JD-GUI

NOTE: Free for non-commercial uses only.

Working as a programmer or software developer can be both challenging and rewarding, but it's unlikely that one's going to develop successful projects without the help of third-party specialized software solutions.

JD-GUI is one of the applications that can help you in the situation depicted above by providing you with everything you need for inspecting the code you just wrote and even decompile your applications in a controlled environment.

Since this program is portable, you don't need to install it on the target computer in order to benefit from its entire array of features, as simply unpacking the archive it comes in and launching the executable lets you do just that.

More so, its portability also implies that it won't even attempt to tamper with your Windows registry entries or create additional files or folders on your computer without your direct permission. You can also run it from USB flash drives or external HDDs.

When it comes to JD-GUI's design, you should know that there are no flashy menus, eye-catching animations or vividly-colored menus. Instead, you'll face a series of plain, minimalistic menus, buttons and toolbars.

However, the need for such aesthetic elements enunciated above shouldn't stop you dead in your tracks, not if you're looking for a stable code analyzer and decompiler for your JAVA applications. Keeping it simple is not necessarily bad, especially in this situation.

As you probably figured out by now, JD-GUI was designed with Java code in mind, namely CLASS and JAR documents. However, you might want to use it on TXT and LOG files, but also ZIP archives, since they are fully supported.

Navigating through your projects or documents can be easily done by relying on the tree view available in the left-hand section of the main screen. This tree hierarchy mode lets you select the desired class that you want to review in a truly effective manner.

Aside from its highly accessible interface, JD-GUI provides you with a "Search" function that can come in handy whenever you need to locate any piece of code that might need to be inspected.

Among the elements that can be identified by this function, you can find types, methods, constructors, fields and string constants. Any string or character can be looked up by using the "*" and "?" search operators as well.

To wrap it up, if you're having trouble finding an efficient code analyzer and decompiler for your Java projects, you might want to give JD-GUI a try. It's simple, packs a lightweight layout, can be run from a thumb drive, provides you with efficient project management and includes a search function.