A new web server has been added to the Free/Open Source Web (HTTP) Server Software page. Tornado is a scalable non-blocking web server designed for real-time web services. It is able to handle thousands of simultaneous standing connections. It is the open source version of the server developed for FriendFeed.
Looking for a program to manage your collection of fonts? These free font managers let you organize your fonts into categories, install and uninstall fonts, load them on-the-fly into your system so that you can use them with a particular program without permanently dumping them into your system font folder (thus potentially slowing your system down), see sample text of fonts (even if they're not installed), check out the font licensing, font metrics and other font information stored in a font, etc.
A new CAPTCHA script has been added to the Free PHP CAPTCHA Scripts page. The script allows you to add a test to your contact forms to make sure that the person submitting the form is a human and not a spam program.
Note: for those who would rather not modify your own PHP scripts by hand, you may prefer to use my step-by-step tutorial on How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form which uses a different set of (free) programs to do the job.
It is with extremely great pleasure that I point you to the first post at the new WordPress Foundation site. Not only am I excited about the things that will happen under the auspices of the Foundation, I’m excited to see a site running the 3.0 development version and the nascent theme called 2010. Go check it out for yourself.
Microsoft's research operating system, Singularity, complete with source code, build tools and documentation, is now listed on the Free Alternative Operating Systems page. If you're thinking of creating your own OS, check this out to see how it implements advances in software engineering to make a more reliable system.
Thinking of creating your own fonts that will have the exact design you're looking for? Check out the newest addition to the Free Font Editors and Font Creation Software page. This one, Type Light, handles both OpenType TrueType fonts (.ttf) and OpenType PostScript fonts (.otf). And there are a number of other free font editors listed on that page too, if you prefer something else.
A new shopping cart software has been added to the Free And Open Source PHP Shopping Carts page. Besides the usual features that most shopping carts have, this program (OpenCart), supports product reviews and ratings, the display of related products, downloadable products (for those who are selling ebooks and software), multiple currencies, multiple tax rates, shipping weight calculation, unlimited categories, and so on. If you're thinking of selling anything from your website, check it out.
2010 is the year we dive into open source design. We’ve dipped our toes in this pool before (icon contest, graphic design component for Trac tickets, header refresh contest, etc.), but this year we’re going to cannonball and make a big splash. Here’s what you need to know if you want to get involved.
A list for all seasons. Developers have the wp-hackers mailing list to discuss core and plugin code. Sometimes UI/UX stuff comes up and gets discussed there, but there is a whole universe of discussion around navigation labels, gradients, button styling, layouts, alignment, etc. that would be clutter on wp-hackers. Designers need a list to call their own, and now we have one. You can sign up for the wp-ui list to discuss ways to improve the interface or user experience of WordPress, and to discuss progress on design-related projects for the open source project, like the design challenges we’re going to have.
Design Challenges. We learned a lot from the icon design and header refresh contests, and we want to do these kind of open design challenges on a regular basis to give UI/UX designers who want to contribute to the WordPress open source project more opportunities to do so. If we could do one per month, that would be ideal, keeping the challenges relatively bite-sized to allow potential contributors an easy way to get involved at first. As each challenge is posted, people can use the list to bounce ideas off each other and work toward optimal solutions. I’m hoping the design challenges will evolve to be less contest and more collaboration. We’ll announce the first one before the end of January, so if you’re interested, please sign up for the list! (Hint: one will likely be a touch up to the Right Now dashboard module, to improve the information design, and there will be a couple of screen layout challenges coming up as well.)
Distributed Usability Testing. We started to try this out last year, and several dozen usability professionals volunteered to help get the program going, but a combination of scheduling and infrastructure issues combined to stall the progress. Having the “UI/UX contributor team” infrastructure in place, starting with the mailing list, will make it much easier to get this project going again.
Chit-chat. The weekly developer chats in IRC at #wordpress-dev have been very productive. We’ve created an IRC room at #wordpress-ui on irc.freenode.net so that we can have the same kind of “water cooler” for UI/UX contributors as for core code contributors. In addition to being a place where you can drop in and discuss core UI/UX (note: this room will not be a place to discuss the design of blog themes, it’s to discuss the design of the Wordpress application itself), we’ll set up a weekly chat. Choosing a day and time for the chats will probably be the first discussion on the mailing list.
A blog of our own. Once again, taking a page from the code contributor infrastructure, we’ll set up a blog for UI/UX updates, announcements, progress reports, etc. This will be on WordPress.org in the nearish future, and will be announced to the mailing list when it is live.
So, if you want to become a contributor to core WordPress by using your design skills, join the wp-ui mailing list and get ready for a fun year!
Create fancy user interfaces for your text-based programs in a device independent way with these Free Text User Interface (TUI) Programming Libraries. Now you don't have to worry about supporting the wide variety of video adapters, terminals and whatnot while still adding things like windows, dialog boxes and other widgets to your programs.
Are you thinking of creating your own computer game? Shorten your development time with the newest game engine to be added to the Free Games Programming Libraries and Source Code. The Unity games development tool not only comes with support for graphics, animation, sound, multiplayer networking and scripting, it also ships with an integrated editor that lets you create and edit things like animation clips directly. Or if you prefer another game engine, check out the other 30 or so packages listed on the page.