Ftg (Fireworks texture gallery) is a website presenting 300 black and white textures with various shapes used like:
Textures can be used in both free & commercial works. To download them, images can be simply right-clicked & saved.
P.S. Although the website is not English, it is the images that talk.
ICEpdf is a 100% Java-based open source PDF library for creating & displaying and printing PDF documents from any Java application.
The library is lightweight, fast & easy to use. It can render PDF files up to version 1.6 (Acrobat 7.0).
The library can render PDF files to an image (PNG, JPEG, or GIF) in a server-side web application. For faster viewing the first page, it loads documents incrementally.
ICEpdf also supports Adobe Standard Security for password-protected documents & interactive link annotation actions; uri, launch and resource.
P.S. The open source version doesn’t come with the Font Engine (the font substitution is done succesfully when the Font Engine is off).
Free icons are great resources for web designers as quality ones help creating beautiful outputs. But they are better when they come with the source files as it is possible to edit/improve them.
Smashing Magazine is sharing Flavour Extended icon set, a set of 450+ icons, that is created by Oliver Twardowski.
Icons are in 48*48px size & PNG format. PSD source files are also included.
The set contains icons of users, folders, file formats, actions, social bookmarking services & more.
Dragon Labs is featuring 3 beautiful CSS / JavaScript effects that you may want to use in your websites. Here they are:
A solution to create rainbow effects by not using any images.
It is accomplished with the help of some JavaScript and CSS magic to apply a two-color gradient to any text. Shadows and highlights can also be applied.
This is a CSS trick, specially used in menus, that fades any other elements when one of the items is hovered.
It is technique to smoothly change colors and create ambient motion. A nice demo is presented here.
P.S. Rainbow & Putterfish are well-described & source files are offered. On the other hand, DragonFish, currently, only comes with the demo.
Controlling layouts with CSS is a big subject these days as after dropping the table support, it is clear that the current capabilities of CSS is not enough to develop complex & flexible layouts with ease.
There is CSS Template Layout Module which offers exciting features but it is in a draft status.
Until we get those new features, there are various solutions that are developed with jQuery to manipulate page layouts for faster & cross-browser results.
Here is a collection of 6 jQuery plugins to manage page layouts easily:
Masonry is like the flip side of CSS floats. Floats arrange elements horizontally then vertically, Masonry arranges them vertically then horizontally. And the result is no vertical gaps between elements of varying height.
The plugin is almost totally managed with CSS rules. It uses jQuery’s outerWidth() and innerWidth() methods to calculate the margins & paddings of elements.
This is a plugin to create desktop-like layouts. It can b used to create any UI look from simple headers or sidebars, to a complex application with toolbars, menus, help-panels, status bars, sub-forms & more.
The library provides three layout algorithms:
border, which lays out components in five different regionsgrid, which lays out components in a user defined gridflex-grid which offers a grid with flexible column and row sizes.
The plugin aims to offer a similar functionality with the CSS Template Layout Module (which is currently in a draft status).
The script simply parses the mentioned CSS rules & displays the content accordingly.
The plugin automatically converts any content into a newspaper-like column format.
A default clumn widt or a static number of columns can be defined & the rest is almost done by itself.
Creating equal height boxes or content holders is mostly a challenge with CSS. The plugin makes this process easy by simply calling a function.
Descry is a project to demonstrate the power of data and information visualization as a communication tool.
Currently, there are 4 examples provided, all built with Silverlight & come with the source codes.
There are also 2 very nice articles shared on visualization:
For a demo, click here.
P.S. Descry is not a toolkit. It contains classes and fragments of code or design elements that can be reused.
Slideshow JS is a free JavaScript library which helps creating an image slideshow with ease.
It is totally configurable via markup & does not require any scripting. Although the download package comes with various styles, the look & feel of the slideshow can be completely customized.
The library is built with jQuery & it is unobtrusive. It offers several options like:
P.S. Don't let the blury images in the demo fool you. With quality images, the script offers a nice presentation.
Flabell is presenting a free Flash-XML slideshow which can be customized with ease.
Images presented are displayed with a blur effect & the color of the navigation bar can change on every image (using the colors of that image can be a good idea – set manually in the XML file).
target to be _blank or notThe slideshow comes with the source file (.FLA) & in order to download it, a free membership is required.
Automated web application testing is done very rarely & it is generally thought as an unnecessary + hard to setup system.
Truth is, automated testing is a must, because it saves so much time during development & when the project is live. Also, with the right tools, it is generally very easy to setup.
Using testing tools, once the scenarios are created, you can:
There are 2 important web application tests to measure if everything is working (and will work) on your website:
So, here is a collection of 15 Free Functionality And Load Testing Solutions For Web Applications to create better online experiences:
Selenium has various projects that can be combined with each other to create a robust testing environment.
Also there are Selenium projects specifically for Rails, Ruby & Eclipse.
Watir is a set of Ruby libraries which drives browsers just like people. It clicks links, fills in forms, presses buttons. And, it also checks results to report back.
Watir supports:
There is also Watij, which is an enhanced version of Watir with Java.
Mozilla Prism (previously known as WebRunner) is an application that enables users to run web applications directly on their desktop. And, for developers, offers ways to make them act like desktop applications.
It is a very easy-to-use tool that simply asks you which URL to wrap, whether to sit on the system-tray and creates a shortcut for the new application. Once clicked, the URL mentioned runs in a desktop application.
With the help of a scripting support, developers can add events to their web applications to trigger actions like displaying system-tray notifications or popups.
It allows you to style (overwrite the default styles) the web application via CSS.
Prism also offers more customization options like enabling you to choose the icon for the application to be created, whether the navigation bar or navigation keys will be displayed & more.
Prism can run both on Windows & Mac OS X.
