Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

We can create animation and interactive websites easily with Adobe / Macromedia Flash. It is fast loading and it is even faster now because we are getting larger and larger bandwidth everyday. Flash is really useful and is a great choice when developing a website. That’s why Flash is really popular nowadays. However, are there any affordable Flash components we can use?

Flashloaded might be a right choice for you. Flashloaded is a division of FFF Web Media Inc which was founded in 2003. Flashloaded is based in Toronto with a team of talented developers, web designers and programmers. Their aim is to provide you the most innovative, at the same time cost effective components for Flash. SO that you can have some of the cutting-edge Flash components at a affordable price.

One of the interesting components I have found is 3DEnvironment which allows you to build 3D interactive interfaces and environment in Flash. You can have built-in depth and perspective effects create in illusion of three dimensions without the need of 3D modelling. Full keyboard and mouse support really enhanced the usability as well. The whole 3DEnvironment Package is quite nice and easy to use. You can view some of the examples I particular like as follow

Example showing an animated 3D landscape with grass and trees (Nice for an interactive adventure sites)

This shows a sample website navigation system which was created using the 3DEnvironment component. (Suitable for complex and 3D navigation sites)

This example shows an innovative way to display and zoom in on images using the 3DEnvironment component. Click on each image to zoom in. (Great for gallery sites)

You can have the whole 3DEnvironment Package for $59.95 on Flashloaded. However, do not worry. Flashloaded is very nice to give away 3 sets of 3DEnvironment Packages ($179.85 in total) to our readers. Get chances of having the excellent Flash Component Package is easy, all you need to do is complete the following sentence as usual.

I would like to use Flashloaded 3DEnvironment Package for…

I will pick 3 lucky winners on 10th Nov randomly. Thank you for all participants in advance.

We love Mac, we love Fish Eye Menu. The idea behind a fisheye control is a strip of icons, being vertical or horizontally laid out that reacts to the user’s mouse as it approaches the icon. Here is a list of Nice Fish Eye Menu for you to dowload and use it in your web application.

CSS Dock Menu

Fish Eye Menu for Prototypejs

Fish Eye Menu for Mootools

DHTML Fish Eye Menu for Text

Fish Eye Menu Tutorial

Congratulation. The winner of Giving Away 1x SlideShowPro + SlideShowPro Director is Michael McCorry. You will receive an email from SlideShowPro shortly for your account information.

Thank you for all participants.

The Official Google PageRank Update has just happened yesterday. WebAppers has got a mixture of PR5 and PR4 from PR0 in most datacenter. Apparently Google has penalized WebAppers for selling Text Link Ads which I have stopped selling for a month already.

Check Your PageRank here
CheckPageRank.com
PageRank Checker from iWebTool
SmartPageRank.com

What To Do If You Are Penalized By Google
If you see a different PR on different datacenter as well, you probably are being penalized by Google for selling Text Link Ads. If you would like to get your PageRank back, you can go to Google Webmaster Tools and request a reconsideration by clicking on “Request reconsideration” after removing your Text Link Ads and stop selling them from now on.

This Google PageRank Update Does Not Make Any Sense
I am happy with the PageRank of WebAppers, I think I can get a firm PR5 back if I have requested a reconsideration. However, I think there is something wrong with this PageRank Update, because there are some REALLY popular websites are getting ridiculous low PageRank. For example, Forbes.com has got a PR4, YouTube has got a PR3. And Showcase Point is a one month old site which has got less than 50 backlinks has got a PR5 from PR0! I cannot really figure out the logic behind it.

We cannot trust PageRank anymore, what is Google thinking about? Or is it just simply because the PageRank update is still in process, the PageRank of all websites are not valid and unstable at the moment?

What did you get for your websites? Are you happy with it? Are you feeling confused as well?

Have you thought of running your web application in it’s own window? Prism can let you run your web application on desktop without changing the code. Mozilla Labs is launching a series of experiments to bridge the divide in the user experience between web applications and desktop apps and to explore new usability models as the line between traditional desktop and new web applications continues to blur.

Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, they are not building a proprietary platform to replace the web. Their goal is to identify and facilitate the development of enhancements that bring the advantages of desktop apps to the web platform.

There are more and more of people are using web applications. But the web application often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers. And they are surrounded with controls–like back and forward buttons and a location bar–that have nothing to do with interacting with the application itself. Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop. You do not need to change your web application, you just need to install Prism in order to run your web application on your desktop.

Requirements: Installation Required
Demo: http://labs.mozilla.com/2007/10/prism/
License: License Free

JSLoader is a dead-simple, non-intrusive “Javascript-on-demand” packaging convention which helps developers and the internet community rapidly develop and prototype applications without the headache of figuring out the witches’ brew of files that need to be copied, included, etc. You do not need to download anything to use all the Javascript frameworks. it is because multiple sites will share this code the browser and proxy caches will help make things more efficient.

All Javascript Libraries are already installed on their server, so all you need to do is create a <script></script> tag with inside <noautolink> of your page and you should be able to load any of the available modules. Once you’ve loaded them, close the script tag out, and use a separate script block for using the API.

JSLoader supports many Javascript Framewroks. The following the an example of how to load a particular Javascript Library on your website / web application.

// Ext.js
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”ext”,”1.1.1″);
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”ext”,”2.0-beta1″);

// JQuery (no plugins yet…)
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”jquery”,”1.2.1″);

// Lightbox (for prototype/scriptaculous)
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”lightbox”,”2.03″);

// Prototype.js
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”prototype”,”1.5.1″);
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”prototype”,”1.6.0-rc0″);// Scriptaculous
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”scriptaculous”,”1.7.1-beta3″);
JSLoader.load(”ria”,”scriptaculous”,”1.8.0-pre1″);

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: http://www.jsloader.com/
License: LGPL License

Finally, Webappers has a complete site redesign today. As you can see there is a hugh difference between the old design and the current new design. We have spent the last few weeks working on the redesign of WebAppers. We would like to achieve the following improvements from the redesign.

Higher Contrast Between Content and Menu
We found a lack of contrast between the categories menu and the main content part. There is no clear separation between them. So now you can see a relatively high contrast between the categories menu and the main content part. You would not be easily distracted by the menu when you are reading the posts.

Unique Look and Feel
The old design was too generic, we would like to have a unique theme for WebAppers. So that people can recognize WebAppers by looking at the site design.

Reduce the Excessive Use of White Color
There is too much white in the old design. It makes your eyes feeling uncomfortable when looking at the bright white screen for a period of time. And also We found the old design a not too much design elements, so that we have more design elements and patterns within this new design.

Avatar Next to Your Comments
We always found the commenting section of the old theme a bit boring. At the same time, Automattic (Owned Wordpress) has just acquired Gravatar recently, it is now more than 3 times as fast. So that, we have implemented the Gravatar system on the commenting section of WebAppers, you can see your avatar next to your comments. We do not need to remeber your name, we can just recognize you by looking at your picture. I hope this can make the commenting section a little bit more interesting and encourage more people to discuss and comment on the posts. ( Go and get your Avatar now )

No Clustered Footer
Compared to the old clustered footer, the new footer is much simpler and useful.

Clear Seperartion Between Components and Design Related Resources
We are trying to separate Components Resources and Design Related Resources on the Right Hand Side Categories Menu. Currently, the categories menu is a bit messy.

I hope the new theme can improve the usability of WebAppers. We are still doing some little modification to the new theme. If you have any opinions, please feel free to leave a comment. Thank you very much for all of your support.

JFreeChart is a free 100% Java chart library that makes it easy for developers to display professional quality charts in their applications.The JFreeChart project was founded seven years ago, in February 2000, by David Gilbert. Today, JFreeChart is used by approximately 40,000 to 50,000 developers. JFreeChart’s extensive feature set includes:

• a consistent and well-documented API, supporting a wide range of chart types.
• a flexible design that is easy to extend, and targets both server-side and client-side applications.
• support for many output types, including Swing components, image files (including PNG and JPEG), and vector graphics file formats (including PDF, EPS and SVG).
• JFreeChart is “open source” or, more specifically, free software. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public Licence (LGPL), which permits use in proprietary applications.

Requirements: Java 2 platform (JDK version 1.3 or later)
Demo: http://www.jfree.org/jfreechart/samples.html
License: LGPL License

We have been working on the WebAppers complete site redesign in the last few weeks. You might feel bored with the current design. So that we are trying to give WebAppers a unqiue and fresh look. The new design will be rolled out very soon. Please stay tuned.