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Find my Font, a very useful desktop font identifier application, is giving away 5 Pro licenses ($69/each) to WRD readers.

Details on joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post and here is what this tool offers:

What is Find my Font?

We sometimes see a beautiful logo and wonder which font is used to create it. Guessing and try-catches is the popular method for reaching to a result but it takes time and usually hard.

Find my Font is a desktop application (with Windows and Mac OS X versions) that can identify a font used in images and helps browsing your font library.

It works by selecting the letters in the image and asks us to type these letters and runs a quick scan within the fonts in our system (any number of font folders can be defined) to find the ones with the closest match.

The great thing is that the application doesn't only return a single result but also lists and orders the fonts according to their similarity score which is handy for finding alternatives.

Find my Font has an easy-to-use toolbox for taking screenshots, rotating images or selecting letters to make sure that the image to be analyzed is ready for a scan.

As mentioned previously, the application is also a font browser where you can type a text and quickly see how it looks. Also, the scan works during browsing fonts so that the alternatives to the system fonts (or their duplicates) can be instantly catched.

How to join the giveaway?

Find my Font is giving away 5 * Pro licenses and it is enough to comment for joining this giveaway -and let us know you favorite font in the comments which can help other commenters meet new lovely fonts – totally optional : )-.

Winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 13 Dec 2011 (a week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2602 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck to all.

And, the winners

The winners are selected and here they are:

• Aldo (comment #454823)
• Josh D. (comment #457922)
• NRL (comment #454441)
• Robert Barcus (comment #454262)
• Webster (comment #455313)

Congratulations..

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Fluidium, similar to Adobe AIR but open source, is a platform for developing Rich Internet Applications that run as native Mac OS X desktop apps.

Although there are many new applications that are built as web apps., native Cocoa applications still provide the best user experience on Mac OS X.

Fluidium can wrap your existing web app in a pure, native Mac application shell to provide the best of both worlds to your demanding user base.

It is based on the same open source technology that powers the popular Mac OS X Site Specific Browser: Fluid (which was discussed here).

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IntraMessenger is a free application for that enables communication between communities, groups, companies or simply closed groups.

It consists of a client (for Windows) & a PHP-MySQL-based open source server to manage the whole communication.

The messenger is autonomous, but authentication (login + password) is possible from other existing databases like forums, groupware applications, e-learning systems, etc.

It can operate in 2 modes:

• open community : everybody can see everybody, without add to contact list
• groups only : everybody can see everybody (but only) is they are in the same group

IntraMessenger has a multilingual interface & it is a handy application for enabling web-based communities to communicate in the desktop.

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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.

Fluid (Mac)

Fluid enables you to create Cocoa desktop applications with:

• dock icon
• standard menu bar
• growl notifications
• Userscripting (Greasemonkey)
• & more..

Bubbles (Win)

An application platform for creating site-specific browsers which supports:

• system tray icon & context menu
• notifications
• drap'n drop of local files
• & more..

Mango (Win)

Mango can create a website-to-application instantly with features like:

• custom tray & context menu
• minimize to tray
• always on top
• kiosk mode
• fixed width/height
• & more..

All application settings are kept in a XML file which can be used for further customization.

Other Site-Specific Browser Methods:

• Curl offers EmbeddedBrowserGraphic to accomplish this functionality.
• Using Adobe AIR, it is possible to create site-specific browsers (a simple example).
• Site-specific browsers with WebKit.

Further Resources:

There are also other ways of creating desktop applications with web scripting technologies like:

• Wapache: Apache server & IE bundled to create portable dynamic apps.
• Appcelerator Titanium: create desktop apps. with HTML, CSS, Javascript as well as Flash and Silverlight (see WRD post).
• Roadsend PHP: a platform for converting PHP apps into EXE files. (see WRD post)

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Adobe AIR applications are great considering the ease-of-use & simplicity they offer.

Almost regulary, WRD is sharing the fresh Adobe AIR applications that web designers & developers will find useful, like:

• 15 New Adobe AIR Applications For Designers & Developers
  
• 16 Fresh Adobe AIR Applications For Designers & Developers
  
• 27 Adobe AIR Applications – Handy For Web Designers
  

Since then, new applications are created & ready to use. And, here they are:

Image Editing, Debugging & Invoicing

zFlick

This is an awesome Flickr search tool that makes browsing between images fun.

Once you find what you're looking for, just drag'n drop that image to your desktop to download it.

PixelWindow

It helps measuring the width/height of any item on the desktop. With a semi-transparent background & custom-presets, it is a great helper when prototyping websites.

Caldera

Caldera resizes, renames & recompiles any number of images in bulk.

You can set it to resize images by scale or spedify a maximum width/height. The renaming function supports automated-names (prefix plus number).

URL Decoder And Encoder

A tiny application with a single purpose: it makes URLs with querystrings more readable, easier to analyze or can create querystrings from a given input.

Debug.a.li.cious Console

An application that transforms ActionScript objects into a human readable format with 5 different debugging levels.

doswf

doswf is an Adobe AIR application for encrypting, confusing & watermarking SWF files.

PreFab

This is a handy application for simplifying common tasks, improving the workflow & enhancing the visual quality of your Flash 3D productions.

It's a small but powerful tool that can add visual quality to low polygon models using a nice bag of tricks thanks to the advanced rendering capabilities of Away3D.

TiltShift Generator

An application for adding camera effects to images quickly.

It is possible to play with blur, color, vignetting settings of images.

uBooks

An invoicing application which is specially built with freelancers in mind.

It is possible to add clients, projects & use the built-in timer to auto-calculate the time worked on projects.

The application also creates invoices & financial reports.

P.S. If the installer fails, try this address.

Time, Task & Project Management

Doit.im

Doit.im helps you organize tasks & focus on items in hand, so that you can closely track the process of your work.

Besides the tasks, it is possible to add projects where sub-tasks can be created.

ToDoDoc

ToDoDoc is a very well-thought project/task & to-do-list manager.

You can use tags for reaching to related actions easier.

PhiToDo

It is a powerful task manager where tasks can be shared with friends & time spent on each task can be displayed.

The application comes with two versions: web & desktop.

Scattrbrain

This is a very simple task-tracking application with a beautiful interface.

Just enter the tasks, select the due date & mark-them complete once done.

FlashTrack Database

A task tracking application which can track the time worked on each task. It can also export reports to MS Excel.

Hourly

Hourly does one thing & does it well. It tracks times you worked on projects & tasks.

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Adobe AIR has clearly became the standard on creating desktop applications for web developers.

Besides the offline applications, it can combine the richness of web with the simplicity of desktop & offer very functional tools.

At WRD, there were 2 other posts that had shared web designer/developer focused Adobe AIR apps.:

• 27 Adobe AIR Applications – Handy For Web Designers
• 16 Fresh Adobe AIR Applications For Designers & Developers

Since then, various new tools are built & here are 15 new Adobe AIR applications for designers & developers:

colrful

colrful is a beautiful application that enables you to make color-based searches in Flickr. Any number of colors can be mentioned, they can be viewed as thumbnails/originals & downloaded.

Another feature is the ability to mention an image URL & get similar images from Flickr.

Polaris

The application is a desktop interface for Google Analytics (free version works with 1 website).

It offers most of the features of Google Analytics including visits, pageviews, reports, Google Maps report & more..

Big Browser

Big Browser is an application which can display multiple websites in a single window.

It is functional when comparing 2 websites or keeping an eye on multiple pages.

Boks

This is an Adobe AIR UI for Blueprint CSS framework. It handles grid configuration, baseline rhythm CSS (with or without compression, grid.png export, HTML layout and more.

SEO Analyzer

SEO Analyzer checks pageranks, analyzes links & keywords with a very easy-to-use interface.

PrintScreenshot

This Adobe AIR application handles the process after taking a screenshot. You can paste the screenshot, select the areas to crop & choose the image to be saved or e-mailed.

SWF To Animated GIF

This application quickly converts SWFs to animated GIFs by selecting certain points of the animation which is very handy specially when the .FLA sources are not available.

Broadchoice Workspace

This is a payed application with a free version that provides an impressive workspace where users can share notes, tasks, files & communicate with each other.

It can also be reached via mobile phones.

The SQLite Sorcerer

An SQLite admin tool built with Adobe AIR which offers most of the functionality a database manager needs.

Besides standard features like creating dbs, tables, etc, it has nice options like:

• comparing the structure of 2 databases
• changing all attributes of fields is allowed, including default values
• filtering data using keyword or regular expression
• & more..

Run!

Run! is a “query runner” tool for Adobe AIR developers that use AIR’s local SQL database (SQLite) functionality.

When I’m developing an application that uses a database, I find it much easier to get a SQL statement working in isolation rather than trying to write it and test it within the application source code. That is the basic idea of Run!.

SimpleTimer 2

This is an easy to use time tracker application where projects/tasks can be added & reports can be seen in a calendar-view or exported as CSV.

ParseForGo

ParseForGo is a PHP editor that comes with an internal editor. With an internal function-dictionary, double clicking a function displays details of it.

BlazeMonster

It helps developers to generate Flex code to consume BlazeDS Remoting services and also generate configuration file to expose Java classes as Remoting services.

Developers can view response from a Remoting service, generate Flex code to invoke a Remoting service and also generate AS3 VO code for the Java classes.

KwikUML

A tool to quickly build UML models of ActionScript and PHP classes / interfaces, as well as, SQL Entity Relationship Designs (ERDs).

jsBeautifier

A very simple tool for formatting JavaScript code.

(update: 31 August 2009) And, a bonus application which just started offering a free version just after this post is published:

Livebrush

Livebrush is a drawing application which employs an easy-to-use brush tool that reacts to your gesture. By combining simple motion controls with brush styles, it offers a fun and unique way to create graphics.

Books On Adobe AIR & Flex:

• Adobe AIR Bible (Bible (Wiley))
• Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Rich Internet Application Developers – (PDF Version)
• Flex 3 Cookbook: Code-Recipes, Tips, and Tricks for RIA Developers (Adobe Developer Library)
• Professional Adobe Flex 3 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

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Glimmer is a desktop application that makes jQuery accesible from a visual tool & generates the jQuery code, XHTML and CSS.

If jQuery is the "write less, do more” JavaScript library, then Glimmer is the “write none, do more” jQuery design tool.

Currently, Glimmer has 8 built-in effects that can be combined with wizards like:

• image sequencing
• customized tooltips
• drop-down menus
• custom animations

It is also extensible. Anyone can write new wizards and effects to improve the application.

Although it looks like a perfect fit to power-users & designers as they generally don’t prefer to code JavaScript, Glimmer is also handy for developers for creating the base-code faster & improving it later on.

To read more on Glimmer, you can visit the announcement article by MIX Online.

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With the ease of development & multi-platform support, Adobe AIR is a getting-popular choice for creating desktop applications.

There are many beautiful applications built with it including the ones that are functional for the designer & developer community.

Months ago, a post published at WRD was sharing 27 Adobe AIR Applications – Handy For Web Designers. Since then, there are various great applications created.

And here they are, 16 Fresh Adobe AIR Applications For Designers & Developers:

ImageSizer

ImageSizer is a batch image processor tool which can resize, optimize and rename multiple JPG files.

Once the images are processes, they can be exported as a single .zip file.

JustResizeIt!

A batch image resizer that works with drag'n drops. It enables users to define different presets in advance & creates resized images instantly.

The application is great for anyone sending photos with e-mails, requires batch resizing & more.

Xe-IMG Editor

It supports multiple image types, image-from-URLs & SWF files as images to be edited.

With various effects like: zoom, image mask, sharpening, enhancing, embossing & more Xe-IMG Editor is a handy free desktop image editor.

.merlin – Font Organizer

This Adobe AIR based font organizer is very helpful for anyone with many fonts.

It scans a given folder, renames a font with its original name & places it in a folder with the first letter of the font which makes Georgia font to go to the "G" folder.

Contrast-A

The application enables interacting with a 3-dimensional RGB color space, experimenting color combinations, checking the contrast according to both WCAG 2.0 and 1.0. And, results can be seen in different types of color deficiency.

Custom color palettes can be created, printed and saved as Pdf to the user's desktop.

Dot3D

Dot3D enables drawing a 16*16px image an viewing it in 3D.

Images can be easily rotated withing the canvas and saved as PNG files. Also, any drag'n dropped image is automatically drawn as a pixel image.

It is a handy application specially for icon designers.

Fractal4D

A very interesting Adobe AIR application that makes it possible to draw fractal swirls.

By playing with the options like "points in use, line thickness, colors" it is possible to get very surprising results.

Drawn images can be exported as Illustrator files or saved as images.

Random Pattern

It lets you to create random patterns which you have control on some variables.

It is possible to define the "number of elements", "color scheme used", "width/height", "corner radius" of the objects.

Preset files can be loaded & results can be saved as .SVG files.

Adobe Fireworks – Auto Backup

For Fireworks users, this can be a real life-saver. It automatically creates backups of  .PNG files which they are modified.

An interval can be set for the backup. A nice solution specially for possible Fireworks crashes.

Caliper Project

A caliper for measuring objects pixel perfect. It floats over any other applications, can be dragged & rotated with hotkeys.

pixDIF

An application for:

• measuring the pixel distance/size of something when you're not in Photoshop
• testing how a new visual update would look in your websites

It floats an image over any other applications and makes imagining "how it would look" very easy.

Lita – SQLite Administration Tool

An SQLite admin tool that runs on the Adobe AIR platform.

It enables users to manage databases, tables, columns & records. SQL queries can be ran, databases can be encyrpted/reencryped & more.

htmlText Editor

Specially for Flex developers, it provides a shortcut to having htmlText generated in a WYSIWYG type editor.

It updates both ways: while updating the htmlText or the rich text. Optionally, it can wrap the htmlText in CDATA tags and what you copy to the clipboard will be wrapped in the CDATA tags.

Bolso

Bolso is an Amazon SimpleDB GUI which displays the data stored in the service.

It can run custom SQL queries, add/edit/delete/view items, import phpMyAdmin exported data & much more.

SQLFury – SQL Injection Scanner

An SQL injection scanner, using blind SQL injection techniques to extract information from a target database.

It supports, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle & Microsoft SQL Server.

De MonsterDebugger

An open source debugger for Adobe Flash, Flex & AIR.

It can trace strings, numbers, objects, arrays, xml and even custom classes, edit properties in runtime, explpre your live application & much more.

P.S. Alcon: another Adobe AIR based debugger for ActionScript developers.

And a healthy bonus:

RelaxMyEyes

For anyone who works with computers, eye health is something that requires attention. So, every x minutes, taking a break is a must.

This tiny application runs in the background & warns you when it is time to relax your eyes. Very handy for designers & developers, people who are ,clearly, very concentrated & don't realize how time goes by.

Books On Adobe AIR & Flex:

• Adobe AIR Bible (Bible (Wiley))
• Adobe AIR 1.5 Cookbook: Solutions and Examples for Rich Internet Application Developers – (PDF Version)
• Flex 3 Cookbook: Code-Recipes, Tips, and Tricks for RIA Developers (Adobe Developer Library)
• Professional Adobe Flex 3 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)

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A web application or a software development process always has bugs which is very normal in a hundreds of lines of code. The important part is tracking & fixing them.

Whether you are a one-person-army or have teammates, it is a big time-saver to use a bug tracking software.

Besides having the bugs listed in a comprehensive way, most bug/issue tracking applications let end-users to submit bug-feature requests that will end up in a better product.

Here are 9 free & open source bug tracking softwares, both desktop & web-based, for a better development process:

WebIssues

WebIssues is an open source issue tracking & team collaboration application that has 2 parts:

• The server: a PHP-MySQL based server where the data is stored, notifications are sent
• The client: a desktop application for users to connect to the server (Windows & Linux supported)

A permission-based user system enables the ability of "multiple users working on different projects".

Issue types are flexible & customizable. Issues can be easily filtered & reports can be created for a snapshot. 

eTraxis

A PHP bug tracking software that works with MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL and Oracle.

Unlimited projects can be created with any number of users working on them. Users working on the project can easily see the bugs assigned to them or see the general status of the project.

eTraxis can notify users with e-mails & has a reminder system. The software has multilanguage support.

Bugzilla

This Mozilla Foundation supported/developed bug tracking system allows individual or groups of developers to keep track of outstanding bugs in their product effectively.

Considering Bugzilla is used by Mozilla, Open Office, RedHat, NASA, Facebook & hundreds of other popular companies, it is a very mature & feature rich application.

It can perfectly track bugs & code changes with time tracking and notifications. Teammates can communicate with each other & users of the product can become a part of the bug tracking system by submitting bugs

Trac

Trac is a improved wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects.

It has an interface to Subversion (or other version control systems), an integrated Wiki and convenient reporting facilities.

A timeline displays all current and past project events in order, for a better overview of the project. There is also a roadmap which shows the list of the upcoming milestones.

Mantis Bug Tracker

A web-based free bug tracking system, written in PHP and works with MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL.

Mantis has a multi-level hieararchy: projects>sub-projects>categories>bugs where users can contribute to each item if they have the access rights.

The application has powerful features like an integrated wiki, chat, RSS feeds, time tracking & much more.

BugNET

BugNet is an open source ASP.NET bug tracking tool.

Email notifications, reporting and per project configuration of fields and values allows efficient management of bugs, feature requests, and other issues for projects of any scale.

The Bug Genie

An open source issue tracking system for improving the development process by managing bug reports, feature requests and user feedback.

The Bug Genie is built with PHP, has multilanguage support & provides an easy to use interface.

It can be integrated with Subversion, displays roadmaps automatically & much more.

Issue Tracker By ASP.NET

A simple yet working issue tracker by ASP.NET.

The application lets you to create projects, projects members/permissions & issues to be assigned to members.

Issues can be tracked, related issues can be displayed & more. Issue Tracker supports MS Access & MSSQL for storing the data.

Eventum

Eventum is a issue tracking system built by the MySQL team.

It helps organizing tasks & bugs within a development project. It has various features from notifications to reminders & reports to RSS support.

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Appcelerator Titanium is an open source platform that enables you to create rich desktop applications with web technologies like HTML, CSS, Javascript as well as Flash and Silverlight.

Appcelerator SDK is used to create applications or any third-party Ajax library / framework can be used too.

Tip: To make it clear, it is very similar to Adobe AIR but open source.

Titanium also comes with a simple command-line interface (CLI) for creating projects and packaging them into an executable.

The platform has a built-in database, direct file system access, desktop notifications & more.

Titanium apps. currently work in Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX.  Linux support is in the roadmap.

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