Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

When we talk about tabs on web we usually think about tabs used for navigation. However, in this case we want to use them for showing different entities on the same page. We will try to simulate tabs as seen in browsers. Take Google docs for example, instead of opening each document in a new window (or browser tab), you could open them in page tabs.

Janko has written a throughout tutorial that shows you How to Use jQuery to Create Dynamic Tabs that can be added and removed dynamically. He has also mentioned how to use tabs and in which context should they be used in order to make them meaningful and usable.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/examples/dynamic_tabs/
License: License Free

The popularity of social media has been booming in the past few years and Facebook definitely has climbed high to the top of the social network rankings. Facebook has many Ajax driven features and applications that are very impressive, and one of the things is the footer admin panel, where it neatly organizes frequently used links and applications.

SohTanaka has created a tutorial about how to recreate the Facebook Style Footer Admin Panel with CSS and jQuery Part I and Part II. The footer panel can be useful for admin driven applications and much more. There are many useful techniques like the fixed footer, CSS tooltips, height calculation function, and multiple toggle function, that can be used in various ways for your future projects.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/footer-panel/
License: License Free

The problem of mouseover/-out the menu a couple of times. After you stop moving the mouse, the animation will continue since you’ve built up the animation queue with every mouse event.

Some uses the stop() method to prevent animation queue buildup. While this helps solve the initial problem, it introduces another: When you now do a fast mouseover/-out, you will see no animation at all or just a part of the animation. This behavior seems somehow unnatural.

The HoverFlow Plugin is the solution, which honors a single mouseover/-out with a full animation cycle while preventing animation queue buildup. A queued animation will only run if it corresponds with the current mouse position at “runtime”. That is, a mouseover animation will only run if the mouse is currently over the element, and a mouseout animation will only run if the mouse is currently not over the element. Otherwise, the animation queue is emptied.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.2meter3.de/code/hoverFlow/
License: MIT and GPL License

Do you remeber we have published a post of Accessible Very Tall Menus with jQuery and CSS? Some people found it not a good way to present information, because we cannot see everything on the menu in one go.

Now SohTanaka has come up with another solution – Mega Drop Down Menus. According to usability expert Jakob Nielson, mega drop down menus tested to be more efficient for large scale websites.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/mega-dropdowns/
License: License Free

The problem with long dropdowns is that the dropdown itself can go below the fold of the website. That is, below the visible area of the browser window. So in order to access those menu items down below, you need to scroll your browser window.

For those of us with scroll wheels of some kind on our mouses, it’s not a big deal. For those without, those lower menu items are totally inaccessible, because to use the browser scrollbar means mousing off the menu and probably having it close.

CSS Tricks has come up with a Solution For Very Long Dropdown Menus, and tell us how to implement a technique where as you scroll down, the menu actually moved in an accelerated fashion. Therefore the menu can be accessible even the user has no scroll wheels on his mouse.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://css-tricks.com/examples/LongDropdowns/
License: License Free

Would you like to Create a Realistic Hover Effect With jQuery? It adds a rising hover effect to a set of icon links using jQuery’s animate effect. In a nutshell, the JS appends the reflection/shadow to each <li>, then animates the position and opacity of these elements and the icon links on hover. And .stop() eliminates any queue buildup from quickly mousing back and forth over the navigation.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://adrianpelletier.com/sandbox/jquery_hover_nav/
License: License Free

Would you like to create a Simple Navigation with a Horizontal Subnav? It looks very similar to the Menu of Behance Network, which looks nice and professional.

We can achieve this effect purely with CSS, but since we have to attend to our red headed step child aka IE6, we will use a few lines of jQuery to cover all grounds. Nice and simple! I am sure this will come in handy in your future projects.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/horizontal-subnav/
License: License Free

While mimicking the OS X dock and stacks isn’t new, it’s certainly not common. Nettuts has shown us a few ways to do “Outside the Box” Navigation with OS X style docks and stacks navigation.

jQuery OS X Stack and Drop Stack is my favorite navigation style out of the three shown in the tutorial. It’s super lightweight (~1kb). It might be a little awkward having the navigation in the bottom right or left of the browser window but it would certainly be creative and save lots of space.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://nettuts.s3.amazonaws.com/358_jquery…
License: License Free

Janko shows you how to implement Advanced Docking using jQuery. He taught us how to create multiple docking and undocking functionality with jQuery and unordered lists.

When user hovers an item on vertical menu, its submenu will slide in from left to right and overlay the content. When user move the mouse pointer outside the panel, it will slide back. If user clicks on “Dock” link, panel will fix in the current position while content moves to the right of the panel in order to be seen. Lastly, if users “undock” the panel, it will slide back.

But that is not all. Multiple panes are able to dock in the same time. If one panel only is docked it should be 100% height. With each new panel docked, height will be recalculated so that all panels have the same height value. If there are docked panels and user wants to slide in another panel temporarily, it will overlay docked panels.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/examples/AdvancedDocking/
License: License Free