webtools

Here I’m goiing to write down and update by the time a set of usefull small online and offline tools and goodies that might be usefull for one who want to learn, create or improve his “web interface” author abilities

.htaccess online editor

http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml
easy online tools for creating custom .htaccess files

Embded FLV video player

I’ve been sneeking around the web for a free flash player and with reference from Menalto’s Gallery discussions I found JEROENWIJERING.COM website with its FLV MEDIA PLAYER. For noncommercial use its free and has lot of nice features:

• high customizeability through supported flashvars (variables) that you can set to customize the player’s UI and functions
• it supports playlists supported playlist formats
• you can use a large list of all third-party plugins for the FLV Media Player for use in third party apps like Joomla, WordPress etc

on site can be found nice collection of tutorials where you can start with player features exploration

• A tutorial on embedding the player in your site.
• A tutorial with all functions of the javascript API.
• A tutorial on adding captions and an audiodescription (accessibility).
• A tutorial on FLV encoding and video formats.

For quickstart use web based wizard for easy player setup which creates embedable list of parameters for your web page

Some common info regarding flash video is on wikipedia, Adobe website (flash video central, encoding calculator) and a few posts bellow you can find online services for conversion to flv format

ajax libraries and frameworks

This post is far from to be a research on what’s on the market. I just needed to add web 2.0 capabilities to a small microsite and thus made a web search. What was important to me is

• easy to learn
• cross browser stability and compatibility
• good documentation
• and of course peoples reference
• as open licence as possible (GPL or so)

so here is the result. I will not explain difference between library and framework here as now I do not see clear boundary what is what. In easy way as I do understand it libs are for quick solving frameworks for more complex projects so grouping in post is based clearly what authors tell about their creations. Nice informational discussion on what to choose can be found here

Same as most of people in that discussion I ended with jquery. Quick and easy for my need

Libraries

jquery

jquery ss very powerfull js library with lots of AJAX functions.

“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. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.”

Lot of other scripts that can add interactivity to a website is based on jquery.jquery has also its own standardized UI plugins and there are other third party plugins which are in fact just codes built on top of jquery like this image carousel

Thorough post on how to use jquery is on WebDesigner’s wall site here

script.aculo.us

script.aculo.us

“script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use cross-browser user interfaceJavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly”

Frameworks

Mootools

http://mootools.net/

“Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API“

The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

“The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources. All components in the YUI Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses”

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/download.html

“Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript’s lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile”

PrototypeJS

http://www.prototypejs.org/

“Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.

Featuring a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.”

Collection of nice AJAX applets

nice looking simple downloadable ajax and dhtml code
http://miniajax.com/

ajax modal window aka lightbox

AJAX modal window

modern way of displaying modal window using ajax

http://www.synapsesinc.com/lightbox/
http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox/
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/
http://www.ibegin.com/blog/p_ibox.html
http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox

and comparative blog article with list of lightboxes and comments about them

Preload images
here you can pick one you like and customize it for use in one of lighboxes
http://loadinfo.net/