Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

After the massive success of PSDTUTS, Eden Creative Communities decided to branch out into tutorials on other subjects. Since one of the most requested types of tutorials has always been for web development, that seemed like a logical place to go. So Eden Creative Communities has just launched NETTUTS for us. NETTUTS is tackling pretty much any subject to do with building websites including:

• Complete step by step website builds
• HTML and CSS techniques
• Flash effects and techniques
• Javascript and AJAX
• Dreamweaver and other tools
• General web development skills

Although NETTUTS has just launched few days ago, there are some very nice and useful content for web developers like us. For example, Creating a PayPal Payment Form and Build a Sleek Portfolio Site from Scratch. I strongly recommend you subscribing to NETTUTS, so that you can receive top quality website tutorials as soon as you can. I am sure NETTUTS will not disappoint you.

Pixelpost is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, fully extensible photoblog application for the web. Anyone who can download and use Pixelpost for free. It has the following main features.

Take Control of As Much As You Want
If you want an easy to setup photoblog that gives you complete control over how your photos are displayed, Pixelpost is for you. You can download one of the free templates, or you can easily create your own original look & feel.

Admin Panel – Quick & Easy
Post new photos from anywhere and at any time. Easily change your template, or tweak your settings with a single click. You can control it all from the Panel.

Manage Your Comments
Getting feedback on your photos is one of the best things about having a photoblog. Pixelpost provides you with top-notch spam protection built right in. And if spam happens to slip through, you can easily flag it from the admin panel. Pixelpost will even send you an e-mail when you get a new comment, so you’ll never miss a comment again.

Built in Browse Page
Show the world your photographs, in a convenient thumbnail view. Pixelpost will automatically resize and create thumbnail previews for all of your photos.

EXIF Data & Image Details
Want to share more than just a photo? Pixelpost allows you to add text to your posts to allow people find out more. Pixelpost can also read EXIF data from photos taken with digital cameras. It’s never been easier to display the nitty-gritty details such as aperture, ISO, exposure time, focal length, etc.

Requirements: PHP 4.3+, MySQL 3.23.58+
Demo: http://www.pixelpost.org/screenshots/
License: GPL License

We have published a post about Send Notifications Instantly with Growl Mootools few days ago. And then one of our readers, Oskar Krawczyk has pointed out that there is another Growl-like notifier called Roar which is more configurable.

Roar is a notification widget that streamlines incoming messages, such as updates or errors, without distracting the user from their browser experience or breaking their work-flow by displaying obtrusive alerts. Roar is inspired by Growl, and is realised with MooTools as well. You can check out the following 3 examples below.

• Never-ending Feed Showing feed items with link but without end.
• Random Alerts Random notifications for all 4 corners of the document.
• Update Ticker Timed updates on events.

Roar has been tested on all A-Grade Browsers and it is available under the MIT License.

Requirements: Mootools Framework
Demo: http://digitarald.de/project/roar/
License: MIT License

When we are developing web applications, we always need some kind of dialog boxes to inform the users the status of the system. Leigeber has put together a lightweight (~4.5kb) JavaScript dialog box library. The script currently offers four dialog styles: alerts, warnings, prompts and success.

JavaScript dialog box library is nothing to add to your page except references to the JavaScript and CSS if you choose not to incorporate them in your existing files. The Divs are dynamically added to the DOM when the function is called. The function currently relies on a content wrapper to calculate the page height however you could use the body height but the background overlay would only cover the currently visible content. The variable for the wrapper ID as well as the speed and timer settings are available at the top of the JS file. The script is tested working in IE 6/7, Firefox 2/3, Opera and Safari.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://sandbox.leigeber.com/dialog/dialog_box.html
License: License Free

Thank you for all of the participants of “Giving Away 20 DreamTemplate Memberships for Free“. DreamTemplate has picked the following winners as follow. You will receive an email from DreamTemplate soon.

1. jeckyll 2. Michael 3. Eugene 4. Peter 5. blog.nerbles.com
6. Conica 7. Lonnie 8. Johan 9. Jonathan 10. Paul
11. Jesse Foster 12. Ben 13. Yoyo 14. Steve 15. trevis
16. XGhozt 17. Mohammad Taki 18. Ghofrani 19. Fipsy 20. Melissa

It is time to have some icons again. This time, Icojoy is sharing some of the really nice mini icons. These icons are free to use in any kind of project unlimited times. The icons come in 6 different file types, .ico, .icns, .tif, .gif, .bmp, .png. Some of the icons are designed for blogs, dating, player and social networks as well.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.icojoy.com/blogs/3/
License: License Free

Masked Input Plugin is a masked input plugin for the jQuery javascript library. It allows a user to more easily enter fixed width input where you would like them to enter the data in a certain format (dates,phone numbers, etc).

A mask is defined by a format made up of mask and placeholder characters. Any character not in the placeholder character list below is considered a mask character. Mask characters will be automatically entered for the user as they type and will not be able to be removed by the user. The following placeholder characters are predefined:

* a – Represents an alpha character (A-Z,a-z)
* 9 – Represents a numeric character (0-9)
* * – Represents an alphanumeric character (A-Z,a-z,0-9)

It has been tested on Internet Explorer 6/7, Firefox 1.5/2, Safari, and Opera. The file size is very small with only 7.3k and 2.8k for the Packed version.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://digitalbush.com/projects/masked-input-plugin
License: License Free

Thank you for all of the participants of “Giving Away 20 DreamTemplate Memberships for Free“. We were supposed to announce the winners on 21st April. However, there are over 160 comments so far, it takes some time to digest and pick the best comments. Therefore, we are still waiting for DreamTemplate to pick the winners.

Sorry for the delay. We will announce the winners once we have received the reply from DreamTemplate. Hopefully, it can be done within the next 2 days.

Thanks again for all of the participants.

If you are using Mac OS X, you should have come across Growl. Growl is a notification system for Mac OS X, it allows applications that support Growl to send you notifications. Notifications are a way for your applications to provide you with new information, without you having to switch from the application you’re already in. I think this feature is really useful for our web applications as well. Daniel Mota has created Growl 2.0 with Mootools, so that we can easily integrate this effect into our web applications.

Requirements: MootoolsFramework
Demo: http://icebeat.bitacoras.com/mootools/growl/
License: License Free