Web Dev Plugins I’d Recommend

Tweet! (Twitter plugin)

“Simple and intuitive.” That’s all I’ve ever wanted in a Twitter plugin and Tweet! is just that. Tweet! provides a vertical list view of a user’s tweets (the amount displayed is adjustable) including that user’s avatar. The capabilities are far greater than this however, as Tweet! can also display tweets by any user about a certain query, feeds that auto-update, all tweets by users in a certain twitter list, and favorited tweets. The metadata is also customizable. As an added bonus, it is very easy to manipulate from a visual standpoint. Very streamlined.

bx-slider (jquery slider: html content)

Out of the box, bx-slider is basically ready for use with only a little customization. There are, of course, other slider plugins that handle html content as slides, but this one has to be the most powerful. Visually, you can customize colors, “next” and “previous” graphics, and sliding/pausing intervals. This plugin has options galore, with a ton of callback functions, active state classes, and toggles that no other plugins have. When I wanted to use Nivo Slider (more on that plugin soon) recently, but couldn’t, I was happy to have bx-slider as a backup.

Nivo Slider (jquery slider: photos)

Nivo Slider from dev7studios is one of the slickest, most compatible, prettiest photo sliders that exists. It is regularly updated and is more compatible than you ever wanted it to be. Featuring photo transitions that I haven’t seen elsewhere (even now), and smooth UI, this is simply the best photo slider out there for non-lightbox and non-fullscreen uses. You can also get it as a WordPress plugin.

Lightbox2 (lightbox)

Lightboxes reached their peak a few years ago, but they are still relevant in some cases. In all of my experience, Lightbox2 has served every purpose I’ve needed. I’ll add, however, that this lightbox does not handle any kind of video file. There are lightbox solutions for these filetypes if needed, like this one that handles youtube, etc. videos. I wouldn’t recommend a lightbox to handle local video files, however, due to added strain on bandwidth.

Form2Mail (contact form email)

At $30, you may dismiss Form2Mail automatically. Maybe I just don’t know where to look, but I’ve never found a better non-wordpress plugin for capturing/e-mailing form contents and I’d rather not trust a third party service. If you handle e-commerce websites or any number of sites with form data, this is money well-spent. In addition to the form data, you are e-mailed the sender’s IP address and country, which can be helpful to filter spam. Also, there are PHP and ASP versions of the plugin, making it very adaptable. Form2Mail is a plugin that is designed for use with Adobe Dreamweaver, although it can be used independently.

Dynamic Drive Accordion (jquery accordion)

I have always been a fan of Dynamic Drive’s plugins. Previously, I used a customized version of their drill-down menu plugin on my portfolio site and loved it. This accordion plugin is also built very solidly; with a compatibility of IE6 through all modern browsers, this accordion can handle AJAX content and supports active states when you move your mouse off of the menu. My only negative comment – visually it looks like 1999 out of the box. It will take some customizing to update the look, but luckily all of that is easy through css.

Masonry (layout)

Masonry is a plugin that I’ve just become aware of and that is becoming very common in web design. The plugin gathers floated divs vertically first, rather than horizontally. The result is a dense field of like-width divs that form a sort of brick-like interwoven pattern. I think this could be great for visual blogs like FFFFound! where the order of posts isn’t as important. Very interesting.

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