WebDev3000 » MIT License

Sudo Slider

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:12:44 +0000

Since weekend is coming, I think that some CMS or shopping cart wouldn’t be a good idea. At least when I think about myself, I usually enjoy some light work during weekends, nothing special, as it happens with most of my friends. The web designers that I can call “friends” usually go in the woods during weekends, but when they don’t, they usually avoid work, that’s certain. If things are so boring for them and they end up facing some script, I know they would surely enjoy something like Sudo Slider…

But what is this thing called “Sudo Slider,” you will ask, right? Based on Easy Slider, Sudo Slider is a jQuery slider plugin packing quite a few interesting features. To make a longer story short, I think it’s enough to say that this piece of code will help you to display any HTML content via Ajax, displaying the items with fade or slide effects. Even better, you can use multiple sliders in one page and you get support for forward-back browsing, so you can easily bookmark every item.

Before giving Sudo Slider a try on your website, I think best thing to do is take a look at the demo. This 10kb plugin may be unobtrusive, but it’s surely faster to click the link above than make it work on your pages, right? That’s all, folks – have a nice weekend and be sure to enjoy Sudo Slider!

Compatibility: all major browsers

Moovie

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:51:08 +0000

While this may not be something new at all, it surely ads a new alternative to those programmers looking for a HTML5/Javascript-based library offering all the features of a player… only that you don’t really need Flash, that’s the whole catch! The name of this library? Moovie!

To take a closer look at the demo and download this library still in its early development stage, please go here and have a look around. For now, basic functionality is almost complete, Moovie offering support for subtitles and playlists already, CSS-powered styling, play/pause/stop controls, control and progress bars like the ones YouTube has, and then some!

Released under the terms of the MIT License, Moovie requires MooTools and works with most major browsers without any special problems, but the demo currently has some issues in Google Chrome and Google Chrome-based browsers (Flock 3 beta, anyone?).

P.S. I guess you figured out this already considering the license type, but let me point it out clearly, just for the record: Moovie is completely free!

jMediaelement

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 09:29:06 +0000

Could you live without sites like YouTube or Vimeo? I think I could, but that would surely be a pretty boring life! Sure, that won’t happen anytime soon, especially since it becomes easier with each day to add media elements to your website. Today, we’ll take a look at jMediaelement, an audio-video development kit built using HTML5 and jQuery.

jMediaelement, shortly known as “jme,” is covered by the terms of the terms of the GPL and MIT licenses, offering support for a wide range of media file formats, including OGG, MP4, FLV, and more. With its help, you can easily create media elements just by calling a function. While it offers support for all major browsers, jme can fallback to Flash and VLC plugin when facing some exotic Web browser…

Other than the above, you should also know that the player’s looks can be easily changed using CSS, and if you want to quickly check a demo, you should take a look at this page. That’s all, folks!

jTweetsAnywhere

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:40:54 +0000

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter! No matter where I turn, it seems I can’t escape it. Oh, well, you know how they say… “If you can’t beat them, join them!” Today, I will do exactly that, so I’ll tell you a few words about another Twitter-related thing. Its name is jTweetsAnywhere and comes for free, as it usually happens with most of the stuff we talk about here.

This “thing” called jTweetsAnywhere is a jQuery Twitter widget able to make integration of Twitter services into your sites much easier. According to the official product page mentioned above, this piece of code allows you to display tweets from feeds and lists, show Twitter search results, integrate a customizable TweetBox or handle secure authentication with Twitter, all “with just a few lines of Javascript” and nothing more!

jTweetsAnywhere’s current version is 1.0.0 and it should work with all major browsers. It only requires jQuery, and it can automatically detect #hashtags, @usernames or URLs, linking them accordingly. For more about this goodie… go ahead and give it a try, it’s free!

Sexy.js

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 07:38:05 +0000

Those who claim that intelligence is sexy may be right, after all. Why? I never thought about programming/code to be sexy, and I wasn’t expecting to see a jQuery library with such a smart branding as Sexy.js. Now, they only need a theme song… and I can’t suggest anything else but ZZ Top’s Legs, since I think it goes perfectly with the home page of this product!

Sexy.js is a chainable library that allows you to easily manage script dependencies and write “sexy” code. While I would really like to see a nice video presentation of this lightweight JavaScript library, all I could find was this slideshow. Don’t get me wrong, this slideshow is nicely put together, but this piece of code surely deserves more!

Dual licensed under the MIT or GPL v2 licenses, Sexy.js can easily turn “ugly” code into “sexy” one, providing enhanced sequential Ajax (Sajax) functionality and coming in two versions – as a jQuery plugin, or standalone. Obviously, there’s no special requirement for it, since all major browsers can easily handle JavaScript. For a demo, take a look at this page. Enjoy!

FlareVideo

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 14:21:46 +0000

HTML5 is the way of the future… am I right? Right or not, I know it’s not the first time I say this, and I bet it’s not the last one, either. There are plenty of reasons to say this, and seeing video players like FlareVideo is one of them… so let’s take a quick look at this piece of code, shall we?

Completely free and even open source, FlareVideo can be easily customized using CSS, JS and HTML, but it comes with 3 themes in the package already. Oh, my, but I forgot something: this video player falls back to Flash when an incompatible browser is being used, and if you want a demo… just hit the Play button on the homepage of the product (see link above). By the way: I love that video!

Built using jQuery and jQuery UI, FlareVideo supports full screen display, autoplay, custom keyboard shortcuts, preloading/autobuffering and more. Sounds like a pretty good deal, don’t you think? I don’t know about developers, but I, as just another Internet user, would surely love to see more HTML5 players and as few Flash-based ones as possible.

Compatibility: according to its producer, FlareVideo works with Safari, Firefox and IE7+ (according to me, myself and I, it surely doesn’t work properly in Opera…)

AeroWindow

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:23:47 +0000

The Aero-look has been around for ages, Vista only made it really popular (don’t tell me that more than 10% of those using Vista/7 now and enjoying the transparent interface and the effects coming with it ever used Stardock products or even heard of it – I’m not buying that!). Don’t get me wrong – I don’t have anything against it, but I think there was and still is too much hype around Windows’ looks… and now I will tell you a few words about a jQuery plugin built to help you use Aero-style popups on your websites!

AeroWindow allows you to easily create Aero-style popups and offers a lot of options for changing the appearance of the result, including window title, start position, standard and minimum size, animation effects or window status. I don’t know about regular websites, but this tool is surely an awesome addition to Web-based operating systems… or at least sites that try to emulate the look of Microsoft’s notorious Vista/7 software platforms!

Freely available under the terms of the GPL/MIT License, AeroWindow is compatible with all major browsers and is based on jQuery 1.4.2, the downloadable package containing all that you need to get started in no time. Sweet!

Nivo Zoom

Codrut Nistor — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:41:29 +0000

No matter if you have problems with your eyes or you simply want to see a close up of some image you found on the Internet, you’ll usually end up zooming in and out. Sure, you can copy the image, paste it into your favorite image viewer (I would go with IrfanView, as always), and then zoom in as you wish, but why not be quick about it and use the facilities of image zooming capabilities offered by plugins like Nivo Zoom? Sure, there’s a little problem here – the dev behind the page you’re visiting should have been careful to add this feature…

… but since Nivo Zoom is freely available for them to grab and use, I see no solid reason to avoid using it. Sure, page loading speed and design principles, but I am not going that far today. All I have to tell you now is that Nivo Zoom supports HTML captions, offering 5 different zoom types and optional overlay support. Even more, it has a lot of settings to mess with, and the packed version only weighs 4kb!!!

This interesting jQuery plugin is covered by the terms of the MIT License and requires, as expected, jQuery. According to dev7studios, its producer, Nivo Zoom was tested and works well with Internet Explorer 7 & 8, Firefox 3, Chrome 4 and Safari 4. That’s all, folks!

CwVideo

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 14 May 2010 08:52:07 +0000

In the long run, I really think that HTML5 may be able to kill Flash. If the iPad continues to gain market share, that would also help (it seems most people don’t care too much about those iPad problems, after all…). Anyway, this is not about the iPad, but about a toolkit for taking full advantage of HTML5 video capabilities, namely CwVideo.

CwVideo is covered by the terms of the MIT License and supports a bunch of methods, including play/pause, rewind, volume or move, and every property can be easily reached by providing an id to the video tag and calling a function, the MooTools way!

CwVideo requires MooTools 1.24+ (Core) and Fx.Slider (More), but despite the fact they claim to have full compatibility with Safari 3+, Firefox 3+, Chrome 3+ and Opera 10.5+, I wasn’t even able to watch the product site properly in Opera, not to mention the demo… Anyway, Chrome had no problems… so I ask you – were you able to watch any of these two pages (the demo and official product page) in Opera? Maybe it’s some strange problem on my side, after all…

Rhodes

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 13 May 2010 13:22:00 +0000

If I had to start a programming career today, I know for sure what’s the path to follow – mobile apps development, all the way! This market is growing and will continue to do so for some time, so why not choose the right thing? Sure, I won’t get into that, because it’s more interesting to see what’s happening from outside the field, but today I got something really useful for those already into building apps for the dominant smartphones on the market: Rhodes!

Being the only smartphone app framework to offer support for the iPhone, Windows Mobile, RIM, Symbian and Android at the same time, Rhodes is freely available, being covered by the terms of the MIT License. Using Ruby as its development language, Rhodes offers access to various device capabilities, such as PIM contact reading or writing, GPS geolocation, and camera capture.

The result of your work will be available as true native device applications, and not just mobile web apps, which is simply great. If you are going to use Rhodes in a company and need commercial grade support, you can purchase an Enterprise License for $1,000, but if you can find your way around without help… that’s even better! After all, there are plenty of examples and tutorials available, so… you only need to get started and learn on the go! Good luck!

Compatibility: iPhone, Windows Mobile, RIM, Symbian and Android (Ruby and Rubygems are required)