Issue #582  (htmx History, CSS Tools, JSON/DB, Uncats)09/12/24

It's always interesting to read about how popular projects were started by their creators. In a Hacker News post a few months ago, a reader asked about the creation of htmx, which seems to only have become popular in recent years even though it's been around much longer. Also, the motivation for it to exist has been around since Ajax was first popularized way back in the mid-2000s.

Well, the creator himself chimed in with his story, which is the top comment on the post. I thought some of you would enjoy his description of events going back to 2012 up to how it exploded in popularity in 2023. And he has the visual to prove it, which I've included above!

Now on to this week's tools!

CSS & HTML Tools

Tailwind Generator — A collection of useful tools and generators for Tailwind to create, design, and customize all kinds of UI components using a graphical editor.

Open Graph Generator — A simple tool to generate Open Graph meta tags for any web page, to help improve SEO, social media presence, etc.

Button Stealer — A Chrome extension that automatically "steals" a button from every web page you visit, creating an inspiration gallery of button designs for future use.

Add SSO the Easy Way — WorkOS helps you ship SSO and other enterprise features this afternoon. From high-quality documentation to self-serve onboarding for your customers, we remove all the unnecessary complexity for your engineers.   SPONSORED 

Tailwind Grid Builder — An online tool to visually build and generate code for CSS grid layouts with Tailwind classes, with options to customize columns, rows, and breakpoints.

ObsoHTML — A Node.js script designed to scan HTML, PHP, Nunjucks, Twig, JavaScript, and TypeScript files for obsolete or proprietary HTML attributes and elements.

pdf-embed — A web component that adds support for Adobe's PDF Embed API, so you can add a PDF display to your web page, controlling the size, reading experience, etc.

Orbit — A CSS framework designed specifically for building radial (or circular) user interfaces, with a small set of components and functions for making custom radial designs.

tailwindcss-3d — A Tailwind plugin to add classes for CSS transforms utilities and animations, for 3D styling in your Tailwind projects.

html-metadata — A Node.js-powered scraper and parser for extracting all HTML embedded metadata from a web page, with support for Promises and callbacks.

JSON & Database Tools

Shapeshift — A TypeScript library that maps arbitrarily structured JSON objects using vector embeddings.

sqlite-vec — An extremely small, "fast enough" vector search SQLite extension that runs anywhere, as a successor to an older project no longer maintained.

json-to-csv-export — A lightweight JavaScript function to easily generate CSV downloads of your JSON data, with ability to choose file name and header names.

graphql-request — A minimal GraphQL client supporting Node.js and browsers for scripts or simple apps.

Tech Productivity — A brief newsletter for tech workers featuring tools, apps, tips, articles, and other resources on productivity, work culture, remote work, brain science, and lots more.   SPONSORED 

typed-xlsx — A simple yet powerful library to effortlessly export any data into XLSX sheets, with the full power of type safety.

SQL Studio — A single binary, single command SQL database explorer with support for SQLite, libSQL, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and DuckDB.

moleQLar — An open-source tool that simplifies the process of overlaying a GraphQL implementation over your PostgreSQL database.

DB Browser for SQLite — A high quality, visual, open-source tool with a spreadsheet-like interface designed for people who want to create, search, and edit SQLite database files.

safe-stringify — A JavaScript package that allows you to serialize objects to JSON with handling for circular references.
 

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The Uncateg­orizables

Fair Source — An alternative to closed source, allowing you to safely share access to your core products using 'fair source licenses'.

Fonts Ninja — A platform with a companion Chrome extension that lets you save and collect high quality commercial fonts with search and filter features.

Page Replica — A web service that enhances your website by prerendering, caching, and serving static versions of your pages, to help ensure accurate indexing by search engines and proper display in social media posts.

jQuery to JavaScript Converter — An online tool and CLI that finds jQuery methods from existing projects and generates vanilla JavaScript alternatives.

Manifest — A complete self-hosted backend-as-a-service that fits in a single YAML file, with a SQLite database, admin panel, REST API, and JavaScript SDK.

Wing — A programming language for the cloud that combines infrastructure and runtime code, enabling developers to stay in creative flow, to deliver better software, faster and more securely.

Tech Productivity — A brief newsletter for tech workers featuring tools, apps, tips, articles, and other resources on productivity, work culture, remote work, brain science, and lots more.   SPONSORED 

Blocks — A Figma plugin that features a collection of ~50 best-in-class wireframing components, with drag-and-drop and a smart customization system.

SSOReader — Open-source dev tools that provides an authentication middleware layer for enterprise SSO with self-hosted or cloud options.

Bad Bot Blocker — A list of 223 .htaccess rules to block bad bots, including E-mail harvesters, content scrapers, spam bots, vulnerability scanners, surveillance bots, and more.

Commercial Apps & Classifieds