EVE Monitor
EVEMon is a lightweight, easy-to-use standalone Windows application designed to assist you in keeping track of your EVE Online character progression. You can view your current skills and attributes, what you're currently training, and your ISK balance. EVEMon can track multiple characters across multiple accounts, so all your alts can be monitored through the same, simple interface.
You can also plan your future character progression, by setting up a skill training plan; or even just play "what if" with detailed listings of all skills and training times. Put Learning skills into your training plans and the times adjust automatically. EVEMon will even look over your plans for you and suggest Learning skills to reduce your overall training time!
EVEMon can save your character information in XML format, or as a text file. Your skill plans can be saved as EMP (EVEMon Plan File), XML, or text formats; and can easily be shared with other EVEMon users for easy skill build suggestions and sharing. EVEMon automatically adds or removes skills from the plan when a plan file is loaded by another user as appropriate to fulfill skill prerequisites, or to remove skills the user already knows.
When your character's currently training skill completes, EVEMon can notify you with your choice of a desktop tray balloon, a sound effect, or even an email sent automatically. Your skill plans will automatically update to account for the newly completed skill, as well!
It is pretty straight forward. You install the program. Add a new character and enter API info. At that point the program should import your character and show your current training skill. You will usually create a new plan from that point. Making a plan is different for each person. It all depends on what you want to do. I would recommend doing the in-game tutorial & reading the new player guides on this site and the eve-oneline site to have a better understanding of the game.
From this new plan window, you can look at stats for items, ships and info about skills by selecting the related tabs towards the top of the window. You can select different items & ships and add the related skills to use it. In the ships tab, you can see loadouts that are hosted on this site. If you see a loadout you like, you can add the related skills to use it.
Expect to make several plans as you learn more about the game and start to figure out what you want to do and in what order. Eve takes a long time to do things well. It is not a game that you play for a month and are uber. Eve takes months/years to get to certain things...
You can also link EVEmon ingame with the igb