Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Xinha is a powerful WYSIWYG HTML editor component that works in Mozilla based browsers as well as in MS Internet Explorer. Its configurabilty and extensibility make it easy to build just the right editor for multiple purposes, from a restricted mini-editor for one database field to a full-fledged website editor. Its liberal, BSD licence makes it an ideal candidate for integration into any kind of project.

Xinha is Open Source, and they take this seriously. There is no company that owns the source but a community of professionals who just want Xinha to be the best tool for their work.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://xinha.webfactional.com/wiki/Examples
License: BSD License

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Minify is a PHP5 app that can combine multiple CSS or Javascript files, compress their contents (i.e. removal of unnecessary whitespace/comments), and serve the results with HTTP encoding (gzip/deflate) and headers that allow optimal client-side caching.

Yahoo’s Combo Handler and Google’s AJAX Libraries API both serve content from their heavy-duty CDNs and potentially increase the chance that your visitor will already have a file in her browser cache. Neither service serves custom content that you provide. You may wish to use these services to serve popular libraries and Minify to serve your code.

Minify is distributed under the New BSD License, which means that you’re free to use, modify, and redistribute Minify or derivative works thereof, even for commercial purposes, as long as you comply with a few simple requirements. See the License file for details.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://code.google.com/p/minify/
License: New BSD License

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Agile Carousel is a jQuery plugin that allows you to easily create a custom carousel. Call jQuery UI to enable many different additional transition types and easing methods. It uses PHP to draw images from the folder you specify.

You can also configure Agile Carousel with many different options including controls, slide timer length, easing type, transition type (e.g. blind, drop, pulsate, shake, slide and etc…) and more. The script is currently in beta version, security & feature enhancements are on the way.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://code.google.com/p/agile-carousel/
License: New BSD License

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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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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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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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What if we want to include data visualization as an integral part of the site, not just an isolated figure or an interactive chart? When we’re designing interfaces for browsing data-driven sites, it’s valuable to be able to create navigation elements that are also visualization tools. We can keep the user informed as they explore, so they can make better decisions about what they’re looking at and what they’re clicking on.

What we need is something in between—markup that’s appropriate for navigation, but with some extra hooks for semantics and structure.

A List Apart has published an article of “Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards“, shared three basic techniques for incorporating some simple data visualization into standards-based navigation patterns. All of them start with the building block of HTML navigation: an unordered list of links.

You should also look at Sparkline PHP Graphing Library. It provides a wide range of options how your graphs are rendered. It’s important that sparklines are visually appealing, especially in the restricted visual environment of the web. Web sparklines should approach as closely as possible the aesthetic of printed sparklines. Sparkline is completely free to use on your personal website, company home page, or to include in your commercial product. Sparkline is distributed under the BSD license.

A List Apart Article: Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards
A List Apart Demo: http://alistapart.com/d/accessibledata/example-final.html
Sparkline PHP Graphing Library: http://sparkline.org/
License: BSD License

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OpenLayers makes it easy to put a dynamic map in any web page. It can display map tiles and markers loaded from any source. MetaCarta developed the initial version of OpenLayers and gave it to the public to further the use of geographic information of all kinds.

OpenLayers is a pure JavaScript library for displaying map data in most modern web browsers, with no server-side dependencies. OpenLayers implements a JavaScript API for building rich web-based geographic applications, similar to the Google Maps and MSN Virtual Earth APIs, with one important difference – OpenLayers is Free Software, developed for and by the Open Source software community.

As a framework, OpenLayers is intended to separate map tools from map data so that all the tools can operate on all the data sources.

Requirements: Javascript Enabled
Demo: http://www.openlayers.org/
License: BSD License

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The YUI team is pleased to announce the public availability of YUI 3.0 Preview Release 1, an early look at what they’re working on for the next generation of the YUI Library. Documentation for YUI 3.0 is on the YUI website; the download is available on the YUI project area on SourceForge;  Keep in mind that this is an early preview, not a production-quality (or even a beta) release. This release is not suitable for production use, but it will give you an idea of what they’re working on, and it should provide a good framework for conversation about the future of the library. They’ve set five design goals for the next generation of the library. What you’ve told us is that YUI 3.0 should be:

• lighter (less K-weight on the wire and on the page for most uses)
• faster (fewer http requests, less code to write and compile, more efficient code)
• more consistent (common naming, event signatures, and widget APIs throughout the library)
• more powerful (do more with less implementation code)
• more securable (safer and easier to expose to multiple developers working in the same environment)

Requirements: -
Demo: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/
License: BSD License

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Canvas 3D Graph is a special type of bar graph that plot numbers in 3D. <canvas> tag is not supported in IE, so the author was forced to use excanvas.js in order to draw graph in IE. As the result of that, you may experience some freezes when you try to plot large amount of data in IE. Firefox and safari works just fine (aprox 10x faster than emulated canvas in IE). This is initial release, he planned to add many more features, so stay stay tuned for the updates.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://dragan.yourtree.org/code/canvas-3d-graph/
License: BSD License

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