Hello developers,

Initially when I started working on Altertunes, I was unaware of the various frameworks which one can use for his website. Though I never have used any of them for Altertunes (main reason being the eagerness to do everything by myself), but may be some of you out there might be interested in having a look at the same:

• http://prototypejs.org : Undoubtedly one of the best available framework for Ajax in the market. Prototype is a javascript framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.
• http://script.aculo.us : If you are looking to have all those fade-in and fade-out effects for your website, probably Scriptaculous does the best for your website. Scriptaculous provides you with easy-to-use, cross-browser user interface JavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly. Though I am not too sure, but I guess Ruby on Rails already comes packaged with Scriptaculous.
• Prototype Windows Class : Another master piece which allows your website to have all those fancy popups, fade-in and fade-out effect.
• Google Web Toolkit : Google Web Toolkit (GWT) makes it easier to write high-performance AJAX applications. You write your front end in the Java programming language and GWT compiles your source into highly optimized JavaScript.

Probably you will find hundred’s of them in the market right now. Above I have listed a few which I tried atleast once and got good performance. However there are various factors which decide what Ajax framework you should choose for your site. Most important being:

If you are looking to develop your site using flash, then there are again some excellent frameworks available in the market for the same. Two of the best which I know are:

• OpenLaszlo : OpenLaszlo is an open source platform for creating zero-install web applications with the user interface capabilities of desktop client software. OpenLaszlo programs are written in XML and JavaScript and transparently compiled to Flash and DHTML. The Alterplayer used on Altertunes, was developed by me using OpenLaszlo. I am open for any suggestion or question you need for development in OpenLaszlo.
• Red5 : It is an opensource flash server written in Java that supports Streaming audio and video, recording client streams and many other useful things which openlaszlo fails to do currently. So if you are looking to develop a voice chat application, Red5 is the way to go.

Above are just a few which I found useful on my way to Altertunes. There are several more untouched by me, which might be more powerful than the those I have listed above. If you find any, kindly post the same as comment here.

Happy Frameworking and web developement

• How to create a single button flash audio player using Openlaszlo? (4)
• Releasing Jaxl 2.0 – Object oriented XMPP framework in PHP (6)
• Building a Custom PHP Framework with a custom template caching engine using Output Control functions (10)
• How to add wordpress like add_filter hooks in your PHP framework (18)
• Getting started with Openlaszlo – Framework for developing flash apps (3)