Fresh Resources for Web Designers and Developers (July 2023)

It’s that time of the month again when we gather to explore fresh resources for our fellow web developers and designers. The tech world is in constant evolution, and the Laravel community is at the forefront, introducing fantastic new libraries and resources at the recent Laracon 2023 event in beautiful Nashville.

In this post, we will delve into some of these new tools, as well as other resources within the Laravel ecosystem that you might have overlooked.

NativePHP

Unveiled at Laracon 2023, NativePHP is a framework designed for the swift creation of native desktop applications using PHP. It is user-friendly and caters to both seasoned and beginner PHP developers, facilitating cross-platform app development with HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. NativePHP introduces a new realm of possibilities in the app development world, particularly for those with a background in PHP.

Laravel Herd

Herd, another tool introduced at Laracon 2023, is a new addition to Laravel development. It provides a one-click PHP development environment with no dependencies. Exclusively built for macOS, Herd is a remarkably fast, native environment that includes everything you need to jumpstart your Laravel projects, from PHP to nginx.

Lighthouse PHP

Lighthouse PHP flawlessly incorporates GraphQL into PHP applications. It offers a schema-first approach with effortless integration with Laravel Eloquent. Lighthouse PHP provides GraphQL directives, authentication, pagination, sorting, and robust error handling.

Radix Vue

Radix Vue is a Vue.js adaptation of Radix UI Primitives, an open-source UI component library. This library is designed with a focus on accessibility, customization, and an enhanced developer experience. It serves as a solid foundation for building high-quality design systems and web applications, with a particular emphasis on addressing the limitations of existing web platform implementations.

Draft UI

Draft UI is a collection of React components that prioritize web accessibility, and are designed to be easily copied and pasted into your projects. Drawing inspiration from shadcn/ui, these components provide full control over the code, facilitating easy customization and adaptability. Draft UI is compatible with any React framework.

Devpod

DevPod is a tool designed to simplify development environments. It supports devcontainer.json setups and has the capability to analyze projects to determine optimal environments. As an open-source tool with a declarative file standard, it provides a powerful desktop application and command-line interface (CLI), free from vendor lock-in or server-side setup. DevPod enables the creation of repeatable development environments for any infrastructure, IDE, or programming language.

Coolify

Coolify is an open-source alternative to Heroku and Netlify that can be self-hosted. It enables you to host your applications, databases, and open-source services on your own machine or hardware. It is an ideal solution for companies, teams, hobbyists, and individuals who prefer hosting in-house and wish to maintain independence from large cloud providers.

Cachet

Cachet is an open-source status page system that allows you to keep your users informed about service incidents, maintenance, and uptime. It provides easy customization, incident tracking, API support, and subscriber notifications.

Orchid Software

Orchid is an open-source platform designed for building admin panels with Laravel. It features a visual builder, customizable themes, and access control. It also offers data visualization and is extensible, allowing developers to add new functionality on top of it.

Wave

Wave is the ultimate Software as a Service (SaaS) Starter Kit, built on the Laravel framework. It provides a robust foundation with features such as authentication, subscriptions, invoices, announcements, and user profiles. This makes it an ideal base for constructing your SaaS project.

Canvas

Canvas is an open-source package that can enhance your Laravel application by setting up a blog within minutes. It offers a distraction-free writing environment and provides valuable insights such as monthly trends, traffic, and other statistics. These insights offer valuable data to enrich your blogging experience.

VSCode Blade Formatter

The VSCode Blade Formatter is a Visual Studio Code (VSCode) extension designed for automatically formatting Blade templates in Laravel projects. It provides customizable rules and seamless integration, ensuring your code remains consistent and well-organized. If you’re a Laravel developer using VSCode, this extension is a must-have.

TastyIgniter

TastyIgniter is an open-source restaurant management system with online ordering capabilities, built on top of Laravel. It simplifies restaurant operations by handling online ordering, managing menus, processing orders, and handling table reservations, all through a user-friendly interface. It also offers multi-language support and allows customization through extensions and themes.

Laravel Compass

Laravel Compass is an open-source Laravel package that can be used to test API calls or generate interactive RESTful API documentation based on defined routes. It supports all standard HTTP methods, various authentication mechanisms, and is compatible with the OpenAPI Specification. If you’re looking for a simple tool to develop your API that integrates well with Laravel, this is the package to install.

TypiCMS

TypiCMS is an open-source CMS built with Laravel. It offers essential features such as content management, user management, multilingual support, and customizable themes. Its modular architecture allows for easy integration with existing Laravel installations and enables developers to extend or include specific features as needed.

Ziggy

Ziggy is an open-source JavaScript library specifically designed for Laravel. It simplifies route handling, providing a seamless way to interact with backend routes from the frontend. Overall, it’s a handy library for building Single Page Applications (SPAs) with Laravel.

Jigsaw

Jigsaw is an open-source static site generator that utilizes Laravel’s blade templates and Markdown for content creation. It manages asset compilation, offers a local development server, and includes essential features for a website such as Markdown support, pagination, customizable themes, and more. If you prefer working with Laravel or PHP, this library is an excellent choice for building static sites.

Ripgrep

Ripgrep is an open-source, exceptionally fast line-oriented search tool that performs recursive regex pattern searches in the current directory. It automatically adheres to gitignore rules, skips hidden/binary files, and can be highly configured to exclude specific files or directories. It operates cross-platform and integrates seamlessly with Git.

Unhead

Unhead is a platform-agnostic universal document <head> tag manager. It offers an intuitive API with automatic deduplication and ordering. It also includes powerful plugins for optimizing tags and inferring SEO meta tags. Unhead is compatible with runtime builds for minimal client overhead and offers full extensibility.

Plane

Plane is an open-source alternative to JIRA or Linear. It provides solutions for issue tracking, epic management, and product roadmapping. It also comes with essential features including a rich text editor, file attachments, customizable layouts, cycle planning, module breakdowns, custom filters, and even GitHub sync for enhanced tracking and collaboration.