Links to My Favourite Online Resources
I have come across a variety of useful online resources whilst developing websites and here they are.
This is NOT a link exchange page, this is a page of links I regularly visit which help me make websites. If you email me asking me to put your link up here, I will ignore it.
- 3v4l
- Quickly test your code in multiple versions of PHP or that a certain combination of functions works as you vaguely remember it doing.
- loading.io
- Ever wanted an ajax loading animation for your ajax site that fits in? Well here you go.
- Code Beautifier: CSS Formatter and Optimiser
- Most useful tool for deduplicating a CSS file and making minified files workable.
- Colour Combination Tester
- Simple colour combination tester, compare your colour schemes. This is a little simpler than Adobe Color CC but not as awesome. There is also Color Supply which is nicer and more Web 2.0.
- HSL Color Picker
- Check the values of a HSL colour value and remember which parameter is which.
- CSS Gradient Generator
- Simple generator for your CSS gradients, especially handy if your gradient has a few stops in it.
- CSS Triangle Generator
- Simple generator for CSS-generated triangles.
- DuckDuckGo
- A tracker-free search engine which includes and MD5 generator amongst other things.
- Firefox
- Always my first choice for browsers, particularly its privacy settings which erase all sessions and cookies when the browser closes.
- Font Squirrel font-face generator
- This tool generates the font-face code you might want for your website, compatible with all browsers. A good way of including fonts yourself if they aren't on another online service.
- Graphemica
- An in depth resource for finding character codes. Note that the URL of each character page includes the character so you can paste the one you are researching there for a quick result.
- Google Closure Compiler
- Simple minifying tool for JavaScript.
- Dillinger, Online Markdown Editor
- A great markdown editor, good for making sure your README.md is spot on.
- polyfill.io
- Polyfill as a service, means you can use things such classList in unsupported browsers (i.e. IE).
- Postman
- An excellent small tool for testing APIs and checking HTTP headers.
- RegExr
- An online regular expression testing tool. Version 1 has a nicer cheatsheet but version 2 is a much better design. If you're having trouble understanding a regular expression regex101.com has an explainer which breaks down a regular expression into english.
- Responsive Design Testing
- Quickly see how your website looks at mobile resolutions.
- VisiBone color lab
- A quick reference for 216 web safe colours.
- W3C cheatsheet
- A nifty little search engine for HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and SVG.
- Who.is
- Whois lookup and other tools at an easy to remember URL.
Website Checkers
- CSP Evaluator
- A tool from Google that analyses your Content Security Policy in detail.
- GTmetrix website speed test
- Identifies how fast your website is by using the Google PageSpeed Insights and Yahoo YSlow results.
- Have I been pwned? Domain Search
- Helps you find logins that have been compromised on other services from your domain name.
- Observatory by Mozilla
- Scans your website for security-related headers and runs a few other checks on it too. Not as good at CSP as the CSP Evaluator above.
- Qualys SSL Server Test
- Great for performing an in depth analysis of your websites current SSL settings.
- W3C CSS validator
- Validate your CSS to quickly check for any typo or bad code.
- W3C HTML validator
- Validate any HTML to quickly check for any typo or bad code.
- WAVE
- This useful tool checks your website for accessibility and graphically highlights errors and accessibility issues in your code.
Passwords
- DinoPass
- A password generator for "kids" which makes simple passwords for regular users.
- Random Word Generator
- If you would like to follow the Correct Horse Battery Staple style with an alternate source of random words.
- Random string generator from clsc.net
- If you're after a random string rather than a word-based password or just need some random characters, this is a good bet.
Lorem Ipsum Generators
- malevole
- random TV show theme song lyrics
- "Professional"
- If you want something which is slightly less silly than the other generators listed here.
- Samuel L Ipsum
- Samuel L Jackson (both not safe for work and safe for work versions available
Picture placeholders
- Placehold.it
- plain placeholders
- Placekitten
- kittens
- xmple
- Wallpapers and free abstract vector HD background images
Music
- Capital 106.9
- They have an excellent morning show which coincides with most of the work day.
- Capital XTRA
- A dance and urban radio station with an excellent choice of music.
- Coins on Bandcamp
- A maker of awesome tunes.
- SomaFM
- My long time favourite online radio station with minimal advertising and reliably good tunes. PopTron gets me through much of my work.