Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

PRADO is a component-based and event-driven programming framework for developing Web applications in PHP 5. PRADO stands for PHP Rapid Application Development Object-oriented. A range of web applications have been built using the PRADO Framework.

There is a configurable and pluggable modular architecture and full spectrum of database support within PRADO. It supports AJAX-enabled Web components, Customizable and localizable error/exception handling and Generic caching modules and selective output caching. There is some sort of Security measures: cross-site script (XSS) prevention, cookie protection as well. Most importantly, Rich documentation and strong userbase will help you through.

The sole requirement to run PRADO-based applications is a Web server supporting PHP 5.1.0 or higher. PRADO is free. You can use it to develop either open source or commercial applications.

Requirements: PHP 5.1.0+
Demo: http://www.pradosoft.com/
License: Revised BSD

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Jx is a javascript library for creating graphical user interaces based on the fabulous MooTools library. They provide access to the library as well as extensive documentation and examples. The Jx examples are a set of web pages that illustrate specific Jx components. Simply click on a page in the tree to the left to load the appropriate sample and get started exploring Jx right away.

The theme selection allows you to change between Jx skins on the fly. Simply click the button to expose a list of available skins and select a new skin to see the effect immediately. They store a cookie in your browser so you don’t have to keep changing skins every time you load a new example. Jx is distributed under the MIT license.

Requirements: Mootools Framework
Demo: http://jxlib.org/
License: MIT License

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CSS Frameworks have been a hot topic the past few months. Although they’ve been getting a lot of heat from semantic freaks and minimalists (for adding unnecessary code), I think they’re a step forward. Web design is about doing things quickly and beautifully. No matter how you feel about frameworks, it’s undeniable that they speed up the design process.

We have seen some of the popular CSS Framework like, 960.gs, Blueprint, YAML. Capsize Designs decided to combine the good points of each of them to get something that I was satisfied with. He has pretty much taken the entire grid from Blueprint (with a bunch of his own changes) and the entire typography from Tripoli (with a bunch more of his changes). Since most of it came from BlueprintCSS or Tripoli, This CSS Framework is called BlueTrip. The end result ended up really nice.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://capsizedesigns.com/blog/2008/04/bluetripcss…
License: MIT and GPL License

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Free CSS Drop-Down Menu Framework does not only separate HTML from CSS, but even CSS definitions are categorized into structural and thematic types. Thus creating a new drop-down means creating only a new theme since structure is permanent.

Your unordered List can be transformed by changing class name only. Available transformations including horizontal, vertical left-to-right, vertical right-to-left, horizontal linear and horizontal upwards. Free CSS Drop-Down Menu is cross browser that there are some configurations available for Windows Internet Explorer 5 or later, Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or later, Opera 7 or later, Apple Safari 2 or later.

Requirements: Internet Explorer 5+, Firefox 1.5+, Opera 7+, Apple Safari 2+
Demo: http://www.lwis.net/free-css-drop-down-menu/
License: GPL License

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Peppy is a lightning fast CSS 3 compliant selector engine with no external library dependencies. Peppy can be used along side other libraries seamlessly.

As it stands now Peppy is faster1 than all other major JavaScript libraries with DOM querying capabilities (Prototype 1.6.0.3, JQuery 1.2.6, MooTools 1.2.1, EXT 2.2, DoJo 1.2.0, YUI 2.6.0). It is faster2 than Sizzle by John Resig and it also is cross browser (IE included). You can take a look for yourselves by using SlickSpeed Selectors Test and download Peppy here.

If you are designing your own JavaScript library or want to replace your existing libraries selector engine then Peppy is an ideal candidate.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://jamesdonaghue.com/static/peppy/
License: FreeBSD License

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Raphaël is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the web. In case you want to create your own specific chart or image crop-n-rotate widget, you can simply achieve it with this library.

Raphaël uses SVG and VML as a base for graphics creation. Because of that every created object is a DOM object so you can attach JavaScript event handlers or modify objects later. Raphaël’s goal is to provide an adapter that will make drawing cross-browser and easy. Currently library supports Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+.

Requirements: Firefox 3.0+, Safari 3.0+, Opera 9.5+ and Internet Explorer 6.0+
Demo: http://raphaeljs.com/
License: MIT License

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The YUI development community is pleased to announce the release of version 2.6.0 of the YUI Library. 2.6.0 introduces a new Carousel Control, offers the Paginator Control for general use (it was previously bundled with DataTable), includes more than 450 total fixes, enhancements and optimizations, graduates eight components out of “beta,” and now ships with more than 290 functional examples.

The YUI Carousel Control provides a widget for browsing among a set of like objects arrayed vertically or horizontally in an overloaded page region. Like most YUI controls, Carousel can consume content from page markup using progressive enhancement techniques or be created, configured, and populated entirely via script. It has built-in support for the lazy-loading of content via XMLHttpRequest (aka Ajax) using YUI’s Connection Manager.

The YUI Paginator Control addresses the navigation aspect of chunked content, offering a set of controls that it can render into your UI to allow users to navigate through logical sections of local or remote data. It’s a great tool for managing page load times by reducing the amount of markup or data needed per page.

Requirements: YUI Framework
Demo: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui
License: BSD License

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ZK is the a proven Ajax + Mobile framework designed to maximize enterprises operation efficiency and minimize the development cost. With groundbreaking Direct RIA architecture, ZK simplifies and speeds the creation, deployment and maintenance of rich Internet applications.

By programming user interfaces directly, developing Web application is as intuitive as programming desktop applications. By programming database and enterprise resource access directly, developers no longer have to worry about exposure of business logic to the client and exposure of business data over the Internet .

ZK is an open source Ajax + Mobile framework. ZK developer community is extremely active with 20+ translations, 100+ articles/blogs, and 100,000+ lines of codes, 700,000+ downloads, from 190+ countries.

Alos, ZK is designed from the ground up to be secure. ZK protects enterprise applications from cross-site scripting, malicious JavaScript/SQL injection, exposure of business logic to the client, and exposure of business data over Internet. Scalability, Clustering and Failover: ZK supports high scalability and availability with serializable user interfaces, and pluggable failover manager. ZK is compatible with the clustering and load balancing support found in modern application servers.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.zkoss.org/
License: GPL License

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TWiki is a flexible, powerful, and easy to use enterprise wiki, enterprise collaboration platform and knowledge management system. It is a Structured Wiki, typically used to run a project development space, a document management system, a knowledge base, or any other groupware tool, on an intranet or on the internet. TWiki looks and feels like a normal Intranet or Internet web site. However it also has a Edit link at the bottom of every topic (web page), everybody can change a topic or add content by just using a browser.

Web content can be created collaboratively by using just a browser. Users without programming skills can create web applications. Developers can extend the functionality of TWiki with Plugins. TWiki fosters information flow within an organization; lets distributed teams work together seamlessly and productively; and eliminates the one-webmaster syndrome of outdated intranet content.

TWiki is GPLed software. The Perl CGI source code, templates and documentation is available for free.

Requirements: Perl CGI Supported Server
Demo: http://twiki.org/
License: GPL License

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Like Ruby on Rails, Merb is an MVC framework. Unlike Rails, Merb is ORM-agnostic, JavaScript library agnostic, and template language agnostic, preferring plugins that add in support for a particular feature rather than trying to produce a monolithic library with everything in the core. Merb is also thread-safe and was originally engineered to handle multiple file uploads concurrently.

Merb is a simple, clearly documented core. Rather than trying to cram every feature under the sun into a single code base, we keep things to the bare minimum, without sacrificing anything important. The core code in Merb is kept simple and well organised meaning it’s easier to understand, maintain and extend.

Merb is featureful, flexible and extensible. For any features that aren’t covered in Merb’s core, there are plugins. Rather than reinvent the wheel with a custom plugin framework, these are implemented as RubyGems, giving us easy plugin installation, updates and versioning.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://merbivore.com
License: MIT License

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