Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

As web developers, we spend precious time laying out our pages, using every UI concept in the book to conserve space, while trying to maintain a user’s focus on the task at hand. There are many techniques to use Lightbox, Carousel and Tabs to name a few – and recently Scott Robbin has offered up another: jQuery pageSlide.

jQuery pageSlide was inspired by the UI work of Aza Raskin. Aza introduced the idea of sliding content aside to reveal a secondary content pane. This plugin allows any developer to recreate a similar interaction on their own website using a few simple lines of Javascript.

By attaching the method to an anchor tag, pageSlide wraps the original body content into a wrapper and creates an additional block for the secondary content load. The slide is animated whenever the click event is invoked.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://srobbin.com/blog/jquery-pageslide/
License: GPL License

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Meerkat, named for its pop up like behavior, is a jQuery plugin created by Jarod Taylor. Meerkat, depending on the options you have set, will slide or fade in from the top or bottom of the browser window and remain in its fixed position while the rest of the page will scroll normally.

You have a choice of providing a close option which will simply close Meerkat until the page has been reloaded, or a dontShow option, which will close Meerkat until the browser session has ended, or for a set amount of days, depending on the options you have defined.

Whether it’s used as a simple promotional tool, a roost for advertisements, or even as an alternative to a splash or entry page; Meerkat is unobtrusive, cross-browser compatible, and degrades gracefully if Javascript has been disabled.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jarodtaylor.com/meerkat/demos/
License: MIT License

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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

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SimpleModal is a lightweight jQuery Plugin which provides a powerful interface for modal dialog development. Think of it as a modal dialog framework. SimpleModal gives you the flexibility to build whatever you can envision, while shielding you from related cross-browser issues inherent with UI development.

Styles can be applied through external CSS, the options object, or both. The CSS options for the modal overlay, container, and data elements are: overlayCss, containerCss and dataCss, all which take a key/value object of properties.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.ericmmartin.com/projects/simplemodal-demos/
License: MIT License

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Say I had some CSS or JavaScript techniques/effects I wanted to show in a blog post. Obviously it would have been uncomfortable for us to actually include the thing in the post (CSS needs to be in the head, JavaScript may conflict with other JavaScript, etc), so the best option would have been to just link to the file demonstrating the effect.

Using inFrame, we can keep demos indisde the page. So that, the reader doesn’t have to go away from the blog post to view demo files. Simply just add a class of inframe to each these links.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.vileworks.com/inframe-keep-the-demos-inside…
License: License Free

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We have seen lots of Javascript Lightbox plugins. It is good to see someone who has created a valid markup Lightbox purely with XHTML and CSS for us.

ThinkVitamin has published a detailed tutorial of How to Create a Valid Non-Javascript Lightbox. Please note that this article assumes you have a basic understanding of (X)HTML and CSS.

Requirements: FF, Safari, Chrome, IE6, IE7 and IE8
Demo: http://www.growldesign.co.uk/projects/lb/
License: License Free

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Bumpbox is another lightbox clone with a few advantages over other lightboxes – it supports not only all common media types but also PDF’s.

Yet, the integration and implementation on your own site is pretty simple. Just add the scripts to your head section, add classes to your links that should use bumpbox, define a rel tag with the size that the bumpbox should have and you’re ready to roll.

Bumpbox automatically detects what kind of filetype you wish to show in the box, so you do not need to specify the type, easing the process of integration.

Requirements: Mootools Framework 1.2
Demo: http://www.artviper.net/bumpbox.php
License: License Free

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You have probably seen these forms of advertisings where you can peel a corner of a website and see a message underneath. SohTanaka has made a tutorial: Simple Page Peel Effect with jQuery & CSS. All they are doing is expanding the image on hover, then retracting to its default size on hover out.

You may also interested in The Sexy Curls jQuery Plugin if you like this tutorial. The page corner can be set to curl automatically. The plugin is released under the MIT license. That means you can do whatever you like with it.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/peeling-effect/
Demo: http://www.elliottkember.com/sexy_curls.html
License: MIT License

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Growl4Rails is a javascript component that provides the UI for growl-like notifications in your Rails web application. Jim Fiorato has recently added the ability to show multiple growls at once, as well as improved support for IE. You can also specify the duration and max number of growls to show.

If you are not using Rails, you can also get the Growl for jQuery and Growl for Mootools instead.

Requirements: Rails 2.1+, Prototype 1.6+, Scriptaculous 1.7+
Demo: http://github.com/jfiorato/growl4rails/tree/master
License: MIT License

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jQuery Alert Dialogs aims to replace the basic functionality provided by the standard JavaScript alert(), confirm(), and prompt() functions. These are completely customizable via CSS (which can make your apps look much more professional). And you can set a custom title for each dialog.

These methods simulate a true modal dialog box. They will automatically re-position themselves if you resize the browser window. If you include the jQuery UI Draggable plugin, the dialogs can be moved by dragging their title bars. Unlike their native JavaScript counterparts, you can use HTML in the message parameter. To specify a newline, you can use either \n or <br />.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://abeautifulsite.net/notebook_files/87/demo/
License: GPL License

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