In an already all too familiar format, here’s more PHP news you may have missed over the past month or so. Some of these will be presented in more depth in future posts, but it’s just as important to have a heads up about them. HHVM HHVM is on fire lately – we have four […]
Continue reading %PHP News You May Have Missed – October / November 2014%
Since the birth of the digital camera, there has certainly never a shortage of imagery. In fact, Yahoo! estimates we'll take 880 billion digital photos in 2014. Our challenge has never been a lack of choice -- it's locating precisely the image we want in this vast ocean of imagery. As Coleridge wrote "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.”.
Of course, it can often depend on the kind of image you seek. If you're looking for commonly photographed objects such as computers, books, or flowers, you shouldn't have to search long to find dozens of good ones.
However, try searching for less common objects, or for abstract concepts -- perhaps a sunny day or a particular type of flower -- and it can get tougher. Part of the difficulty stem from the fact that even a perfect image, it may not be tagged in a way that allows you to find it.
The advantage of these search engines for free images is that they (in theory) search multiple sites with free images at once. However, in practice some of these search engines search just a bunch of sites, not dozens of them. Anyway, it's more than nothing but if you hope these image search engines are a blessing, you'd better get realistic.
It's hard to compare the quality of the 7 search engines included in the article. At first I wanted to run the same queries through all of them and compare the results.
However, after I tried some very popular terms (computers in particular) and got thousands of results from some of the engines as well as no results for some not so popular terms (probably because I simply didn't use the right keywords), I decided that such a test would give misleading results.
What's more, these search engines index new images daily, so even if today there is not a single image for “sunny day”, for example, tomorrow dozens of such images might get added and my conclusions will be wrong. Therefore, I won't be comparing the quality of the search for these 7 engines – I will just list my impressions with them, as well as some facts, such as the number of photos they include in the search or the sites they search.
Before we go on with the search engines themselves, here is a word of advice. Even if in the search results you find images labeled as free for commercial use, always check the source site itself for the latest version of the license. It's not unheard of images that were licensed as free but later the author had second thoughts and modified the license. Because of this, always check the license before you use the image.
For many of us, Google Images is the first (and frequently the only) choice to find free images that are allowed for commercial use as well. In order to take advantage of Google Images, after you type your keywords in the search box and hit Enter, click the Images tab (1).
Continue reading %The 7 Best Search Engines for Finding Free Images%
anchor.js is a small but might really useful jQuery Plugin brings in an animation to all native section links and smoothly jumps at an element anywhere on your page.
Markdown is a syntax designed specifically for easier web writing. In this post, you’ll find the best free online Markdown editors.
StackEdit is a free online Markdown editor loaded with useful features. It has a visual tool bar for formatting (bold, emphasis, lists, etc.). It can sync with cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive, and import files from a URL or your computer’s hard drive. A nifty helper feature of this Markdown editor is it can convert HTML to Markdown.
Dillinger has a clean user interface that will help you compose Markdown text easier. This online Markdown editor links up with four web services: Dropbox, Google Drive, One Drive, and even GitHub. You can export your text to HTML, styled HTML, Markdown (.md), and PDF. It has a "distraction-free" mode which hides everything except your Markdown text so you can focus on writing.
Markable is a basic online Markdown editor. All it has (unless you create an account on their site to access more features) is the ability to preview your Markdown-formatted text and an option to download your work as either an HTML or Markdown (.md) file.
This barebones web-based Markdown editor gives you a live visual preview of your Markdown text as well as its HTML-markup equivalent.
Markdown Journal is a very simple online text editor that syncs with Dropbox. To be able to use it, you will have to give it access to its own Dropbox folder.
Dingus is a relatively old and extremely simple Markdown online editor. What makes this tool special is it’s by Daring Fireball (John Gruber), the creator of Markdown. Don’t quote me on this because I’m not sure, but this might very well be the first online Markdown editor.
Markdown-Editor is a minimalist Markdown editor that can also handle the GitHub Flavored Markdown (GFM) variant. It syncs with Google Drive.
This is another option if you want to compose GitHub Flavored Markdown. It doesn’t have cloud storage syncing capabilities, but it has a visual preview pane so you can see the results of your Markdown formatting.
Writebox is a distraction-free text editor that supports Markdown. When you start writing, it hides everything except your text. This online text editor can sync with Dropbox and Google Drive, has a few keyboard shortcuts, and allows you to download your text in HTML or .txt format.
wri.pe is a simple web-based notepad that supports Markdown. You can back up your notes in Dropbox or Evernote.
There are a lot of free online Markdown editors out there. However, two of them truly stood out to me: StackEdit and Dillinger. Both of these online Markdown editors have the features needed for practical writing, and that’s why they get my vote.
If you work on a lot of GitHub projects, Markdown-Editor and (GitHub-Flavored) Markdown Editor can make writing your docs and README.md a bit easier.
Markdown is an excellent syntax for Web writers. It’s simple, intuitive, not cumbersome like HTML, and designed specifically for composing text that will eventually find its way on the Web.
Check out these resources if you would like to learn Markdown:
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