Some freeware for your web development

GIMP – versatile graphics manipulation package

GIMP – versatile graphics manipulation package

GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.

Each task requires a different environment and GIMP allows you to customize the view and behavior the way you like it. Starting from the widget theme, allowing you to change colors, widget spacings and icon sizes to custom tool sets in the toolbox. The interface is modulized into so called docks, allowing you to stack them into tabs or keep them open in their own window.

HTML Kit for more than editing HTML

HTML Kit for more than editing HTML

HTML Kit is a full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and other text file types. Over 400 plugins are also available, including HTML Tidy for creating standards-compliant HTML/XHTML pages. HTML-Kit has received 95% thumbs up out of 2900+ Download.com user reviews and over 4 million overall downloads.

Inkscape – Vector Drawing Graphics SVG PNG

Inkscape – Vector Drawing Graphics SVG PNG:

“Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, Freehand, CorelDraw, or Xara X using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Supported SVG features include shapes, paths, text, markers, clones, alpha blending, transforms, gradients, patterns, and grouping. Inkscape also supports Creative Commons meta-data, node editing, layers, complex path operations, bitmap tracing, text-on-path, flowed text, direct XML editing, and more.

It imports formats such as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and others and exports PNG as well as multiple vector-based formats.”

This software has solved my SVG view and Convert to PNG Problem. I got some icons from GNOME Art – Artwork & Themes which were SVG and was stuck. Then i found more SVG here Open Clip Art Library .

VIM – Advanced text editor VI

VIM – Advanced text editor VI

Vim is an advanced text editor that seeks to provide the power of the de-facto Unix editor ‘Vi’, with a more complete feature set. It’s useful whether you’re already using vi or using a different editor.

Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is distributed free as charityware.

Thingamablog blogging application

Thingamablog blogging application

Thingamablog is a cross-platform, standalone blogging application that makes authoring and publishing your weblogs almost effortless. Unlike most blogging solutions, Thingamablog does NOT require a third-party blogging host, a cgi/php enabled web host, or a MySQL database. In fact, all you need to setup, and manage, a blog with Thingamablog is FTP, SFTP, or network access to a web server.

Thingamablog allows you to:

• Set up a blog in minutes via an intuitive wizard
• Maintain multiple blogs
• Effortlessly manage thousands of entries
• Dynamically update blog content
• Write entries offline (Dialup users)
• Publish your blog with a single click
• Create a unique layout with customizable templates
• Import entries from RSS/Atom feeds
• Set up flexible archiving options
• Organize your entries by category or date
• Save entries as drafts
• Define your own custom template tags
• Syndicate your blog via an RSS or Atom feed
• Ping services like weblogs.com, BlogRolling, and Blo.gs

You have to install Java to run Thingamablog. Java. Java Technology is required to run applications, hese are usable in multiple operating Systems and use a JVM or Java Virtual Machine. – Java Software from Sun

Zoundry Raven – Portable WYSIWYG Publisher

Zoundry Raven – Portable WYSIWYG Publisher

“Multiple Blogs Made Easy – Do you have multiple blogs for different audiences? We make it easy to write and publish to separate blogs all with one editor.”

Tabbed true WYSIWYG Editing – True WYSIWYG writing and XHTML source editing. Drag and drop images, video, and text from the Web. Unicode (UTF-8) support. Preview posts in your blog’s template.

WordPress 2.2+ Page & Tag support – Use Raven to create and modify your WordPress Pages just like any other blog post. Set WordPress tags as well as import tags from all of your posts.

Raven2Go: Portable Application support – Install Raven as a Portable Application on your flash/thumb drive. We’ll stay out of your Windows registry and let you take your Blogging on the road.

BlogDesk – Offline Weblog Client

As an offline weblog client, BlogDesk lets you comfortably write and effortlessly publish new entries to your blog.

No need to use those annoying HTML Tags in the WYSIWYG editor. Images can be directly inserted and are automatically uploaded. Even publishing simultaneously to multiple blogs is a matter of a click.

With the ImageWizard you can not only insert images to your posts – it’s possible to edit them as well (crop, resize, rotate, shadow etc., see Examples). Even Thumbnails can be created – the preview will be shown in the blog and a click on the image will open it in its original size (just like here in the right column). Linking and uploading those images is automatically done by BlogDesk.

BlogDesk is totaly free of charge and optimized for the blog systems

• WordPress (
• MovableType
• Drupal
• Serendipity
• ExpressionEngine (pMachine)

How to make a Round corners with CSS???

Let’s start with a ’rounded-corner’ tutorial. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to make them. This isn’t the only method there is to produce round corners; this is just the method I use.

First, make two files, called index.html and roundcorners.css. We willl start with the index.html. The code provided isn’t everything you should have in your index.html. You should know how to add structure in your document. If not, please download the final code at the end of this tutorial.

This is very simple. We start with a DIV with id box. This is the box where all the elements of the box will appear in. In this box, we’ll add the corners and the content. Take a look below to view the codes.

<div id="box"></div>

As you can see, I have structured the document. I think this should be very easy to follow and the HTML part has been finished now!

We will continue with the CSS. Open up your roundcorners.css file now. You should understand we use images to give the box its round corners. I will use the following images.

top-left.gif
top-right.gif
bottom-left.gif
bottom-right.gif

CSS

body{
background-color: #CFCFCF;
}
#content{
float:none;
padding:20px 20px 0 20px;
}
#box{
width:300px;
background:#ffffff;
}
#top-left{
width: 19px;
height: 16px;
background: url(images/top-left.gif) top left no-repeat;
float:left;
}
#top-right{
width: 22px;
height: 22px;
background: url(images/top-right.gif) top right no-repeat;
float:right;
}
#bottom-left{
width: 22px;
height: 16px;
background: url(images/bottom-left.gif) bottom left no-repeat;
}
#bottom-right{
width: 22px;
height: 21px;
background: url(images/bottom-right.gif) bottom right no-repeat;
float:right;
margin-top:-21px;
}

As you can see, I’ve placed the div with id top-left at left (with float:left;) and made the div as small as the image itself. With the background style attribute I define a background (top-left.gif) and as you can see when you have done this too, it’ll display a perfect top left round corner (the perfection level of the round corner depends on your designing skills of course).

What I did next, is just repeat this step with all the divs and only change some small things. With top-right you should use float:right; and define another background image but the logic behind it stays the same.

download files here

10 Needful Steps to Help Cut Costs in the Slow Economy

There’s no escaping the slowing economy. Layoffs are being announced and companies are in cost cutting mode. Whether you are a tech at a big company or a small one man operation it’s time to cut the fat before you get cut out of work. Unnecessary expenses have to go and inefficient ways of working need to be analyzed and improved.

If done right, the use of some technologies can greatly reduce costs and make us more efficient.

Here are ten technologies every techie should consider to help cut costs in this slow economy:

1) Open Source
Dump the high cost proprietary systems for equivalent open source systems where you can. There are many operating systems, databases, content management systems, communications tools, networking and administration tools that are open source and free to use. Choose mature products with a strong community following and plenty of available support options either via developers or third party support offerings.

2) Software as a Service
Instead of spending money on time on developing complex in-house solutions to CRM, support and project management use SaaS providers such as Sales Force, Google, 37Signals and Right Now . Not only do you save money by using these third party tools by cutting development costs, but you also reduce costs on specialized hardware to run similar in-house solutions. Many SaaS solutions can also be integrated via the providers API’s.

3) Virtualization
Do you have multiple servers and workstations handling different tasks? Combine them into one machine. With virtualization suites such as ones offered by VMware you can take one machine and turn into multiple virtual machines. One machine can act as your web server, your network share and your exchange server. Each virtual machine will work independent of the other and optimize utilization of hardware resources.

4) Thin Clients
Employees no longer need to use expensive machines for light computing work such as emailing and using basic office work. Low powered thin-clients connected to a single multi-core system with x64 architecture and virtualization can power the work of multiple employees. Besides better utilization of hardware and energy, you also introduce efficiency for IT managers by reducing the # of systems they have to manage.

5) Enterprise 2.0
Get your organization connected and sharing information. Use intranet systems with built in messaging, voice messages, wikis, profiles and contact information. Keeping your employees connected and sharing information about your business can keep the organization from making costly decisions.

6) Digital Documents
Move as much of your company’s paper usage to digital as you can. Not only do you save money with printing you also save money on office space to store all that paperwork. Other ways to save more on printed costs is move to email for memos and letters. Also consider e-fax services as an alternative to fax machines.

7) Fast Efficient Networks
Using all these cost savings technologies will require a fast internal network and fast bandwidth coming in. These days companies and individuals can subscribe to fiber-optic bandwidth providers. With higher bandwidth network such as fiber lines, you can also server voice and video through the same connection. Internally make sure you’ve upgraded as much of your hardware to gigabit speeds. Newer networking gear tends to be more energy efficient and capable of handling faster network speeds. A fast network means less waiting for employees and more working.

8 ) Data Storage
Storing as much of your company’s data and information on the network keeps it accessible for employees and staff to use at any time from any location. This saves employees from physically having to search for the required data or information. The time savings will make your staff more efficient. Saving data on cheap mass storage hard drives saves you office space for storing documents and paper work.

9) Wireless
With wireless connectivity employees can work from anywhere. They are no longer stuck to their desk and their mobile systems such as laptops can move with them from meetings to conference areas. An added benefit of wireless systems are the savings in running wire for hard networking.

10) Virtual Office
Cut the overhead costs of keeping employees on site by allowing them to work from home. Virtual offices reduce the amount of resources required for equipment and office space. Many companies have already instituted virtual office policies and have realized great results from doing so. With virtual offices upfront investments in secure networking will be required. Setting up VPNs and access to other network resources for employees will be a must.

Copied from bytes.com

71 Links Help You To Learn Webdesign

General

• “What is Webdesign” guide
• Understanding Webdesign
• Validate HTML / CSS (Very important!)
• Why validate?

Programs

• Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Design)
  
• GIMP (Design)
• Adobe DreamWeaver (HTML/CSS/PHP editing)
• NVU (HTML/CSS editing)

HTML

• HTML Basics
• W3Schools – HTML reference
• HTML Tutorial
• WebMonkey

CSS

• CSS Basics
• Complete CSS Guide + Reference list
• W3Schools – CSS reference
• Free CSS Ebook – Need to subscribe to the RSS feed to download the Ebook!
• CssLeak
• CSS-tricks
• BrushKing
• A list apart

Design

• Photoshop tutorials
• GIMP tutorials
• Photoshop Basics
• Photoshop Shortcuts
• Create a weblayout in Photoshop + Dreamweaver
• 27 “how to design a website” tutorials in one place

How to Optimise Flash Sites..a brief note…

If there is a really hot potato that divides SEO experts and Web designers, this is Flash. Undoubtedly a great technology to include sounds and picture on a Web site, Flash movies are a real nightmare for SEO experts. The reason is pretty prosaic – search engines cannot index (or at least not easily) the contents inside a Flash file and unless you feed them with the text inside a Flash movie, you can simply count this text lost for boosting your rankings. Of course, there are workarounds but until search engines start indexing Flash movies as if they were plain text, these workarounds are just a clumsy way to optimize Flash sites, although certainly they are better than nothing.

Why Search Engines Dislike Flash Sites?

Search engines dislike Flash Web sites not because of their artistic qualities (or the lack of these) but because Flash movies are too complex for a spider to understand. Spiders cannot index a Flash movie directly, as they do with a plain page of text. Spiders index filenames (and you can find tons of these on the Web), but not the contents inside.

Flash movies come in a proprietary binary format (.swf) and spiders cannot read the insides of a Flash file, at least not without assistance. And even with assistance, do not count that spiders will crawl and index all your Flash content. And this is true for all search engines. There might be differences in how search engines weigh page relevancy but in their approach to Flash, at least for the time beings, search engines are really united – they hate it but they index portions of it.

Few CAPTCHA scripts that save your website!!!

1. reCAPTCHA
reCAPTCHA is a free service which helps prevent automated abuse of your site (such as comment spam or bogus registrations) by using a CAPTCHA to ensure that only humans perform certain actions.

2. Securimage
Securimage is an open-source free PHP CAPTCHA script for generating complex images and CAPTCHA codes to protect forms from spam and abuse. It can be easily added into existing forms on your website to provide protection from spam bots. It can run on most any webserver as long as you have PHP installed, and GD support within PHP. Securimage does everything from generate complicated CAPTCHA images to making sure the code the user entered was correct.

3. WebSpamProtect
WebSpamProtect allows you to instantly add verification image (CAPTCHA) to your web site and protect your forms against spam robots. In order to protect your web form, this system requires that you install a small piece of code onto your web page. The code requires that your web site support PHP, Perl, ASP or ASP.NET. Basic plan is free but you can buy a Premium, Advanced or Professional paln with a little expense.

4. Cryptographp
Cryptographp is a PHP script for generate captchas. Cryptographp limit the robots bombarding spams and automating the forms: spaces members subscriptions, guestbooks, forums… This script is free and does not use any database. It is compatible with PHP >= 4.3.0. Cryptographp also exists into plugins for WordPress, wpMu for WordPress, Symfony and Guppy.

5. CAPTCHA-Service
captchas.net provides CAPTCHA images and audio files you can use in html-forms. To use this technology, your web pages have to be generated dynamically in any programming language PHP, ASP, Perl, Python, JSP, Ruby.

6. WP Captcha-Free
WP Captcha-Free blocks comment spam by using a combination of time-based hash (a.k.a. Time Based Tokens, TBT) and JavaScript (AJAX). When a comment is posted the plugin validates a hash based on time (and some other parameters). Comments posted via automated means will not have a hash or will have an expired hash and will be rejected. Unlike using a captcha, this does not place any burden on the commenter.

7. ProtectWebForm
ProtectWebForm is a service to add CAPTCHA images and audio files on your website. You have to create an account, generate your CAPTCHA type with all the desired parameters and include it on your web pages.You can also use it on your WordPress template with this plugin.

8. ProtectWebForm
OpenCaptcha is a simple web service which requires no special configurations or modules. Basic installation is cut-and-paste, and requires no ability to program image manipuation scripts. New fonts, image algorithms, and distortions applied weekly.

9. Form-to-email script protected by Captcha
This form-to-email script is intended to collect data from an HTML form and send it to a specified email address using a CAPTCHA script to stop spam. It works with any kind of HTML form and you can use it multiple times on your pages.

10. freeCap
freeCap is a GPL CAPTCHA script to stop spam. It has been used on any form on any kind of website. It does require some knowledge of PHP to install, though there are several captcha plugins for forum and blog software listed below.

Open-source PHP applications that rules the world !!!

From managing databases to shopping, writing blogs to sending emails. Ten years of passion, great software architectures, team work and revolutionary ideas. Here are the most influential open-source PHP applications to date:

1998

phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields, manage privileges, export data into various formats and is available in 50 languages. Development is backed up by the phpMyAdmin team.

1999

SquirrelMail

SquirrelMail is a standards-based Webmail package. It includes built-in pure PHP support for the IMAP and SMTP protocols, and all pages are rendered in pure HTML 4.0 for maximum compatibility across browsers. It has very few requirements, and is very easy to configure and install. It has all the functionality you would want from an email client, including strong MIME support, address books, and folder manipulation.

PHP-Nuke

PHP-Nuke is a Web portal and online community system that includes Web-based administration, surveys, access statistics, user customizable boxes, a themes manager for registered users, friendly administration GUI with graphic topic manager, the ability to edit or delete stories, an option to delete comments, a moderation system, referer tracking, integrated banner ad system, search engine, backend/headlines generation (RSS/RDF format), Web directory like Yahoo, events manager, and support for 33 languages and 9 database servers.

2000

eZ Publish

eZ Publish is an Enterprise Content Management platform with an easy to use out of the box Web Content Management System. It is available as a free Open Source distribution and serves as the foundation for the rest of the eZ Publish Product Family. As a CMS it’s most notable feature is its revolutionary, fully customisable and extendable content model. It is also a platform for general web development, allowing you to develop professional PHP applications. Standard eZ Publish functionality: easy to create and edit content, workflow system, content versioning, multilanguage possibilities, collaboration, e-commerce functionality, revolutionary content class system, role based access control are implemented and ready for you to use. High quality software and total product responsibility from eZ systems make eZ publish the leading Open Source Enterprise Content Management System. Enterprises, governmental offices, organizations and educational institutions trust eZ Publish.

osCommerce

osCommerce is an open source e-commerce solution under on going development by the open source community. Its feature packed out-of-the- box installation allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with no costs involved. osCommerce combines open source solutions to provide a free and open development platform, which includes the powerful PHP web scripting language, the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database server.

phpAdsNew

OpenX began as phpAdsNew, a fork from a similar project called phpAds, created by Tobias Ratschiller in 1998. OpenX is a hugely popular, free ad server designed by web publishers for web publishers. It provides everything you need to manage your on-line advertising. It allows paid banners to be easily rotated along with your own in-house advertisements, and can even integrate banners from third party advertising companies.

phpBB

phpBB is a fast, efficient discussion board program built in PHP with a muti-database backend. Features include: posting, replying, private messages, polls, username/ip banning, strong encryption for storing passwords, user rankings, very advanced access control for private forums, full templating, simple yet robust translation system and much more.

2001

Gallery

Gallery is a slick Web-based photo album written using PHP. It is easy to install, includes a config wizard, and provides users with the ability to create and maintain their own albums in the album collection via an intuitive Web interface. Photo management includes automatic thumbnail creation, image resizing, rotation, ordering, captioning and more. Albums can have read, write, and caption permissions per individual authenticated user for an additional level of privacy.

Drupal

Drupal is a modular content management system, forum, blogging and community engine. It is database driven and can be used with MySQL, MySQLi and PostgreSQL. Its features include (but are not limited to) discussion forums, Web-based administration, theme support, a submission queue, content rating, content versioning, taxonomy support, user management with a fine-grained permission system based on user roles (groups), error logging, support for content syndication, locale support, and much more. It is considered to be an excellent platform for developers due to its clean code and extensibility, and it can also be used as a Web application framework.

2002

MediaWiki

MediaWiki is a web-based wiki software application used by all projects of the Wikimedia Foundation, all wikis hosted by Wikia, and many other wikis, including some of the largest and most popular ones. Originally developed to serve the needs of the free content Wikipedia encyclopedia, today it has also been deployed by companies for internal knowledge management, and as a content management system. Notably, Novell uses it to operate several of its high traffic websites.

2003

WordPress

WordPress is a state-of-the-art, semantic, personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, Web standards, and usability. It was born out of a desire for an elegant, well-architected personal publishing system. While primarily geared towards functioning as a Weblog, WordPress is also a flexible CMS capable of managing many types of Web sites. In addition to the basic blog functions, it also has an integrated link manager (e.g. for blogrolls), file attachments, XFN support, support for stand-alone pages, Atom and RSS feeds for both content and comments, blogging API support (Atom Publishing Protocol, Blogger, MetaWeblog, and Movable Type APIs), spam blocking features, advanced cruft-free URL generation, a flexible theme system, and an advanced plugin API.

Zencart

Zen Cart™ truly is the art of e-commerce; free, user-friendly, open source shopping cart software. The ecommerce web site design program is being developed by group of like-minded shop owners, programmers, designers, and consultants that think ecommerce web design could be and should be done differently.Some shopping cart solutions seem to be complicated programming exercises instead of responding to users’ needs, Zen Cart™ puts the merchants and shoppers requirements first. Similarly, other shopping cart software programs are nearly impossible to install and use without an IT degree, Zen Cart™ can be installed and set-up by anyone with the most basic web site building and computer skills.

2004

SugarCRM

SugarCRM is a complete CRM system for businesses of all sizes. Core CRM functionality includes sales force automation, marketing campaigns, support cases, project mgmt, calendaring and more. Built in PHP, supports MySQL and SQL Server.

2005

Joomla!

Joomla! is an award-winning Web-based content management system. It provides for split front end content access and backend administrator access. Group-based access control allows for different levels of system control for both the site and the administrator. The Joomla! framework allows for extension by installable components (applications), modules (template blocks), languages, templates, and mambots (plugins that enhance system functions).

Symfony

Symfony is a full-stack framework, a library of cohesive classes written in PHP5. It provides an architecture, components and tools for developers to build complex web applications faster. Choosing symfony allows you to release your applications earlier, host and scale them without problem, and maintain them over time with no surprise. Symfony is based on experience. It does not reinvent the wheel: it uses most of the best practices of web development and integrates some great third-party libraries.

OrangeHRM

OrangeHRM aims to be the world’s leading open source HRM solution for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by providing a flexible and easy to use HRM system affordable for any company worldwide.The project was started during fall 2005 and the first beta release was made in January 2006. Today OrangeHRM has users worldwide enjoying a free, stable and highly usable HRM solution. The system is backed by professional support and services as well as a fast growing, receptive and knowledgeable worldwide open source community. By building and leveraging this community of users, developers and partners, the usability, scope and international adoption of OrangeHRM is continuously being improved.

2006

Zend Framework

Extending the art & spirit of PHP, Zend Framework is based on simplicity, object-oriented best practices, corporate friendly licensing, and a rigorously tested agile codebase. Zend Framework is focused on building more secure, reliable, and modern Web 2.0 applications & web services, and consuming widely available APIs from leading vendors like Google, Amazon, Yahoo!, Flickr, as well as API providers and cataloguers like StrikeIron and ProgrammableWeb.

2007

Magento eCommerce

Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control. It was designed with the notion that each eCommerce implementation has to be unique since no two businesses are alike. Magento’s modular architecture puts the control back in the hands of the online merchant and places no constraints on business processes and flow.

Cake PHP

CakePHP is a rapid development framework for PHP that provides an extensible architecture for developing, maintaining, and deploying applications. Using commonly known design patterns like MVC and ORM within the convention over configuration paradigm, CakePHP reduces development costs and helps developers write less code.