Everyone loves lightbox javascript effects, since the original Lightbox script there has been countless clones generated for all the popular Javascript libraries. This collection rounds up the top ten Lightbox scripts for jQuery in particular, so remember to keep it bookmarked for your next design project!

jQuery Lightbox Plugin

Supported Media: Images

View Demo

Download

Fancybox

Supported Media: Images, Inline HTML, iFrame

View Demo

Download

Shadowbox

Supported Media: Images, Inline HTML, iFrame, AJAX, Flash, Video

View Demo

Download

ThickBox

Supported Media: Images, Inline HTML, iFrame, AJAX

View Demo

Download

Slightly Thickerbox

Supported Media: Images, AJAX, Video

View Demo

Download

Fancy Zoom

Supported Media: Images, Inline HTML, Flash

View Demo

Download

Facebox

Supported Media: Images, Inline HTML, AJAX

View Demo

Download

nyroModal

Supported Media: Images, Inline HTML, iFrame, AJAX, Video

View Demo

Download

Interface Imagebox Demo

Supported Media: Images

View Demo

Download

piroBox

Supported Media: Images

View Demo

Download

Greybox Redux

Supported Media: Images, iFrame

View Demo

Download

prettyPhoto

Supported Media: Images

View Demo

Download

1.OpenCart

OpenCart is an open source PHP-based online shopping cart system. A robust e-commerce solution for Internet merchants with the ability to create their own online business and participate in e-commerce at a minimal cost.

OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface.

2.Magento

Magento is a feature-rich eCommerce solution offering complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of an online store.

Magento Features:

Site Management

• Control multiple websites and stores from one Administration Panel with ability to share as much or as little information as needed
• Multi-Lingual
• Support for localization
• Support for multiple currencies
• Administration Permission System Roles and Users
• Web Services API for easy integration between Magento and any third-party application
• Flexible tax rate management with support for US and International markets
• Fully 100% customizable design using templates
• Customer Groups
• One-Click Upgrades
• Content Management System for Informational Pages

3.osCommerce

osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution that offers a wide range of out-of-the-box features that allows online stores to be setup fairly quickly with ease, and is available for free as an Open Source based solution released under the GNU General Public License.

osCommerce was started in March 2000 and has since matured to a solution that is currently powering 14,055 registered live shops around the world.

Today, osCommerce has been taken to the next level, moving towards an e-commerce framework solution that not only remains easy to setup and maintain, but also making it easier for store administrators to present their stores to their customers with their own unique requirements.

4.PrestaShop

PrestaShop™ is professional e-Commerce shopping cart software that you can download and use for free

The big advantage of open-source software: you’re never ‘locked’ to expensive commercial software.

Our dedicated team and growing user community join forces to fix bugs and add new functionality at a rate proprietary software companies can rarely claim. Join the Open Source revolution!

5.AgoraCart

AgoraCart – The powerful “Free” Open Source ecommerce shopping cart software solution that offers a very wide range of “out-of-the-box” features that allow you to setup an online ecommerce solution ranging from a simple template based store to the integration of a complex visual design concept containing all the creative magic of your web designer.

Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software with limitless flexibility in many areas including full design controls through Cascading Style Sheets (css), template systems, customizable layouts, custom individual product category layouts and templates, customization of nearly all cart features for the code hobbyist, modular “drop in and go” code as well as AgoraScript, our own scripting language inside parsed HTML pages, that experienced programmers can appreciate.

6.StoreSprite

StoreSprite is ecommerce for web designers a powerful, free php/mysql shopping cart easy to install, customise and maintain, no complex scripting to negotiate design and deploy a top rate store that your
client can manage with little or no training.

7.Freeway

Freeway is an advanced Open Source eCommerce platform which can sell using methods only previously available in enterprise class or niche bespoke systems. Without having to purchase a commercial system and then paying a developer to build a custom installation, Freeway does what you need out of the box. Of course Freeway is great for selling products but it also sells events AND services AND subscriptions. From appointments and time based bookings to event ticketing and subscriptions Freeway is the eCommerce platform for how we want to sell.

8.UberCart

Ubercart is an exciting open source e-commerce package that fully integrates your online store with Drupal, the leading open source content management system. This is a killer combination for anyone looking to build a community around a product, sell access to premium content, offer paid file downloads, and much much more!

Ubercart was designed to take advantage of Drupal’s major core and contributed systems, providing our users with shopping cart functionality that seamlessly integrates with other parts of your company or community website.

9.phpShop

phpShop is a PHP-powered shopping cart application. It is released under the GNU General Public License. The primary purpose of phpShop is to provide a simple shopping cart solution that is easy to customize to suit any purpose. phpShop has less features that many other shopping cart applications, but is generally easier to customize. All that is required to effectively customize phpShop is a basic knowledge of HTML, PHP, and SQL.

10.VirtueMart

Free Shopping Cart Software for Joomla! & Mambo
VirtueMart is an Open Source E-Commerce solution to be used together with a Content Management System (CMS) called Joomla! (and Mambo). Joomla! and VirtueMart are written in PHP and made easy for use in a PHP/MySQL environment.

但凡看到有关图片秀的工具，都会多看两眼，虽然这样的工具真的很多。打算尝试一下SimpleViewer的方法，给自己的BLOG填上些图片什么的。

Original article from mashable.com.

Whether you’re an artist, designer, or photographer, your web portfolio is your calling card and your showroom. While the work should speak for itself, presentation is important. Modern style and clean functionality can be a great selling point.

If you’re looking for an alternative to hand-coding or DreamWeaving your ultimate gallery, check out these five great tools that should make maintenance a bit easier, and give you a stylistic leg-up on the competition.

1. SimpleViewer

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Simpleviewer is simply gorgeous, and can generate a stunning visualization of your portfolio that is sure to impress. It uses XML to pull in images from a web directory (or Flickr, if configured) and display them as a Flash presentation. You can incorporate captions and links for each image.

The viewer comes in a few impressive flavors, including the TiltViewer (my personal favorite), and thePostcardViewer, both shown below.

Pros: You can’t beat the design. The presentation is clean, artistic, professional, and unique. While there is a pro version, the free download is highly customizable and full-featured. The viewers are scalable to full pages, or embeddable as part of your existing website or blog.

Cons: It’s not so simple. There is no software or user interface for SimpleViewer. It is powered by one Flash file and one XML file, so you’ll have to know how to manipulate the code, and have access to dedicated web hosting where your files will live. The support area presupposes you know most of this, but is a good resource on how to set up and implement your viewer.

2. PhotoSnack

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PhotoSnack is a web-based solution that generates slideshows from photos you upload to your account. The free version offers clean, embeddable flash presentations. If you’re looking for a bit more customization, you don’t have to buy the farm to get a pro account. Additional features can be purchased a la cart through the website’s “points” system.

Pros: The web interface is easy to navigate and use. Your photos live on PhotoSnack’s website, so there’s no need for web hosting or link pointing. Updating, changing, and reorganizing slideshows is a snap, and customizable embed codes ensure your presentation will fit snugly on your site.

Cons: While there are a few custom options, the presentation is fairly basic for free accounts, and the embeds contain links back to the main site. It is also worth noting that Flash is still not viewable on most mobile platforms and may leave a gaping hole for some users with outdated browser plugins.

3. ScriptOcean Accordion Menu

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If you’re looking to avoid Flash altogether, ScriptOcean has some handy JavaScript solutions that really look sharp. Among them is this accordion menu that unfolds — with optional captions and links — as you roll your mouse over it (click through to the website to see it in action).

ScriptOcean provides downloadable software with a user interface that makes compiling and customizing your menu quite simple. Add your images from a local directory, set the dimensions, colors, and animation properties, and the software generates a JavaScript file and some embed code. Upload everything to your website and embed as needed.

Pros: The user interface makes this otherwise daunting code project very intuitive. Customization is also very granular. You can control everything from the colors between the slides to the speed at which they snap together.

Cons: You must host the images and scripts yourself, and you should understand where to put them in your web directory so that the JavaScript file can reference them. The software interface makes this a bit easier to configure, but it may not be for beginners.

4. Carbonmade

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Carbonmade is an online portfolio community of sorts. It offers a really great-looking presentation that is sure to please the discerning eye of a graphic designer. It’s Flash-free, with a strict anti-clutter policy. A great drag-and-drop interface lets you organize, present, and share your work with ease.

Pros: Simplicity is the name of the game here. There is nothing to distract a viewer from your art. In addition to photos, you can also upload video and flash projects. Built-in metrics let you know who is viewing, and connecting with other artists is easy through the online community.

Cons: Carbonmade provides no viable way (that we can see) for embedding your portfolio on your own website. This may be a drawback for some professional users, who would rather people view their work on their own domain, rather than a third-party site.

UPDATE: Carbonmade does allow you to map your portfolio to a custom domain when you upgrade to a paid account for $12 per month.

5. Flickr Slideshows

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When all else fails, there’s always your Flickr account. If all of your artwork is already there, why not group the best of it into a set and embed the slideshow into your portfolio website? For a free service, the Flickr slideshow is surprisingly elegant and functional.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to generate embed code from Flickr itself, but there are a few handy tools that can do it for you.

FlickrSLiDR is a really simple web-based solution. Simply drop in the URL of the set, user, or group you want to create the slideshow from, set your parameters, and click “create” to get some code you can pop right into your website or blog.

Flickrshow is another easy and customizable way to embed Flickr slides. Simply reference Flickrshow’s JavaScript code as per the installation instructions, and tweak the parameters as needed.

Pros: It’s free, easy, and the social aspect of Flickr itself provides many advantages for hosting your content there.

Cons: A branded slideshow may not be ideal for a professional website or portfolio.

Original article from mashable.com.

SlickBoard is a simple, yet powerful tool for creating unlimited graphics, attractive interface elements (buttons, menus, tabs, drawers, etc.), animated slideshows, live dashboards (dials, gauges, ticker tapes, etc.), interactive presentations (drag, dock, etc.), dynamic web pages, and much more.

Create an XML source to describe your content, then pass it to this tool’s flash file to generate an attractive product. The XML source can be prepared manually or generated dynamically, using any scripting language (PHP, ASP, CFML, Perl, etc.)

SlickBoard makes the best of both the XML and SWF worlds. XML provides flexible data generation and Flash provides the best graphic quality.

Features:

• Endless designs and interactive graphics.
• Endless interface elements (buttons, menus, tabs, drawers, etc.)
• Endless dashboards (dials, gauges, ticker tapes, etc.)
• Flexible slideshows.
• Quick generation of graphics and interactive elements from static or dynamic data (any scripting language).
• Animated transitions and quality Flash graphics, including anti-aliased fonts, color blending, masks, transparency, shadows, bevel, glow, and blur.
• Updates without reloading the web page.
• Full screen mode, scalable boards, and printable boards.
• Web applications and support for Javascript communication.
• Unicode text, special characters, and multi-languages.

Visit SlickBoard Site.

Forums are clearly one of the most standard ways of sharing knowledge on the net. With easy-to-use interfaces & strong community features, they are still very functional & popular.

They can be easily integrated into a website by customizing the look & feel or used as a framework which is sometimes a good idea considering the features they offer.

Here are 9 widely-used, open-source & free forum softwares, where most of them are built with PHP, that you may consider using:

phpBB (PHP)

phpBB is one of the oldest & widely used forum softwares around. It is being updated frequently with improvements in speed, security & features.

It comes with a powerful administrator panel where all aspects of the system can be managed & supports almost any database.

The software has a very crowded community which makes it easier to get support.

MyBB (PHP)

This free forum software works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.

MyBB has nice features like calendar/events, mass mailing to members, a built-in theme editor & more.

Besides an admin panel, a moderator panel helps managing the system by multiple users.

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) (PHP)

SMF is the PHP successor of the Perl-based forum YABB. It comes with a comprehensive template system, polls, groups, calendars & more.

The software uses MySQL for storing data & has 40+ ready-to-download language files.

Vanilla (PHP)

Vanilla is an open-source, standards-compliant, multi-lingual, theme-able, pluggable discussion forum.

It is built on the Garden, a PHP development framework, which is easily extendible with a powerful plug-in architecture. And, there are already 450+ plugins that are ready-to-use.

Vanilla requires MySQL as the database.

PunBB (PHP)

PunBB is a fast and lightweight forum application which aims to be less graphically intensive compared to other discussion boards.

It supports with MySQL, PostgreSQL & SQLite. The design can be easily updated with the theming support. It is multilanguage & can be extended with the extension support.

FluxBB (PHP)

FluxBB is a fork of PunBB which supports both PHP4 & PHP5 with MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite.

It generates “XHTML 1.0 Strict” valid pages & can be easily translated into any language.

bbPress (PHP)

bbPress is a forum software from the creators of Wordpress which is plain, simple & fast.

It can be customized with templates & extended with plugins. And, it integrates perfectly with Wordpress.

Phorum (PHP)

Phorum is also one of the oldest forum softwares. It has support for theming & modules.

The software uses MySQL for storing data

YetAnotherForum.Net (ASP.NET)

YetAnotherForum is a free application that is built with ASP.NET (C#) & uses MSSQL as the database.

It has a feature-rich administrator panel, supports unlimited categories/user groups, templating & more..

Which forum software do you think is the best one, do you have a favorite?

Original article from webresourcesdepot.com.

我们在写有关代码技巧的文章的时候，总会需要在文章里嵌入代码，诸如HTML, CSS, PHP, javascrip等等。如何让代码能够不执行，仅仅显示呢？很多博主应该都会遇到这个问题。

在一篇文章中，我们对代码一般会有这样两种处理方式：一类是我们在一段话中引用代码，来加以说明；另一种则是高亮显示完整的代码段。

在一段话中引用代码，我们可以用<code>和</code>把代码包括进来。
比如：如果要显示“我们今天要讨论的是index.php”，可以在编辑器里这样输入：我们今天要讨论的是<code>index.php</code>。

但如果代码里有HTML标签的话，这样仅仅用<code>和</code>还是不行的，Wordpress会解读为你在使用html标签。
比如要显示：“我们来看<div class="header">”，在编辑器里，我们必须使用字符集&lt;来替换标签左括号，用&gt;替换标签右括号，然后再用<code>和</code>把代码包括进来，即： <code><div class=”header”></code>。

你可以阅读WordPress官网上的这篇文章，那里有详细的解释。

以上是说明如何在一段话中引用代码。另一种情况是，我们需要单独高亮显示一整段代码段，来表达某个功能的实现方式。

使用Wordpress代码编辑插件。
以下有一些推荐的，其实每种都很好用，看个人喜好。

• Code Markup
• Wordpress Plugin Code Editor
• Power Code Editor
• WP-SynHighlight
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress

使用SyntaxHighlighter
SyntaxHighlighter 是一款基于javascrip的开源代码高亮显示工具。使用起来也很简单，你只需要把以下代码段copy到<head>头文件里（或者是其它你需要高亮显示代码段的任意地方），移除不需要的语言。

然后，你就可以在编辑器里通过使用 <Pre>标签来显示代码。

<pre class="brush: html">

</pre>

要注意的是，以上所有方法,在插入代码前，务必用`&lt;`替换所有`<`。

Open source applications and tools are a great alternative for web designers on a budget. Many open source tools have comparable features to the expensive applications, and are also free. This makes it possible possible for a web designer to have all the tools and applications needed to complete everyday tasks without even spending a cent. In this article you will find 13 of the best open source tools for web designers.

Text Editors

Aptana Studio

Aptana is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, along with thousands of additional plugins created by the community.

KompoZer

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing.

Notepad++

Notepad++ is a source code editor and Notepad replacement that supports several languages. It runs on Windows and is governed by a GPL License.

Firebug

Firebug is a plugin for Firefox that allows you to edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Quanta Plus

Quanta Plus is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment.

jEdit

jEdit is a cross platform text editor with hundreds of person-years of development behind it.

Graphics Applications

GIMP

GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package. It’s considered by many to be an excellent alternative to Photoshop.

Dia

Dia is a cross operating system diagram creation application.

Krita

Krita is a graphics application for everyone who wants to get creative with images.

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator.

FTP

FileZilla

FileZilla is probably the most popular ftp application. You can download a client or server version.

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is an FTP client built for the Mac.

WinSCP

WinSCP is an open source free SFTP client and FTP client for Windows.