Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Tooltip is a splendid invention. Small detail in web design that plays a big role when it comes to user experience. Usually, tooltips are used to present a tiny amount of hidden content, that pops up when user moves a cursor over or clicks on a special target.

Osvaldas Valutis built a Responsive and Mobile-Friendly Tooltip using CSS and jQuery. It relies on a maximum width value when viewed on large screens, adopts to narrow environments and picks the best viewable position relatively to the target. It’s mobile-friendly. It pops up when a call-to-action button is tapped and disappears when tapped on the tooltip itself.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://osvaldas.info/blog/elegant-css-and-jquery-tooltip…
License: License Free

jPages is a client-side pagination plugin but it gives you a lot more features comparing to most of the other plugins for this purpose, such as auto page turn, key and scroll browse, showing items with delay, completely customizable navigation panel and also integration with Animate.css and Lazy Load.

With jPages you can create as many navigation panels as you want and you can choose exactly where to place them. The plugin is unobtrusive and it won’t apply any extra styles to the items you are paginating. And it is compatible with All Browsers and IE7+.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://luis-almeida.github.com/jPages/
License: MIT License

ResponsiveSlides.js is a tiny jQuery plugin that creates a responsive slideshow using images inside <ul>. It works with wide range of browsers including all IE versions from IE6 and up. It also adds css max-width support for IE6 and other browsers that don’t natively support it. Only dependency is jQuery (1.4 and up supported) and that all the images are same size.

Biggest difference to other responsive slideshow plugins is the file size (985 bytes minified and gzipped) + that this one doesn’t try to do everything. ResponsiveSlides.js has basically only two different modes: Either it just automatically fades the images, or operates as a responsive image container with pagination and/or navigation to fade between slides.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://responsive-slides.viljamis.com/
License: MIT License

There are lots of timeline tools on the web but they are almost all either hard on the eyes or hard to use. The goal is to create timelines that are at the same time beautiful and intuitive for users.

Timeline is great for pulling in media from different sources. Just throw in a link from Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, Google Maps or SoundCloud and Timeline will format it to fit perfectly. More media types will be supported in the future. Creating one is as easy as filling in a Google spreadsheet or as detailed as JSON.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://timeline.verite.co/
License: GPL License

Camera Slideshow is an open source jQuery slideshow with many effects, transitions, easy to customize, using canvas and mobile ready. You can download it and use it for free, you can also include it in your projects and sell it as part of a bigger work.

Camera slideshow requires jQuery 1.4+ and other jQuery plugins are necessary if you want to use some functionalities: jQuery Easing and a customized version of jQuery Mobile to use it on mobile devices. These plugins are included in the zip file you can download.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.pixedelic.com/plugins/camera/
License: MIT License

jQuery File Upload is a File Upload widget with multiple file selection, drag&drop support, progress bars and preview images for jQuery. It supports cross-domain, chunked and resumable file uploads and client-side image resizing. It also works with any server-side platform (PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails, Java, Node.js, Go etc.) that supports standard HTML form file uploads.

The jQuery UI widget factory is a requirement for the basic File Upload plugin, but very lightweight without any other dependencies. The User Interface is built with Twitter’s Bootstrap Toolkit. This enables a CSS based, responsive layout and fancy transition effects on modern browsers. The demo also includes the Bootstrap Image Gallery Plugin. Both of these components are optional and not required.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://blueimp.github.com/jQuery-File-Upload/
License: MIT License

Kartograph is a new framework for building interactive map applications without Google Maps or any other mapping service. It was created with the needs of designers and data journalists in mind.

The core concept of Kartograph is to separate the mapping process in the map generation and map rendering part. The client-side library kartograph.js renders pre-generated maps stored in SVG files. You can chose among hundreds of ready-to-use maps or simply generate your own using kartograph.py, the open source Python SVG map generator.

Requirements: jQuery and RaphaelJS Framework
Demo: http://kartograph.org/showcase/
License: GPL License

jPlayer is the completely free and open source (GPL/MIT) media library written in JavaScript. A jQuery plugin, jPlayer allows you to rapidly weave cross platform audio and video into your web pages. jPlayer’s comprehensive API allows you to create innovative media solutions while support and encouragement is provided by jPlayer’s active and growing community.

It is easy to get started and deploy in minutes. It’s totally customizable and skinnable using HTML and CSS. It has been tested on Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.jplayer.org/
License: MIT License

Adipoli is a simple jQuery plugin used to bring stylish image hover effects. There are over 20 transition effects (popout, sliceDown, sliceUp, fold, boxRain, boxRainGrow and etc…) you can choose from. You can also select the start effects, like transparent, normal, overlay and grayscale. It is released under MIT License.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jobyj.in/adipoli/
License: MIT License