Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

Komodo Media has developed over 80 refined, amazing social networking icons for the top networks around. The Social Network Icon Pack consists of 40+ 16 pixel x 16 pixel icons and 40+ 32 pixel by 32 pixel icons all in 32-bit PNG format. Social Network Icon Pack is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.komodomedia.com/blog/2009/06/social…
License: Creative Commons 3.0 License

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MegaZine 3 is an open source pageflip/flashbook engine, written completely in AS3. It generates an interactive book, which can then be flipped through by the user. MegaZine 3 uses a completely dynamic approach, allowing full configuration through an external XML file. This makes it easy to set up books even if you do not even own the Flash IDE.

MegaZine 3 automatically generates a control bar that allows jumping to every individual page. It also generates thumbnails for the pages, to make it easier for the user to find a page again, or getting a first impression.

Requirements: Flash Required
Demo: http://megazine.mightypirates.de/demo/index.html
License: LGPL License

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While mimicking the OS X dock and stacks isn’t new, it’s certainly not common. Nettuts has shown us a few ways to do “Outside the Box” Navigation with OS X style docks and stacks navigation.

jQuery OS X Stack and Drop Stack is my favorite navigation style out of the three shown in the tutorial. It’s super lightweight (~1kb). It might be a little awkward having the navigation in the bottom right or left of the browser window but it would certainly be creative and save lots of space.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://nettuts.s3.amazonaws.com/358_jquery…
License: License Free

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Since 2005, Socialcast has been a leader in the development of on-demand collaboration software. Socialcast unites traditional intranet features with social networking technology to empower employees to expand, create and share knowledge across the enterprise. Socialcast is a simple, secure, free collaboration tool that helps employees communicate in real time.

Recently, Sociacast has announced that all new corporate networks will be free to join and use for employees and site administrators. Additionally, administration rights for these networks are completely free. Administrators can manage user access and customize the site’s look and feel at no charge.

This exciting news opens up access to Socialcast’s Enterprise-ready tool for thousands of organizations across the globe. Socialcast is simple to use for new companies and their employees, and at the same time provides a robust, useful and customized experience for companies that may be using other free tools on the market.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.socialcast.com/
License: License Free

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Less is Leaner css. Less extends css by adding: variables, mixins, operations and nested rules. Less uses existing css syntax. This means you can migrate your current .css files to .less in seconds and there is virtually no learning curve.

Variables
Variables allow you to specify widely used values in a single place, and then re-use them throughout the style sheet, making global changes as easy as changing one line of code.

Mixins
Mixins allow you to embed all the properties of a class into another class by simply including the class name as one of its properties. It’s just like variables, but for whole classes.

Nested Rules
Rather than constructing long selector names to specify inheritance, in Less you can simply nest selectors inside other selectors. This makes inheritance clear and style sheets shorter.

Operations
Are some elements in your style sheet proportional to other elements? Operations let you add, subtract, divide and multiply property values and colors, giving you the power to do create complex relationships between properties.

Requirements: Ruby on Rails
Demo: http://lesscss.org/
License: Apache License

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Hemlock is an open-source web development framework, focused on allowing easy development of real-time, many-to-many apps. Hemlock follows the inspiration of Ruby web frameworks like Rails and Merb. It can be used for applications such as games, workspace collaboration and education.

A client registers for message and is only contacted when a relevant one arrives. By combining the scalability of XMPP with the flexibility of Flash, Hemlock allows you to create web applications that are more dynamic, interactive and exciting.

Hemlock 0.1 is now ready for download. Hemlock includes an example app called DrawingDemoContainer. This shows off two of the starter HemlockWidgets: a basic chatroom, and a multi-user canvas for drawing pictures. Either of these can be reused, modified, and skinned across Hemlock apps. You can learn more about Hemlock and the setup process in Learn section.

Requirements: Flash Required
Demo: http://hemlock-kills.com/
License: MIT License

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WordPress is one of the most popular CMS for blogging. There are lots of Useful Plugins and Free Themes available on the internet. Some of them are very beautiful and useful, some of them are not.

BlogPerfume has compiled a list of “45 Best Free WordPress Themes of All Time” and “45 Essential WordPress Plugins for Pro Blogging“. I am sure you would find them useful if you are using WordPress as your blogging platform.

45 Best Free WordPress Themes of All Time

45 Essential WordPress Plugins for Pro Blogging

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Ever wanted those flash iPhone on/off toggle switches on your webpage? Love jQuery? Well then Thomas Reynolds has got something special for you. iPhone Style Checkboxes implements the iPhone toggles as replacements for standard HTML checkboxes.

Simply run the script and your site will be updated with these specialized controls. Best of all, the underlying checkbox is not touched and backend system will never know the difference. The change is purely visual.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://awardwinningfjords.com/2009/06/16/iphone-style-checkboxes.html
License: License Free

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Many websites offer syndication formats such as RSS, JSON, or XML based services to allow for easy content delivery. But what happens when a website doesn’t offer one of these services? How do you syndicate content from a website that doesn’t offer a news feed?

Nettus has gaven us a a simple solution using JQuery’s AJAX functions and PHP’s cURL library that allows us to syndicate external content. This is a simple solution if you require content from an external website.

Although JQuery’s easy syntax and CSS-selectors give us the convenience of styling and selecting what we want from the client-side, this is not speed optimized. Remember you have no control over whether or not the content creator changes what tags and classes they use, it is always best to style general elements that will be commonly used.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/php/how-to-syndicate-content…
License: License Free

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jQueryforDesigners has added a scrolling carousel that worked in the same way the carousel worked on the Apple Mac ads page. They have published a tutorial which walk through the fundamentals of scrolling carousel, and how they have created jQuery Infinite Carousel.

The trick is building the DOM with the cloned nodes, because we’ve cloned the start of the list to the end of the list, when we scroll off the last items, it looks like we’ve looped back round. Once the animation completes, we change the scrollLeft position back to the real first items.

This scrollLeft isn’t visible to the user since the overflow is hidden, and so it creates the effect of being infinitely sliding from left or right.

Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://jqueryfordesigners.com/demo/infinite-carousel.html
License: License Free

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