Blog
Guides, tips, and roundups on free online developer & web tools.
How to Diff Two Blocks of Text Without Opening an IDE
By M. Rizwan ·
Spotting the difference between two versions of a paragraph by reading them side by side is slow and unreliable — your eye skips right past a changed word if the surrounding sentence looks similar enough. A proper diff catches what reading misses.
Iframe Works Locally but Not in Production? Check the Parent Origin
By M. Rizwan ·
Diagnose an iframe that works locally but fails after deployment. Compare parent origins, CSP directives, redirects, HTTPS, and authentication behavior.
Regex Cheat Sheet The Patterns You'll Actually Copy-Paste
By M. Rizwan ·
Regex syntax is dense enough that even people who use it constantly look up the same handful of patterns every time. Here's the reference, plus the two mistakes that cause the most debugging time.
YouTube Chapters Not Showing? Check These Settings
By M. Rizwan ·
Troubleshoot missing YouTube chapters with timestamp examples, duration checks, and feature-access guidance. Learn what a chapter formatter can and cannot fix.
Markdown Tables Cut Off in PDF? Fix Width and Layout
By M. Rizwan ·
Fix wide Markdown tables when exporting to PDF. Adjust orientation, margins, columns, and long cell values, then inspect the final document for clipping.
Modern CSS Gradients That Don't Look Like a 2015 Website
By M. Rizwan ·
The default two-stop gradient — one color sliding into another — is the first thing most people reach for, and it's also the thing that makes a design feel a decade old. A few small adjustments make a real difference.
How to Export Python Code to PDF with Line Numbers
By M. Rizwan ·
Turn a Python file into a readable PDF with syntax highlighting and line numbers. Choose page settings, handle long lines, and check the exported listing.
The .gitignore Mistakes That Leak Secrets (And Templates That Prevent Them)
By M. Rizwan ·
A missing `.gitignore` entry is usually harmless — an extra `node_modules` folder bloating a repo, a stray `.DS_Store` file cluttering a diff. Occasionally it's how an API key ends up permanently in a public repo's history, findable by anyone who knows to look.
How to View Page Source on iPhone Without Installing an App
By M. Rizwan ·
View a public webpage's HTML source on iPhone without an app. Find titles, canonical links, and meta tags, and understand server HTML versus the live DOM.
How to Block (or Allow) AI Crawlers Like GPTBot and ClaudeBot in Robots.txt
By M. Rizwan ·
Two years ago, a robots.txt file mostly had one job tell Googlebot and Bingbot what not to crawl. In 2026 there's a whole second category of visitor — AI crawlers — and they split into two groups that behave completely differently, which is where most robots.txt configurations for this get confused.
How to Remove Timestamps from a YouTube Transcript
By M. Rizwan ·
Remove timestamps from a copied YouTube transcript, merge caption lines, and check speaker labels, capitalization, and meaningful times before sharing.
How to Turn Code Snippets Into Images People Actually Stop to Read
By M. Rizwan ·
Plain-text code dropped into a tweet or LinkedIn post gets skipped past — no syntax highlighting, no visual distinction from the surrounding text, easy to scroll right by. A code screenshot with proper syntax coloring reads instantly as "code" before anyone parses a single character, which is most of why code-image posts outperform plain-text snippets in the feed.