DEV Community: Pablo Tejada

An Image Cropping Web App 8 Years in the Making

Pablo Tejada — Fri, 13 Aug 2021 12:51:17 +0000

Following my previous post on what not to do when you get a good idea for a project, this is a short story of what I end up doing with an idea that I came up with a long time ago. About eight years ago to be exact.

In early 2013, websites were not as sophisticated as they are today. I recall having to google for sites to crop an image and reduce their size because a lot of websites expected you to upload the perfect image. Even for a profile picture. They would offer no way for you to adjust or crop the image once you upload it. For example, if I wanted to upload a profile picture to a forum or a post I had to find tools outside of the website to make an acceptable image.

To put into perspective how long ago this was, React was not even released until later that year. Even cropping an image in the default Windows viewer was not a thing or it was not intuitive. Looking back on it, it was bizarre that websites enforced image size and dimension limits without providing any tools to help users comply with such limits. Is not that image cropping was not a thing at all, is that it was not common for it to be built into the website's image upload functionality.

All of the websites to crop and compress images that I came across at that time did not have a good user experience and were full of ads everywhere. I told myself then that I could do a better job. The idea was to make a single function application where users could upload and crop their images with the simplest UI possible. True to my habits back then I went on to GoDaddy for my domain hunt. I end up buying cropimg.com.

Sadly I never got to build the application. I only got as far as making a "coming soon" page, more than a few variations throughout the years. Every time I migrated to a new web framework or web host I used to design new "coming soon" or "under constructions" pages for all of my parked ideas. I kept the domain for 8 years but never found the time to do the actual work.

Today, I find myself with a new landing page for cropimg.com, and I am committed to completing this personal project of mine. It's been a long time coming and I have done a lot progress so far. I want to see this through even if there is no need for such a tool anymore.

Nowadays, cropping an image is such a trivial task. It is super simple to do from the default Windows image viewer. Whether it is an app on the web or mobile, if it allows you to upload an image, it lets you adjust or crop it before been saved. While image upload limits have not gone away for good, they are more generous today. Size policies are now integrated seamlessly as well. Today automatically optimizing uploaded user images is a must for both storage optimization and deliverability.

What project have you worked on recently that brought you personal gratification even if the world did not notice it? Let me know in the comments.

Why are images not opened in a lightbox or modal?

Pablo Tejada — Mon, 09 Aug 2021 22:30:12 +0000

I am sure this probably has been asked before but I could not find anything on this. I was not even able to search for posts by the #meta tag.

Why images linked in Dev.to posts don't open up in a lightbox or modal when clicked? I find it inconvenient that it doesn't do this.

You can click this image to see what I mean.

What not do when you get an idea for a project

Pablo Tejada — Sun, 08 Aug 2021 07:09:22 +0000

Great ideas come in the moments you least expect them. I am sure every developer has had one of those moment of enlightenment. The first few steps after getting the idea can be crucial for the success or at least seeing the project even progress.

The first thing that might come to mind after coming up with the next big idea is to research whether it has been done before and how well it has been done. You could be wasting your time if the idea you have envisioned has already been done the exact same way you had picture it. It is completely ok to still pursue your idea even it has been done before. At the end of the day what matters most is the execution.

When I come up with an idea the first thing I would do is look for a good available domain. This is before I even do anything else to vet weather it is a good idea to pursue. My top priority was always to get a good or clever .com domain. It had to be .com and it would have to make some sense when you read it. Mind you that this this was before we had all this TLDs we have today. Looking back now I realized how useless this way of thinking was. The visibility of your projects in the web goes beyond having a good domain name.

Over the years I must have accumulated dozens and dozens of domains. I never accomplished anything for most of these domains. They were lucky to even get a "coming soon" page. After some light research I would come to the conclusion that the project was not worth the time, weather there wasn't a real need or it had already been done even better than what I had envision it. I did manage to sell some of the domains for a profit but for most I just let the registration expire. There are a few domains which I really like and I will probably keep holding on to them. One day I will give them meaning.

I got to finish very few of the projects I have wanted to do. There are some projects you do for yourself and there are others you want be something more than just your hobby. It can be discouraging when those projects you had high hopes for just flop. They just don't attract the interest of the users you want.

Don't do what I did for years. Don't get useless domain names for your projects that are still ideas or are in their infancy. Nowadays your projects can live anywhere in the web and people don't need to remember their unique domain names. In terms of visibility all that matters is how you spread the word and drive attention to your project. A domain name can always come later.

Let me know if you can relate in anyway in the comments. My next post will probably be how one of my domains is finally getting a "coming soon" page after 8 years of ownership.