Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Sprockets is a Ruby library that preprocesses and concatenates JavaScript source files. It takes any number of source files and preprocesses them line-by-line in order to build a single concatenation.

Specially formatted lines act as directives to the Sprockets preprocessor, telling it to require the contents of another file or library first or to provide a set of asset files (such as images or stylesheets) to the document root. Sprockets attempts to fulfill required dependencies by searching a set of directories called the load path.

If you use and contribute to open-source JavaScript frameworks and libraries that use Sprockets, like Prototype and script.aculo.us, the build processes for those scripts can be integrated directly into your application. That makes it possible to track the latest development versions of your framework and library dependencies by adding their repositories to your Sprockets load path.

Requirements: Ruby on Rails Framework
Demo: http://getsprockets.org/
License: MIT Licenses

• 2 Comments

jQuery Scrollable is to provide generic scrolling capability to your pages. Anytime you want to scroll your HTML elements in a visually appealing way you should use this tool. The difference between “normal” scrolling is that you don’t have browser’s default scrollbars available and you can perform scrolling in more sophisticated ways.

Items can be scrolled horizontally or vertically. Elements can be scrolled with navigational buttons, arrow keys, API calls and mouse wheel. You can specify the amount how many items are scrolled at once. Possibility to add and remove scrollable items dynamically. And also, the file size is roughly 6.0 Kb when minified.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.flowplayer.org/tools/scrollable.html
License: MIT and GPL Licenses

• 7 Comments

Stephen Bau has been looking for a means of rapidly developing interactive prototypes for his site designs. He has been building a library of commonly used HTML elements, combining these with CSS for typography and layout.

He finally created Fluid 960 Grid System Templates (960 pixel fixed width, 12-column fluid width and 16-column fluid width) which have been built upon the work of Nathan Smith and his 960 Grid System using effects from the Mootools JavaScript library.

These templates are offered free of charge in accordance with the applicable licenses for 960 Grid System and Mootools.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://designinfluences.com/fluid960gs/
License: GPL, MIT License

• 17 Comments

jQuery ListNav Plugin supplies an easy way to unobtrusively add a letter-based navigation widget to any UL or OL list. An easily stylable (via CSS) nav bar appears above the list, showing the user the letters A-through-Z.

Clicking one of the letters filters the list to show only the items in the list that start with that letter. Hovering over a letter (optionally) shows a count above the letter, indicating how many items will be displayed if that letter is clicked. Other options give you control over the basic functionality.

ListNav works great on long lists. It supports multiple lists on the same page. And it has been tested on IE6, IE7, Firefox 2 and 3 (Windows and Mac), Safari (Windows and Mac).

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.ihwy.com/Labs/Demos/Current/jquery-listnav-plugin.aspx
License: MIT, GPL License

• 7 Comments

UI.Layout was inspired by the extJS border-layout, and recreates that functionality as a jQuery plug-in. The UI.Layout plug-in can create any UI look you want – from simple headers or sidebars, to a complex application with toolbars, menus, help-panels, status bars, sub-forms, etc.

UI.Layout creates a ‘page-layout’ that has auto-sizing ‘center pane’ surrounded by up to four collapsible and resizable ‘border panes’ (north, south, east & west). It can also create multiple headers & footers inside each pane.

For more complex layouts, you can nest layouts within layouts. Or use an iframe as a pane to create a ’sub-form’ that can have its own layout. The possibilities are unlimited – from simple fixed headers or sidebars to rich applications. Layouts are created from existing elements (divs, iframes, etc), so UI.Layout will degrade gracefully.

Combined it with other jQuery UI widgets to create a sophisticated application. There are no limitations or issues – this widget is ready for production use. You can checkout Demos page for a list of all demos and samples.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://layout.jquery-dev.net/
License: GPL, MIT License

• 6 Comments

WireIt is an open-source javascript library to create web wirable interfaces like Yahoo! Pipes for dataflow applications, visual programming languages or graphical modeling. Wireit uses the YUI library (2.6.0) for DOM and events manipulation, and excanvas for IE support of the canvas tag. It currently supports Firefox 1.5+, Safari 2.0+, IE 7.0, Opera 9+ and Chrome 0.2.x.

Requirements: YUI Framework
Demo: http://javascript.neyric.com/wireit/
License: MITLicense

• 6 Comments

Easy Slider enables images or any content to slide horizontally or vertically on click. It is configurable with css alone. So, basically you link to plugin file, set the content up and style it with css. First you’ll need content and it should be wrapped inside a div containing an ordered list where each list item represents one slide.

You can basically put whatever you want inside list items as long as you keep the same dimensions. Script automatically adds “previous” and “next” buttons in form of span elements with nested anchors just after the content element.

On each click (previous or next button) script calculates the current “position” and makes a one step in requested direction. So, the slider jumps from one slide to another. Once it reaches the end (last slide), the “next” button fades away and re-appears only if “previous” button is clicked again. Same goes for sliding towards the beginning.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://cssglobe.com/post/3783/jquery-plugin-easy-image-or-content-slider
License: MIT, GPL License

• 6 Comments

Sinatra is a Ruby “micro framework” for developing Web applications. It seems to have reached critical mass – it’s on the cusp of becoming really popular.

This is a good time to check it out and see where it could fit into your own projects. Lots of awesome articles about Sinatra, Sinatra apps, and various links and resources have cropped up over the past few months.

RubyInside shows us the best links and resources for Sinatra they have found on Sinatra: 29 Links and Resources For A Quicker, Easier Way to Build Webapps. Most of which you should find useful as you start to explore Sinatra in detail.

The resources includes Tutorials and Presentations, Sinatra Applications, Deployment, Sinatra Blogging Engines and Sites Built on Sinatra.

Requirements: Sinatra
Demo: http://www.rubyinside.com/sinatra…
License: MIT License

• 0 Comments

The jQuery sIFR Plugin is an addon for jQuery that makes it easy to replace text in a web page with flash text (sIFR, Scalable Inman Flash Replacement). It gives you a function in javascript to replace text in a web page dynamically with sIFR text, using native jQuery functionality along with the jQuery Flash Plugin.

The jQuery sIFR plugin is fully configurable and can choose how little or how much you want to customize the display of the sIFRed text. It uses jQuery’s native functionality to eliminate the otherwise code redundancy in SWFObject, meaning you get a much smaller filesize and even faster loading.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jquery.thewikies.com/sifr/
License: GPL, MIT License

• 7 Comments

We can create javascript treeview component quickly with jsTree. It accepts various data sources including predefined HTML, JSON and XML. User can open, close, rename, create, delete nodes easily. jsTree supports drag & drop and multiple select as well. And also, jsTree supports easy CSS customization of icons, dots, background, fonts & sizes. So that you can create your own unique javascript treeview component easily.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.jstree.com/jsTree/examples/
License: MIT, GPL License

• 6 Comments