Nested is a jQuery plugin for generating multi-column grid layouts with zero gaps.

The plugin creates a matrix of all elements, builds a multi column grid and tries to fill any gaps by reordering the elements.

There are various other solutions out there that does the same. However, Nested applies one small action: it resizes any element at the bottom of the grid to guarantee the gap-free layout.

Its usage is very easy by simply targeting a container element through a jQuery function.

And, various options exist for customization like enabling/disabling animation, min. number of columns and more.

Microsoft Excel, Google Spreadsheets and similar spreadsheet apps have powerful formula functions.

Formula.js is a JavaScript library that brings most of these formulas to web developers.

The formulas are listed under multiple categories like date/time, text, logical, financial and much more.

Also, besides client-side it works with nodejs (to be released soon) as well.

PredictionIO is an open source prediction engine that allows developers to implement predictive features to their sites/apps.

Such predictive features can be the recommendations of videos, articles, deals, photos or documents, restaurants, etc. that are specific to a given user (which we see in many sites).

The application is designed to work with big data (supports Hadoop, Mahout, Cascading and Scalding) and has SDKs for major programming/scripting languages (Ruby, Python, Java and -soon- PHP).

It has a REST API for integrating the prediction features into apps and an admin interface helps setting up everything.

PredictionIO can be installed on any platform (runs on JVM), it is in the beta phase but still very valuable considering it is hard to find an alternative in that field.

CanvasQuery is a JavaScript library that eases working with HTML5 canvas and adds lots of new methods to it.

The library provides a jQuery-like syntax and methods added are mostly for image manipulation (like masks, blur, crop or fill mask).

It also brings blend modes, new shapes, text wrapping and much more.

CanvasQuery can be used with or without jQuery, has methods for color conversion and can be extended with plugins.

SVG.js is a JavaScript library for working (manipulating and animating) with SVG without any complexity.

The library is standalone, very lightweight in size (5kb gzipped) and has lots of features.

There are built-in methods for creating shapes (rectangle, circle, polygon, etc.) or defining images.

They can all be animated with size, position, color or any other properties and be interacted with standard JavaScript events.

It has support for grouping elements for mass manipulations, filling them is possible and a unified API simplifies working with the library.

SVG.js is extendable with plugins and there are already various plugins (like dragging or easing).

w2ui is a jQuery UI library with many widgets for creating desktop-like and data-driven web applications.

The library comes as plugins for each widget so that you can choose which ones to use.

It consists of the following widgets: layout, sidebar, toolbar, grid, popup, tabs, forms and field controls.

They all play well with each other, make use of HTML5-CSS3 and have powerful APIs for controlling all the aspects of them.

w2ui is very well-documented, has lots of demos to play with and it is being improved regularly.

We have probably all seen the comics (usually related to web, design and programming) created by the xkcd.

Comix I/O is an open source library for creating them with standard web technologies.

It is built on top of Yeoman and works by converting an HTML with a specific format into comics elements.

And, the library comes with a web-based editor for instantly seeing the output of the HTML.

cgSceneGraph is an object-oriented and easy-to-use JavaScript animation framework that is built on top of HTML5 canvas.

It is created with professional apps and games in mind, works cross-browser and has lots of built-in nodes like images, text, buttons, shapes, etc.

The framework is capable of managing complex scenes, supports mouse and touch events, has attributes for draggable + resizable and comes with a collision + particle system.

There is also support for asynchronous image loading, color manipulation and much more.

Today, it is getting much more common to support a Q&A platform on your site rather than a forum.

Q&A systems are much more “to-the-point”, targeted to find the best answer and easier to use for both parties (users asking questions and the ones answering them).

Answerbase is a quality hosted platform for adding such Q&A interaction that can be integrated into any website with ease (there is single sign-on-auth support and a full-featured API).

The application provides customization on each functionality like defining “who can ask questions or send replies (anyone or only users)”, there is a points system which makes experts more significant.

It has a powerful admin panel that enables the system admin to control all the details + content, works on mobile and integrates nicely into social platforms.

Also, it has widgets for listing and/or starting the conversation from any web page. The widgets list include:

• Q&A tab (for placing a button that displays the “ask  a question” form)
• Ask a question (for embedding the form into anywhere we prefer)
• Full feature Q&A (a widget to ask questions and view popular questions/answers)
• Question list (display topic-specific questions)
• Expert list (present topic-specific experts)

Answerbase is very good at handling such uses:

Online communities

Q&A websites can be the community itself or just a part of it. They attract new users so easily as users are eager to register for getting answers and the content generated regularly attracts new visitors (from search engines).

Private collaboration

Companies can use it for creating and sharing private-only content and knowledge-base by providing access to only registered/approved users.

Social commerce & customer support

Like mentioned, such a Q&A website can easily be the pre-sales or support community of a product/service. And, if supported actively by the customer support staff, it’ll be a good place to turn questions into sales.

And, within time, it’ll become a “pool of answers” where potential customers won’t even need to contact the staff.

The giveaway

Answerbase is giving away 3 annual Business Plan subscriptions. In order to win one of the annual licenses:

• sign-up for a free trial of the Answerbase service
• submit your Answerbase site name to the comments

Winners will be picked randomly with the query below 1 week later (29 Jan 2013):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=3620 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck everyone.

The winners

Here they are:

• @Magnum Themes
• @Derek
• @der_robert

Congratulations.

Squash is an open source application, that is built by Square (with Ruby), for finding and killing bugs.

The application is multi-user, has client libraries for different systems (Ruby on Rails, Objective-C, etc.) and can catch + record errors when they happen.

Once they are caught, it sends them to the API, logs them and triggers any defined actions like sending e-mails.

Squash has a web interface that displays bug information and guides developers to locate + fix them. It is possible to collaborate through it, comment  to bugs or assign them to teammates.

Also, the application also visualizes the occurrences of bugs so that their frequency can be analyzed better.