Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

John Resig has ported the Processing visualization language to JavaScript, using the Canvas element called The Processing Language. The first portion of the project was writing a parser to dynamically convert code written in the Processing language, to JavaScript. This involves a lot of gnarly regular expressions chewing up the code, spitting it out in a format that the browser understands. The language includes a number of interesting aspects as follow.

• Types and type casting – Type information is generally discarded, but becomes important in variable declaration and in casting (which is generally handled well).
• Classes – The full class system is supported (can be instantiated, etc. just fine).
• Method overloading and multiple constructors – Within classes you can have multiple method (or constructor) definitions – with the appropriate methods being called, based upon their signature length.
• Inheritance – Even classical-style inheritance is supported.

The second portion of the project is the full 2d Processing API. This includes all sorts of different methods:

• Shapes drawing
• Canvas manipulation
• Pixel utilities
• Image drawing
• Math functions
• Keyboard and mouse access
• Objects (point, arrays, random number generators)
• Color manipulation
• Font selection and text drawing
• Buffers

The full source code of The Processing Language is contained within a single file. It comes in at about 5000 lines, compresses down to less than 10kb. It is licensed under MIT license.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://dev.jquery.com/~john/processing.js/examples/basic/
License: MIT License

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There are more and more people are using their phones to access the internet. I think one of the most beautiful phones would be iPhone designed by Apple. Have you thought of developing an iphone application? Here is a resources site for building iphone applications easily. You can have many samples of code for building windows, buttons, canvas, dynamic lists, debug console and etc… It shows you the samples for iphone app integration as well. Have a look and start building useful iPhone applcations.

Source: http://groupaware.mobi/iphone/#_Samples

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The 960 Grid System is an effort to streamline web development workflow by providing commonly used dimensions, based on a width of 960 pixels. There are two variants: 12 and 16 columns, which can be used separately or in tandem. The premise of the system is ideally suited to rapid prototyping, but it would work equally well when integrated into a production environment. There are printable sketch sheets, design layouts, and a CSS file that have identical measurements.

All modern monitors support at least 1024 × 768 pixel resolution. 960 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480. This makes it a highly flexible base number to work with. You can download a Zip file which contains PDF grid paper, templates for Fireworks, OmniGraffle, Photoshop & Visio, and CSS framework with demo HTML.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://960.gs/
License: MIT / GPL License

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The AJAX Control Toolkit is a joint project between the community and Microsoft. Built upon the ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions, the Toolkit aims to be the biggest and best collection of web-client components available.

The Toolkit addresses three needs. First it gives website developers a place to get components to make their web applications spring to life, second it gives a set of great examples for those wishing to write client-side code, and third it is a place for the best script developers to get their work highlighted.

All of the controls in the Toolkit are built upon a set of classes that really help streamline the process of writing control extenders. These classes form a thin “glue” layer between the Toolkit controls and the ASP.NET AJAX classes as they exist today. While the AJAX Control Toolkit is focused primarily on providing great AJAX controls and extenders, it also includes a powerful animation framework which you can use to add awesome visual effects on your pages.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://asp.net/AJAX/AjaxControlToolkit/Samples/Default.aspx
License: Microsoft Public License

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MoreCSS is a small JavaScript library for everyday things, like creating popups, tab menus, tables and lists with “zebra”-style and etc… But the really special thing is: you can do these things in regular CSS. Just include MoreCSS.js and an external stylesheet file in your page header. And then you can use MoreCSS properties like normal CSS properties.

Example:
a {
target:popup;
target-width:640px;
target-height:640px;
}

Requirements: -
Demo: http://yellowgreen.de/morecss
License: Creative Commons License

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GWT-Ext is a powerful widget library that provides rich widgets like Grid with sort, paging and filtering, Tree’s with Drag & Drop support, highly customizable ComboBoxes, Tab Panels, Menus & Toolbars, Dialogs, Forms and a lot more right out of the box with a powerful and easy to use API. It uses GWT and Ext.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.gwt-ext.com/demo
License: LGPL License

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The Spry framework for Ajax from Adobe Labs is a JavaScript library that provides easy-to-use yet powerful Ajax functionality that allows designers to build pages that provide a richer experience for their users. It is designed to take the complexity out of Ajax and allow designers to easily create Web 2.0 pages.

The Spry framework is a way to incorporate XML, JSON or HTML data into pages using HTML, CSS, and a minimal amount of JavaScript. The Spry framework is HTML-centric, and easy to implement for users with basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The framework was designed such that the markup is simple and the JavaScript is minimal. By building the front-end of your web application with Spry you enable a more efficient designer-developer workflow by keeping UI separated from back-end application logic. You can view the demos and samples created by Spray.

Demo: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/spry/demos/

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Zend Framework is a leading open-source PHP framework has a flexible architecture that lets you easily build modern web applications and web services. Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services.

Zend Framework provides a lightweight, loosely-coupled component library simplified to provide 4/5s of the functionality everyone needs and that lets you customize the other 20% to meet your specific business needs. By focusing on the most commonly needed functionality, they retain the simplified spirit of PHP programming, dramatically lower the learning curve, and your training costs – so developers get up-to-speed quickly. They do this with:

• An extensible and well-tested code base – easy to augment
• A flexible architecture – not locked-in to a rigid application structure
• No configuration files necessary to get up and running – or when maintaining and deploying your apps

Requirements: PHP version of 5.1.4+
Demo: http://framework.zend.com
License: New BSD License

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IT Mill Toolkit is an open-source user interface framework, prividing widgets and tools for the development of high-quality web applications. You can create stunning Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) without worrying about incompatibilities of web browsers, DOM or JavaScript by using standard Java tools. Use traditional OOP methods to build web applications that look good and feel right.

Effortless RIA Development

• Build Rich Internet Applications using Java language utilizing OO methods: inheritance and composition.
• Dozens of AJAX-enabled widgets for Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) that work with all major browsers.
• No need to learn new web technologies such as JavaScript, DOM, taglibs, etc.
• Secure server-side programming model keeps your application data secured from JavaScript threats
• Extend and build your own user interface components using Google Web Toolkit – again in Java language.
• Pluggable look and feel using standard CSS: re-brand whole applications fast – in just a few hours.
• Compatible with all standard Java application servers, including JBoss, WebLogic and WebSphere and Oracle.
• Wide range of supported browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera.

Requirements: Java versions: 1.4, 5 and 6
Demo: http://www.itmill.com/itmill-toolkit/demos.htm
License: Apache 2.0 License

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jRails is a drop-in jQuery replacement for Prototype/script.aculo.us on Rails. Using jRails, you can get all of the same default Rails helpers for javascript functionality using the lighter jQuery library. The visual effects in jRails are based on the new jquery-fx library. jRails currently uses a slightly modified version of jquery fx code to get some of the desired effects. This code is evolving and is subject to change. In the meatime, you can get a taste of the visual effects that are currently available.

Requirements: No Requirements
Demo: http://ennerchi.com/projects/jrails
License: License Free

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