Squoosh
A handy in-browser image compression tool. Drag, drop, tweak, and export.
Tags: images
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Dynamic resources using the Network Information API and service workers
Smart thinking—similar to this post from last year—about using the navigator.connection API from a service worker to serve up bandwidth-appropriate images.
This is giving me some ideas for my own site.
The Tarot Cards Of Tech
A useful set of questions to ask on any project, shuffled and dealt to you.
They’ll not only help you foresee unintended consequences—they can also reveal opportunities for positive change.
All of the content in images. Not a single image has alternative text. If only they had asked themselves:
When you picture your user base, who is excluded? If they used your product, what would their experience be like?
Keep Pixelated Images Pixelated as They Scale | CSS-Tricks
This is a potentially useful bit of CSS that I had no idea existed.
Lazy Loading Images and Video | Web Fundamentals | Google Developers
Jeremy Wagner offers a deep dive into lazy loading images (and video) with some advice for considering the no-JavaScript situation too.
Carbon
This service could be quite handy if you’re making a presentation that involves showing code—it generates syntax-highlighted images of code.
Compressive Images Revisited - TimKadlec.com
Tim explains why that neat trick of making a really big JPEG with quality set to 0% is no longer necessary, and how the savings you make in bandwidth with that technique are nullified by the expense of the memory footprint needed.
Swapping Images with the Sizes Attribute | Filament Group, Inc., Boston, MA
The hits just keep on coming from the Filament Group. Here Scott shares a really clever technique for creating an image magnifier using the sizes attribute of the img element.
Boxy SVG
This is impressive—a fully featured graphics app for creating SVGS right in your browser.
Metaballs
Metaballs, not to be confused with meatballs, are organic looking squishy gooey blobs.
Here’s the maths behind the metaballs (implemented in SVG).
Href Tools - Free online web tools
Handy web-based tools—compress HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and convert files from one format to another.
edent/SuperTinyIcons: Under 1KB each! Super Tiny Icons are miniscule SVG versions of your favourite website and app logos
These are lovely little SVGs of website logos that are yours for the taking. And if you want to contribute an icon to the collection, go for it …as long as it’s less than 1024 bytes (most of these are waaay less).
Network based image loading using the Network Information API in Service Worker | justmarkup
This is clever—you can use the navigator.connection API from a service worker (because it’s asynchronous) which means you can have a service worker script that serves differently sized images based on bandwidth.
Using SVG as placeholders — More Image Loading Techniques - JMPerez Blog
Here’s a clever to technique to improve the perceived performance of image loading with a polygonal SVG placeholder.
The Contrast Swap Technique: Improved Image Performance with CSS Filters | CSS-Tricks
A clever performance trick for images:
- Reduce image contrast using a linear transform function (Photoshop can do this)
- Apply a contrast filter in CSS to the image to make up for the contrast removal
Rebuilding slack.com – Several People Are Coding
A really great case study of a code refactor by Mina, with particular emphasis on the benefits of CSS Grid, fluid typography, and accessibility.
Seeing Earth from Outer Space
A lovely interactive photo essay charting the results of what happens when evolution produces a life form that allows a planet to take selfies.
Building a CSS-only image gallery (with fallbacks)
A great step-by-step walkthrough of building a really nice image gallery without any JavaScript.
The end result is really impressive but there’s still the drawback that the browser history will be updated every time you click on an image thumbnail (because the functionality relies on ID attributes referenced via :target). Depending on your use-case, that may or may not be desirable.