Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, theme-able, pluggable discussion forum for the web. With over 450 plugins so far, Vanilla is ideal for custom community solutions. Anyone can download and use Vanilla for free. If you do not have a web space, you might be interested in the hosted version of Vanilla as well.

Vanilla lets you have total control over the appearance of your forum so it can completely mesh with the look & feel of your site. Vanilla is fast. Setting up a forum takes moments, using Vanilla is a breeze. With Vanilla’s Pages feature, you can add custom pages to your forum and turn it into a complete website. Add a bunch of plugins and you’ve got a totally interactive website to go along with your forum.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://vanillaforums.org/
License: GPL License

Web is a multiple utilities. It can either be a resource that can provide information or help you keep you in touch with your loved or even be a source of entertainment. There has been exponential increase in functionalities associated with the Internet, that it is very difficult to keep a track of it.

Here are some comics that can help you catch up with what is happening on the Internet! Thank you so much for BLaugh bringing us the following funny comics about web.

Where is the Secret of Life

Baby First Language

(more…)

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an easy way to make massive HTML tables with scrollable content and headers that stayed put? Why would you want this? Say you have a table with many rows and columns. Typically what happens when you scroll to the bottom of the table is you’ve forgotten the context of the cell you’re viewing because the table header has scrolled out of view.

Chromaloop did come across a solution that achieves the desired effect by creating two tables and stacking them on top of each other, one for the thead and the other for the tbody. Regardless of the extra markup required, this approach seemed to work the most reliably across all browsers.

So Chromaloop worked out a way to do it that would rely on Jquery to do most of the heavy lifting for the extra HTML markup and generating the correct cell dimensions so that the thead would line up properly with the tbody with dynamic content. The rest would rely on some light CSS markup to define the table dimensions and positioning.

And then, he has taken this a step further by creating Chromatable jQuery Plugin to keep the code contained in one location and allow users to call the “chromatable()” method on any table, or many tables on the same page.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.chromaloop.com/posts/chromatable-jquery-plugin
License: License Free

jQuery Slider plugin (Safari style) is easy to use and multifunctional jQuery plugin. It makes selected elements into sliders. The handle can be moved with the mouse easily. There are various options such as step of pointer, heterogeneity, dimension, limits and scale.

If you do not fancy the Safari style, you can also define your own new skin for the sliders as well. (Do not forget to set absolute or true relative path for png in jslider.ie6.css and jslider.ie6.[skin].css)

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://blog.egorkhmelev.com/2009/11/jquery-slider-safari-style/
License: License Free

HotGloo is an Online Wireframe Application. With the help of the elements you can create a whole world out of wireframes. Just drag and drop, scale, link, name and rename them – it’s super easy and intuitive.

You can manage your projects: edit, comment & share any moment of the developing process with colleagues and clients. You can also add editors & reviewers to your projects within just a view steps and as you like. HotGloo is free for the beta testing phase. However they are thinking about a reasonable monthly pricing model for after the beta testing stage.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://hello.hotgloo.com/
License: License Free

TopUp is another easy to use Javascript library for unobtrusively displaying images and webpages in popups. The library is jQuery and jQuery UI driven in order to maintain cross-browser compatibility and compactness.

TopUp is absolutely free, also for commercial use. The installation of TopUp consists of including only one file (no images or stylesheets), the look-and-feel is Apple-like, the animations and transitions look fancy, you can still use Prototype, it is so easy to specify options and last but not least: you can stay updated with the latest version without changing any code.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://gettopup.com/
License: Creative Commons License

Because web type renders differently with only subtle CSS adjustments, seeing it exercised in a variety of ways can help web designers typeset – and also help them decide which typefaces to purchase for their projects.

Therefore, Tim Brown has designed Web Font Specimen, which presents real web type in real web context, and released it under a Creative Commons license for the betterment of typographic style and practice.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://webfontspecimen.com/
License: Creative Commons License

Twitter is running a new homepage with clean and easy design for a while already. Look at the top right of Twitter’s homepage, you’ll see the sign in button which will drop down the login form. AEXT has written a tutorial to show you how to create a login drop down with Twitter style using jQuery.

It is easy to follow, it also helps you save the space of your webpage and make visitors feel comfortable by the awesome toggle login form. The tutorial explains how it works step by step and it’s good for learning how to do the toggle and tooltips with jQuery.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://aext.net/example/twitterlogin/
License: License Free

Macintosh computers are really known to bring out the creative side of people. To harness it, and refine your potential there are some great Mac tools that you can use online and some of them for free.

As Microsoft burdens you with tons of softwares that serve the purpose and slow downs the computer at the same time these serve as a better alternative. The best part is that abundant tools are available to do things from simple text editors to image processing tools. Most of these tools provide an easy to use interface and work efficiently. Here is a list of useful Mac applications, which looks really slick too.

Fontcase

Fontcase is an elegant font management software. It combines simplicity and raw power all underneath a streamlined workstream. It organises your installed fonts with a powerful tagging system to automate the process. Like iTunes is for music, Fontcase is for fonts!

Postbox

Postbox, powered by Mozilla Technology is a powerful Email Management software with cutting edge features that have set new standards for Email Clients. It has a powerful message and content search with autocomplete features. It provides a smarter message and content views that simplifies mail organisation as well as tracking them. It possess superior message handling and organisation features as well as strong security features.

(more…)