NitobiBug is a browser-based, cross-browser JavaScript object logger script.

Using this debugger, you can inspect a JavaScript object to discover its members and the values of those members.

NitobiBug intelligently discerns simple types like strings, booleans, and numbers, from complex objects like error messages and objects.

For example, to inspect an object:

var myDomObject = document.getElementById('someID');
nitobi.Debug.log(myDomObject);

is enough. It will present you the results in a pop-up like draggable, expandable interface.

As there are nice tools for debugging like Firebug but few are cross browser, NitobiBug works on the following browsers:

• Internet Explorer 6+
• Firefox 1+
• Safari (Only tested 3+)
• Opera 8+

We generally have lots of content to present but can not load all of it at once as it may take too long.

I always loved the dZone’s Ajax content loading while scrolling feature and created a similar one using jQuery.

I’m pleased to share with WebResourcesDepot readers (Check the demo - scroll down to see new content in the demo)

This Ajax auto content loading can very be handy in almost every project. Don’t forget to bookmark it (del.icio.us link).

Download package includes a working demo coded with ASP with a test MySQL database. ASP code is just a simple query so you can switch it with a one you like easily.

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IETester is a free web browser allowing you to browse websites with the JavaScript & rendering engines of IE8 beta 1, IE7 IE 6 and IE5.5 on Vista and XP, as well as the installed IE in the same process.

You can also find a very nice tool for Internet Explorer named Debug Bar which includes a toolbar and a development bar +  a IE JavaScript debugger named Companion.js inside the same website.

Community Engine is a free, open-source social network plugin for Ruby on Rails applications. Drop it into your new or existing application, and you’ll instantly have all the features of a basic community site.

Features of this social network plugin:

• Authentication (sign up, log in)
• User profiles
• User search
• Blogs with tagging, categories and rich text editing
• Photo uploading and tagging
• “Clippings” - visual bookmarks
• Commenting and comment notification by e-mail (Blogs, profiles, photos, and clippings can be commented)
• Forums
• Friendships and activity feeds
• Favoriting of clippings and blog posts
• And more!

Most of the developers use cookies for storing data on the client side as they are cross browser & platform. But storing important data in cookies has some downsides:

• Size: Cookie max size is around 4kb.
• Bandwidth: Cookies are used in every HTTP transaction.
• Complexity: It is hard to manipulate cookies correctly.

Modern web browsers, Google & Flash have non-cookie storage solutions but each of them solved this differently:

• globalStorage: Firefox 2.0+, Internet Explorer 8
• localStorage: development WebKit
• openDatabase: Safari 3.1+
• userdata behavior: Internet Explorer 5.5+
• Adobe Flash
• Google Gears

PersistJS solves all of the issues above. It currently supports persistent client-side storage through the following backends:

• flash: Flash 8 persistent storage.
• gears: Google Gears-based persistent storage.
• localstorage: HTML5 draft storage.
• whatwg_db: HTML5 draft database storage.
• globalstorage: HTML5 draft storage (old spec).
• ie: Internet Explorer userdata behaviors.
• cookie: Cookie-based persistent storage.

And the great news is, each backend is communicated with the same interface which means you don’t have to know or care which backend is being used.

AtMail Open Source is an open source webmail client written in PHP.

This lightweight Ajaxed webmail client has a simple to use interface and can be used with existing IMAP mailservers.

Features of this free webmail client:

• Lightweight Ajax Webmail Interface
• Video Mail
• PHP source code
• IMAP support
• Live Spell Check
• Address Book

John Resig (the creator of jQuery) has created a pure JavaScript HTML parser that can definitely be very handy.

As more HTML code is inserted and formatted inside JavaScript tags, this parser can save serious development time with automating the process.

Some examples:

• Unclosed Tags: HTMLtoXML("<p><b>Hello") == '<p><b>Hello</b></p>'
• Empty Elements: HTMLtoXML("<img src=test.jpg>") == '<img src="test.jpg"/>'
• Attributes Without Values: HTMLtoXML("<input disabled>") == '<input disabled="disabled"/>'

HTML is a language with lots of tricks and the parser may fail in some cases but it will work in most of them and will become better by time for sure.

Developers generally neglect JavaScript testing because there’s really nothing out there that let’s you simulate user interactions easily.  Here comes the Test plugin (Thanks to Brian Moschel from JavaScriptMVC for suggesting this resource).

It lets you simulate every major DOM event, as well as some combination events like Write and Drag, and then run functional and unit tests in a separate console window.

Test plugin saves serious development time with features like using sample data to simulating AJAX functionality, writing text or dragging an element.

Here is a sample test function:

test_check : function() {
    // simulate clicking the checkbox
    // params has the todo element
    var params = this.TodoCheckClick();
    // assert the color change occurs as expected
    this.assert_equal("#808080", params.element.parentNode.style.color);
},
test_uncheck : function() {
    // click the checkbox again to uncheck it
    var params = this.TodoCheckClick();
    // assert the color change goes away
    this.assert_equal(”, params.element.parentNode.style.color);
},

There are projects which I’m using Subversion and some that I don’t. There are also other things which are very valuable to me like bookmarks, code snippets & more.

And every designer, developer, for sure, lost a few days work because of not backing up the files regularly.

I have started using Mozy Online Backup Free version as a backup solution for my dev. files in general. It provides 2GB space for free, very easy to configure, can take scheduled backups and works silently.

It is an impressive product as it totally reduces the risk of losing data. And works both in Windows and Mac.

There are also other versions of Mozy:

• Mozy Free - 2GB - free - personal use
• Mozy Home - unlimited space ($4.95/month)
• Mozy Pro & Mozy Enterprise with more features like SQL or server backup

P.S. This post is an advertorial (and I really like the product ).

This is an exciting project which helps creating portable, hidden source coded, both online and offline PHP applications.

Roadsend PHP is an open source implementation of the PHP language.

It has a compiler that generates native binaries (no interpreter required) and all source files can be compiled in 1 executable file.

Using Roadsend Compiler, you can:

• Create online web applications with Fast/CGI
• Offline web applications with an embedded web server (MicroServer)
• Desktop GUI applications with PHP-GTK, and console applications.

Once the files are compiled with this PHP compiler, it is close to impossible to return back to the original code. This is a great feature for hiding the source code.

And for easier development & testing, Roadsend has a powerful built-in debugger.