WebDev3000 » License free

Google Font Directory

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:27:55 +0000

Less than a month after Google Analytics Application Gallery, Google strikes again! That time, it was about various apps for Google Analytics, now it’s all about fonts, since the name says it all – Google Font Directory.

Another Beta product from the Internet search giant, Google Font Directory allows you to browse all the fonts from the tiny collection already available via the Google Font API. Just as it happened with the Application Gallery I mentioned earlier, there’s not much to see here now, but things will surely change in the future. Why am I saying this? Think about the two sides of the coin: to font creators, Google Font Directory offers a quick way to reach a lot of people looking for free fonts, while web designers will surely enjoy having access to such a resource that contains fonts covered by an open source license!

For a bunch of details and sample code, please click one of the large text snippets located on the main Google Font Directory page. That’s all, folks!

Barcode Label Printer

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:56:02 +0000

Some say that products having any kind of barcode on them are marked with the so-called “number of the beast,” but I think they are more than paranoid. After all, no matter what number you take, after applying some math, you’ll surely end up facing the notorious “666,” if that’s what you are really looking for. Anyway, if we leave conspiracy theories aside, barcodes can be used successfully in various designs for Web or print, but if you don’t want to create barcode graphics in Photoshop or another similar program, Barcode Label Printer is a great choice!

The idea behind Barcode label Printer is very simple – you go to the page, choose the type of barcode to generate (Interleaved 2 of 5, Code 39, Code 128 A, B, or C symbologies available), pick the size and set some other options, as you can see in the image above, and then press the Make me a barcode! button. What could be easier?

At last, you should save your barcode, and the formats available are only two – JPEG or PNG, but I think they’re enough. I don’t think you’ll have any problems using this tool, and I hope you won’t ever need technical support, because Barcodes Inc., the company behind it, won’t offer such a thing. After all, you got the freebie, what else can you ask? Enjoy it as it is!

Compatibility: any major browser – it even works in Firefox with the scriptblocker enabled!

Domainr

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 08:20:43 +0000

While the domain name won’t really make the difference between success and failure, it’s surely better to have a site accessed via vegetabl.es instead of isellfreshvegetables.com, don’t you think? Sure, that was just an example, since I don’t think anyone bothered to touch the fresh vegetables online sales niche… although vegetabl.es seems to have been purchased already by someone, parked, and now is for sale. Too bad, but I am sure you can still find a bunch of interesting domain names, especially when using a tool like Domainr!

The main purpose of this Web-based tool is to help you find good domains for your needs, taking things a bit further than the notorious COM-NET-ORG crowd. For example, if you look for “automobile,” you’ll also get suggestions like auto.mobi/le or automo.bi/le, and despite the fact these don’t look that good to me, finding interesting combos like blo.gs or lapto.ps is surely worth spending your time with Domainr (sorry to inform you, but both these two last domains have been taken already… and not by me).

Currently, Domainr covers virtually the entire global namespace, including country domains, second-level domains (co.uk or net.nz, for example), and even sponsored domains (.asia or .mobi), making it a very interesting and useful choice to those who really care about the naming process during the development of a site, as well as for those simply hunting for good domain names…

Compatibility: any major browser, but – as usual – be sure to turn off script blockers!

Big Browser

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:30:59 +0000

One of the things I really love about Maxthon is the ability to load two sides side by side. You don’t have to be a developer to use this, since content editors and even “normal” Internet users can find themselves pretty often in situations requiring side by side browsing. While having two sites loaded next to each other may be good, what about four of them?

Big Browser is exactly the tool to use to achieve the goal described above, and while the official page claims this is still in a “very very early development state,” I think everything works just great considering this… After all, I had no crashes or any strange errors while playing with Big Browser, and the amount of memory used is pretty low (about 26MB with four sites loaded seems cool to me).

The cherry on top of the cake? This tool works on both Macs and Windows PCs, and it’s a completely free application. What else can you ask?

Compatiblity: a computer with Adobe AIR in a working state

colrful

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:10:42 +0000

I usually enjoy writing about apps/resources that I can try by myself, but this time, something’s wrong here – I just found a very interesting tool, but it doesn’t seem to work. Since I think something may be wrong with my ISP, I hope you’ll be able to play with colrful, because this is something some people will really enjoy, and I don’t want to keep it aside simply because I bump into some kind of error…

If you want, you can call this Adobe AIR toy “colrful desktop” and you won’t go wrong, but if we leave name aside, this little piece of code can be used to easily retrieve Flickr photos that contain the color palette you choose. Useful, pointless… that depends on the one using it, so I won’t say anything about this part.

How does it work? Everything is very simple – you select the colors from the palette, then choose to search, and then view/download your favorites! Even more, you can paste a URL of some image, and colrful will look for similar ones on the Web!

To end this with a few words about my own experience, I should add that everything works great, only that I get a Flickr connection error when I try to preview a image. Funny that the program can connect to the site to look perform the color-based search, so… this seems to be out of my hand. Any clues?

Compatibility: as long as you have Adobe AIR (and you’re luckier than I am), everything should be fine…

Lessn

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:40:03 +0000

These days, it seems everyone’s into releasing free scripts to the public, and I can’t say this is bad. In fact, I think it’s great, even if we’re talking about a URL shortener that comes “as is” and was written using PHP, MySQL, as well as some mod_rewrite tricks…

… namely Lessn, a script that can be installed in just a few moments, since all the instructions come in a very clear (and rather short) readme file. With a little bit of assistance, I am sure even my uncle could make this work (he has nothing to do with computers!), believe me!

To have Lessn up and running, all you have to do is create a user and pass in the config.php file, then enter the details required to connect to a database you want to use. Once you do that, upload the entire folder containing the file and access it to enter your own URL shortener. Sweet!

Compatibility: Lessn works in all major browsers and requires PHP 4.4.8 and MySQL 4.1.25 (or above, of course)

VidoopCAPTCHA

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:51:56 +0000

I hate CAPTCHA on sites that I use frequently, especially since most of them use only letters, and sometimes I don’t understand the text displayed. If everyone would be nice and switch their text CAPTCHA pages to ones using images, that would really be awesome, at least to me. Well, they can use VidoopCAPTCHA, so there’s no excuse for not doing it… since I know a lot of people like me who would be grateful!

To make a short story shorter, I will tell you that VidoopCAPTCHA is a completely free image-based verification tool for those afraid they’ll have more spam accounts created automatically on their site than normal accounts, with a person behind them. Sure, bot attacks aren’t exactly pleasant, but text-based verification isn’t, either – at least for those human users…

Since you can set the number of images displayed, as well as the number of those required to identify a human, I think that VidoopCAPTCHA is a great idea, and that’s enough for me. I only hope to see it on my favorite sites as soon as possible… or at least to see a similar solution being implemented, if the multitude of plugins/code snippets available for this one aren’t enough…

Text-based CAPTCHA is dead, long live VidoopCAPTCHA!

Compatibility: all major browsers and nothing less (demo available here for those who may not trust me…)

BgPatterns

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:24:05 +0000

I really like to start every new week by discovering something cool, and today I had a big revelation. What kind of revelation? Well, first of all, some time has passed since we talked about any kind of online background generator… and second, I really don’t know how did I manage to miss BgPatterns for so long!

BgPatterns obviously comes from “background patterns,” but I really like this site a lot, because it offers more than just some patterns to save and then use for your own projects. In this case, you have a bunch of images to choose from (categories available include scrolls – my favorite, stars, flowers, hearts, trees, and more), as well as the ability to choose pattern and background colors, canvas type and size, and finally to rotate the pattern image in your work of art.

Using BgPatterns is really straightforward – all you need to do is mess with each of the elements I mentioned above, and finally download you work (you can also get a free account on the site and save it there, or just apply the background image to the background of the site itself). Awesome!

Just one more thing – BgPatterns is free for any kind of work you may have in mind, but if you really like this resource and make good use of it, I suggest sparing some bucks for a little donation…

Compatibility: I played with BgPatterns in Opera, IE, Chrome, and even in FF with my script blocker turned on (warning: disable such tools to see the tool working properly, all right?) – everything worked just as expected!

AnythingSlider

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 05:31:37 +0000

To be honest, I love image gallery scripts, but when I want to watch various images on the Web, I like keeping things as simple as possible. When I say “as simple as possible,” that means image transitions and Flash- or Java-based image galleries are a no-go, but…

… it all becomes pretty interesting when we look at AnythingSlider, a jQuery plugin created to display not only images, but any kind of HTML content. Before I tell you a few words about the features, just take a look at the demo, all right?

Good… now, here’s what AnythingSlider has to offer, in case you didn’t check the demo properly: dynamically added navigation tabs, next/previous arrows, custom function for formatting navigation text, autoplay, autoplay pause on hover, as well as hashtagged slides with the advantages you get from this (can link to specific slides or have multiple sliders on a page).

Since it’s free to use and looks pretty good, if you think that AnythingSlider can get your job done… go for it!

Compatibility: all major browsers, but only as long as JavaScript is enabled, of course

Tweetable

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:26:56 +0000

For some, Twitter is like Eden, while others consider it a plague. To be honest, I think that the Twitter plague is closer to the truth than the other version, but since everyone seems to be so crazy about it, a little jQuery Twitter plugin won’t hurt at all, I am sure of that.

While there’s also a WordPress plugin with the same name (take a look at it here), the Tweetable piece of code I have here today is only a lightweight jQuery plugin that will enable you to easily display your Twitter feed on any site you may be working on.

If the above is not enough, you should also add that Tweetable does more than simply displaying the feeds, since you can also highlight @replys and links are dynamically generated, making it all much easier.

The official page I mentioned earlier also has some useful advice about usage and the various Tweetable options you can use, as well as a demo page. I think these should be more than enough to get you started with this freely available piece of code, don’t you think?

Compatiblity: tested in IE, Firefox and Safari, probably works in other major browsers, too (problems noticed in IE7, so I guess IE6 and IE7 are out of question)