qdPM is an open source project management application that is created for small teams in mind.

It is built with PHP/MySQL & relies on Symfony Framework (bundled with the download package).

It has support for adding extra fields for projects, tasks & users which eases customizing the application.

With the multiple task editing feature, it is possible to work with multiple tasks faster.

Projects in qdPM can be set to different billing types like per hour, fixed price, etc. & a powerful reports module helps analyzing these data like any other data in the system.

The application is multilangual & already comes with various language files.

PeoplePods is an open source toolkit built with PHP/MySQL for creating websites with social networking capabilities with ease.

It can be used to build stand-alone sites or layered onto existing sites for adding social functionality.

It has the popular social functionality such as:

• friend lists
• personalized content views
• bookmarking
• voting, etc.

and standard web application features like:

• log-in
• personalization
• content creation and management
• & more

The toolkit is object-oriented & comes in 3 pieces: the core, plugin modules & administrative tools.

PeoplePods has support for theming & can be improved further easily with its plugins module.

Concept Feedback is a free-to-use web application for getting feedback from a professional community about designs, concepts we created.

The feedback points are collected under several categories like design, purpose, engagement & originality. Also, you can read the written feedbacks of the community & discuss with them.

It works so simple:

• become a member (free)
• upload your design (website,advertisement, logo, etc.)
• receive the fedback from the community
• improve your design, get feedbacks again & compare with the previous one

And, as a member of the community, you can send feedbacks to the works of other users.

For a web application, It is always a good idea to provide access to it from other platforms like mobile or desktop programs.

As web designers/developers, desktop applications are harder to create considering they have a totally different environment.

In order to fill this gap, we can make use of site-specific browsers which enable us to lock a website inside an application-looking browser that can interact with the system tray/dock & display notifications.

Some usage examples for site-specific browsers:

• displaying new orders, support tickets for an e-commerce website
• showing system tray alerts when a new visitor visits your website
• or even locking your whole application inside a site-specific browser and offering it as a desktop application.

To sum up, they simply help us convert a website into a desktop application. Here are free & mature tools for creating site-specific browsers:

Mozilla Prism (Win-Mac)

Prism is a very easy-to-customize tool that supports Windows & Mac.

Applications created can be:

• minimized to system tray/dock & a navigation can be added there
• set to display status messages & popups in the system tray/dock

Prism apps. will be running seperately from the browser & will stay alive even if the browser isn't.

P.S. You can also read a more detailed post about Prism at WRD.

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dynaTrace AJAX Edition is a free tool for diagnosing & preventing Ajax performance issues.

The tool runs on IE & measures the performance of your AJAX application as real users are feeling it.

It traces & analyzes AJAX calls through their entire round trip (DOM event, JavaScript, HTTP request, avaScript callback) and displays network traffic, CPU load, execution times & more.

dynaTrace AJAX also records every session for future offline analysis.

Web Font Specimen is a project by Tim Brown of Nice Web Type, for seeing how a typeface renders in browsers.

It is simply a well-prepared HTML/CSS setup that displays most important elements like headings, lists, text in different colors/sizes, emphasis of them & more.

The download comes with the Georgia set by default & new typefaces can be configured by updating the CSS file.

Considering every font is becoming a web font with @font-face & web designers will probably be purchasing more fonts, analyzing how the font will be rendered becomes more important.

To see a demo of Web Font Specimen, click here.

TinyTable, a lightweight JavaScript table sorter that was featured before, has its 3rd version released.

The new version has fresh features like: search, column averages and totals, record numbering, a view all & a reset function.

TinyTable also has features like:

• alternate row highlighting
• header class toggling
• auto data type recognition
• selective column sorting

Almost every feature is optional & can be configured while calling the TinyTable function.

Since using tables is still the best option to display tabular data, it is a must-bookmark.

Online image editors have evolved so much in the last few years & became very mature + functional for designers at every level.

They generally offer a similar interface with the popular image editing softwares which lowers the learning curve so much.

Almost all of them are Flash-based (no extra installations -like plugins- are required) & load/work very fast.

Why To Use Them?

You may be asking yourself why to use a web-based one when there is a powerful image editing software installed on your computer like Photoshop, Fireworks, GIMP, etc.?

Portability

There is no need to have a software other than a browser to run such applications. Also designs created with them can be saved instantly online.

This function is specially handy for anyone working at different locations/computers.

The Price Factor

Most popular image editing softwares, except GIMP, are generally not cheap & every new version requires a new license.

Online image editing platforms are free or come with cheap subscription plans.

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jParse is a jQuery plugin for parsing XML that was fetched with the jQuery .ajax method.

It can select the value of any XML node or a node's parameter & can ouput a totally customized HTML.

The plugin is very flexible & offers features like:

• running callback functions before it starts & after it finishes
• limitting the number of <items> to be processed
• excluding XML nodes with certain words, numbers or symbols
• output the number of <item>'s in a feed anywhere in your document

As jQuery .ajax method does not allow cross domain Ajax requests, the XML must be on the same domain.

To see how easy it is to parse a XML file with jParse, check the demo.

Browser Sandbox is an online platform which makes launching various browser versions possible.

It requires an installation of a plugin & can run:

• IE6-7-8
• Firefox 2-3-3.5
• Apple Safari 3-4
• Opera 9-10
• Google Chrome

The platform is definitely a gold mine for making cross-browser tests quickly & easily.

P.S. Spoon allows you to convert your own apps to Spoon apps & post them on the web. You can check the platform's homepage for that.