Squoosh

Google is on a mission to get people to shrink their images so pages load faster on mobile devices. They recently launched a new website called Squoosh to make it even easier to compress images.

Squoosh Description

https://squoosh.app/

Four Differences Between Squoosh and ShortPixel

Back in Septemeber, I wrote about how ShortPixel is a great compression service. Here are some of the key differences between ShortPixel and Squoosh. Still a good option for many reasons.

1. ShortPixel allows users to batch process lots of images, with Squoosh you can only do it one at a time.
2. ShortPixel automatically sets the best compression, with Squoosh you have to figure out what compression doesn't ruin the image.
3. ShortPixel also compresses PDF documents and animated Gif files.
4. Squoosh allows you to play around with the settings to get the smallest possible size that works for that image, including settings for Reducing the color palette and image physical size.

Squoosh is great if you just need to compress an image for a blog or Slack. It's a quick fix tool. It would be nice if Google did offer several compression suggestions - such as "Best for Mobile" or "Image Optimized for Slack."

Dynamic Drive

Dynamic Drive has all sorts of useful tools for Web Developers, including Image Optimizer, Button Maker, Image to Base64 and lot more.

There is a section of the site where you can download script files, such as creating a dynamic calendar, snow or rain effect, the Matrix Text Effect, Mouse and Cursor effects and many more. It's a great place to get a code and some unique ideas to help spice up any webpage.

Description from the site

http://dynamicdrive.com/

Sample Content Listing

Check out some of these cool effects

It's Snowing - Decorate your webpage with this great animated document effect! Watch as snow gently trickles down the page, then disappear. Cool DHTML Tooltip - This is a practical, elegant DHTML tooltip script. Use it to display additional information about a link or any other element when the mouse moves over it. Tic-Tac-Toe - Entertain your visitors to a quick game of Tic-Tac-Toe. Comes with artificial intelligence and the ability to keep score. It's a good way to increase webpage time, which is a way to help SEO score. Online Image Optimizer - Image Optimizer lets you easily optimize your gifs, animated gifs, jpg, and png, so they load as fast as possible on your site. You get a preview of each quality and pick the image that works best for you.

Cheatography

Single page reference sheets - often called Cheat Sheets - are good reference guides to common tasks. Most developers have used them when researching the latest CSS styles or figuring out the proper regular expression.

A great online resource is the Cheatography website - they have a huge selection of cheat sheets in various topics. If you think you can do better than what they have, you can also create your very own cheat sheet.

Description from their site

https://www.cheatography.com/

Cheatography Content

The five most popular Cheat Sheets:

1. Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet
2. Linux Command Line Cheat Sheet
3. EQ tips Cheat Sheet
4. JavaScript Cheat Sheet
5. Python Cheat Sheet

Snipplr

Wouldn't it be great if there was a resource to get awesome code snippets, so you don't have to re-invent the wheel for an HTML5 Starter Template or a PHP function to properly trim strings or any bit of code. Fortunately there is such a site it's Snipplr.

At Snipplr you can search for any code bits for just about every active programing language. There even a useful HTML Test Page so you can see how your style sheet works with all the active HTML elements.

Description from the Website

https://snipplr.com/

glowtxt.com

The awesome people that created Textcraft, created a cool sister site called glowtext.com. The site offers a lot of very cool glowing style font styles. These are perfect when you want to bring to life some otherwise boring text.

Description from the Website

https://glowtxt.com/

Some Notes

• GlowText.com doesn't offer any shared library style as is offered in Textcraft.
• If you don't want to host the image, simply click on the 'Get Web Code' to get links from imgur.com.
• You can preview the PNG transparent image against different backgrounds.
• There are 147 fonts available - Only a small sub-set is visible on the page as preview.

Example Designs and Styles

Filmora Meme Generator

Earlier this week Filmora announced a new free product called Meme-Maker. Do we really need another Meme-Maker? Yes, Filmora does a good job making it easy to create custom Memes. If your looking to make a Meme from standard images your still better off using Imgflip.

Website Description

https://filmora.wondershare.com/meme-maker/

Example Meme Created in Filmora

Undertale Text Box Generator

The Undertale TextBox Generator is a creative way to display text in a graphics format. You simply type the phrase you want, design the box, and presto a creative graphic is ready to share on social media, blog or Slack.

You can have a character, or logo in the text box to add a bit of humor to your text.

Description from Website

https://www.demirramon.com/en/generators/undertale_text_box_generator

The generated text box are in PNG format and are 576w x 152h.

Example Text Boxes

Da Button Factory

Da Button Factory is an easy way to make all sorts of website buttons. It's a good site for bloggers or anyone that maintains a website. Need some button ideas? They have a page of examples, which you can use as a starting point.

Description from Website

https://dabuttonfactory.com/

Some Example Buttons

Canva Meme Generator Tool

Most people know Canva as the easy place to create blog titles, posters, Social Media graphics, YouTube thumbnails and more. Did you know that their editor is perfect for creating MEMEs?

The webopedia describes the 'Internet Meme' as " a concept or idea that spreads "virally" from one person to another via the Internet."

Description from Canva's website:

https://www.canva.com/create/memes/

Four Things I learned using the Canvas Editor

• Many sites like Imgflip have all the popular background images, such as the Waiting Skeleton, Think About it, Sponge Bob, Batman Slapping Robin, One Does Not Simply and more...
• Canva does offer a lot of good images to help make your own creative Meme. Some images are extra, but there are plenty of free images.
• You can create your own templates so you can reuse images/designs later.
• The downloaded images are 1080 x 1080.

Example Meme

ShortPixel

ShortPixel is a great service for anyone looking for an easy way to compress images. Why compress images? If you maintain a blog or host websites, a good image compression tool can make the site load faster. In addition, smaller image sizes mean less disk space.

If your uploading images to Slack, a better-compressed image may help slack show an inline preview on those larger animated GIFs.

To use the site, simply create a free account and then drag and drop images to the compression optimize box on their website. Developers will be happy to know that there are API tools for PHP and a command line tool.

Website Description

While ShortPixel promotes the use of the WordPress Plugin and API, you don't need it to use their compression technology.

https://shortpixel.com/online-image-compression

Sample Compression

This animated gif was originally 3.6 MB, and now it's 1.6 mb.

I compressed an old PDF file from 6MB to 795K. Check out the PDF to see if there's any serious quality lost: http://www.cryan.com/pdf/IncredibleUniverse.pdf

Letter Board Generator

The folks over at Letterfolk created a cool generator that allows you to create letter board graphic. This is a creative way to display a message in social media or in Slack. There are all sorts of settings, such as font size, board size, and colors.

If your serious about Letter board, Letterfolk is the place to go. They have all sorts of designs and options that sure to meet anyone needs.

https://www.letterfolk.com/pages/virtual-letter-board

Sample Designs

Note: Like all post on the cryan.com, this is not a paid endorsement. I found the Virtual Letter Board to be a very useful graphics generator tool and thought it should be featured as this week's internet tool.

Backronym

backronym.org is simple site that converts a word into a random phrase. This is useful if you're trying to learn a complex word, or just for fun. Since the phase is random it can give you some ideas on more useful backronym.

Webster's Dictionary: an acronym deliberately formed from a phrase whose initial letters spell out a particular word or words, either to create a memorable name or as a fanciful explanation of a word's origin.

http://backronym.org/

Sample Generated Backronym

• YAHOO: that Yarn-spinning Admissive Houttuynia Orchestrated from that Organdie
• YAHOO: the Yellowish-orange Aerological Harmonics Overpaying one Octosyllable
• CNN: that Confined Narthecium from that Nuclease
• MBTA: that Maltese Brazilian Tortricidae in an Argument
• NRA: that Nonexplorative Reconcilable Alt

Graphic Burger Text Effect

Graphic Burger has all sorts of cool text effects to download and modify using Adobe Photoshop. While it would be great if these were editable online, I think having the templates makes it just as useful.

Description from the Website

https://graphicburger.com/tag/text-effect/

Some Notes

• None of the Text Effects will work with Affinity Designer or Affinity Photo.
• Some of the effects will work with Photoshop Elements Editor but it appears that you need the full version of Photoshop to use the smart object container feature of the files.

Favicon & App Icon Generator

If you own a website, you still need to create a Favicon for bookmark purposes. A favicon is an icon that is displayed next to the URL in the bookmark list. Not having a custom icon makes the site look unprofessional and boring.

While you can use any graphics format for a Favicon, Microsoft is playing hardball and still requiring the use of ICO files.

This is where favicon-generator comes in handy. The site is a single source to generate all the icons for your website so it looks good on iOS and all the browsers. You don't have to worry about what format is supported by which browser and interface. The site takes all guesswork for you.

If you don't have an icon in mind, you can browse the gallery to see other Favicons to get some ideas.

Description from the Site

https://www.favicon-generator.org/

Sample Designs

When you upload an image, you are giving simple instructions on downloading the generated ZIP file and code snippets to your index.html file.

Check out Favicon and see it