🛠️ Salty's Lair Site Credits 🛠️

Cloud Convert 🔸 Font File Conversion
I use this site to convert .TTF and .OTF files to web-compatible .WOFF and .WOFF2 files. I try not to use these gimmicky conversion websites when I can avoid it, but sometimes it's worth saving the headache of doing it yourself.

CodePen 🔸 Code Testing & Sharing
I occasionally use CodePen for testing out development ideas without breaking my projects. This "social media-slash-web-development" site allows you to edit and preview HTML, CSS, and JS all in one window (and in real time), but with the added benefit that it doesn't make your eyes bleed. It's also a good way to find new CSS tricks and inspiration from other users!

EmojiCopy 🔸 Copying Emoticons to the Clipboard
I use this to copy-paste the emoticons you see all over my website into my code editor. I use this site over the many "emoji selector" copycats because they have a search engine that is actually functional, which saves me a lot of time. Yes, modern emojis aren't very 2000s but I love them and they're so fun! Plus, they look cool with my glowy, scanline overlay.

⭐ Ezgif 🔸 The WebDev Swiss Army Knife ⭐
If I could only choose one "indie webdev" tool, it would be Ezgif. This is the holy grail of image conversion and optimization web tools. It translates between common image file types. It crops, compresses, rotates, resizes, and optimizes .gifs. You can even MAKE a .gif out of a stack of pictures, which is not the most straightforward thing to do offline if you don't have a good handle on Photoshop/GIMP. It isn't updated too frequently, but it already has a ton of features that work REALLY well. What more can you ask for out of a free tool?

Fsymbols 🔸 Copying Glyphs/Symbols to the Clipboard
This serves a similar to EmojiCopy, but I use this one for ALT code symbols and other non-emoji symbols. They also provide an "emoji copy" feature but navigating it gives me a headache. You'll see what I mean.

Remove.bg 🔸 Image Background Removal
This site just removes plain backgrounds from an image. I have no idea what they do with my data, and I probably don't want to know, but that's the trade-off I suppose. It works pretty well, so I use it (sparingly) when I am away from home and can't use GIMP or Photoshop. I wouldn't recommend feeding your personal photos it, however. :)

GifRun 🔸 Convert Youtube Clips to .gifs
Downloading a Youtube video, editing it, and converting it into a .gif is a pain in the ass and a big time suck no matter which way you look at it. If you survived the Tumblr fandom wars of '14, then you have probably cried over the .gif creation process. This site takes whatever Youtube URL you feed into it and gives you a simple tool to convert it into a .gif, albeit with a hideous and slightly confusing UI. I've tried a couple of similar online services but they were much more limited with their freemium features.

I work in IT, so I usually cut my teeth on new software and languages by reading the boring vendor documentation and one supplementary "fun" source. My apologies in advance to all my video tutorial watchers, but that stuff doesn't work for me most of the time! I learned all I know through the following sites and the occasional "Stack Overflow" search:

The Mozilla Developer Network documentation is THE webdev [insert religious text of choice here]. They are on the cutting edge of standards and their documentation is beautifully-written and concise. If you can make it through the technical reading, there is no better way to figure out the proper way to code a webpage.

This is the go-to website for most budding front-end developers from what I have gathered. Their tutorials are easy to navigate and understand, and they're taught in a pretty effective order. I think they're a bit behind on coding best practices, especially with some of their CSS methods, but the functionality is definitely there even if not always the most efficient way to do something.