7 frameworks for reach User Interface experience

IT MILL

IT Mill Toolkit is an open-source framework, providing widgets and tools for the development of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Deliver web applications without worrying aboutincompatibilities of web browsers, DOM or JavaScript by using standard Java tools. 

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LIVE PIPE UI

LivePipe UI is a suite of high quality widgets and controls for web 2.0 applications built using the Prototype JavaScript Framework. Each control is well tested, highly extensible, fully documented and degrades gracefully for non JavaScript enabled browsers where possible.

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iWebKIT

Iwebkit is the revolutionnairy kit used to create high quality iPhone and iPod touch websites in a few minutes. In the first 4 months of it’s existance the pack has greatly evolved from a basic idea to a project that has reached worldwide fame.

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JITSU

Jitsu contains an integrated set of tools to enable developers to build and deploy sophisticated user interfaces for web applications. These include an Xml markup language, page compiler, data binding engine, JavaScript runtime, control library, runtime inspector, animation engine, cross-platform library, Ajax, and back button support. Jitsu apps use DHTML and run in most modern web browsers.

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MochaUI

MochaUI is a web applications user interface library built on the Mootools JavaScript framework.

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Echo Web Framework

Echo is an open-source framework for developing rich web applications. From the developer’s perspective, Echo behaves as a user interface toolkit–like Swing or Eclipse SWT. AJAX technology is employed to deliver a user experience to web clients that approaches that of desktop-based applications. Echo applications can be created entirely in server-side Java code using a component-oriented and event-driven API (applies to Echo2 and Echo3) or as client-side applications written in JavaScript (applies to Echo3 only).

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The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)

The YUI Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX.

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TypePublish CMS – touch of corporate blogging

TypePublish is a website content management system built on PHP, MySQL and a dash of Prototype/Scriptaculous, it is ideally suited for small-to-medium businesses who want to set up and manage their own website.

Zenphoto – web 2.0 gallery

Zenphoto is an answer to lots of calls for an online gallery solution that just makes sense.

Jquery-AIR

One of the more popular libraries, heres a crash course written with code-savvy web designers

home: 

demo: http://www.digital-web.com/extras/jquery_crash_course/

 

Justify elements using jQuery

Nice way to justify the labels in the form using jQuery without tables 

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Jquery-Img Notes

A simple way to display notes over images when you roll your mouse over the image. 

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Tags: ajax, jquery, notes, tags

TextboxList

A very nice Apple-like dynamic textfield, with autocompletion.

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Blogged with the Flock Browser

jQuery File Tree

A nice plugin to view the file tree using jquery..easy to use

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Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: ajax, jquery, php, tree, filebrowser

PAJAJ: PHP Asynchronous Javascript and JSON

What is the PAJAJ framework, it stands for (PHP Asynchronous Javascript and JSON). It is a object oriented Ajax framework written in PHP5 for development of event driven PHP web applications. The framework follows 5 basic principles:

1. Simple:

   You do not have to be an expert at PHP, HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to use the framework. You can do most, if not all, your coding in PHP, and the framework will generate HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for you. There are object for most of the HTML element, with method to manage common task, like updating the content of a Div or items in a forms Select pull down. A lot of the other frames include a simple example that is anything but simple. For my simple example I have been asked where the rest of the code is!

2. Develop how you want:

   the framework supports 3 different development models: i. the developer develops the whole application and interface in PHP, since the framework knows about HTML elements you want to interact with, i.e. there are objects for Select, Div, Table with instances with unique IDs; it is easy to have the framework generate simple html and CSS for you. ii. A designer generate a pretty but dump page, and you then hook events to it to make it a real application (see Last Binding of Event below) iii. You design an interface as a template (example Smarty), and have the framework make html, CSS, Javascript that you pore into the template.

3. Event Driving:

   I would rather have events delivered to the back-end, and decide there what actions to take then to write a lot of JavaScript in the front-end. What happens after an event?:

   1. The front-end gather information about the state of the page
   2. The back-end see if there is an event handler registered for this event
   3. If there is a registered event handler, it is call with the information from step i.
   4. After processing data is return back, if any, to page for processing:

   When an event happens there are 3 action that can be taken:

   1. Preprocessor Action: example setting a spinning hour glass gif, to tell the use that something is happening.
   2. Postprocessor Action: do something standard with the data that comes back, like update a div.
   3. Back-end delivers code to front-end: have the back-end tell the front-end what it want to do, or message the user.

4. Late Binding of Events:

   The pages HTML does not need to changed event and there logic (event handlers) are bound at run time. So your wed designer could delivery a pretty, but dump from, and without changes to the HTML you can make it into a AJAX enabled application. This make for simpler markup and an easier separation of design and code.

5. Object Oriented:

   There are not only objects for the Ajax plumbing, but for page elements that you are interacting with. The page element objects have method to make this interact easier to program.

Forecasting Keywords via Microsoft Prototype Application

Although it may come to a shock to some of you, Microsoft has actually put together a cool web application called Keyword Forecast. Using it you can compare up to four keywords and it will spit out some pretty graphs forecasting the impression count vs. time, keyword age distribution, and keyword gender distribution. This is similar to Google Trends but Google’s tool just gave a historical view of keywords and didn’t get into age and gender distributions although it did break it down geographically. Can someone say mashup opportunity here?Very cool for anyone out there like myself who is always looking for new ways to identify not only good keywords but an innovative concept that you’re not sure will still be viable in a few months.

On a whim, I decided to try the tool out with the keywords: ajax, javascript, rails, and php and here’s the output: (as you can see Ajax is expected to sky rocket in the coming months)

Here’s the time vs. impression count graph: