25 Emerging Free Web Scripts to Watch

One of the unwritten rules of the script industry is that every week, new scripts are released, while others are simply abandoned and no longer maintained. Some of these newly developed scripts will at times be proclaimed as the best, with their marketing pitch reading along the lines of “Install me!” “Try me!” “Worship Me!”

We know that these sales pitches are simply buzz, or rather, noise. And here at Hot Scripts, one of our missions is to separate that noise from what’s useful and to highlight the hottest scripts to web developers. For this month’s issue of our newsletter, we wanted to take our mandate further and showcase a list of emerging scripts that are gaining popularity among web developers.

Here is our list, in no particular order, of 25 Emerging Free Scripts to Watch. This list comprises scripts coded in different languages and in a broad range of categories, from e-commerce to social networking and frameworks.

Open Atrium

Open Atrium is an intranet that combines six modules – a blog, a wiki, a calendar, a to-do list, a shoutbox and a dashboard to manage it all. Companies can use it as a collaboration tool whereby which different teams can start conversations or share files. It proves to be very useful for individual as a project management tool. The best thing about Open Atrium is that it is based on Drupal, which makes it extremely customizable.

Pixie

Pixie is a free, open source web application that will help you quickly create your own website. Many people refer to this type of software as a “content management system (cms)”, but the developers prefer to call it a small, simple, website maker. It has an elegant interface and takes seconds to install and has a great list of built-in features including WYSIWYG editor, automated database backups, SEO friendly URLs and multilingual support.

Croogo

Croogo is a free open source content management system based on the CakePHP framework. You can create different content types including blog, node and page and categorize your content using taxonomy. Pages can comment-enabled with built-in moderation features. Croogoo also includes a menu manager, file manager and user permission manager.

Monoql

Monoql is an AJAX based MySQL admin and query tool. It has a bunch of features you’ll find in phpMyAdmin including database and table design, browsing of records, in-line editing as well as advanced querying. Compared to other similar solutions, Monoql is faster and stable.

TeamLab

TeamLab is an open-source platform for business collaboration and project management. It is based on ASP.Net, C# and supports both MySQL and SQLite. It has several features like project management, reports, instant messenger, polls, task management and milestone tracking.

Pulse CMS

PulseCMS is a simple CMS designed for small websites. It enables you to take an existing site and add content management in five minutes. Define the “blocks” on your website you wish to be editable and Pulse provides an easy to use backend to make edits right from your browser. It doesn’t require any database.

HummingBird

Hummingbird takes a different approach to web analytics by proving real time web traffic visualization – it allows you to see how visitors are interacting with your website in real time. It refreshes 20 times per seconds Hummingbird is built on the top of Node.js, a JavaScript web toolkit and uses the MongoDB database system.

Plupload

Plupload is an upload handler that allows you to upload files using HTML5 Gears, Silverlight, Flash, BrowserPlus or normal forms, providing some unique features such as upload progress, image resizing and chunked uploads.  It has a powerful API that will allow you to further customize it.

Gestalt

Gestalt is a way to write Ruby, Python & XAML code in your (X)HTML pages. It enables you to build richer and more powerful web applications by marrying the benefits of expressive languages, modern compilers, AJAX & RIAs with the write /  save / refresh development model of the web.

Php.JS

php.js is an open source project that brings high-level PHP functions to low-level JavaScript platforms such as web browsers, browser extensions ( Mozilla/Firefox, Chrome ) and Abobe Air.  It support a wide range of PHP functions like  arrays, mathematics, strings, date and time, regular expressions and filesystem.

Grafico

Grafico is a JavaScript charting library built with Raphaël and Prototype.js. The library provides a wide array of graphs that effectively communicate their information. Each graph type has numerous API options to customize it’s look and behavior.

Phraseanet

Phraseanet is an open solution for digital asset management. Digital assets can be virtually anything from photos, videos, audio files to documents. It has quickly evolved as a powerful solution with a usable interface for managing your assets online. This script is based on PHP and MySQL.

Chevereto

Chevereto is a free script, written in PHP, that lets you set up your own image hosting on your web server. It supports image upload either from your local computer or from a remote URL. Images uploaded can be set to automatically resize and you can set it to shorten the image URL using TinyURL web service.

Meteora

Meteora is a set of cross-browser Javascript Widgets that provides web developers with ready-to-use user interface controls to create Rich Internet Applications. It is based on the MooTools framework and offers great widgets like calendar picker, file browser, data grids, and other interface related controls and effects.

Analogue

Analogue is a PHP based chat application that allows you to start a linear dialogue with others in a chat room. Only people with a valid URL can come in and join the conversation. The design is simple, sleek and usable. This script makes use of a bunch of other frameworks like lithium, douchdb and jQuery.

PrestaShop

PrestaShop is a free open-source PHP and MySQL based e-commerse software. It was built to take advantage of essential Web 2.0 innovations such as dynamic AJAX-powered features and next-generation ergonomy. PrestaShop guides users through your product catalog intelligently and effortlessly, turning intrigued visitors into paying customers.

UKi

Uki is a fast and simple JavaScript user interface toolkit for desktop-like web applications.  It comes with a rich view-component library ranging from Slider to List and SplitPane.  You really need to check out their Mac Mail.app web clone demo powered by UKi.

HighCharts

Highcharts is a charting library written in pure JavaScript, offering an easy way of adding interactive charts to your web site or web application. Highcharts currently supports line, spline, area, areaspline, column, bar, pie and scatter chart types. It works in all modern browsers including the iPhone/iPad and Internet Explorer from version 6.

Argentum

Argentum is a free open-source invoicing and online project management system. It is ideal for developers and designers who works with clients’ projects. You will be able to manage your client’s projects, their contact information as well as time track how much time you spent with each projects.  You can create, email and track invoices for your clients and it has the ability to generate invoices in PDF format.

Ofuz

Ofuz is an open source invoice, project and customer relation solution created solely for teams, freelancers and service providers. It supports an elegant and streamlined interface combining powerful tools like contact management, time tracking, invoice generation, lead capture and tracking. Most of its features have been designed with online collaboration in mind.

cFTP

cFTP is a PHP and MySQL based file management system aimed at managing client-specific files and giving them access to either upload or view the files. It has a really simple and attractive design with user roles permission system. You can brand the interface by uploading your logo.

storytlr

Storytlr is an open source lifestreaming and micro blogging platform. It allows you to aggregate your social and online life content from over 18 popular sources like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and FlickR. It will also let you post anything you find any interesting and share it with others.

pyroCMS

PyroCMS is a modular open-source CMS built on the CodeIgniter PHP framework. It is lightweight, themeable and secure and is meant to be a CMS that can be used by anyone. It has great web integration features like automatic posting of your articles to your Twitter account, integration with Google Analytics, etc.

painbrush JS

PaintbrushJS is a lightweight, browser-based image processing library that can apply various visual filters to images within a web page. You use it by applying a class to an element on the page and setting a few parameters with some extra HTML attributes It support filters like blur, noise, edges, emboss, grayscale and mosaic.