Open Source Resources for Web Application Developers

An Animated Cartoon Robot with jQuery was created by layering several empty divs over each other with transparent PNGs as background images.

The backgrounds were animated at different speeds using a jQuery plug-in by Alexander Farkas. This effect simulates a faux 3-D animated background dubbed the “parallax effect” originating from old-school side scrolling video games.

The robot is comprised similarly to the background animation scene by layering several DIVs together to create the different robot pieces. The final step, was animating the robot with some jQuery.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://robot.anthonycalzadilla.com/
License: License Free

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Shout’Em is platform on which you can easily start co-branded microbloging social networking service. Something simple as Twitter or with more features like Pownce. Networks on Shout’Em are “lightweight social networks”. They have small set of features: microblogging, links and photo sharing, geo location sharing and mobile browser support.

Shout’Em is the service that want’s to make your job that much easier. With features such as posting links, photos as well as geolocating and mobile interfaces, it’s the easiest way to get your own microblogging service up and running. This lets bloggers and small companies get back to what’s important – creating value, while letting Shout’Em do all the hard (technical) work. Scalable, they’ve made sure of it.

Anybody can use Shout’Em. From single person building up a community for his friends, to large corporations providing nice new service to their existing user base. Use the invitation code “doneright” to register and create your own social network now.

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

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Compfight is a home brewed flickr search tool specifically for the advertising / design community. The rails based ajax search bar pulls in a flickr feed at speed so that you can quickly scour the site.

You can restrict your search to the Creative Commons with “only”, and use the “commercial” setting for commercially usable assets. Blue bars indicate flickr is holding an original. Linger your cursor over the image to display dimensions. For nothing but originals switch Seek Original to “only.”

Source: http://www.compfight.com/

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All great websites have a great server behind them. NETTUS has shown us how to set up a dedicated web server for free (with Apache, MySQL, and PHP) using that old computer you have lying around the house and some free software. In the tutorial, you are going to learn the following things.

1) You are going to install the Ubuntu Server operating system. Ubuntu is easy to use with simple administration. It also has a rather large and extremely active community behind it, which makes getting support a breeze.

2) You are going to install an OpenSSH server. This allows you to administer your server from remote computers.

3) A LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) stack is going to be installed. This provides the backbone that will run your web site. Apache is the industry standard web server on Unix-based operating systems.

4) You are going to install a firewall to protect your server from unauthorized access.

Source: How to Setup a Dedicated Web Server for Free

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Cocomo is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications).

Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Cocomo allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Features of the Cocomo beta includes, VoIP Audio, Webcam Video, Chat, Multi-User Whiteboards, Real-Time File Sharing, User Management, Roles and Permissions and Robust Data Messaging. To get access to the public beta of Cocomo service and Cocomo SDK, you just need to create a developer account in Adobe.

Requirements: Flex
Demo: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/cocomo/
License: License Free

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Everybody loves free textures, and finding these and sharing is one thing that Abduzeedo staff loves to do. They have collected 29 Great Free Textures for designers. So check this great selection right now. From organic to metal rust, this list has lots of great textures.

Source: 29 Great Free Textures from Abduzeed

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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

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Nowadays, there are so many social bookmarking sites, e.g.Del.icio.us, Digg, Facebook, Fark, Mister-Wong, Newsvine, Reddit, Technorati, Slashdot, StumbleUpon and etc…

What do you to do if you want readers to promote your content? Encourage your visitors to submit their favorite stories directly to Digg? Not everyone uses Digg. You have to decide on which bookmarking site, if any, to dedicate your precious screen real-estate. It’s a hard choice. If you choose poorly your reader won’t vote—it’s not a single click coupled and out-of-sight means out-of-mind—and your content losses its chance to make it big. You have to choose your horse wisely.

On the other hand, if you take the bird-shot approach, it overloads your reader with branded badge after branded badge. It turns your page into the village bicycle. Not pretty. Nobody seems to have solved the problem yet.

If you could detect which social bookmarking sites your reader uses, on a per-reader basis, you could display only the badges they care about. SocialHistory.js enables you to detect which social bookmarking sites your visitors use. SocialHistory.js has a big list of the most popular social bookmarking sites which it checks against.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/socialhistoryjs/
License: License Free

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Sigma Grid is written in pure javascript, which is an Ajax data grid for displaying and inline editing data in a scrollable and sortable table. Sigma grid appearance is controled via a stand-alone CSS(style sheet). Developer can change grid skin by defining themes in different CSS files.

It supports online printing, to make it easy to print tabular data in WYSIWYG way. Paging enable developer display data page by page. Data will not be retrieved from server side until end user come to the page it is at. End user can sort records by clicking on the header of a column. Developer may define a new data type and a new way to sort.

Bar diagram, line diagram and pie diagram are built in. Translation tabular data into diagram without any server-side coding. Data filter enables sigma grid to present the data users are interested in only. And you can download and use Sigma Grid freely under LGPL license.

Requirements: -
Demo: http://www.sigmawidgets.com/products/sigma_grid2…
License: LGPL License

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I have found an interesting article called “Maxing out your Triangle” today. He found that most people take on new jobs, projects and hobbies for three reasons: 1. To learn something new, 2. To pay the bills, 3. Because they love doing it. These three things fulfill some of our very basic needs—they give us stability, excitement, ways to contribute and opportunities to grow.

Some people might ascribe to the philosophy that it’s okay to be at a well-paid-yet-crappy day job and use the remaining time and money enjoying your hobbies. you end up missing out on pieces of the bigger (triangular) pie. There’s a certain joy that comes from doing what you love, getting compensated for it and constantly learning new things in the process. Your goal should be to maximize each experience and try to cover as many new areas of the bigger triangle as possible.

Re-evaluate everything you’re working on. Grab a pen right now and draw a triangle for every job, project and hobby. Take a good hard look at each one. What can you do to get more out of that experience? If it’s not helping you max out the bigger triangle, drop it and find something else to spend your time on.

I am really glad that I am a freelance web developer. I can learn something new every day, and I love what I am doing, at the same time, it pays the bills as well. How about you?

Source: Maxing out your Triangle

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