Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Particletree has written a detailed report – Web App Autopsy about 4 very different web application companies that are at varying stages of their life cycle. In addition to age and size, these companies vary in their business models, programming languages and views on approaching the web as a platform. Also They are sharing code line counts, business processes, conversion rates, support requests revenues per customer. This information can help us identify some trends about web application.

Original Article: http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/

One of the Pingdom Tools for webmasters – The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser. The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars. You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file. Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects. You might also interested in Ping and Traceroute as well.

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
License: License Free

Brusheezy is not the best name but has a hugh collection of top quality photoshop brushes and patterns. Users are free to download and vote for the best custom photoshop brushes and patterns.

Requirements: Refer to Readme File of the Author
Demo: http://www.brusheezy.com
License: MIT License

LightWindow is the most powerful modal window I have seen so far. It has so many features, you have the complete ability to style and position it. It is very easy to implement as well. Lastly, most moal window application didn’t actually test for their media types and how they behaved in other browsers and operating systems. However, LightWindow has done a great job, other than images, inline content, iframe content and ajax content, it also supports Quicktime Movie, SWF and PDF.

Requirements: Any Modern Browsers
Demo: http://stickmanlabs.com/lightwindow/#demos
License: MIT License

Are you tired of using some small and ugly web 2.0 services icons? You should try the Web 2.0 Services Icons Pack which is made by Made by ilemoned and miniajax. They looks amazing and all in PSD and PNG formats, it is very easy to modified and blend it to your website.

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: http://www.miniajax.com/social-media-icons.php
License: GPL License

YShout is a lightweight yet full-featured package that allows you to easily add an interactive shoutbox to your website. So that you can communicate with your visitors in real time, and also provide a great chat room for the visitors to discuss on your website or web application. You can tailor YShout’s appearance to fit your website perfectly by using CSS. YShout 5 features a completely rebuilt control panel. It contains some new preferences, as well as a lot of returning favorites.

Requirements: PHP and Javascript
Demo: http://geekchat.net/yshout5/example/
License: Donationware

Do you want to build your own color schemer? Do you want to put a color picker in your web application? ColorJack DHTML Color Picker is the best choice. Users can simply click on the color picker to choose their favourite color. Also, users can drag the color picker to where they want it to be. They can even close it easily by clicking on the “X” symbol at the top right hand corner. It’s licenced under Creative Commons, so you are free to use or modify the DHTML Color Picker on your own project.

If you like this, you might want to use ColorJack Sphere Color Picker as well. However, this version is not compatiable with Internet Explorer at the moment. Therefore, there is no download-able package at the moment.

Requirements: Any Modern Browsers with Javascript Enabled
Demo: http://www.colorjack.com/plugin/
License: Creative Commons

Sometimes, users are tired of seeing banners and adsense, they are not going to click on it anymore. We have another nice way to generate income from the website or web application. Simply just insert the Text Link Ads code on your website. They sell your ads off your website look like this.

You can choose to approve or deny any text link ads sold prior to the links being published on your website. This ensures that only quality and relevant links appear on your website. And then you can make money without the hassle of dealing sales, invoicing and customer service, Text Link Ads do that for you. You can receive payment via check or PayPal.

Requirements: Website with not too low traffic
Demo: Sign Up Now
License: License Free

SWFUpload is a small javascript and flash library to get the best of both worlds – The great upload capabilitys of flash and the accessibility and ease of html and css. It allows users to upload multiple files at once by ctrl/shift-selecting in dialog, no page reloads necessary. Users can also queue uploads, remove/add files before starting upload. On the other hand, we can style upload elements with XHTML and css as we like.

Requirements: Works on all platforms/browsers that has Flash support
Demo: http://swfupload.mammon.se
License: License Free