While developing websites and web based applications you always have to try to make a product that is easy to use, and at the same time has a slick, stylish look. Any user has to be able to work with it, whether it’s an IT-professional or someone who only uses the computer at his office and doesn’t have any more skills than text processing. I’ve written before that it would really help to use an interface similar to the desktop of Windows or Mac, as the user is already familiar with it.

I did some exploring on this fact lately, because I was busy building my own Web OS. Actually I stepped off the idea of a Web OS, but now I’m focusing on using these kind of interfaces for my web based applications, like a CMS.

During these explorations I found some interesting projects, available to be used as the graphical user interface of your applications.

qWikiOffice
An open source project to provide an easy an user friendly web experience. It is based on Ajax and the EXT-JS library and can be extended with applications. The project is still under development, but the developer release is very promising.

jQuery Desktop
The name says it all. Another desktop alike user interface, but this one is based on jQuery.

MochaUI
This is one of my personal favorites and I’m currently using it for one of my projects. It offers a wide range of user interfaces and comes standard with lots of features like file trees, panels and windows. It is based on Mootools, and very easy to implement in one of your current projects, or to use as a basis for a new project.