BigBlueButton is an open source video conferencing application which is specifically built for remote learning but can be used for standard meetings as well.
The application enables multiple users to login & share their webcam or communicate via VOIP at the same time.
It is a very ideal application for presentations as users can upload PDF or office documents & keep everyone in sync with their current page, zoom, pan, mouse pointer etc.
Also, users can share their desktop with others easily.
There are 3 user types:
- Presenter: can upload presentations & sharing their desktop
- Viewer: have no authority within the conference, can only view & chat with other users
- Moderator:can upload presentations, share the desktop & change user types of other users.
Users can raise hands to get the attention of the presenter, mute any other participants they want & chat between themselves in public or privately.
BigBlueButton completely relies on open source technologies & it can be improved further with the API provided.
Requirements: Linux-based Server
JuiceKit is an open source software development kit (SDK), which integrates with Adobe Flex, for building "information experience" applications.
The SDK includes components for controls, visualizations & utility classes that are easy to implement & aesthetically pleasing.
To better define the SDK, some of the components it has are a treemap, US Map, "copying data to the computer's clipboard" & much more..
These components can be used independently, within other applications or assembled together to create full applications.
JuiceKit is very well-documented & there are few examples provided to show the things that can be created.
Requirements: Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124+, Adobe Flex SDK
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:
Since then, new applications are created & ready to use. And, here they are:
Image Editing, Debugging & Invoicing
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.
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.
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Adobe used to have individual Cookbooks applications for Flex, AIR & Mobile that presented code snippets created by the community.
Now, they have combined all, with new additions, under a single Adobe Cookbooks application.
The website is a great place for finding ready-to-use code samples for Adobe products, specially ActionScript & Flex.
Besides adding new snippets, users can request for the ones that they can not find & other users can create/share them.
The new Adobe Cookbooks also offers a better search/browsing experience with titles like "related recipes" & "contributor lists".
Requirements: No Requirements
HydraFramework is a prescriptive development framework for quickly building Flex applications at every level.
The framework’s development methodology can be totally adopted or the core classes can be used in any way you see fit in projects.
It consists several projects:
- HydraFramework Core – an implementation of MVC (otherwise known as HydraMVC)
- HydraPlugins – for quickly adding prebuilt functionality into the core
- HydraComponents – a library of components built on the HydraFramework.
The framework is well documented & presents a demo.
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.:
Since then, various new tools are built & here are 15 new Adobe AIR applications for designers & developers:
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.
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..
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Hemlock is an open-source Flash framework which offers the richness of Flash & the scalability of XMPP.
It eases the creation of real-time & multi-user applications like games, collaboration and more.
Generally, real-time applications are handled with polling where a database is queried every x seconds to get the latest updates.
With the Hemlock approach, a client registers for a message and is only contacted when a relevant one arrives. This is clearly a better method as it is much real-time & cost-effective (no unnecessary polls).
Requirements: Adobe Flex SDK & ejabberd
Axiis is an open source data visualization framework & based on Degrafa, Flex & ActionScript 3.0.
It is a resource for both beginner & expert developers to create elegant charts.
Axiis comes with both ready-to-use visualization components & abstract layout patterns + rendering classes that makes it possible to create custom visualizations.
To view some beautiful examples of this framework, click here.
Requirements: Adobe Flex
Kap Lab is presenting 5 impressive & free visualization components for Flex.
All components are AS3 based & some of them offer multiple layout options which makes them very flexible in means of presentation.
The components are:
- Diagrammer (for diagram creation, mind mapping…)
- Visualizer (for displaying hierarchies like organizational schemas..)
- Radar Chart (for data analysis, comparing data items…)
- Treemap (for inventory management, social news mapping…)
- Ring Chart (for displaying statistics)
Examples are provided for each component with the sources & there is a support forum where users share their experiences.
P.S. Download requires a free membership.
OpenZoom is an open source framework for creating zoomable user interfaces.
The framework is similar to Silverlight’s Deep Zoom control (see WRD post), but for Flash.
The power behind OpenZoom is Flex MultiScaleImage component, which is built on top of the OpenZoom framework.
The name is same wih the Silverlight Deep Zoom’s built-in control & the usage is similar too.
The component has built-in support for keyboard / mouse activities & supports Deep Zoom, Zoomify & OpenZoom images.
For now, OpenZoom can sound to specific, but considering its abilities & usage areas, we’ll probably be hearing more about it soon.
P.S. The framework is so fresh & still in development but it can be downloaded (& it is documented).
Requirements: Adobe Flex
