : (mine) , (all).

If you'd like to hang out with people with names like Ass Clown,
E'lickser, SpongeDick NoPants, Turns'Em Gay, Ball Me, Banger Not, Better Not Suck,Big Box,Blows the Hammer,Briar Breast ,BubbaGump, Buckafuffalo, Cheese Infection,Cock Cleaner,Condomint,Cracked Nuts, Endangered Feces,Finger Licking Good, Gigglegasm,Goes Down Hard, Mary Lou Rotten, and Photo Spread, find a local hash and run!

It's a world-wide thing that began in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1938 so there's probably one near you, regardless of the continent you live on. LINKS

Faster than geocaching - and they have beer! On-On!

Honestly, the reason why firefox is the preffered choice is not only because of it's security, robustness, and general workability, but also because it's so damn customizable. Honestly, I can do anything I want on any operating system, if I have my handy dandy firefox.

Anyway, check out this kickass firefox extension that allows users anywhere to chat with other users viewing the same website as them. (It'd be cool to see a few slashdot.org people!) =)

Try the QuickChat extension out .. it's pretty sweet.

I think I like the name more than I think I'll like the game.

How sad. You might find you're missing a great little game. Not to mention many of the other good ones like T4XI and Hunters4K.

Well, at least you might get some amusement out of the manual:

http://java.dnsalias.com/4k/robotron/readme.txt

It contains an entire story about how Robotron ends up in 4096. :)

Opera's good software - I tried it and liked it well enough - but maybe someone can tell me what makes it good enough to ditch what ships with my OS? Don't start by trying to tell me what I have isn't good enough. Can anyone sell me on some positives?

If you're not interested in paying ten bucks for it, just check the "I paid" checkbox and move on.

For sessions, Saft.

Opera saves sessions, and Firefox doesn't without an extension, so this isn't some leet power Firefox user thing, you know.

Commence bitching about paying for software...now.

Considering they said it's environmentally safe, I doubt it's mercury. Considering it's intended to /cool/ your gpu, I doubt it's molten lead.

Even if it were either, why couldn't it be good? 20x the cooling sounds pretty good to me, and if it's safe and environmentally friendly, what's the problem?
--
Issue #2-Vic Gentry, Vigilante Cop [dnsalias.com]
Updated May 6

A few points:

1. Most of the "management" apps are written by people who are not experts in the Java language, thus tend to fubar it pretty well. This is changing, but slowly.

2. Sun is aware of the remote X issues. This is something they are being slow about addressing, but I believe 1.5 should show a marked performance improvement.

3. P2P programs tend to eat a lot of system resources during operation. This doesn't have so much to do with Java as in the way they are designed.

4. The majority of "good" Java software is outside of the area of Desktop applications. Desktop is still an underdeveloped area for Java.

5. Java programs will always take more resources on a mainstream machine. This is due to the fact that the JVM replicates a lot of the functionality of the OS. In instances where the JVM *is* the OS (e.g. embedded development) the difference in resources is insignificant.

Here are a few examples of Java Desktop programs that do their job extremely well:

Azureus
Wurm Online
JGoodies JDiskReport
DataDino Database Explorer
A few games I wrote for a 4k contest.

Safari? You've got to be kidding me.

Wihtout Saft, Safari is the least usable joke of a (current generation) browser I've encountered.

The only issue I have with FireFox on my PowerBook (w/ OSX 10.3.9) is that Java causes it to beachball every third or fourth time it's called from the same browser instance.

I'm curious... do you do this yourself?

Yes.

What do you use?

Primarily Java these days. When I was a young'un, I did 3D engines in C, but these days I see little need for doing much at all in C.

Some of my favorite stuff to write is the 4K games. The 4K boundry seems to be sweet-spot that provides me with a challenge worthy of spending time on, as well as confines the game enough to make sure it gets *done*.

BTW, the X libs are the wrong place to start. I spend most of my time in the Java2D APIs, but for serious games (both 2D and 3D) you'll want to use OpenGL.

Regarding Safari & type-ahead-find: installing Saft gives you type-ahead support. Amongst other useful features.

Install Saft for type ahead find and other nifty stuff.

Not sure if this helps, but I have a web interface to a MySQL MP3 database: TVDinner.

Sorry, I generally agree with what you're saying, but you tweaked my feathers on one point:

Compare a nicely-fleshed-out Windows application, with automatic visual styles and Direct3D and OpenFileDialog boxes, with wonky Java applets that might run in a browser, and might just break.

NOBODY and I do mean NOBODY writes Java Applets any more. Java Applications are what have been working to displace Windows dominance. A few examples:

Azureus Bit Torrent Client
Thinkfree Office Suite
DataDino Database Explorer
Disk Analyzer

Games too:

Wurm Online
My 4K games
Big game list

So PLEASE don't mention Java Applets. You're likely to get stoned for it.

"In safari the tabs are fixed size. Once you have more tabs then can fit on your bar you have to use the stupid drop down. In firefox the tabs automatically resize temselves."

"5) Profiles"

I finally got around to scripting a dynamic fake warez site. There are currently 250 movies, but you can add your own to the flat text file. This should work on ANY php webserver.

If you try and download a file, you will get the correct mime-type, and filesize, but the transfer will gradually get slower and slower and it will never finish (well, maybe some day, but its garbage anyways).

Preview: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/
Source: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/index.phps
Movie List: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/movies.txt

Enjoy!

I finally got around to scripting a dynamic fake warez site. There are currently 250 movies, but you can add your own to the flat text file. This should work on ANY php webserver.

If you try and download a file, you will get the correct mime-type, and filesize, but the transfer will gradually get slower and slower and it will never finish (well, maybe some day, but its garbage anyways).

Preview: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/
Source: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/index.phps
Movie List: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/movies.txt

Enjoy!

I finally got around to scripting a dynamic fake warez site. There are currently 250 movies, but you can add your own to the flat text file. This should work on ANY php webserver.

If you try and download a file, you will get the correct mime-type, and filesize, but the transfer will gradually get slower and slower and it will never finish (well, maybe some day, but its garbage anyways).

Preview: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/
Source: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/index.phps
Movie List: http://ciagon.dnsalias.com/movies/movies.txt

Enjoy!

Oh, go jump off a (virtual) cliff. Java can handle "soft" realtime just fine, and extensions are being worked on for "hard" realtime support. And yes, some people actually write device drivers in Java. Java isn't slow because it's actually slow, it slow because:

1. C programmers write 10 lines of REALLY LOUSY Java code and decide that proves their point about Java being slow.

2. People like you WANT it to be slow. I'm sorry, comparing Java programming against device driver writing? That's the height of hypocrisy. Just because you're sore that *you* can't write high performance Java code while maintaining the beauty of an OO design, doesn't mean you have to take it out on everyone else.

BTW:

4k games
Amazing OpenGL game
More Java games
JDiskReport
Best BitTorrent client ever

etc, etc, etc.

And here I was hoping the author was sharing his secrets on finding time to *build* games on a tight 40-60 hour workweek. Taking the time to build even simple games results in a massive reduction in sleeping hours.

You're obviously not married. :)

Try again, I'm quite married with two kids. I had a chance to get an E8500 (8x300MHz, 9x8Gig Fibre Channel, 8Gig RAM, etc.) for only $3000! My wife said I could spend the money if I could find a use for it. Damn.

My wife has been trying to get me to unload every computer that hasn't been turned on in the past 5 years.

Ah, see there's your problem. All my machines are turned on at all times. The iBook and Desktop PC are obvious, the Ultra 10 runs my wife's recipe database, and the old P120 runs FreeBSD and acts as a Firewall, NAT, Web Server, mail server, etc. While the Symbolics machine may not have an outward use, I can simply explain to my wife that it's a research project for me. She'd understand. ;-)

That's pretty cool. And it's also just the type of thing I think would go over great for video games. If I could find some time, I'd love to integrate your MOD library into GAGE. The two would be a match made in heaven! :-)

I personally think that more employers should give a short test as part of the interview, this way they can be fairly confident that the person they are hiring actually knows how to do the job.

I actually did something similar when I was recently interviewing junior programmer candidates. When I noticed that they had "Masters Degree" written all over their resume, I decided to put them through the wringer and ask about various data structures and search algorithms. (Note: I never got a degree myself. Too busy actually performing the job.) I usually started with something complex like Hashtables, then went progressively simpler to Binary Searches, B-Trees, and Linked Lists. Oddly enough, no one knew how hashtables worked. One guy stuttered through so badly that he barely even managed to explain linked lists (and I wasn't tremendously happy with his explanation). The guy I ended up recommending was the one who simply said "I don't know" to the ones he didn't know, and gave detailed explanations of the ones he did know.

Of course, none of this would tell me if the guy could write *good* software. But at least I'd know that he had the basics and could be taught. If it had been a more senior position, I would have taken great care in attempting to find public examples of their work, and spend time chatting to ascertain how passionate they actually are about technology. Sadly, I can't say that I've interviewed a single person who has actually wowed me. :-( It's especially amusing when one considers that I converse with these people online quite often, but never meet one in real life. (The ones I know online are never where I am at the moment.) We must be extremely rare.

BTW, if you're looking for the type of API I'd demonstrate to a tech interviewer, look no farther than my GAGE gaming APIs. The API is clean, the code is simple, and the algorithms are original and unmatched. If I saw something similar out of a candidate, I would go throttle my manager until he was hired. Too bad that pretty much all senior candidates I've dealt with don't even have code to show.

GordianKnot is good, but for the supremely lazy AutoGK is even better.

Try Saft. It has a very nice feature (similar to a Firefox extension I've seen) that will let you automatically save open windows upon quit, and restore them upon return. It also has a great deal of other goodies that really make Safari quite nice.

I've got old skool sound effects right here. The whole game fit in 4K, even won the 4K Java Game programming contest.

It requires that you have Java installed in order to play. It doesn't work on Linux, tho. Sorry. Complain at Sun to get full screen mode working on Linux.

Use this link. Works like a snap!

Here's my top 10 list.

1. Sleipnir - Greatest tab browser, made by a Japanese guy, there's an English translation, if you haven't tried it and been using other IE based tab browser, you should give it a try. It's IE engine only. (For those who'll have trouble navigating Japanese web page, here's the download link to English version)

2. PuTTY - Just like others

3. Exact Audio Copy - Very good audio ripper for CCCD.

4. Adobe Reader - Though getting like a bloated software with Printme ad, I encounter PDF just about everyday...

5. GIMP - I thank GIMP team for such a great freeware tool.

6. VideoLAN (VLC) - Great media player + rich network functions, can play DVD (with libdvdcss, check your own law) without any commercial licensed softwares.

7. EmEditor - This is the best text editor I've found to date (tried, textpad, editplus, ultraedit what have you...but I'm not a emacs/vim guy). For what's better, it's free for academic use! It's got regular expression search/find, keyboard mapping, document tabs and all the feature you'd expect on a good text editor. I used to use EditPlus(registered) before this, but I switched.

8. ffdshow - Codecs for DivX, Xvid. No more need for official ad-full DivX codec installation.

From here, I don't have them installed, but these are worth mentioning.

9. burnatonce - A great tool for writing CD/DVD media. It's actually a Windows frontend for cdrecord and ProDVD, small and efficient.

10. DVD Shrink - To extract DVD data and back it up, no writing function, but good for storing it on HDD.

I could go on...but I've reached ten =)