Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

As the online advertising industry evolves, it is becoming increasingly difficult for publishers like you to effectively and easily manage your advertising inventory. PubMatic can help us answering the following questions.

Ad Network Auction
It’s not as easy as implementing Google AdSense anymore. Now there’s Yahoo! Publisher Network, Microsoft ContentAds is coming, and you may also be using 3rd party ad networks such as ValueClick or BlueLithium. Which ad network provides you with the most revenue?

Optimized Ad Layout
There are so many different ad layout options (size, color, location, text/banner/video, etc.) that it’s nearly impossible for you to know which layout will generate the most revenue. What ad layout maximizes click-throughs on your web site?

One Management Interface
Even if you knew which ad layout and ad networks work best for you, it’s not easy to maintain accounts across all of the networks and get consolidated reports on demand. How long does it take you to get a consolidated view of your ad inventory performance?

PubMatic provides an industry leading platform that lets you maximize your revenue and minimize the complexity of selling advertising on your web site. It is really useful if you would like to find out which ad network works best for your website. It is easy to use and understand and it is FREE.

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: http://www.pubmatic.com/
License: License Free

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Are you still using the traditional 2D graph for your reports and presentations? N.Design Studio taught us how to create 3D Pie Charts with Illustrator CS2 at ease. The Pie Charts looks so real and professional.

As a freelancer, we may come into the situation that you have to present some sort of statistical data to your client. Of course you may use Excel’s graph tool to easily create a bunch of charts, but more or less all of those predefined designs suck. Bartelme Design show us how to create visually appealing Pie charts using Adobe Illustrator’s graph tool.

GoSquared showed us how to create beautiful Pie Charts in Illustrator. Just follow a few simple steps, and you’ll view pie charts in a whole new light.

IMmodernLife created a comprehensive tutorial of how to make overwhelming niceness of the Pie Charts. He is using Adobe Illustrator CS2, but the tips should apply to most of the more recent versions.

Requirements: Adobe Illustrator
Demo 1: http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/tutorials/3d-graphs/”
Demo 2: http://bartelme.at/journal/archive/creating_graphs/journal/281/
Demo 3: http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/103
Demo 4: http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/howto…
License: License Free

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It is difficult to find a well-developed calendar component for our web applications. NoGray has developed a free and highly customizable Javascript calendar component for web developers like us. The look and feel of the calendar can be changed easily using CSS. You can have more than one calendar on any page, create any number of months per calendar. You can also enable multi selection of date as well. The calendar looks really and very easy to integrate into your websites.

If you found the calendar does not suit your needs, you can spend some money and ask them to customize it for you. And also there are some other useful and free Javascript tools for webmasters, I particular like the Free Color Picker as well.

Web Application is getting more and more popular recently. They can be really useful because it can be accessed everywhere in the world with internet access. If you have an idea, do not know how to build it? NoGray might be able to help you. It is a small web design and development firm. They specialized in creating well-developed web applications for customers.

NoGray focuses on 3 simple steps when working with clients. They will design the homepage and main template for the website which gives the client a clear perspective on how it will look like first. While the development, they will create a easy to use content management system to ensure clients can update or make changes to the application easily afterwards. After all, they will also submit your website to major search engines without you worrying about the SEO stuff.

You know where to go if you need someone to help on your website or web application projects. ; )

Requirements: XHTML Doctype
Demo: http://nogray.com/calendar.php
License: License Free

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WidgetBucks features pay-per-click shopping widgets that help our customers make money fast. They instantly display the most popular products based on buying trends of 100 million shoppers. Thus they are highly engaging, which means instant dollars for the customers. They claimed their widgets see $3-$6 CPM — pretty good compared to traditional ad networks that deliver less than $2 CPM.

The widget is very dynamic, you can customise the widget easily. There are over 300 configurations, 256 color schemes and formatted for major IAB standard sizes. With WidgetBucks‘ Referral program, affiliates can earn a 10 percent referral fee based on the commissions earned by the people they refer. Affiliates receive this 10 percent for the full 12 months after the new member joins. However, these type of ads work great with technology related website / blog only.

Requirements: Any Modern Browsers Javascript Enabled
Demo: Sign Up Now
License: License Free

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TNX.net is a relative new but awesome text link ads system for both advertisers and publishers. The system seems working really well as it trades over 25.000.000 text link ads per month. Despite of the fact that TNX.net is completely free to join, which has attracted more than 24,000 webmasters using the system already.

For Publishers
Webmasters can sell your text link ads through TNX.net as well. It will calculate ratings of each page for you and give you TNX-Points when a link is sold. You have full control to block new text link ads purchase at any time. So that you can avoid irrelevant text link ads appear on your site. After you have gained some TNX-Points, you can either use these points to purchase links from other websites, you can actually sell your TNX-Points to TNX.net Network at any time. Current rate is $0.61 for 1000 points and it will grow by 2% every week. You can also earn 12.5% commission of your referrer earned.

For Advertisers
TNX.net allows advertisers purchasing non-reciprocal links from thousands of relevant websites. Instead of purchasing site-wide text link ads, TNX.net allows advertisers select any single page you want to locate your ads at. Or you just need to select the sum of text link ads, they will be placed on websites with selected PageRank, number of Yahoo backlinks on selected category automatically. The price of purchasing 1000 inbound links only cost you $1.14 at the moment which is quite bargain I think.

User Interface and Security
The user interface is very good which is really easy to use. You can mange both advertiser and publisher accounts easily on one single account. And also, TNX.net claimed that there is no more than 4 text link ads are placed on each page by default, it does not look like a link farm, therefore there is no risk to get banned or penalised by search engines.

Try it now
TNX.net network is now offering us 2,000 TNX – Points on every new accounts. And they will credit you 5,000 TNX-Points free of charge after your website is approved. You can read more details on http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=477444. Feel free to ask them questions if needed, I am sure they are happy to help you out.

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: Sign Up Now
License: License Free

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CSSplay has released 15 professional horizontal menus. All using the sliding doors technique so that the menu items will fit the text. These menus work in all the latest browsers. Some of them are Mac style, and some of them are Windows Vista style. You can use them in both personal and commercial projects. You can use these menus as part of your application interface. You can also use it in your “Paid Projects” for your clients.

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/pro_horizontal.html
License: License Free

• 4 Comments

Bubble Tooltips are an easy way to add (via a bit of CSS and javascript) fancy tooltips with a balloon shape to any web page. They operate this way:

1. A check for DOM support is performed
2. If found, the title and href attributes of links are extracted from the page and they’re injected into a DOM structure
3. When the mouse is rolled over a link, the related tooltip (styled with CSS) is displayed

Bubble Tooltips are unobtrosive and for browsers with bad DOM support or javascript disabled, the plain title of links will be displayed. Compatibility is quite good: they’ve been tested with success in IE5, IE5.5 and IE6 on Win, Opera 8.5, Safari 2.0 and Firefox 1.5.

Requirements: Internet Explorer 5.0+, Opera 8.5+, Safari 2.0+, Firefox 1.5+
Demo: http://web-graphics.com/mtarchive/BubbleTooltips.html
License: License Free

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(E)2 Photo Gallery is an open source gallery built with Mootools Javascript Library the compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework. Designed to allow you to upload your photos to a desired folder, tell the (E)2 Photo Gallery what folder to look at and it will automatically load the images using PHP. It looks very good and easy to use. You can customised it with different designed skins easily. However, currently it is not possible to have multiple galleries on one page.

Requirements: Mootools Javascript Library
Demo: http://www.e2interactive.com/e2_photo_gallery/demo.php
License: License Free

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The ZebraMap time zone map is a free, customizable map that you can use on its own or as part of a blog or web site. You can pick from twenty color schemes, add locations and position the labels. The map initially comes with ads at the bottom. If you would like to remove the ads from your map you can do so for a small fee.

Requirements: Modern Browsers with Javascript Enabled
Demo: http://www.zebramap.com/
License: License Free

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Phatfusion has showed us another way to build our menu, he has created a image menu with the aid of Mootools framework. It looks really good and easy to use. It is very similar to the menu design of Mootools Official Website. It has the following features.

• It allows onClick event keeps selected item open.
• Click open item to close.
• Specify a function for the onClick event.
• Auto open when the page loads.

Requirements: Mootools Framework
Demo: http://www.phatfusion.net/imagemenu/index.htm
License: MIT License

• 42 Comments