XML Editor

Introduction
Notepad++ is a great choice for editing XML files. It displays XML with colour coding and you can install the XML Tools plugin for additional features. However, I found a dedicated XML editor that's excellent, it's called First Object XML Editor or "Foxe" for short. Here are a couple of screen shots to show an XML file in Notepad++ and Foxe. Both programs can be downloaded and are free! Links are provided below:


Notepad++

Notepad++ is a great general purpose text editor, you can download it here:
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/


Foxe (First Object XML Editor)

In Foxe you can see the structure of the XML File on the left, when you click on an attribute you can see the value highlighted in the text editor to the right (in our case "Bob Dylan").

The Foxe website has lots of help including a Youtube video tutorial. Here's a link:
http://www.firstobject.com/xml-editor-format-xml-customize-treeview-program.htm

Foxe can be installed on your Windows PC or you can download the standalone exe file! This is great, you can put it on a USB flash drive and take it anywhere.


Conclusion
It's a simple editor, easy to use and it makes XML files understandable (mostly!). It's great being able to see the structure of the XML file and navigate through it. I must admit that I have not used it extensively, if over time I find any issues then I'll update this blog post. But as far as I can see now, it's excellent.

Recommended 9/10


References

Notepad++
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/

Foxe
http://www.firstobject.com/xml-editor-format-xml-customize-treeview-program.htm

Learn about XML here:
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/

Thanks to w3 Schools for the cd_catalog.xml sample file I used in my screen shots above :-)

Merge PDF files

Traditionally to merge to PDF files together you'd need to use Adobe Acrobat (not Reader). However, there are now many other options available and some are even free of charge. I found a very good one that's easy to use and fast. It's an online service but you do not have to sign in or give your e-mail address. Here it is:

PDF Merge
http://www.pdfmerge.com/


Update: January 2014
Here's another website that works really well too:
http://merge.smallpdf.com/   (thanks to Mathis Buchi for recommending this site)

In fact, try http://smallpdf.com/, there are a number of functions here such as compressing a PDF and creating a PDF from image files, etc.

Update: January 2015
PDFtk Free is a nice little Windows program that can merge PDF files, best if you don't want to upload your files to the web:
https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/