WebDev3000 » Licenses

Juitter

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:50:44 +0000

While messing with Twitter itself on a regular basis is nothing but a huge waste of time (my personal opinion, of course, you’re free to disagree with it), I have to admit that a lot of the messages sent by Twitter user may lead to useful information. Great, but how can one avoid using Twitter, yet gain access to the goodies that can be found with its help? Without too many doubts, I can say that the answer is not a single one, but Juitter can be one of the possible ones, so… let’s get to it!

Completely free to download and use (donations are welcome, anyway), Juitter is a highly customizable, lightweight and fast jQuery plugin that allows you to easily put live Twitter content on your site. According to its official page I just mentioned, Juitter is smaller and faster than other Twitter widgets, offers content filtering, allows you to show tweets from/to a user or containing a certain word, multiple user/word search is also possible, results can even be filtered based on language and, in case you were wondering, you can add your own stylesheet to make it look exactly as you wish. Not bad at all, right?

Developed by Rodrigo Fante, the Juitter jQuery plugin works with all major browsers on any platform, as long as Java is running as it should. Oh, yeah – if you want to know about its licensing model, keep in mind that Juitter comes covered by the terms of the MIT license. That’s all, folks!

… but, in case you didn’t figure that out yet, the official site of this piece of code is also its demo, since it uses it to display those live Twitter results. Bingo!

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Videola

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 07:45:51 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I think that a really good book simply doesn’t need a movie adaptation. For example, I simply wasn’t able to watch Dune after reading Frank Herbert’s books. If I have to eliminate one of the following – music, video and text – it’s always the video part that goes out. I know it may sound strange, but that’s my personal opinion and I’m not going to change it anytime soon. Well, my personal opinion doesn’t stop me from writing about video-related piece of code, so here’s Videola!

Built on Drupal and open sourced, Videola is, as far as the official mumbo-jumbo goes, “an enterprise-level video management system and video delivery platform. It allows you to create paid-access or free-access video websites which can serve video to the desktop, mobile, or television-based devices.” This piece of code allows you to easily create your own video streaming website using any business model you consider best – subscription (Netflix On-Demand style), ad-supported (Hulu style) or rental (Blockbuster / Amazon style). Obviously, you can (and should, I guess) use your own video content…

… so if you got enough videos ready to be streamed, I think the features at your disposal should be more than enough – Videola offers quite a few of them, including extensive video analytics, HD/adaptive bitrate/secure video streaming, user queues, listing of similar videos on each page, option to show video previews to non-subscribed users, in-stream ads and even iOS & Android compatible mobile streaming via WiFi or 3G. Awesome!

In case you’re still wondering, you should know that Videola works with all major browsers, including mobile ones, requiring that you have PHP & MySQL up and running on your server. A demo can be accessed right here. That’s all, folks!

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yfrog for iPhone

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 14:40:23 +0000

I got a friend who’s working as a software developer, mostly for desktop platforms, but since he’s into financial software (and completely fed up with it), we have talks about ways of making money from time to time. As you can imagine, none of us got rich yet, but at least we’re trying. I am no developer, but every time we talk about software to develop, there are three words I keep repeating to him: iPhone, Twitter, Android. So far, nothing came out, but we’re boiling our brains on a regular basis to give birth to some brilliant idea. Anyway, until then… checking others’ projects is a pretty good start, and today the time has come for ImageShack’s yfrog for iPhone!

According to the official description found on code.google.com, yfrog for iPhone “is an open source Twitter client for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch,” previously known as Tweetero. Its rich list of features includes the ability to view tweets and lists as you wish, mess with the mobile notifications, schedule posts/uploads, forward tweets by email, take and send pictures that end up hosted on Yfrog.com and so on.

To freely install yfrog for iPhone, just click right here. For more screenshots, click here. Sure, since I already mentioned that yfrog for iPhone is open source, feel free to mess with the code, if you got the skills and the time required to do that. For me, it’s bye-bye time now. See you next week!

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Jigoshop

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 07:22:09 +0000

These days, a lot of people seem to be selling their souls – not to the devil or another imaginary entity – it’s all about crushing your own principles and nothing more. To be honest, I can’t say I know anyone who managed to never break his/her own rules, but at least I know a lot of people who are struggling to avoid that as much as possible. In the end, it’s not always the outcome of the fight that matters, keeping your banner high no matter what is also very important and that’s exactly why I love to discover new online stores showing up here and there during these tough times – some of them will fall, others will take off successfully and, in case you want to get into the business without spending too much, WordPress and Jigoshop can be a great combo to set your new online store in motion!

More than just looking great and offering a bunch of features everyone will enjoy to get, Jigoshop comes for free, but delivers much more than one would expect! The official mumbo-jumbo goes like this: “Jigoshop is an eCommerce plugin for WordPress developed by professionals with years of experience delivering online shops for global brands.” Its rich set of features includes themes and extensions, multilanguage support, advanced reporting capabilities, excellent support forums and documentation, powerful and easy to use orders tracking system, multiple currency and shipping options, even the ability to calculate tax by location, all right out of the box!

Offering support for Moneybookers, PayPal and cheque payments, Jigoshop only requires WordPress (obviously!), MySQL and PHP to be up and running on your server, being available for a quick download right here. Oh, yeah – in case you want to mess with the demo for a while, go here. That’s all, folks!

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Surface iPhone UI Kit

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 06:06:12 +0000

Still having some problems with your iPhone development work? Well, I guess there’s nothing out of this world, since nothing’s that simple when it comes to programming stuff for the iPhone/iPad or the iPod. Fortunately, there are plenty of great tools available for free, so if you want to ease your life, you don’t really have to start paying for tools that can help you. Today, the time has come to tell you a few words about Surface iPhone UI Kit, so let’s get to it, shall we?

This excellent freebie know as Surface iPhone UI Kit was designed to cover all the common UI elements of the iPhone, being one hell of a choice for those in need to quickly design user interfaces of iPhone apps. Also great for wireframing, Surface iPhone UI Kit includes two PSD files – one for the Retina resolution and one for standard (pre iPhone 4) resolution. More than just that, you can also mess with the set and obtain interface elements that can be easily used to “dress” iPad apps, even programs built to run on Android and Windows phones!

Other than the above, I think there’s nothing much left to be said – after all, designing a user interface is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, so… start sweating with Surface iPhone UI Kit, will you? Good luck!

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Three Icon Sets For You

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:18:11 +0000

I know some of you may not consider this to be such a great find, but I think we all need some cool icon sets from time to time. If they come for free, then we’re already talking about an offer that only a few can refuse, so today I decided to tell you about not one or two, but three icon sets. These being said, let’s take them down one by one, shall we?

Released by design deck on the 3rd of June, the 25-icon Mini Social Icon Set includes 25 layered social icons freely available in PNG JPG & PSD formats for the following: Rss, Facebook, Twitter, dribbble, Google, last FM, Share this, Ember, Digg, LinkedIn, YouTube, Skype, Stumbleupon, Evernote, flickr, Forrst, Yahoo, Github, Vimeo, Aim, tumblr, Paypal, Behance, MySpace and Gowalla. As you can see in the image above, they look pretty cool, so I guess we can move on now, right?

Next in line is the Clean Noise Social Media Icon Set from Creative Nerds, also freely available to use in commercial and non commercial design projects, just like the previous set. This one contains 12 icons, looks different, but it’s still a great resource, so here you have it!

At last, we have a set of Awesome Textured Icons that, in fact, consists of over 40 black and white icons (shades of grey also included, lol), also packing 10 social network icons. Each icon comes as a 32X32 PNG image, but if you need them larger or smaller, you should know that vector PSD files are also available in the ZIP file. Free for both personal and commercial purposes, the Awesome Textured Icons set is a great way to close this day, don’t you think? That’s all, folks!

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Lubith

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 14:30:02 +0000

Can you believe that some people pay up to 100 bucks or more to some self-titled “designers” who don’t work at least 20 minutes to “create” a WordPress theme? I didn’t do such a thing, but one buddy of mine did it a few times – in the end, it’s not a fool the one asking, but the one paying, especially since we’re only talking about starting with some theme already available and changing it here and there, not building one from scratch! Well, today I’ll give everyone something to think about – Lubith can do a lot for free… so if you’re planning to pay for a WordPress theme, at least be sure you’ll get an original one, not just a painted old crow, all right?

No need for any other introduction – Lubith is a Web-based WordPress theme editor that, unfortunately, only seems to work with Firefox and Chrome, but it surely gets the job done! By using it, you’ll save a lot of time and money, since it requires no coding, it’s completely free and sports an intuitive interface. Even more, if “intuitive” is not easy for you, there’s also a tutorials section on the official page, available right here. For now, it’s only one there, but we’ll surely have more in the future, I have no doubt about it…

Other than the above, I should add that, in case you’re feelin’ lost, the support forum will surely help you – it’s not really crowded there as I write this, but most issues reported get answers pretty soon and, in the end, that’s what really matters – to learn how to master Lubith as soon as possible, so maybe you can create some WordPress themes for others in need and ready to pay for it, right? Good luck with that and anything else you may have in mind!

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resizeMyBrowser

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:45:37 +0000

For a lot of Web developers and designers, keeping things as short and simple as possible is not something to choose – it’s something you follow as faithfully as possible, or else… wasting your time can have really nasty consequences, going as far as leaving you without any work to do. After all, who wants to work with a person/company needing more time than all the others to get the same job done? Well, today we’re not going to talk about any impressive script or IDE that can help you spare some of that precious time, since I think that easy to use, straightforward Web-based tools like resizeMyBrowser can also have a serious impact in the long run…

… so let’s make a short story even shorter: created by Chen Luo, resizeMyBrowser is nothing more but a browser resizing application that works best with best on Safari, Firefox and IE, unfortunately still encountering some issues on Opera and Chrome. Basically, it does the following things: allows you to set to set the browser size by both Inner window and Outer window, displays the current size values in real time when manually resizing the browser, it even lets you create your own presets, all inside a clean layout. Excellent!

As I write this, resizeMyBrowser is free and I have no doubt that it will continue to remain this way. Current version is 1.0.9, released back on the 23rd of February and, if you ask me, all I wish to see until Christmas is support for Opera and Chrome or – why not? – even some extensions for this browser to get the resizing job properly done. That’s all, folks!

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Css-sprit.es

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 10:45:23 +0000

While an experienced developer can get started with CSS and go above average level in less than an hour, I think that code generators should be used as often as possible, I decided to take a closer look at another Web-based CSS tool. After a few minutes spent searching for something interesting enough, I ended up facing today’s subject – ladies and gentlemen, here’s Css-sprit.es!

Before anything else, Css-sprit.es is a great domain name, if you ask me. Other than that, I think I should add that this is a Web-based CSS sprites generator that can be freely used by anyone and packs a bunch of interesting features, including CSS-based rollover effects with a few different presets available. The sprite image to upload can be in the JPG, GIF or PNG format, while output is CSS or SASS.

“Carefully handcrafted by Nicolas Crovatti” and powered by jQuery and Pixastic, Css-sprit.es is still in Beta status, but seems like a pretty useful, good looking and reliable Web-based tool, so why not take it for a spin? Since “Beta” also means “possibly buggy” and I must confess I didn’t manage to spot any bugs, could you drop a comment below with any compatibility/functional bugs that you encountered, if any? Thank you in advance!

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PhotoSwipe

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 31 May 2011 16:00:41 +0000

iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry 6, even desktop computers or laptops – what do they have in common? Well, they’re all used to go online, at least once in a while, so when that does happen… I guess most users will end up facing one image gallery sooner or later – agree with that? Fortunately, it seems developers have a lot of tools at their disposal to avoid deploying different apps for each device, so today we’ll take a quick look at PhotoSwipe. Ready or not, here we go…

According to the official mumbo-jumbo, PhotoSwipe “is a FREE HTML/CSS/JavaScript based image gallery specifically targeting mobile devices” aimed at developers and designers who need to add an interactive image gallery to their mobile websites while maintaining the look and feel of a native app. Fully compatible with a wide range of devices, PhotoSwipe also works like a charm with virtually all popular development frameworks and JavaScript libraries, being available as a self contained JavaScript library or, if needed, this piece of code comes packaged with a jQuery implementation as well.

Freely available for any purposes you may have in mind, PhotoSwipe offers support for orientation, allows you to easily swipe items and, when needed, images are being resized automatically, not to mention the customization options available, such as speed control of fadeIn-fadeOut effects, image scaling methods, zoom on/off and many others. At last, I should add that PhotoSwipe has no special requirements and, in case that’s not obvious already, you should know it works with all mobile and desktop browsers. Well… I guess that’s all for today, folks!

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