Plug ins, widgets

Got my mac the other day and I want some useful programs, widgets, and plug ins. I got the VLC player, MPEG Stremclip, and some other stuff, but if you have any good suggestions, then I'd really appreciate it. And while I'm here, I have a couple of questions. When I download a program or something else, I can open it and it'll give me the icon that I drag into Applications, after that I delete the zip file that it downloaded, and if it gives me a driver, I throw it in the trash, too. Is that what I should be doing, everything works fine, but are there any "side effects" from throwing away everything it downloaded except for the program itself? And my brother, who's used a mac for a long time, has a plug in with which he can start typing the name of a program, document, file, etc. and can then open it without opening any folders, what plug in is that? I don't feel like emailing him, so does anybody know?

There are hundreds of different plugins and programs that you can get for your mac. To help people suggest some good programs why dont you tell us a bit about what you do for a living and what sort of things you get up to on your mac.

As for your question about deleting applications. If you have installed the program and dragged it over to your applications folder you can then do anything you like with the instilation file, including deleting it, and it will not affect your instilation. With commonly updated programs i just delete the instilation file. With other programs I may just keep them in a folder just incase I want to re install it some time.

Some programs I use
Flip4Mac - Allows you to play windows media files - usefull for websites with movies built in to them that are for windows.
Journler - I love this application, I use it for taking notes in lectures at university
iWork - Like microsoft office for mac. If you ask me its much better than office for mac 2004 and it works with all different types of documents including microsoft work, powerpoint and excel documents.
Adium - Instant messaging client for lots of different services such as ICQ, AIM etc.. I only use it for MSN though.
Firefox - Internet browser, I have been using it for ages.
Toast - if you are doing any CD or DVD burning this may be a usefull tool for you, the mac equivalent to Nero
VMWar Fushion - Emuation software that lets you run other operating system inside of OSX, including linux and windows
Transmishion - Torrent client
TOR/Vidalia - Anonymouse web browsing and encryption anywhere.
Kismac - Can be used for naughty stuff but I just use it for searching for wireless hotspots.
AppDelete - When you drag some applications to the trash can not everything gets deleted, if you use appDelete it does.

There are hundreds more...

Garlik said:

And my brother, who's used a mac for a long time, has a plug in with which he can start typing the name of a program, document, file, etc. and can then open it without opening any folders, what plug in is that? I don't feel like emailing him, so does anybody know?

Click to expand...

I think that is Quicksilver. Google for it.

Part 1: My top OSX Freeware Applications

Part 2: My top OSX Freeware Applications

Those links should help.

suk02si those are some great links thanks for sharing

One of my favorite widgets is iStat Pro.

sanity1082 said:

suk02si those are some great links thanks for sharing

One of my favorite widgets is iStat Pro.

Click to expand...

istat pro is pretty cool Thanks for sharing

thanks everybody. I'm downloading some stuff right now, except my Internet's pretty slow...
I personally use iStat nano mainly cause it takes up less space.