Superfish

Should call this one lifesaver. This one is a little more than a plugin. It is a whole menu system. It makes pain in the butt menus easy. I’ve used this one a fair amount.

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HoverIntent Plugin

If you’re doing anything fancy on your navigation this is a must have. It simply adds a delay before triggering the hover event handler. In terms of menus, this means that your submenu won’t pop out when a user accidentally scrolls over it. A must have for horizontal menus.

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Bgiframe Plugin

This one fixes a lot of problems with z-index and form inputs, with little to no effort.

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Tablesorter

It wouldn’t be a project unless there was a last minute request. This one saved my life a couple times. For that I salute you Tablesorter. (It’s a plugin that sorts your tables)
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Cycle

This plugin is a slide show for your images. It has more transitions than you’ll ever use, and a lot of options for customizing.

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jQuery Easing Plugin

This adds a little flair to your jQuery transitions and ultimately make your website stand out from the crowd.

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jQuery ThickBox Plugin

There are thousands of lightbox plugins out there. This one is my favorite for jQuery.

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Curvy Corners

When designers make it there mission to make the roundest website every, this will save you, and you will thank Curvy Corners.

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jQuery Media Plugin

Want to add media to your website? No prob. Plug this bad boy in and you’ll be soaking in the rays in no time.

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PNGFix

This tops my list of most used plugins. Until IE6 disappears, this one is a staple for me.

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5 Must Have Books for Web Developers

This is list of books that will help you become a better developer.

10 Characteristics of Good Program Design

This is a list of goals that a developer should try and have in their software design. Some goals contradict other ones, but that is where you have to decide what is best for your program.

10 HTML Tags that are Overlooked but Should be Used.

With the popularity of CSS, the Div tag has been painfully overused. Here is a list of HTML tags that will help you use HTML the way it was intended.

10 HTML Mistakes that Should be Avoided

Here is a list of common mistakes in HTML that should be avoided.

Better Web Usability Through Visual Relationships

Web Usability is more important than ever. People have little to no time to read through all of your information to find what they are looking for. Creating visual relationships can help users find what they are looking for quicker and more efficiently.

How To Create A Twitter jQuery Plugin

Have you ever wanted to create a jQuery plugin? Or put your Twitter feed on your website?  If so this is the tutorial for you.

Things that Can Help or Hurt Your Web Usability

Trying to keep your users happy is the name of the game. A usable website can help your users, and in turn help you with your ultimate goal of your website. The following is a list of dos and do nots of web usability.

10 Must Have Cheat Sheets for Developers

There are far too many languages out there for web developers to remember everything for every language. Here is a list of cheat sheets that will help speed up research time for the lingo that you forget.

How To Compress CSS/JavaScript Files With PHP

A quick way to speed up your site is to simply limit how much the user has to download. This tutorial will show you how to automatically gzip (compress) your files with PHP.

How To Create an Advanced Search Box

Tired of boring boxy search inputs. This tutorial will help you create a functional and visually pleasing search box.

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

Although this book doesn’t speak directly to web developers, it goes into depth on what is good practice for development in general. Some consider this to be bible for developers.  This is a must have if you want to take your development to the next level.

Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software

This book is written by the “Gang of Four”. If you ever wondered where design patterns came from, this book started it all.  This is a must have for the quintessential design patterns reference guide.

Head First Design Patterns

For those developers who have a grip on object oriented programming (OOP) but have don’t really know what design patterns are. I like this book because it makes everything stupid easy to understand. Although to caters more to Java, anyone with sound OOP won’t have any troubles understanding it.

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to
Web Usability

This book covers all the important topics of web usability. The author Steve Krug practices what he preaches by making this book extremely easy to read. Jammed packed with info, but direct and to the point, with a little humor mixed in. This is a must have for helping make your website more user friendly.

Head First Software Development

Web development isn’t all coding.  To be a good developer you should understand the process from front to back.  This book dives into the other side of development. Again this doesn’t specifically target web development, but it’s lessons can be used across the board. This is a must have to make any one that wants to round out their web development game.

So What is The Big Deal

The goal of Opera Unite is to turn every personal computer into a server. This way computers will be able to communicate directly with one another. Here is Opera’s video that explains how this all works. So what’s the big deal? A server on your personal machine isn’t exactly a new technology. The beauty of Opera Unite is that it literally takes 2 minutes to setup. I gave this a try yesterday and I was surprised at how easy it was. Sign-up for a user account, start the service, and you are good to go. Here is another video that will show you the setup process. With it being so easy to install and use, this means people might actually use it. If the masses start using this technology, it can drastically change how the internet is used. The internet now doesn’t allow for true interactivity. Although social sites are bridging that gap, you can only post what those services allow you to post. Imagine being socially connected without limitations as to what you can post (Images, playlists, songs, videos…etc)…pretty exciting stuff. In fact Microsoft has already gone this route with their windows home server. Same sort of goal, but the difference is it cost money, and it’s not built into your browser.

The Down Side

There are some problems that I can foresee. One is that people close their browsers, if your browser is closed people can’t access you stuff. Quickly it becomes a crap shoot to see if the person is online or not. There is no way anyone will want to keep the Opera browser minimized just so people can see your website. There should be an option to leave it running in the background if the user chooses to do so. My Second issue is that there aren’t a lot of Opera users out there for this to take hold. Opera has always been known for its innovations and I think this is a worthy idea that other browsers might copy. If that is the case the idea might expand…kind of like tabbed web surfing. My last concern would be security. If everybody can access your files, so can hackers. I know there will be someone out there that will say…hmmm.. I think I’ll share my entire hard drive and make it public. I’m hoping there is no way to find out the users IP address or those users could be in trouble.

Conclusion

Opera’s innovations are truly impressive. I think they’ve built a fantastic browser, if I wasn’t attached to my Firefox addons I would consider switching over. I hope other browsers take notice, because I really think this is where the future of the web should be heading. Right now Unite has just basic services, but I think with developers help there could be some truly astounding stuff going on.

Download Opera Unite and have a look for yourself.