February 2024 on Glitch: Admiration abounds

Truly, we started out February feeling the love because The New Stack wrote up an awesome story featuring YOU! The Glitch community is solidly the source of unforgettable web projects, so pat yourselves on the back because I can’t and also it would be weird. How would that work even, logistically? There are 2.6 million of you, and I’m kind of a germaphobe.

Speaking of taking cautious measures, old Node.js deprecations continue! The march toward upgrading all projects to use at least Node 16 is very much in progress. Learn how to upgrade your apps with this help center article (it’s easy, I promise…I was able to do it and my coding education was limited to MySpace profile trial and error over 20 years ago). Oops, I said the word march and we’re not there yet!

Although, if you are keeping up with Community Code Jams in February we celebrated the creation and admirable persistence of one of the oldest forms of web identity: ye olde blog. See all the blogs submitted, and while you’re there take a look at March’s prompt, “screensavers.” More on that later, but first we feast on February.

💕 February Finds 💕 #

~light-and-shadow (featured above), created by @ferdoropeza, features gorgeous artwork reminiscent of Rothko in substance and the Impressionists in style, that was actually created entirely with code. Hydra, to be specific! I don’t know about you, but I could study these all day (and strangely enough, these pieces popped a song in my mind, Sound & Color, by Alabama Shakes. What music, if any, do these works remind you of?

On a background that looks like pool water reflecting, several images are collaged together, with the word MANIA repeating over them in white. On the live site, several of these images are moving gifs, adding to the feeling of chaos.

~m1nd-map by @melodyavis52 obviously warrants a mention, hot on the heels of our very weird January community efforts. This expansive site combines stream of consciousness with Geocities design appetites resulting in a pretty comprehensive illustration of the human experience. Mania, shown above, was a personal fave (it’s when I do my best work!!! 🫠)

Now that the floodgates have opened to the general public, new Bluesky users might find ~bannerizer pretty handy. Created by @admin46899 and featured in this very useful new user guide, it converts images into a banner for your profile.

As a former English major and liberal arts degree holder, seeing a Glitch app singularly devoted to educating the masses on a grammatical device that could even maybe help you win a future argument, this warms my nerdy heart. Thank you for your efforts, @aandreev0. 🫡

Speaking of education, in February the internet unearthed ~httpoetics, form of “mention in a community blog post!” (Do people still get Wonder Twins references? 💍) Thanks to Naive Weekly author Kristoffer, we discovered this absolutely amazeballs app. This curriculum, by @toddwords and co., positively slaps, as the youths say, and based on the resources you could probably take it on your own. (Bookmarks this app for later).

When I first came across this project on social media, without looking at the translation, I saw the word torta, and my first thought was “oh hell yeah.” After reading the translation, I discovered a new (to me) culinary phrase, drowned torta. Umm, have you ever had a torta? Now imagine one that’s crunchier and drowned in yummy, spicy, delicious sauce. If you live in Guadalajara this map, created by @YaNiPaper, shows you where you can sample all the variations of this local delicacy. I’m jealous.

This section I like to call 🎶And if there was a problem Yo, I'll solve it, Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it 🎶 #

If that was unclear, this is a section where folks created Glitch apps to solve problems, which is a pretty common use case tbh!

Problem: How would an ordered set of emoji be lexicographically sorted by many programming languages/computing platforms?

Solution: ~emoji-sorter, find out in which order (most) apps that use alphabetical sorting will sort emoji!

Creator: @ckolderup, who documented their process in this Cohost post, and if their name seems familiar, they also created the popular fediverse bookmarking app, ~postmarks 🔖

🤏

Problem: You live in Wellington and want to know if your bus or train is running on time.

Solution: ~metlink-bus-realtime, which shows you real-time info about each route!

Creator: @leighghunt

🚌

Problem: You want to be able to see your countdown app data as a widget.

Solution: ~north-tropical-bread, fully customizable countdown app that also functions as a progressive web app!

Creator: @glitch.com50593

📱

Problem: You need help identifying birds (and translating their names, sometimes too)!

Solution: ~btb-wikidata

Creator: @blprnt

🪶

Problem: You want to be able to use Apache ECharts, but don’t know where to start.

Solution: ~echarts-starter

Creator: @stefan, who we’ve profiled here on the blog (a couple times!), also wrote an introduction to using ECharts, check it out!

📊

This fancy prance around the great state of New Jersey was brought to you by @sobrien26 and inspired by: ~mappy-races created by the folks at Maps Mania, who, if you’re not familiar, produce consistently fantastic, yet educational maps!

A black and white photo is shown of a woman wearing a hat, looking at the camera from a distance, next to a Penske moving truck, in a wide open parking lot.

~eva-n-dills-road-trip is a sweet idea that I’d love to try after my next road trip (note to self: plan a road trip!) Created by @evamarok, this app recounts, well actually, I don’t want to spoil the surprise. Take a look for yourself!

Give these February founders their flowers 💐 #

~letterboxd-last-four created by @derekahmedzai, a February ✨ App of the Week ✨ and very cool social sharing tool for Letterboxd fans!
~cael created by @carliogafuture features the artist’s work on their profile site, check it out!
~how-should-i-colour-the-days by @christianp allows you to color your calendar days by adjusting the hue parameter
~sfdcanbac-ux via @n.hieda is an interactive page used in a dance-tech performance, which you can view here. Try it!
~vision-pro-webxr by @ImJohnDoe is for both WebXR and VR headset fans, you know what to do!

If you haven’t yet, follow us across the open social web 🌐

If you’re sharing your project on the web, use the hashtag #MadeWithGlitch so we can find it. As always, you can send your projects and playlists to us via the community forum, or email [email protected]—we’d love to see your work in our next roundup!

A final Feb thought 🤔 #

Oddly enough, ~screensaver-blur revealed itself to me through a social post, long before we had settled on the code jam prompt. However, I thought it was appropriate to end with, as a little reminder and gentle nudge to use the opportunity of a free code jam challenge to build something new! I’m thinking of learning just enough Hydra to learn how to make a pretty pastel screensaver. See you there!