RestfulX is a framework that brings a clean, REST-inspired approach to Adobe Flex and AIR development and makes integration with RESTful Web Services as simple as possible.
If you want to use Ruby on Rails, Merb, Sinatra, CouchDB or Google App Engine and you want a UI that puts the word Rich into Rich Internet Applications give RestfulX a spin. RestfulX only takes 5 minutes to get started.
Instead of WSDL, SOAP or other complex specifications you’ll find a few common conventions that help you to abstract your application from repetitive CRUD code and switch/synchronize between various data providers with minimal effort.
Requirements: –
Demo: http://restfulx.github.com/
License: MIT License
Project Icon Set contains 18 beautiful icons related to project management. The set includes the icons address card, bar graph, calendar, clock / time, conference device, contact, documents, draft, mail, marker, milestone, notes, portfolio, project plan / gant chart, search / find, sitemap / flowchart, todo and user / resource.
The files are transparent PNGs, and vector Fireworks source files are included as well. As always, the set is completely free and may be used for any private or commercial project without any restrictions whatsoever.
Requirements: –
Demo: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/27/project-icon…
License: License Free
FullCalendar is a jQuery plugin that provides a full-sized, drag & drop calendar. It uses AJAX to fetch events on-the-fly for each month and is easily configured to use your own feed format (an extension is provided for Google Calendar). It is visually customizable and exposes hooks for user-triggered events (like clicking or dragging an event).
FullCalendar is great for displaying events, but it isn’t a complete solution for event content-management. Beyond dragging an event to a different day, you cannot change an event’s name, time-of-day, or other associated data. It is up to you to add this functionality through FullCalendar’s event hooks.
Requirements: jQuery and jQuery UI Framework
Demo: http://arshaw.com/fullcalendar/
License: MIT, GPL License
It is a good news to web application developers. Google Analytics Data Export API beta is now publicly available to all Analytics users. The Data Export API is easy to use and provides read-only access to all your Analytics data. Any data that’s available through the standard Analytics web interface is available through the API.
Developers can integrate Google Analytics into their existing products and create standalone applications that they sell. Users could see snapshots of their Analytics data in developer created dashboards and gadgets. Individuals and business owners will have opportunities to access their Google Analytics information in a variety of new ways with Google Analytics Data Export API.
For example, you can accessing Analytics from your desktop with Polaris from now on. Polaris is a cross-platform desktop widget for Google Analytics. With 8 standard reports it’s the easiest way keep your data always instantly available. The rich interface and swift navigation make it a pleasure to use.
Source: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/04/attention-developers…
Code reviews play an integral part in the development process for making quality software. We can find out security holes, memory leaks, poor queries and heavy file structures from code reviews. Unfortunately, these reviews are also very time consuming.
We spend a lot of time echoing queries, memory stats and objects to the browser just to see how they are being used in the code. To reduce this repetition, Ryan Campbell has invested some time creating the PHP Quick Profiler (PQP). It’s a small tool (think Firebug for PHP) to provide profiling and debugging related information to developers without needing them to add a lot of programmatic overhead to their code.
Now, we only need to toggle one config setting to true and we can have access to an automated tool to help create a faster and more consistent review experience. Since anyone can use it, PQP also gives the initial developer an idea of where their code stands before the review.
Requirements: –
Demo: http://particletree.com/examples/pqp/
License: License Free
Soh Tanaka has written a tutorial about making a Fancy Thumbnail Hover Effect with jQuery. Basically all they are doing is animating the thumbnail’s size, absolute positioning coordinates (vertical alignment with css), and padding when we hover over. During this animation, they also switch the value of the z-index, so that the selected image stays on top of the rest.
It may not be as smooth as the flash version, but its definitely a neat effect. If you switch up the absolute potion coordinates, you can create various ways the hover effect pops out as well.
Requirements: jQuery Framework
Demo: http://www.sohtanaka.com/web-design/examples/image-zoom/
License: License Free
As a designer, we all have experienced the hard time of finding new ideas and inspirations. That’s why Nick La from WebDesignerWall has chosen to talk about this topic in his presentation at the FOWD conference. In this post, he has done a recap of the keynotes – Finding Inspiration From Your Environment. Read on to find out how his work habits and environment influence his design.
Next time you are outside, try to pay more attention to you environment, you may find a lot of interesting things that you can incorporate into your design. Enjoy your life and design more beautiful things!
Source: http://www.webdesignerwall.com/general/finding-inspiration/
Ext Core is a cross-browser JavaScript library for building dynamic web pages. It is lightweight with high performance. The code is clear and maintainable. Ext Core is intuitive with easy to use API as well. You can easily build Carousel, Lightbox, Menu, JSONP, Simple Tabs with Ext Core.
The Carousel example provides a widget for browsing a set of objects. It can be configured to meet any of your specific requirements – auto-play, animations, custom navigation dynamic content and more. The Lightbox example provides a widget used to overlay images on the current page.
The Menu example provides a widget that converts an existing list of links on the page to either a horizontal or vertical menu. The JSONP example shows how you can fetch JSON data from a different domain. It includes a class you can use to connect to any possible web service that supports the JSON format. The Simple Tabs example shows how you can create powerful navigation with only a few lines of code using Ext Core.
Requirements: Internet Explorer 6+, FireFox 1.5+, Safari 3+, Opera 9+
Demo: http://extjs.com/products/extcore/
License: MIT License
ProFolio is an elegantly designed portfolio for artists, designers, photographers, or anyone that has creative visual pieces to share. It was designed to be professional, elegant, clean & simple. You will see the background of the page with the unobtrusive portfolio navigation to the left. Simple click on portfolio to view the artist’s work, and the other items will fade as small previews of the artwork fades into focus.
ProFolio is built with HTML instead of Flash so that search engines can add your portfolio to their indexes. It works in Firefox 2+, Internet Explorer 7+, Safari. ProFolio is also easily customized, extremely simple to install. However, it’s free for a limited time only.
Requirements: Firefox 2+, Internet Explorer 7+, Safari
Demo: http://profolio.sticktacular.com/
License: Free for a limited time
Ethan Marcotte has raised an issue about Fluid Grids, that working with non-fixed layouts can be more difficult once you introduce fixed-width elements into them. By default, an image element that’s sized at, say, 500px doesn’t exactly play nicely with an container that can be as large as 800px, but as small as 100px. What’s a designer to do?
He has wriiten a little script that makes Fluid Images. In short, it cycles through your document, swaps out the images for a transparent GIF, and applies the AlphaImageLoader property to each one. Then, whenever the window’s resized, the script automatically recalculates the proper, proportional height and width of the image, and resizes the spacer graphic accordingly. You can see it in action, and download the script.
Requirements: –
Demo: http://unstoppablerobotninja.com/entry/fluid-images/
License: License Free
