Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

You can find a tool for just about anything online, there’s only one problem: they cost money, and in some cases, lots of it! Many online tools offer a free basic package for anyone to use, but these packages are often strictly limited, rendering these tools practically useless until you stump up the cash. In most cases, however, there are free alternatives available, many of which are very, very good indeed.

Below, you’ll find 15 Best Free Online Tools for Web Design and Development. Rather than narrow our focus, we’ve covered various aspects of the design and development process, to include the admin side of freelancing or running a small business.

No two tools listed below perform the same function; we’ve chosen our favorite tool for doing each job. You’ll find the best free online tool for project management, one for invoicing, one for screen sharing, one for instant messaging, one for mocking up layouts, and much more besides.

1. Redmine

Redmine is a great, free alternative to other pricey project management apps available online. It does pretty much everything you could possibly desire, albeit in a less polished way than some of its more expensive rivals. With Redmine, you can manage a large number of projects simultaneously, defining personal roles and assigning tasks to specific team members if necessary. You can track time and issues, create Gannt charts and calendars, create project wikis and forums, and manage documents and files.

2. Billing Boss

Billing Boss is a fantastic, free invoicing tool, designed especially for small businesses and freelancers, which lets you send an unlimited number of invoices to an unlimited number of clients, quickly and easily. All of your invoices are saved automatically and catalogued in a logical, understandable way. Billing Boss supports multiple currencies, is integrated with PayPal and is mobile friendly. You can even share your account with your bookkeeper or accountant.

3. Yuuguu

Yuuguu is a multi-platform screen-sharing tool, which allows Windows, Mac and Linux users to collaborate. You can quickly initiate an instant messaging session with a client or team member, sharing each others’ screens at the touch of a button. It’s perfect for working together on document presentations or for writing and editing documents in a group.

With Yuuguu, there’s nothing to download at either end, which means you can start sharing and communicating in seconds. The free Yuuguu package includes unlimited use with other Yuuguu users and 100mins/month use with non-Yuuguu users, as well as up to 5 participants in a single session. (more…)

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PHP hide_email() is a PHP function to protect the E-mail address you publish on your website against bots or spiders that index or harvest E-mail addresses for sending you spam. It uses a substitution cipher with a different key for every page load.

PHP hide_email() encrypts your E-mail address and generates the javascript that decrypts it. Most bots and spiders can’t execute javascript and that is what makes this work. A visitor of your web page will not notice that you used this script as long as he/she has javascript enabled. The visitor will see “[javascript protected email address]” in stead of the E-mail address if he/she has javascript disabled.

You can also use the generator if you have no PHP support on your web server. Change the E-mail address into your own E-mail address and press “Generate”. Cut and paste the generated XHTML into your own web page.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.maurits.vdschee.nl/php_hide_email/
License: License Free

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New York Times online had an article which showed a road in Brooklyn that had been reconstructed to make it safer and more pleasing to the eye. To show the difference in the reconstruction project, they showed a before and after picture using Flash that let the visitor drag a slider over the images, which were sandwiched with one on top of the other, so that you could easily see how dramatic the changes were.

CatchMyFame found this very useful and immediately created Before/After jQuery Plugin for the same purpose. The possibilities for this plugin are endless. Doctors can have before and after images of patients, Photoshop users can show the before and after differences between images, remodelers can show the before and after images of projects and on and on. This plugin weighs in at only 7K and can be used multiple times on a page.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.catchmyfame.com/jquery/demo/8/
License: Creative Commons License

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ColourLovers has released a lovely web application called Themeleon, for your Twitter profile. You can use themeleon to customize the way Twitter looks for you and how your profile looks to others. Use any of the more than 600k seamless background patterns and 1 million color palettes on COLOURlovers or customize any of the colors or patterns to get just the right design for you.

Simply login to Twitter, choose your background (pattern or photo) and your colours. You can preview your changes instantly. Drag and drop colors to arrange the order they’re in your pattern or profile settings. Save your settings and share your work!

Requirements: -
Demo: http://colourlovers.com/themeleon/twitter
License: License Free

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HotGloo is an Online Wireframe Application. With the help of the elements you can create a whole world out of wireframes. Just drag and drop, scale, link, name and rename them – it’s super easy and intuitive.

You can manage your projects: edit, comment & share any moment of the developing process with colleagues and clients. You can also add editors & reviewers to your projects within just a view steps and as you like. HotGloo is free for the beta testing phase. However they are thinking about a reasonable monthly pricing model for after the beta testing stage.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://hello.hotgloo.com/
License: License Free

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jParse is a jQuery plugin that allows you to quickly and easily parse XML. With the jParse jQuery plugin, you can parse XML that is returned from an jQuery Ajax request. jQuery .ajax method does not allow for cross domain Ajax requests, so the XML that you would like to parse must be on the same domain from which you are working.

You can pull many types of information from an XML document like the value of an XML node, the value of an attribute of an XML node, or the number of <items> in an XML document. jParse jQuery Plugin has been tested on Firefox 2+, IE 6+, Safari 3+ and Opera 9+.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jparse.kylerush.net/demo
License: MIT License

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On the internet there are many applications and sites that help people to improve the way they work. Notable is an interesting result which is based on giving users an opening to use a feedback program which is created for teams that need to assist in improving many websites’ design, content, and code. Notable, designed by ZURB, makes sharing web page design and collecting feedback very simple.

You can give feedback quickly and easily on design, content and code of a website or application on any page. One of the finest things about this tool is that now it is easy to contribute with any page of a website. You can do it without leaving the browser.

Using this product, your team will be able to participate through visual feedback on screenshots. It is a page capture utility. It has got strong annotation features which allow you pinpoint copy, design elements and even code which needs to be tweaked. Notable is the best comprehensive feedback tool on the Web.

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MockFlow is an online tool for creating wireframes of software and websites. It helps to enhance your planning process by enabling to quickly design and share interactive UI mockups. It also comes with ready-to-use 70+ Components and 200+ icons, all designed to suit wireframing.

Nothing to download or install, create and access your mockups from anywhere. You can share your mockups in private/public mode and get feedback from your clients & users, As simple as sharing an URL. The Basic account is completely free with 10 MB storage.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://mockflow.com/
License: License Free

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Tutorialzine is going to create a pure jQuery & CSS Twitter Ticker which utilizes Twitter’s Search API. It will show your or your friends’ latest tweets, and will not require any server side code or databases. As a result, the ticker will be easily included into any web page and easily modified to your likings.

To change the twitter accounts that are shown in the ticker, you’ll need to modify the tweetUsers array. If you provide two or more twitter names, their tweets will be shown together. Only the 50 most recent tweets from the past 7 days will be returned.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://demo.tutorialzine.com/2009/10/jquery-twitter-ticker/demo.html
License: License Free

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punypng is a free tool that dramatically reduces page load times by reducing the file size of an image without any loss of quality. punypng uses several web optimization techniques to reduce the file sizes of your images. It first analyzes the content of your image and figures out the best image format to use.

Depending on the file, punypng will automatically convert your GIF into a PNG format and then further compress that. For JPEGs, sometimes it’s better to make it a PNG, and other times it’s better to keep it as JPEG and use jpeg-tran to optimize it. punypng makes all those decisions for you and ensures the best possible results.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.gracepointafterfive.com/punypng/
License: License Free

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