Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Most web applications have many more model objects exposed on the backend, or admin side, than they do on the front. Coding interfaces for all those models is redundant and a waste of resources when all you need is CRUD functionality that’s smart enough to handle all your ActiveRecord associations.

ActiveScaffold is a Ruby on Rails plugin that provides you with a wealth of dynamically created goodness, just plug the ActiveScaffold into your controller, you can have a AJAXified table interface for creating, updating, and deleting objects then. It has the following main features as well.

• Automatic handling of ActiveRecord associations
• Sorting, Search and Pagination
• Graceful JavaScript degradation
• RESTful API support (XML/YAML/JSON) baked in
• Sexy CSS styling and theming support

Requirements: Ruby on Rails
Demo: http://demo.activescaffold.com/users
License: MIT License

PicMarkr lets you to add custom watermark (image or text) to your images online and free. It is useful when you need to protect your copyrights or if you want to add comments to your photos. It is easy to use with minimum settings, no need to download or install anything. You simply need to upload files from computer or grab them from your Flickr account. It also allows batch image processing, it can saves you a lot of time when you are adding watermark to many images.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://picmarkr.com
License: License Free

3d package is a 3d-box graphic generator. 3d package lets you instantly create 3d-box images online for free. Just upload pictures for cover and sides and then get 3d-box in you favorite image format (JPG, GIF, PNG supported). You can use it anywhere you like, I think it would be useful when you would like a 3d-box image for your web applications.

P.S. You can also create CD-box and DVD-box easily as well.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://3d-pack.com/
License: License Free

Open Flash Chart is a charting component made by Flash. Open Flash Chart, is open source. It is free to use and you get the source code to fiddle with. You can create some really nice looking Bar Charts, Pie Charts, Area Charts and etc… easily. To use it, you simply need to include the Open Flash Chart in your HTML, and provide the data file on the server. The data file is either a text file, or a .php, Perl, Python, Java (or another flavour of dynamic) page.

Requirements: Flash 8+
Demo: http://teethgrinder.co.uk/open-flash-chart/
License: GPL License

TextureKing lets you find a growing repository of high quality texture photos that are free for personal and professional use. You can find different kinds of textures, e.g. concrete, fabric, glass, grunge, wood and etc… I think they can be really useful for designing websites.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.textureking.com/
License: License Free

There are more than 1 billion keywords searched every month by users around the world. Finding the correct ones for your website is not an easy task. Hundreds of hours must be spent in searching for the right keywords for one ad campaign.

Your competitors know best, why not let them do all the hard work by spending time and money on keywords you in turn will use for your ad campaign. With just a few clicks you can create a large targeted keyword campaign. Only use keywords that are proven to generate sales and save money.

Companies with a much larger list of keywords drive more traffic to their sites compared to those who have less. KeywordSpy helps drive traffic from competing sites to your own instantly, resulting in optimum exposure at the least amount of time and costs.

4 Simple Steps

• Type in a keyword or domain
• View your competitor’s keywords
• Import keywords for your own ad campaign
• Watch your revenue grow

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.keywordspy.com/
License: License Free

Nick La from WebDesignerWall shows us how to slice up the menu design (step by step) and put them together with CSS. Most of you probably know how to code a horizontal or vertical CSS list menu. Now let’s take it to the next level — code an advanced list menu utilizing the CSS position property. You can view the working example here.

Note: there is an IE6 bug where the <span> hover effect doesn’t display properly. To fix that, you can use Javascript to specify the <span> to display block on mouseover.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/tutorials/advanced-css-menu/
License: License Free

flickrshow provides you with the simplest way of displaying your Flickr photosets on your own website. It is simple to install, completely free and doesn’t require Flash or any server side programming knowledge. It is free to use flickrshow, however flickrshow is not available for people to download and use on their own servers at the moment. It has the following main features.

• Unobtrusive and compatible: they built flickrshow on top of Prototype so it will work with all modern browsers and won’t interfere with any other Javascript on your page.
• Themeable to match your site: You can alter the colour of flickrshow to match your site.
• Can be used multiple times: it caused a number of headaches, but you can run as many slideshows on your site as you want, as long as your viewers can handle the loading times.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.flickrshow.com
License: License Free

The voting in the first ever Open Web Awards is over and Vizu has validated the results. The Open Web Awards live event will be held on January 10th at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. Thank you for everyone who nominated and voted – in excess of 250,000 votes and nominations were cast. You can view 13 winners in each respective category of the People’s Choice component of the awards. And the sites were chosen from the nominees list by top bloggers from more than 30 of our partner blogs.