Opa is a web development platform that is mostly focused on scalability, easy deployment to the cloud, security and a faster coding process to create apps.

It consists of the following which are tightly integrated into each other:

• a new programming language
• a new web server
• a new database
• a new distributed execution engine

Opa is a little different most other programming languages around considering the integrity it has. There is no need to deal with any other software, server or language (even SQL or JavaScript). Just Opa.

Out of the box, the platform has everything for scaling of storage, transactions and how they are served. It handles them automatically by using minimum resources.

Opa is currently available for Mac OS X and Linux, however, Windows support is under development. It is also very well-documented.

P.S. Although a new language usually looks hard (or unnecessary) for any developer, Opa is definitely worth checking out.

Flexi is a lightweight (4.3kb) color picker that doesn't use any images (thanks to SVG/VML), CSS or 1px hacks but only JavaScript.

It is a standalone script that doesn't require any JavaScript frameworks and can pass the color selected in hexadecimal, HSV and RGB formats.

The dimensions, position of the picker and slide area can be fully customized in CSS just like any other div element.

html2canvas is an impressive script that can take screenshots of websites (or some parts of them) totally on the client-side, with only JavaScript.

The screenshot is generated via rendering the page as a canvas image by reading the DOM and styles applied to the elements.

As every browser renders pages differently, the output can be expected to differ slightly in each of them.

The library is mentioned to be experimental as there are still various CSS3 properties and elements that are not supported. However, it is still exciting and works pretty good, just check out the demos.

JointJS is a cross-browser JavaScript library for creating fully interactive diagrams.

It makes use of Raphaël.js, can connect vector objects with different types of arrowsand interact with connections + objects.

The library is plugin-based for extending easily and there are ready-to-use plugins for popular diagrams (ERD, Org chart, FSA, UML, PN, DEVS, LDM).

Objects can be drag 'n' dropped by still keeping the hierarchy created and there are callback functions provided on every level.

HTML5 canvas brings a huge flexibility in drawing graphics in web pages but it is sometimes complicated to work with.

CanvasText is a JavaScript library that handles using and styling text in canvas with a syntax similar to HTML & CSS.

The usage is pretty easy with a readable function and, currently, the supported properties include fontFamily, fontSize, fontWeight, fontColor and lineHeight. More properties and a caching system is mentioned to be under development

jQuery Boilerplate is a starting point and a ready-to-use skeleton for developing jQuery plugins.

It is very well-commented, truly object-oriented and implements public and private methods as well as public and private properties.

The comments are very detailed and just like an on-hands tutorial to the plugin development.

The boilerplate does not follow all the guidelines provided by the official jQuery documentation and states to provide better performance and memory usage by not creating multiple instances of itself and attaching them to the target DOM elements.

P.S. You may also like a previously-published WRD article: jQuery Plugin Development – 10 Tutorials To Get Started.

Every designer-developer can have hard times on concentrating to the projects they are working on. Sometimes, it is the project which is not exciting anymore or, sometimes, it is the beautiful weather outside.

I have (recently) met a popular method named "The Pomodoro Technique" that helps me work much more effectively since then. Let;'s hear about it from Wikipedia:

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that uses a timer to break down periods of work into 25-minute intervals called 'pomodori' separated by breaks. Closely related to concepts such as timeboxing and iterative and incremental development used in software design, it is based on the idea that frequent breaks can improve mental agility.

To sum up, it helps focusing on a task for a given time, taking breaks and performing this process regularly.

If you need a better concentration to complete that client website or the-next-killer-web-app you are working on, I suggest giving the technique a try.

Here are 5 free Pomodoro technique apps for an easy start:

Focus Booster (Windows, Mac, Linux, Web)

Focus Booster is an app with 2 versions: desktop (Adobe AIR) and web-based.

It has an elegant interface and comes with few settings like changing the session/break length or enable/disable sounds.

Read the rest of this entry »

Screenfly is a free-to-use web application that can display any website on different device screens and resolutions.

It uses a proxy server to mimic devices and supports the most-used ones under tablet and mobile categories.

Also, TV and desktop categories helps viewing websites according to the selected screen-sizes of the devices.

Antialiaser is a free application that eases OpenType and TrueType font visualization and customization for using them inside Flex and AIR projects.

Using the application, it is possible to use any font, fine tune them and get the generated CSS.

Its interface shows the system + embedded fonts, standard + zoom view and has various options like activating transparent background, comparisons and snapshots.

Advanced and beginner Flex developers will probably both find the application useful for a better typography in their projects.

Antialiser comes with versions for for Windows and Mac OS X.

Kivy is an open source library for creating applications that work in multiple platforms using the same source code.

The library focuses on innovative user interfaces, like multi-touch apps, and can natively use most inputs protocols + devices like WM_Touch, WM_Pen, Mac OS X Trackpad and Magic Mouse, Mtdev, Linux Kernel HID, TUIO. There is also a multi-touch mouse simulator included.

It is built with Cython (C extensions for Python) and, in order to create apps, Python knowledge is required.

The platforms currently supported are Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Android.

Kivy has functions to handle animation, caching, gestures, drawing and much more. There are also many built-in user interface elements like button, camera, grid, slider or tree view.