Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

The iPhone is a fantastic phenomenon. It’s a communications device, a multimedia platform and much more all rolled into one single tool. Everyone wants in on this device. With millions of iPhones out there, it makes sense to have your content, or application available on that platform, but how do you go about doing this?

WebDesignerDepot has published How to Get Started with iPhone Dev, which is an introduction to the various ways of getting content and applications onto the iPhone. It is by no means a full guide, but it can point you in the right direction and give you an overview of what is involved in the process.

Source: How to Get Started with iPhone Dev

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Ethan Marcotte has raised an issue about Fluid Grids, that working with non-fixed layouts can be more difficult once you introduce fixed-width elements into them. By default, an image element that’s sized at, say, 500px doesn’t exactly play nicely with an container that can be as large as 800px, but as small as 100px. What’s a designer to do?

He has wriiten a little script that makes Fluid Images. In short, it cycles through your document, swaps out the images for a transparent GIF, and applies the AlphaImageLoader property to each one. Then, whenever the window’s resized, the script automatically recalculates the proper, proportional height and width of the image, and resizes the spacer graphic accordingly. You can see it in action, and download the script.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://unstoppablerobotninja.com/entry/fluid-images/
License: License Free

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Quality is a word that a lot of people like to use when describing their web design services. But what is quality, how do you know if a design is quality or not. There’s quite a few ways to spot quality within web designs.

Function has put together a few pointers, and collected some examples to explain just how they look for quality within a website design. It Includes Spacing, Pixel Perfect Detail, Typography, Organization of Elements and etc… The post is extremely well-written and informative with some really good examples. It is one of the best posts I have read for a long time.

Once you can see just what goes into making a quality web design, you can use the techniques to perfect your own style.

Source: http://wefunction.com/2009/04/quality-within-web-design/

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I would like to share 25 Most Useful Blogs for Web Design and Development. Almost all of them are daily updated, and cover a wide range of topics including inspiration, design trends, tutorials, interviews, website showcase, programming techniques and resources. Add them all to your RSS reader and receive these useful information every day.

Subscribe to all of them by importing this OPML file (Right-click and Save as)

GoMediaZine is a group of guys and girls who are passionate about art and graphic design. The blog filled with lots of helpful tutorials and advice about business and design. (RSS)

WebDesignerWall serves as Nick La’s public blog where he posts his design ideas, tutorials, and talk about modern web design trends. (RSS)

Veerle Pieters is a graphic/web designer living in Belgium. Veerle’s Blog is an online source for topics ranging from XHTML/CSS to graphic design tips. (RSS)

Fubiz site is focused on the subjects of the graphic world. You can get some really inspiring and creative pictures from Fubiz. (RSS)

AdGoodness showcase only the best advertising and design around the globe. This site is there to start a conversation, to inspire, to enjoy great work, or to just talk about what your views are. (RSS) (more…)

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Google Ventures seeks to discover and grow great companies, they believe in the power of entrepreneurs to do amazing things. Google Ventures is broadly interested in startups in industries including consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others.

They invest anywhere from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars and embrace the challenge of helping young companies grow from the garage to global relevance. They’re looking for entrepreneurs who are tackling problems in creative and innovative ways. Are you one of them?

Source: http://www.google.com/ventures/

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Are you interested in developing some plugins for Chrome too? We have seen lots of browser plugins for Firefox at the moment, it would be nice if we can see some nice plugins for Chrome as well.

Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Webspam team, has published an article about “How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps“. Here is a brief introduction of how to write your own Google Chrome extension in three steps:

1. Install the developer-channel version of Google Chrome
It takes maybe 3-4 minutes, you basically run a small program to indicate your preference. The developer version also gets new features (such as pressing “F11″ to get full-screen mode) way before the beta/stable releases of Chrome.

2. Read the initial documentation
Extensions currently have very Greasemonkey-like functionality: you identify which web pages should be modified, plus JavaScript to be added to those pages. Your plugin has to have a unique identifier. And you have to bundle your extension directory into a “.crx” Chrome Extension file.

3. Try it out
If you’re running the developer version of Chrome, you can install the “hello world” plugin from the extension howto page just by clicking to download the .crx file. Then type “chrome-ui://extensions/” .

Source: How to Write a Chrome Extension in Three Easy Steps

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Have you migrate your feeds hosted on Feedburner to Google’s servers yet? We have just completed the migration one week ago, and It looks like my feeds are working normally. All of us should perform the migration as soon as possible because Google has announced that they expect to get all the feeds transferred by February 28, and after that day Feedburner feeds will start reporting a 404.

Feed Compare and Feed Analysis has released new versions that support migrated Google Feeds recently. You can analysis the growth of your own feed and compare it with your competitors. However, if you have not completed the migration yet, they are not working for you. So, what are you waiting for?

Source: http://www.blogperfume.com/feed-analysis/
Source: http://www.feedcompare.com/

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The SitePoint online CSS and HTML references have been available for some time now, and have already become a valued source of free information for web designers and developers around the world. Recently, Sitepoint has announced a shiny new look to the SitePoint Reference Site and the highly anticipated first release of JavaScript Reference Information.

The look and feel of the old reference site has been completely replaced with a brand new slick, easy-to read design, including interactive examples, improved navigation, page layout and much more…

Source: SitePoint CSS, HTML & JavaScript Online References

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A while ago, we had a Comparison Between Zend and CakePHP Framework. A lot of our readers have given us some valuable opinions about these two frameworks. Now we are going to look at how Glenn Vanderburg compare Prototype with jQuery, and why he still prefers Prototype to jQuery.

He concluded that jQuery is a very nice piece of work, and makes some common tasks easier than their Prototype equivalents. Where it’s good indeed. But its design is uneven, and its scope is limited.

For him, at least, Prototype is still the tool of choice. he thinks it’s a richer, more thorough, and overall better designed library. You can view the detailed comparison of Prototype and jQuery here.

Glenn Vanderburg does not intend this to be an anti-jQuery screed. Neither is it an exhaustive comparison of Prototype and jQuery. Simply put: praise has been lopsided in favor of jQuery of late, and he feels like singing the praises of his personal favorite.

Please feel free to share your opinions about these two most popular JavaScript libraries.

Source: Why I still prefer Prototype to jQuery

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More and more applications these days are migrating to the Web. Without platform constraints or installation requirements, the software-as-a-service model looks very attractive. To compete with desktop applications, Web apps must offer simple, intuitive and responsive user interfaces that let their users get things done with less effort and time.

In the past we didn’t cover web applications the way we should and now it’s time to take a closer look at some useful techniques and design solutions that make web-applications more user-friendly and more beautiful.

SmashingMagazine presents the first part of our extensive research on design patterns and useful design solutions in modern web applications. You’ll find a collection of 10 useful interface design techniques and best practices used in many successful web-applications.

Source: 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques

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