Securimage is an free PHP captcha script used for protecting web forms from spam and abuse.

It can be easily installed and very well documented.

Different than the famous reCAPTCHA, which is web-based, Securimage is a downloadable solution that requires PHP and GD library to work.

Some feature of this captcha solution:

• Show an image in just 3 lines of code
• Validate submitted entries in less than 6 lines of code
• Customizable code length
• Choose the character set
• TTF font support
• Use custom GD fonts when TTF is not available
• Easily add background images
• Multi colored, angled, and transparent text options
• Arched lines through text
• Generates audible CAPTCHA files in wav format
• Use a word list for creating CAPTCHA codes

You can find a demo of the captcha here.

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.

markItUp! is a lightweight and customizable jQuery plugin which turns any textarea into a markup editor.

It has ready-to-use tag sets for HTML, textile, wiki syntax, markdown and BBcode inputs. Also, you can easily create your own.

Some powerful features of this markup editor are:

• Fast and unobtrusive integration
• Support for keyboard shortcuts
• Fully customizable and scriptable
• Ajax dynamic preview
• Customizable skins

MySQL Workbench is a cross-platform, visual database design tool developed by MySQL. It is the highly anticipated successor application of the DBDesigner4 project.

This tool helps you to see the relations, indexes, tables of your MySQL database as a clear snapshot. With its simple yet effective interface, you can easily get used to MySQL Workbench.

For any developer who uses MySQL, this tool saves so much time for concentrating on other tasks rather than data modeling. You can also print the diagrams and use that sheet for faster coding (that’s what I do).

It is definitely a must use.

Mychoonz is a MP3 player application with playlist functionality. Just like last.fm but playing MP3 files of yours.

It has a well-planned AJAXed interface which makes the application easy to use.

This AJAX MP3 Player requires PHP and mod_rewrite functionality to work.

Here are some features of Mychoonz:

• Uses PHP’s embedded SQLite : no database setup needed
• Drag items in playlist
• Reads podcasts (valid RSS2.0)
• Generates podcasts from playlists
• Supports LastFM’s scrobbling
• Easily themable with CSS
• Multiple languages
• Multiple users
• Import songs from local directory, URL or podcast
• Supports ID3 read/write
• Transcodes to lower bitrate (Lame encoder required)

Nearly every project needs a printer-friendly output option.

Hartija is a CSS framework that aims to simplify creating such outputs.

The CSS file includes styles for common tags to make them look good as a printed material.

How to use this CSS Print Framework?

It is enough to insert the CSS file with the media value "print" like:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print">

By doing so, when a user tries the print the page, print.css file will be used instead of the website’s standard CSS file.

Texter is a simple but effective Windows application running in the system tray and doing a very simple job: replacing abbreviations with the phrases you define.

Let’s say you use XHTML frequently and you define an abbreviation like "divmake" and press "tab" (you can define the hotkey) and it can produce you:

<div class=""></div>

as an example.

You can use it for anything like generating your signature on-the-fly or any other frequently typed text.

Phormer is an open source PHP photo gallery that helps you store, organize and trim your photos online.

This photo gallery application uses XML for all the data including photos, comments and settings and does not require MySQL.

With an easy web-based install, Phormer has features like:

• Categorization (by date, subject..)
• Standards-based XHTML output
• Making any content private
• Photos can be set to be called from another server
• Ajax upload manager
• Ability to create a thumb image of your own selection
• 10+ themes
• RSS feeds
• Advanced commenting
• EXIF metadata reader
• Statistics
• Mass upload from a ZIP file
• Slideshow

GoogieSpell is Gmail-like spell checker that you can use in your applications.

It is AJAX based, supports over 27 languages and well-documented.

This AJAX spell checker simply sends a query to Google’s spell checking address:  "https://www.google.com/tbproxy/spell?lang=" and displays the results and recommendations according to the result of this data.

GoogieSpell is well tested to work in all major browsers.

Free document management software is something really hard to find.

Epiware (thanks Jim for the suggestion) is an open source document management solution built with PHP & MySQL.

In a business environment, such a document management system is very helpful as it makes all documents reachable for everyone and keeps the versions of the documents which is a great feature if there are many people editing the same document.

It has many attractive features like:

• Manage multiple projects
• Calendar
• WIKI
• Tasking/Gantt Chart
• News room
• Search document contents and metadata
• Control folder access via groups and/or users
• Document access history
• Document version history
• Check-in and Check-out

Besides the multi-user version, this document management solution has a single user version and a complete – no requirements – version including PHP, MySQL and a web server too.