WebDesignerWall has a very nice trick to decorate your images and photo galleries without editing the source images.

The trick is very simple. All you need is an extra <span> tag and apply a background image to create the overlaying effect.

Benefits of this CSS image decoration:

• Saves time: no need to create every decorated image file
• Keeps original source images
• Flexible: change the decoration anytim.
• Cross-browser compatible

openWYSIWYG is a free cross-browser WYSIWYG editor that’s shipped with most of the rich-text editing features you need.

This editor works as a textarea replacement with a single line of code. It can be used with any programming language as it is coded entirely in JavaScript.

Some features of this free HTML editor:

• Loads very fast
• HTML source code editing
• Create lists, italic, bold or similar HTML properties
• Insert images
• Enhanced table creation
• Dropdowns with formatting preview

Phototype is a client/server-side image manipulation library, based on Prototype and supports all kinds of image manipulations.

How it works?

Clientside JavaScript codes sends the commands to the serverside PHP - GD library image renderer and displays the rendered image.

Using Phototype, you are able to rotate, resize, flip and do some other cool effects to images.

This is a lightweight (only 1kb), accordion type JavaScript horizontal menu that does not require any JavaScript frameworks.

It is very easy to setup as the script automatically adjusts to the number of elements in the accordion and the dimensions of the accordion.

How it works?

• Create an unordered list like this:

<ul id="sm" class="sm">
<li><img src="images/1.gif" alt="" /></li>
<li><img src="images/2.gif" alt="" /></li>
<li><img src="images/3.gif" alt="" /></li>
<li><img src="images/4.gif" alt="" /></li>
</ul>

• Call the function below onload

slideMenu.build('sm',200,10,10,1)">

• That’s all.

Parameters:

• First: id of the unordered list
• Second: width of the accordion
• Third: timeout variable to control how quickly the sliding function is called
• Fourth: speed of the accordion with 1 being the fastest
• Fifth: is the integer that corresponds to the section you would like to be expanded when the accordion is loaded (optional)

uMaps is an universal ActionScript 3.0 mapping API.

This flexible API enables developers to build fully-customized solutions. The current version is integrated with OpenStreetMap and Microsoft Virtual Earth map data.

uMaps features:

• Support for custom map tiles and providers
• Flash / Flex versions
• KML Support
• FLA-Based Map Controls
• Marker Manager
• Advanced content layering

Using a universal API is very helpful as you can easily switch between mapping providers without updating the codes. As Google Maps API for Flash is released (see WRD post), it may be integrated into uMaps too and can make the product better.

This Flash mapping API is free for personal use and requires a license for commercial use.

iPod-like jQuery drilldown menu provides easy navigation of complex and multi-level menus.

The menu sits within a fixed-size area, and when a node is selected, breadcrumb links appear above the menu options to both deliver feedback and allow quick access back to nodes higher up in the hierarchy.

An iPod-style slide transition helps providing the feelthat you’re moving forward into the data, or backward into higher-level data.

This menu is specifically useful in browsing deeply nested hierarchies, particularly those more than three levels deep. It also provides a more usable alternative to multi-level fly-out menus, which can present challenges to those with limited manual dexterity.

It is not coded for ease of modification, but is free to reuse and modify with a proper attribution to Filament Group. Feel free to visit the demo page and view the source code to see how it works

Flajaxian FileUploader is a fully self-contained .NET assembly allowing multiple asynchronous file uploads with no page postbacks.

Features of this ASP.NET Flash File Upload Assembly:

• Self-contained .NET 2.0 assembly
• Supports multiple file uploads
• Fully customizable interface
• Callback support for progress bars
• Flash 8+ compatible
• Full source available

Flajaxian FileUploader S3 is a .NET assembly containing all of the same features of the FlashUploader, plus the ability to transfer files to Amazon’s S3 storage service on the server.

fgCharting is a jQuery plugin which helps us to create accessible charts from standard table data with canvas.

Using this chart plugin, we can create several types of graphs, such as pie, line, area, and bar.

As canvas is not supported by default in Intenet Explorer, you can use ExplorerCanvas to add this functionality to it (WRD post for more details).

TweenLite is a lightweight and fast tweening engine for Flash AS2 & AS3.

It is lightweight because it only takes 3kb when published which makes it one of the smallest tweening engines around. And you can extend it with TweenFilterLite and TweenMax to add ColorMatrixFilter effects like saturation, contrast, brightness, hue, and even colorization.

Why use TweenLite rather than built-in tweening engine?

• SPEED. TweenLite is much faster.
• onComplete, onStart, onUpdate callbacks (plus the ability to pass any number of variables to them)
• autoAlpha (toggles visibility of an object off when the alpha hits zero)
• Tween multiple properties with a single call
• Delay any tween by a set amount (good for sequencing)
• Tween the tint of any MovieClip/Sprite VERY easily
• Tween the volume of any MovieClip
• more..

Usage of TweenLite is very simple:

TweenLite.to(target:Object, duration:Number, variables:Object);

is the most basic usage. You can add more variables that can be found at the product page.

Slider scripts are one of the common objects of newspaper & portal websites. They are very useful as they help us present more content in a limited space.

YCodaSlider 2.0 is a slider script, inspired from Panic - Coda, and based on the Coda Slider of Niall Doherty.

This script helps you present your content with a tabbed menu + previous-next buttons to switch between tabs.

YCodaSlider 2.0 requires jQuery to run and you can use any type of content inside the slider like HTML, Flash, webpages etc.

It can be configured easily to use different effects while changing the content.