• spelling
• grammar
• styles (finds complex phrases, cliches, bias-language & suggests simple ones)
• and detects misused words (has a database of 1500 most misused words & suggestions)

The software used to come as a plugin for several projects (like Wordpress, RoundCube, PHP List) but it is now open source and anybody can embed it to their own code.

Besides the artificial intelligence it already has, it is possible to add new rules & improve the application.

The project also has libraries for jQuery, Ruby & Python to make developing new plugins easier.

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Bestwebframeworks has a wider look with less detail & makes comparing PHP, JavaScript, Ruby & CSS frameworks easier.

Frameworks are listed very clearly and shows:

• their licenses
• requirements
• features
• compatibility

depending on the category viewed.

Also, it is possible to hide any framework & sort titles for a quicker comparison.

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It uses the existing CSS syntax. So, it is very easy to convert current CSS files to LESS files & there is almost no learning curve.

To help understand better, here is an example:

@brand_color: #4D926F;
#header {
  color: @brand_color;
}
h2 {
  color: @brand_color;
}

LESS is well-documented & source can be found here.

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There are various syntax highlighters which can format the codes & color them appropriately according to the languages used. Whether it is a HTML page or runs on PHP, Ruby, Python, ASP, there is a suitable syntax highlighter.

And, here is a collection of 11 Syntax Highlighters To Beautify Code Presentation:

GeSHi (Generic Syntax Highlighter – With PHP)

GeSHi is a powerful syntax highlighter script that supports almost every language.

It is first created for phpBB forum system but became a project itself. It requires PHP to run (there is also a hack to make it work under ASP).

SyntaxHighlighter (With JS)

This is a flexible & extensible syntax highlighter built with JavaScript. It supports a wide range of languages from CSS to PHP or C++ to SQL.

SyntaxHighlighter offers ready-to-use themes an new ones can be created easily for a custom presentation.

It has support for 3rd party applications like Blogger, Wordpress, Joomla & many others.

Google Code Prettify (With JS)

This is the script used by the Google Code website. The script auto-detects the language used and highlights the code accordingly.

It is also customizable via CSS.

There is also an AS3 port to this code highlighting script named as3syntaxhighlight.

Highlight.js (With JS)

Highlight.js is very easy to use because it works automatically: finds blocks of code, detects a language, highlights it.

It has support for 3rd party applications and provides a Firefox extension for viewing code that doesn’t have syntax highlighting.

SHJS – Syntax Highlighting in JavaScript (With JS)

SHJS uses language definitions from GNU Source-highlight. This gives SHJS the ability to highlight source code written in many different languages.

Chili (With jQuery)

Chili is a code higlighter plugin for jQuery. It works very fast & can be totally customized.

It comes bundled with support for popular languages & the download package has examples on usage.

beautyOfCode (With jQuery)

This jQuery syntax highlighter plugin uses Alex Gorbatchev’s SyntaxHighlighter but with a twist: produces more xhtml-compliant codes.

Lighter.js (With MooTools)

Lighter.js is a MooTools-based code highlighter that can create outputs in various formats like ordered lists and tables.

It has a GeSHi-like class naming & requires MooTools 1.2.1+

ColourCode (With Ruby)

ColourCode is written in Ruby. It can read a source file and generate a syntax highlighted version in various formats.

Ultraviolet (With Ruby)

Ultraviolet is a syntax highlighting engine that runs on Ruby. It has support for 50+ languages & 20+ themes.

Pygments (With Python)

It is a syntax highlighter that is built with Python. Pygments supports a wide range of languages, various output formats & it is usable as a command-line tool or as a library.

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Using Compass, you can still use the other css frameworks -blueprint, yui, 960- that are ported to Sass and they are ready to be used in your ruby-based web application or stand-alone via a simple command-line interface.

The framework comes with a detailed documentation on:

• supported frameworks
  
• best practices
• patterns & more..

You can also watch the podcast on how Compass works.

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Ruby on Rails

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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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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But, there are various ways to harden the process & make it not worth trying like disabling right clicks, using images as backgrounds, adding watermarks to them & more.

Here are the good practices of these options:

Hide The Images

Put A Blank File Over The Real Image

This method will make the real image unreachable unless checked from the source.

You can use the original image as a background & put a transparent-blank file over it that matches the size of the real image.

For ex:

<div id="image1" style="background-image: url(originalImage.jpg);">
    <img src="blank.gif" height="250px" width="300px">
</div>

So, when the image is right-clicked, it will be the blank.gif that can be reached.

There are also 2 JavaScript framework ready solutions for this:

• dwProtector for MooTools
• dwProtector for jQuery

Auto-Slice The Images

Super Simple Image Tiles

This is a very effective image protection method.

An image is automatically sliced into pieces but presented as a whole. The original image is also hidden as watermarked.

Some serious disadvantages of this method are:

• adding a relatively more overload to the server as multiple requests will be made
• you’ll have lots of image files

Using Watermarks (Pre-Generated)

Adding a watermark to an image is an effective way of protecting images.

Besides the cons like:

• image not being presented clearly (there will be a watermark on it!)
• can be downloaded and cropped

as the source file is marked, there is no way to get the original image.

There are several solutions to watermark images with ease. From modifying it via Photoshop, GIMP, etc. to some web-based watermarking services like:

PicMarkr

A free service to watermark images online.

Multiple images can uploaded once or they can be grabbed automatically from Flickr.

It is possible to apply a text or an image watermark.

WatermarkTool

Another web-based free watermarking service.

You can upload images to be watermarked, customize the watermark text to be applied & download the updated images.

Using Watermarks (Generated Server-Side)

 It is possible to automate the watermarking process at the server level. Once applied, this is the easiest method to use.

To mention, implementing these methods require at least a bit of scripting knowledge.

Here are several libraries & examples for this:

Asido: PHP Image Processing Library

Asido is a PHP image processing library that can work with GD2, Magick Wand & Image Magick.

Here is a detailed information on watermarking capabilities of Asido.

Other PHP solutions:

• Put watermark on images using PHP
• Watermark your images with PHP 5 and GD
• Watermark images on the fly in PHP

ASP.NET Solutions:

• Thumbnail and watermark images on the fly with ASP.NET
• Watermarking Images in ASP.NET with an HttpHandler
• CoolWatermark (paid)

Ruby Solutions:

• RMagick
• Watermarking your images with RMagick

Use Flash To Show The Images

swfIR

swf image replacement displays images inside a Flash file which makes right-click impossible.

And, images can still be styled with CSS properties

On the other other hand the image source is mentioned at the source which again can not provide a total protection.

Browser Based Image Protection

Disable Right Click

Disabling right click via JavaScript is a way to start protecting images. But it is a simple step which can stop novice users as it is possible to disable JavaScript or get the path to the original image by reaching the source.

Is this a good method? Definitely no as you will be disabling all the right-click options like print, copying the link, etc. (updated 23 Jan 2009)

It may be a better solution to disable only save functions which this jQuery plugin can help.

Disable IE6 Image Toolbar

When an image is hovered for a while, IE6’s image toolbar appears automatically with an option to save the image. This can be disabled too.

Add the following code between the head tags of the webpage.

<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="no">

 Any more image protection solutions you want to share?

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It is a JavaScript port to the Gruff graphing library for Ruby.

Bluff has only 2 dependencies:

• JS.Class (2kb), which is a class for making JavaScript act like Ruby (which is definitely handy).
• Google’s ExCanvas, for canvas support in IE6.

Creating good looking graphs is very easy with this graphing library & it has a well-documented API that is supported with examples.

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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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