jsPlumb is a jQuery plugin for visually connecting HTML elements on a web page.

It uses a HTML5 canvas element when supported and Google's ExplorerCanvas script to support older browsers.

The styles, shapes of the wires and "the position of the connection" can be customized easily.

jsPlumb also supports drag'n drops (requires jQuery UI for this functionality).

The plugin is currently in beta status, however, works flawless and can be downloaded from the source of the demos provided.

slideGallery is a MooTools plugin for creating customizable image carousels easily & quickly.

It converts any given unordered list into a slider & can be styled with CSS.

The plugin can display any defined number of images horizontally or vertically, auto-play them, have prev-next buttons and these functions can be configured more with:

• setting the class of prev-next elements
• speed and duration of slides
• transition to be used
• direction of the transitions
• & more..

slideGallery works in all major browsers including IE6.

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This week was a surprise Magento week at WebResourcesDepot for getting you closer to this awesome open source e-commerce application.

2 posts are published to guide you on installing & customizing your e-store:

• The Ultimate Guide To Creating E-Commerce Websites With Magento (Part 1)
  
• The Ultimate Guide To Creating E-Commerce Websites With Magento (Part 2)
  

And here is the 3rd (last) one which will help you a lot in beautifying your shop with 20+ free Magento themes:

Foot Prints – demo

Magento Classic – demo

Modern

Read the rest of this entry »

Geolocation is one of the most popular subjects for today's web & there are many solutions that help geo-enabling web applications.

YQL Geo Library is an impressive resource for geolocation as it is totally free & JavaScript-based.

It has various powerful features like:

• detecting the visitor’s location with the W3C geo API and with IP as a fallback
• find geo location from text
• find location from lat/lon pair
• find locations in a certain web document (by URL)
• get the location for a certain IP number

The library is lightweight (4kb uncompressed) & non-complicated. It just works by calling a function like:

yqlgeo.get('217.12.14.240',function(o){
  alert(o.place.name + ',' + o.place.country.content +
        ' (' + o.place.centroid.latitude + ',' +
               o.place.centroid.longitude + ')'
        );
});

will get you the city, country, latitude & longitude of any given IP.

Spritely is a jQuery plugin for creating dynamic character & background animations using HTML + JavaScript.

With the power of JavaScript, the animations can be controlled on events (clicks, mouseovers) easily.

Animated elements can fly over the page without effecting any other element (can be ideal for floating-type banners) & the page still remains accessible.

Specially, for the platforms where Flash is not supported, Spritely can be an alternative (like iPhone, iPad).

It works in all major browsers including IE6.

SlimStat is an open source web analytics application that collects & presents statistics information about your website.

It is built with PHP-MySQL & can be integrated into websites with JavaScript (like Google Analytics) or PHP.

For  the given period, the application can display:

• the number of visitors/pageviews
• referrer URLs, domains
• search terms
• browsers, OSs, countries, screen sizes

There is also a "paths" feature that shows a user's browsing path page-by-page.

You may be asking, "why to use SlimStat instead of Google Analytics?" The best answer would be "live stats".

BigBlueButton is an open source video conferencing application which is specifically built for remote learning but can be used for standard meetings as well.

The application enables multiple users to login & share their webcam or communicate via VOIP at the same time.

It is a very ideal application for presentations as users can upload PDF or office documents & keep everyone in sync with their current page, zoom, pan, mouse pointer etc.

Also, users can share their desktop with others easily.

There are 3 user types:

• Presenter: can upload presentations & sharing their desktop
• Viewer: have no authority within the conference, can only view & chat with other users
• Moderator:can upload presentations, share the desktop & change user types of other users.

Users can raise hands to get the attention of the presenter, mute any other participants they want & chat between themselves in public or privately.

BigBlueButton completely relies on open source technologies & it can be improved further with the API provided.

Ketchup is an easy-to-customize (in means of appearance & functionality) jQuery plugin for validating user inputs on the client-side.

The plugin works by inserting the validation rules inside the markup, just like:

<input type="password" id="new_pass" class="validate(required)" />

It comes with a bunch of ready-to-use rules, including: required, min/max length, number, URL, e-mail & much more where new ones can be created as well.

Using Ketchup, it is possible to combine validations (a field can be both required & e-mail).

Although the default setup of the plugin is very satisfactory, like mentioned, it is possible to create a new look & feel (which is easy with the documentation provided).

Simile Widgets is a set of open source web widgets for visualizing data & content.

They are actually a spin-off from the Simile Project & improved over time by a community of open-source developers.

Currently, it includes 4 widgets:

Timeline

Timeline is for creating an interactive display of events within a timeframe.

It can be dragged or controlled with the mouse wheel & events can be clicked to see the details.

Timeplot

Timeplot is a DHTML widget for plotting time series easily.

On mouse-overs, it can display the values interactively (it works with the same data format that Timeline supports).

Runway

Runway is a Flash-based implementation of the popular iTunes-like coverflow.

The colors, fonts, reflection & transit,in values can be configured easily. Also, it can fire events to update the web page's Javascript.

Exhibit

It is for creating web pages with advanced text search and filtering functionalities, with interactive maps, timelines, & other visualizations.

You can find more details on a previously published WRD post on Exhibit.

Ajax Availability Calendar is an open source PHP application for displaying the availability of an item (hotel room, appointment, etc.).

It comes with an Ajaxed administration panel (multiple admin users are supported) to manage the calendar.

The application is multilingual & unlimited number of items can be added under multiple languages.

Months displayed are changed with Ajax requests where no refreshes are required & it can be totally styled via CSS.