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Mercury is a HTML5-powered WYSIWYG editor similar to the popular ones like TinyMCE or CKEditor but with a different usage experience.

Rather than being positioned inside a given element, it appears over the complete web page and can be used to edit the whole page or any number specified areas.

It supports previewing the edited content and inserting links, images, videos or tables. File uploads can be accomplished with drag 'n' drops.

Snippets can be defined and inserted quickly with the help of a sidebar. And, a similar sidebar exists for taking notes.

Also, collaborative editing is supported. Just edit any page that others are working on at the same time and see their changes in real time.

Mercury can be either installed as a Rails gem or by including the necessary JS and CSS files into our web pages.

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Ruby on Rails is an impressive development platform which is used widely by developers and popular apps.

If you're already experienced with it, preparing the development environment it requires is pretty easy. However, if you're new to Rails, it can be tricky.

Rails Installer is a free installation package which includes everything needed for a full Rails stack (Ruby, Tails, Git, Sqlite, Devkit).

Currently, it is compatible with Windows but Mac and Linux versions are mentioned to be "coming soon"

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Creating a project with Rails is usually pretty quick with the features it offers, however, the first repetitive steps can be time-consuming.

RailsWizard is a free and open source web application that helps you rapidly customize and build Rails application templates.

It asks you to choose your database and ORM, unit and integration testing framework, JavaScript framework, authentication system and more.

Once the options are selected, it generates a unique command URL that needs to be run with the Rails application generator.

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Detect Mobile Browser is an open source project for easily understanding whether a visitor of a website is using a mobile browser or not.

It provides codes in several scripting languages (PHP,Rails, ASP, JSP, Coldfusion, .htaccess & JavaScript) that can detect the browser.

The website also has a simple forwarding function which you can create a link like:

http://detectmobilebrowser.com/a.com|b.com

and the user will be redirected to "a.com" or "b.com" depending on the browser type used.

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Behind almost every successful web application, there is an easy-to-use & feature-rich API as they simply help the main application to spread into others & reached by more users.

Also, an API-enabled application can be easily developed further using the API itself.

In order to create an API for your web application, here are 10 tutorials to get you started. But before that, you may want to checkout the video: How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters by Google.

PHP

Create a REST API with PHP

A very detailed yet easy-to-implement tutorial on creating a REST API with PHP.

And, there is a follow-up article: "Making RESTful Requests in PHP" by the same author which can guide you as well.

How to Add an API to your Web Service (PHP)

A detailed tutorial which describes the concepts like REST, SOAP & creates an API step-by-step with PHP.

Implement a Rest API with the Zend Framework

This example utilizes controllers in an MVC style application. Most of the stuff is handled by an instance of  Zend_Rest_Server so it shows implementing to our service.

Creating a Simple REST API With VB, PHP and MySQL

This article covers both creating an API with PHP where the data is stored in a MySQL database & reaching to the API with a VBScript file.

Create Your Own Custom API (PHP)

The tutorial describes a PHP API returning XML data in 6 steps:

• Create Your Own Custom API
• Developing the basic API layout
• The Client
• The Server
• The Server Class
• The "Test" Step

Towards RESTful PHP – 5 Basic Tips

Ok, this is not a tutorial but includes very handy tips that can be used when creating a REST API with PHP for the security & ease of usage of the API.

Rails

Creating Open Web APIs: Exploring REST and WOA in Rails 2.0

As Rails automatically offers URL addressable resources for all the data in a Rails web application, every Rails application already has a ready-to-go RESTful API". The tutorial explains how to use it in detail.

How to Make an API for a Rails App?

The article describes the 2 options for creating an API:

• HTTP Basic Auth
• Using API key

and provides example codes o get you started.

Putting REST on Rails

The tutorial uses the RESTful Rails Controller & creates a simple RESTful Rails application with a full test suite and HTTP method dispatching.

ASP.NET

Create REST API using ASP.NET MVC (JSON & XML)

A solid start to creating your own REST API with ASP.NET MVC.

Considering, depending on the type of the request you may want to sendXML or JSON data, the tutorial provides a class which can return both.

Other Information on APIs

There are also various frameworks for creating APIs easily like WSO2 WSF, Recess PHP framework, Tonic & more.

Books On Creating An API

• RESTful Web Services
• Building Scalable Web Sites: Building, scaling, and optimizing the next generation of web applications
  
• RESTful PHP Web Services
• Pro PHP XML and Web Services
• Web Development Solutions: Ajax, APIs, Libraries, and Hosted Services Made Easy
• Practical API Design: Confessions of a Java Framework Architect
• Java Web Services: Up and Running
  
• Developing Web Services with Apache Axis2

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Ruby on Rails is a powerful web framework that helps creating web applications easier, faster & writing an organized code.

There are lots of websites that use it including popular ones like Twitter, Basecamp, AboutUs & many more.

Also, Ruby on Rails powers some amazing open source web applications which you may want to use directly or improve further.

Here is a well-categorized 23 open source Ruby on Rails applications:

(Note: There are few Merb apps. in the list too which we believe is ok considering Rails & Merb are getting into the same package with Rails 3.)

Project, Task & Time Management

Notes

Notes is an easy to use to-do-list & notes manager application.

It is possible to create pages & make them public (if wanted) or create simple notes. With the Jabber listener support, you can eevn add new notes from your Google Talk by chatting with a bot.

Reminders can be set for each note that can be sent to you by e-mail or SMS (via a Twitter bridge).

Tracks

A to-do-list manager with a clean interface. Tracks lets you to categorize, prioritize, schedule & star items for a better usability (see WRD post).

Interface is Ajaxed & many tasks are done by drag'n drops. The application has multi-user support & comes with a built-in web-server for user who want to install it to their computers.

ClockingIT

It allows keeping track of all your tasks and the time you spend on them. With just a click, the timer can be started (see WRD post).

But not only that. There is a built-in project management system with milestones, reports & tasks.

ClockingIT tracks/logs every change to the documents & can send notifications via e-mail, RSS or iCal.

It is normally a free hosted application & source can be found here.

RubyTime

RubyTime, which is built with Merb, is an application to manage projects in means of project files, time spent & invoicing.

Using RubyTime:

• users can bill projects
• clients can log in and see all the data for only their projects
• project managers can run reports and invoices for any project.

Redmine

Redmine is a flexible project management application that has an integrated news, files, documents management & more (see WRD post).

It supports multiple projects & makes it possible to have per-project forums/wikis.

Every step can be set to send notifications via e-mail or RSS. Also, it is possible to create issues via e-mail.

The application is cross-database & multilingual.

CMS & Blogging

Radiant CMS

A simple-yet-powerful Ruby on Rails CMS application with a slick interface (see WRD post).

It uses 3 main menus to manage the whole content:

• pages: for creating the hierarchy & content
• snippets: like PHP includes or modules to improve the pages
• layouts: pre-designed themes that decide how pages will be displayed

Radiant also has a template language, named Radius, for şncluding dynamic content to any page.

typo

A Ruby on Rails blogging application that is developed continiously.

It comes with theming & plugins support for easier customization. Every part is planned for a better SEO, like friendly-URLs, ability to add keywords/description to every category/page & more.

Project is hosted on GitHub.

Mephisto

A widely used blogging engine that has ready-to-use plug-ins..

It uses Liquid templates for creating & editing themes. Mephisto also has a built-in caching system for faster loading.

XLsuite CRM | CMS

A full-package application that provides a CRM and ERP system.

It has amazing features like:

• Contact list management with import/export capabilities
• Integrated webmail, newsletter management & forum for a better communication
• Ability to present & sell products/subscriptions (including controlling the inventory & payments)
• Managing the content of a website with multi-domain, RSS & permission based user/ group system

The application is still under development but can be downloaded.

Image Galleries

Albumdy

Albumdy enables you to create a multi-user image gallery system where images can be uploaded, edited & shared.

The application uses many other popular resources like: Blueprint CSS for the layout & SWFUpload for managing multiple uploads. Images in a gallery are presented with Galleria & they are stored in Amazon S3.

Gullery

A simple but functional photo gallery built with Ruby on Rails.

It uses the lightweight mini_magick to resize photos, reducing the memory requirements of the full RMagick suite.

Photos can be sorted by drag'n drops, captions can be edited easily & the look/feel can be customized via CSS.

E-Commerce

Spree

Spree is a highly extensible & customizable e-commerce application. Developers can easily override existing views, provide new ones or provide additional models, migrations and controllers.

All popular payment gateways are supported as Active Merchant is used.

Substruct

A simple & production ready Ruby on Rails e-commerce system.

It supports PayPal & Authorize.Net as the payment gateways. From the admin interface, you can easily track the inventory, view sales reports, create static content or answer the questions of your customers.

EcomPages

EcomPages is an e-commerce application which has most of the basic features of an e-store.

It has a good looking admin interface that makes managing products & orders easier.

The application is still being developed & is not feature-rich but can be a good base to start with & improve further.

Social Networks & Communities

EchoWaves

This is a group chat social network application. You can start conversations and connect wih other users while discussing it.

It is possible to make a conversation read-only for presenting a content too.

Community Engine

A plugin for Ruby on Rails applications for having the features of a social netwoking website instantly.

Some great features include:

• Authentication (sign up, log in), user search & user profiles
• Blogs with tagging, categories and rich text editing
• Photo uploading and tagging
• Commenting, forums, friendship, activity feeds & more

Insoshi

An open source social networking application with nice feaures (although it is under active development).

Users can have profiles with photos and comment walls, see activity feeds, friend to each other, have blogs, create discussions or send messages & more.

Openmind

Openmind enables you to create a collaborative environment for collecting the thoughts of your customers/collagues on a product/service.

User can discuss online about an idea & vote for the features. Admin can mark the most-requested features as "to be included in next releases" & users get informed from this. A nice application for creating a constructive community.

Forulio

Forulio is a Ruby on Rails forum application with a similar approach to popular forum softwares like phpBB or vBulletin.

It supports sub-forums, has a monitoring page for viewing the activity and has tagging integrated.

Other

Panda

Panda is an open source solution for video uploading, encoding and streaming.

By providing an elegant REST API, the whole process works painless and you can add video functionality to your web application in a matter of hours.

The application runs with Amazon Web Services utilising EC2, S3 and SimpleDB. And, it provides an admin panel for managing videos.

Mailr

Mailr is an open source webmail application that can be used with any IMAP server.

E-mails can be created both in HTML & plain text. E-mail addresses in the contact list are Ajax-auto-completed just like Gmail & more.

Warehouse

This is a beautiful web-based subversion browser built with Ruby on Rails.

Multiple repositories can be managed from the same interface. Also, it is possible to add any number of users with different permissions.

RubyURL

RubyURL is an online tool for converting long website addresses into short ones.

Besides the standard form input, it is possible to create short URLs via the REST API which supports both JSON & XML requests. Source of the application can be found here.

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Tracks is a web based, advanced & open source to-do-list (getting things done) application built with Ruby on Rails.

It comes with a built-in web server (WEbrick) which makes it easier to run on your own computer or it can be installed to any Ruby on Rails enabled web server.

Application has a very slick interface & offers a high usability with drag’n drops & Ajaxed actions.

Tracks is a multi-user to-do-list application where everyone can have their own tasks.

Items can be categorized, proritized, scheduled & starred (for reaching them easier).

With a chart-supported statistics page, you can see the progress of your tasks, analyze them better like finding out which are your productive days, which task took more then expected & more.

The application has a powerful feed support (text, iCal and RSS). You can subscribe to a list & get status updates for them.

Tracks also makes it possible to getting integrated with other apps. with its API. And, it provides a lightweight interface for mobile phones at  http://tarcksurl/mobile/.

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Panda is an open source solution that handles uploading, encoding & streaming videos.

All the process is completed via an elegant REST API.

Panda is designed to run in the cloud using Amazon's array of web services.

The application runs on a customised EC2 instance with everything pre-installed, including FFmpeg and an plethora of codecs.

SimpleDB is used to store all of data for video, encoding, accounts and encoding profiles. Uploaded and encoded video files are then stored on S3.

Other features of Panda:

• Everything contained within one elegant Merb application.
• Support for FLV, h264 for Flash, iPhone formats & more.
• Panda gem for painless integration with Ruby on Rails and Merb.
• Lovely little admin dashboard for managing your videos.

By default, Panda uses the JW FLV player but you can switch to any other video player easily.

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SproutCore is a framework for building applications in JavaScript with remarkably little amounts of code.

It can help you build full “thick” client applications in the web browser that can create and modify data, often completely independent of your web server, communicating with your server via Ajax only when they need to save or load data.

Like other JavaScript frameworks, SproutCore has ready to use visual widgets like list views, button views, and forms. But it also has other functions such as an in-memory database (that can integrate with client-side offline storage), bindings, property observing, and controllers.

SproutCore uses Ruby to generate static HTML and JavaScript files, you are not tied to Ruby or Rails in production. SproutCore runs in the browser, your production system can use whatever backend you want

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ClockingIT is an open source task – time tracking & project management application (normall a free hosted app. & source code is available) built with Ruby on Rails.

With a slick Ajaxed interface and providing information in every step of creating projects or tasks, ClockingIT is a very user-friendly application.

It is a complete solution for managing projects within a team as it offers nice tools like an integrated wiki, forum & a Facebook-like chat within team members.

Features of this free Ruby on Rails application:

• no restrictions or limits
• time tracking & reports
• milestones & due dates
• tagging & search
• timeline & activity log
• notifications, rss & iCal
• integrated wiki, forum & chat
• multilanguage

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