Dojo is an Open Source DHTML toolkit written in JavaScript. Dojo allows you to easily build dynamic capabilities into web pages and any other environment that supports JavaScript sanely. With Dojo you can build degradable user interfaces more easily, prototype interactive widgets quickly, and animate transitions. Dojo’s event system, I/O APIs, and generic language enhancement form the basis of a powerful programming environment. When you write scripts with Dojo, you can include as little or as much of the available APIs as you need to suit your needs.
Requirements: Safari 2.0.x, Opera 9.0+, Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 1+, Konqueror 3.5+
Demo: http://dojotoolkit.org/demos
License: Academic Free License, BSD License
Ext is a JavaScript framework for building web applications. In early 2006, Jack Slocum began working on a set of extension utilities for the Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) library. These extensions were quickly organized into an independent library of code and distributed under the name “yui-ext“. By the end of the year, the library had gained so much in popularity that the name was changed simply to Ext, a reflection of its maturity and independence as a framework.
Requirements: Internet Explorer 6+, FireFox 1.5+, Safari 2+, Opera 9+
Demo: http://extjs.com/deploy/ext/docs/index.html
License: LGPL License
jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. You can animate hiding, showing, and toggling the display of elements easily. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript. It is lightweight (20kb) which supports CSS 1-3 and basic Xpath syntax. If you have not tried it yet, please try it, I am sure you will be amazed.
Interface is a collection of rich interface components which utilizes the lightweight JavaScript library jQuery. With this components you can build rich client web applications and interfaces with the same simplicity as writing JavaScript with jQuery.
Requirements: Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 1.5+, Safari 2.0+, Opera 9.0+
Demo: JQuery – http://jquery.com Interface – http://interface.eyecon.ro/demos
License: MIT and GPL License
Script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly. You can implement different modern effects easily, for example Fade in/out, Blind in/out, Drag and drop, Slide in/out, highlight, AutoComplete and Sortable List, etc. It is one of the most popular animation framworkm which is really powerful and similar to Mootools, however the size of the package is larger than Mootools. Here is the sample code.
new Effect.Opacity(‘my_element’, { duration: 2.0, transition: Effect.Transitions.linear, from: 1.0, to: 0.5 });
Requirements: Required Prototype
Demo: http://wiki.script.aculo.us/scriptaculous/show/Demos
License: MIT License
When we are coding with javascript especially with some cool effects, e.g. Fade in/out, slide up/down, drag and drop effects, and etc… We need a javascript framework to allow us doing simple Ajax request and all these cool effects easily. MooTools lets you get the job done efficiently and effectively. It is a compact, modular, Object-Oriented javascript framework designed to make writing extensible and compatible code easier and faster. Compared to Prototype 1.5 + Scriptaculous (excluding unittest/controls) 60800k, MooTools is only 34165k.
Requirements: Safari, Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox, Opera and Camino
Demo: http://demos.mootools.net
License: MIT License
When we are developing web application using PHP, it is not a one day process. Sometimes, we spent few months writing PHP code. If the code we wrote were very messy, it is very hard to understand what we wrote previously. So that, we need a PHP framework to work in a structured and rapid manner.
CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP which uses commonly known design patterns like ActiveRecord, Association Data Mapping, Front Controller and MVC. The goal is to provide a structured framework that enables PHP users at all levels to rapidly develop robust web applications, without any loss to flexibility.
Requirements: HTTP server, PHP 4.3.2+, Database Engine
Demo: http://manual.cakephp.org/
License: MIT License
Prototype framework enables you to deal with Ajax in a very easy way. It simplifies the way of using Javascript and deals in a smart way with JavaScript code returned from a server and provides helper classes for polling. And also, it is cross-browser compatible.
The biggest part of the Prototype framework are its DOM extensions. Prototype adds many convenience methods to elements returned by the $() function: for instance, you can write $('editForm').addClassName('active').show() to get the element with the ID ‘editForm‘, add a class name to it and show it (if it was previously hidden).
This framework can save you more than 50% on coding javascript and developing an ajax driven with large amount of DOM manipulations web site. If you have not tried it, please have a look. A well-defined framework is needed for developing a professional web application.
Requirements: Any Browsers
Demo: http://www.prototypejs.org/api
License: MIT License
Google Gears is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using JavaScript APIs. Due to the concern about internet security, building web application which store and serve sensitive information locally on users’ own computers are very useful.
- Store and serve application resources locally
- Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
- Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness
It is a similar idea with Apollo which enable offline use of web applications. From now on, users can store data locally in their database on their own computer. So that some users can use the web application they like, at the same time prevent their sensitive information being hacked by storing their information locally.
Requirements: Windows XP / Vista, Internet Explorer 6.0+, Firefox 1.5+
Demo: http://code.google.com/apis/gears/sample.html
License: New BSD License
Apollo is the code name for a cross-operating system runtime being developed by Adobe that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) to the desktop.
Web Application Developement is growing faster than ever with the support of Ajax. Users do not need to reload every page in order to interact with the web application. Therefore, web application is becoming more popular. However, some people still aware of the security of online application. They are worrying that some hackers might be able to steal their sensitive information form the web site.
Now web application developer can use their web development skill to create a destop application for users with Apollo. Users can download desktop version of the application. It is really a good news to web application developer.
Requirements: Windows XP (SP2) / Vista, Mac OSX 10.4.8 on PPC or Intel
Demo: http://www.adobe.com/go/apollo_samples
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
