Blog

Base64 Images Explained: When to Use Them, and When Not To

Embedding an image as text inside your code feels like a hack. Sometimes it's the right call — and sometimes it quietly makes your page slower.

Developer Tools · 4 min read

Why Your CSV Opens Wrong in Excel (and How XLSX Fixes It)

A CSV is just text with commas in it. Excel has to guess what that text means — and the guess is where things go wrong.

Documents · 4 min read

Hashing vs. Encoding vs. Encryption: Why They're Not the Same Thing

"Just hash it" and "just base64 it" get used almost interchangeably in casual conversation. They do nothing alike.

Developer Tools · 5 min read

How to Convert HEIC to JPG on Windows (Without an iPhone Nearby)

Windows can technically open HEIC now — if you install the right paid codec. Converting the file is faster and works everywhere else too.

Images · 4 min read

Why Your Resized Image Looks Blurry (and How to Avoid It)

Stretching a small image up is a different operation from shrinking a large one down — only one of them can genuinely go wrong.

Images · 4 min read

JSON vs. YAML vs. XML: Picking a Config Format (and Converting Between Them)

All three can represent the same data. The differences that matter are about who's reading the file — a program, or a person.

Developer Tools · 5 min read

Converting Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to PDF Without Breaking the Formatting

A PDF is supposed to look the same everywhere. That guarantee only holds if the conversion actually renders the file instead of guessing at it.

Documents · 4 min read

How to Compress a PDF Without Losing Quality

Most of a bloated PDF's size is sitting in its images, not its text — which is exactly where you can win the space back.

Documents · 5 min read

How to Merge PDF Files Free, Without a Watermark

A lot of "free" PDF mergers aren't free once you see the result — they just move the cost to a logo stamped across your document.

Documents · 4 min read

Adding Page Numbers and Watermarks to a PDF (and Why Order Matters)

Both are just stamps on every page. Do them in the wrong order and one visually buries the other instead of sitting cleanly alongside it.

Documents · 4 min read

How to Password-Protect a PDF for Free

Adding a password to a PDF isn't a premium feature — it's built into the file format itself. Most paywalls around it are selling you something PDF already does.

Documents · 4 min read

PDF Split vs. Extract vs. Remove Pages: What's Actually Different

Three tools that all sound like "do something with some pages" — but each one hands you back a different shape of result.

Documents · 4 min read

Static vs. Dynamic QR Codes: Which One Do You Actually Need

One type of QR code you generate once and it's done forever. The other is a subscription you might not realize you signed up for.

Developer Tools · 4 min read

Why You Can't Copy Text From a Scanned PDF (and What Actually Fixes It)

Two PDFs can look identical and behave completely differently — one has real text underneath, the other is just a photo of text.

Documents · 5 min read

SVG vs. PNG for Logos and Icons: Why Vector Wins Until It Doesn't

One of these formats stays perfectly sharp at any size. The other one is what most software still expects you to hand it.

Images · 4 min read

Unix Timestamps Explained: Why Computers Store Time as One Giant Number

1970 wasn't chosen for any romantic reason — it's just where the counting started, and everything else follows from that one design decision.

Developer Tools · 4 min read

WebP vs. JPG vs. PNG: Which Image Format Should You Actually Use

Three formats, three different jobs — picking by habit instead of by what the image actually needs is how sites end up slower than they should be.

Images · 5 min read

Why Converting Files in Your Browser Is More Private Than Uploading Them

"We delete your file after 24 hours" and "we never received your file" sound similar. They aren't.

Privacy · 5 min read

HEIC to JPG: Why iPhone Photos Need Converting At All

Your iPhone isn't creating a broken file. It's using a format most of the world outside Apple's ecosystem still can't open.

Images · 5 min read

PDF vs PDF/A: What's Actually Different (and When It Matters)

Every PDF/A is a PDF. Not every PDF is a PDF/A — and the difference is not cosmetic.

Documents · 6 min read