The latest articles on DEV Community by lianglili (@lianglili). https://dev.to/lianglili https://media2.dev.to/dynamic/image/width=90,height=90,fit=cover,gravity=auto,format=auto/https:%2F%2Fdev-to-uploads.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fuser%2Fprofile_image%2F4123756%2F355283b7-dfbe-425b-aea0-8b694296ed95.png https://dev.to/lianglili en lianglili Mon, 14 Sep 2026 02:52:38 +0000 https://dev.to/lianglili/i-built-fastools-70-free-browser-tools-for-images-video-pdf-and-everyday-dev-work-10eo https://dev.to/lianglili/i-built-fastools-70-free-browser-tools-for-images-video-pdf-and-everyday-dev-work-10eo <h1> I Built Fastools: 70+ Free Browser Tools for Images, Video, PDF, and Everyday Dev Work </h1> <p>I got tired of opening five different “free tool” sites every week—one for image compression, one for QR codes, one for Base64, another for a quick mortgage or tax estimate—and half of them buried the useful button under ads.</p> <p>So I built <strong><a href="https://www.fastools.cc/en" rel="noopener noreferrer">Fastools</a></strong>: a single hub of <strong>70+ free online tools</strong>, with each tool living on its own subdomain (for example, image tools, video tools, JSON helpers), and a bilingual index so English and Chinese users can find what they need quickly.</p> <h2> What Fastools is </h2> <p>Fastools is a <strong>Toolhub</strong>: click a card → open a focused tool → do the job → leave.</p> <p>Categories include:</p> <ul> <li> <strong>Image</strong> — compress, watermark, merge, cutout / background remove, ID photo, EXIF, favicon, SVG helpers, and more</li> <li> <strong>Video &amp; audio</strong> — trim, compress, reverse, merge, extract audio, size checks</li> <li> <strong>Documents</strong> — PDF / Office-related converters (Word ↔ PDF, Markdown → PDF, CSV ↔ Excel, etc.)</li> <li> <strong>Dev / text</strong> — JSON, Base64, URL encode, encrypt/decrypt, timestamps, QR, password generator, OCR</li> <li> <strong>Finance &amp; life</strong> — mortgage, compound interest, tax, BMI, lunar calendar, retirement helpers, and similar calculators</li> </ul> <p>Start here:</p> <ul> <li>Hub: <a href="https://www.fastools.cc/en" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.fastools.cc/en</a> </li> <li>Index (full list): <a href="https://index.fastools.cc/en/" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://index.fastools.cc/en/</a> </li> </ul> <h2> Design choices that mattered </h2> <h3> 1. One job per site </h3> <p>Each tool is a small product, not a mega-dashboard. That keeps pages fast and SEO-friendly: people searching for “compress image online” land on a page that <em>only</em> does that.</p> <h3> 2. Prefer browser-side processing when possible </h3> <p>For many image/video/text tasks, work happens in the browser (Web APIs / WASM where needed). That usually means:</p> <ul> <li>fewer uploads to a random server</li> <li>better privacy for everyday files</li> <li>lower hosting cost as traffic grows</li> </ul> <p>(Some flows still need a backend; the goal is “local first,” not “never any server.”)</p> <h3> 3. Bilingual from day one </h3> <p>Chinese and English routes / sites sit side by side. If you ship tools globally, i18n is product work, not a later rewrite.</p> <h3> 4. A registry-driven multi-site setup </h3> <p>New tools follow a repeatable pattern: add an app, register metadata, wire the subdomain. That sounds boring—and that’s the point. Consistency is how you ship the 20th tool without chaos.</p> <h2> Who it’s for </h2> <ul> <li>Developers who need a quick encode/decode, JSON tidy, QR, or password</li> <li>Designers / marketers compressing or watermarking images</li> <li>Anyone who wants a calculator without installing an app</li> <li>People who prefer <strong>no signup</strong> for small one-off tasks</li> </ul> <h2> What I’m optimizing for next </h2> <ul> <li>Better discovery (search + related tools)</li> <li>Clearer English copy on every tool page</li> <li>Performance and accessibility polish</li> <li>More “task-shaped” guides (how-to pages that match real search queries)</li> </ul> <h2> Try it </h2> <p>If you have 30 seconds, pick one task you do often—compress an image, generate a QR code, Base64 something, or check a video file—and try it on Fastools:</p> <p><strong><a href="https://www.fastools.cc/en" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://www.fastools.cc/en</a></strong></p> <p>Feedback is welcome: which tool do you open weekly that still feels annoying on the open web? That’s the backlog that matters.</p> buildinpublic productivity showdev tools