Smashing Magazine

Online Generators

November 9th, 2006

One can discuss, whether web-generators are useful or not. On the one hand, they don’t challenge our creativity, but on the other hand they make our life easier and save our precious time. However, it doesn’t matter really. What matters is that we use them if we have to solve some problem quickly and efficiently. We’ve taken a look at the most useful online-generators for web-development and listed them below.

ascii generators

• ASCII Artist
  This little program converts your picture to ASCII text art
• ASCII Generator
  Generate a ASCII graphic from a word or text. Over 130 fonts.
• ASCII-O-Matic
  is a web application that can convert an image into ASCII Art dynamically

color generators

• ColorBlender.com
  Your free online color matching toolbox
• Color Calculator
  Color calculator, with saturation and lightness adjustment.
• ColorCombos.com
  Web colour combinations tool and library
• ColorMixers
  Remixing RGB since 2003
• color palette creator v1.6
  A color swatch generator based on the tutorial located here
• Color Palette Generator
  Generate a color palette based on an image
• Color Palette Generator
  Enter the URL of an image to get a color palette that matches the image.
• Color Scheme Generator 2
  Color scheme generator for webpages and coding
• Color Schemer
  Create matching color schemes at the click of a button
• colr.org
  It’s a tool to let people fiddle around with colors and words.
• EasyRGB
  The first RGB and COLOR search engine on the Web!
• Gradient Image Maker
  Web-based tool that makes a linear gradient image between any two colors.
• HTML Color Code Combination Chooser
  Choose the best HTML color combinations with this free tool. Easy to use color finder that generates HTML codes.
• I Like Your Colors!
  Use this tool to extract the colors from the HTML and CSS of any web site. Compare the colors easily using hue groups.
• Technicolor
  Automatic color palette generator with realtime preview and CSS generator.
• Transparent PNG Generator
  “It’s a simple web application that lets you create transparent PNG images in any color…

css generators

• Clean CSS
  CSS Formatter and Optimiser
• CSS Button Generator
  CSS Button & Text Field Generator
• CSS Creator
  Live CSS Cascading Style Sheet Layout generator for your web site
• CSS Font and Text Style Wizard
  Use this wizard to experiment with font and text styles and generate sample CSS style source code.
• QrONE CSS Designer
  Online CSS Generator
• Online CSS Optimiser/Optimizer
  This tool is used to optimise CSS code. Enter either a URL or Copy & Paste the stylesheet into the box, and click Go
• CSS Formatter and Optimiser
  CSS optimize
• CSS Form Code Maker
  Generates ‘Colorful Box Layout’ For Forms
• CSS Menu Generator
  Our CSS Menu Generator will generate both the CSS and the HTML code required to produce a text-based yet appealing set of navigation buttons.
• Format CSS Online
  Automatically format your CSS (cascading style sheets) so they are easy to read and edit…..
• Online CSS Optimizer
  CSS Optimizer optimizes and reduces the file size of the Cascading Style Sheets
• Colly’s CSS rollover generator
  CollyLogic CSS Multi-element Rollover Generator
• Cornershop
  Rounded Graphics for CSS Box Corners
• CSS Rounded Box Generator (Beta)
  Generates both the images and code you need for a rounded box.
• Online CSS Scrollbar Color Changer
  Change the scrollbar colors in an HTML page
• CSS Tab Designer
  CSS Tab Designer is a unique and easy to use software to help you design css-based lists and tabs visually and without any programming knowledge required!
• Free CSS Template Code Generator
  Maker for 3 Column Layout (tableless)
• HTML and CSS Table Border Style Wizard
  Use this wizard to experiment with table border styles and generate style source code.
• Layout-o-Matic
  Generates tableless CSS layouts at the touch of a button
• Listamatic
  one list, many options - Using CSS and a simple list to create radically different list
• Listamatic2
  nested list options
• List-O-Matic
  Generate CSS-styled navigation menus based on list items
• List-u-Like CSS Generator
  Create cross-browser list-based navigation bars with ease
• S5Easy: Create S5 Slideshows Easy Online
  Create your slideshow in only 3 steps
• Scriptomizers
  A CSS stylesheet generator
• The Generator Form v2.90
  CSS Source Ordered Variable Border 1-3 Columned Page Maker

domain name generators

• Nameboy
  free domain name generator, search and creation
• DNGenerator.com
  Domain Name Generator with Domain Name Finder to register domain names if expired domain names
• Domain name generator
  Intelligent random name generator that finds available domains and unique business names. The fastest online domain name generator available
• Domain Name Generator
  Domain Name Generator will produce a list of possible domain name ideas based on the word or phrase you input.
• Namedroppers
  We provide a more efficient method for finding and generating domain names. Search for domain names using multiple keywords
• Whoix?
  Domain Name Wizard

email generators

• Advanced Email Link Generator
  Advanced Email Link Generator with Anti-Spam Encoder
• E-Mail Icon Generator
  For GMail, Hotmail, MSN, Yahoo!, AOL and many more!
• Email Riddler (online tool)
  Email Riddler is an online tool that encrypts and transform your email address into a series of numbers when displaying it, making it virtually impossible for spam harvesters to crawl and add your email to their list.
• NeedASig
  Email and Forum Signature Icon Generator

favicon generators

• Favicon Generator
  Make Free Favicons - Create a Favicon.ico Design
• FavIcon Generator (beta)
  Use this online tool to easily create a favorites icon (favicon) for your site
• FavIcon from Pics
  How to create a favicon.ico for your website
• Favicon.ico Maker
  Upload a 16 x 16 pixel PNG and click ‘Faviconify!’ to create a favicon for your website. This favicon maker supports alpha transparency.

flash generators

• Flash Buttons Menu Generator
  Free Animated Flash Buttons Menu Generator
• Flash Drop-Down Generator
• FLASH EMBEDDER
  This tool will let you easily embed flash movies into HTML.
• Flash Generator
  Flash Generator is an online easy tool for creating flash animations from your logos or your photos. You can also add music in your animations.
• Flash Navbar Generator
  Flash Topbar Menu Generator

form generators

• Accessible Form Builder
  Generate XHTML-compliant accessible forms quicky and easily
• Accessible Form Creator
  allows you to create forms for web sites containing all the additional markup required to make the forms accessible under Section 508 standards and the W3C WCAG 1.0 Priority 1-3 Guidelines.
• Contact Form Generator
  The free Website Contact Form Generator utility enables you to create form-to-email scripts for your ASP, PHP or Perl web site with no programming skills needed.
• CSS Form Code Maker
  Generates ‘Colorful Box Layout’ For Forms
• Form Element Generator
  allows you to create forms for web sites containing all the additional markup required to make the forms accessible under Section 508 standards and the W3C WCAG 1.0 Priority 1-3 Guidelines.
• FormLogix
  FormLogix is an online web database and form generator solution.Free
• JotForm
  Web Based WYSIWYG Form Builder
• PHP FormMail Generator
  A tool to create ready-to-use web forms in a flash. Once the form has been generated, you have a full functional web form. Including error checking of required fields, email address validation, credit card number & expiry date checking, multiple attachments sending, and email auto responding.
• Wufoo
  Making forms easy + fast + fun.
• Web Form Factory
  Open Source Web Form Generator

fun & humor

• Web 2.0 Generator
  It’s Not Too Late! Quick! The Web 2.0 bandwagon is leaving and you are not on it! Don’t worry, there is still time if you act fast. Luckily web20generator.com is here to save the day!
• Web2.0 Logo Creator
  Web2.0 Logo Generator
• Avatar Maker
  free Web 2.0 Emoticon/Avatar Generator
• Concert Ticket Generator
  Make your own virtual concert ticket
• Dreamlines
  A non-linear, interactive visual experience. The user enters one or more words that define the subject of a dream he would like to dream.
• Free Online Barcode Generator
  Completely free online barcode generator outputs many different symbologies in JPEG or PNG format
• Error Message Generator
  Create your own error message
• The Metaverse Excuse-O-Mat
  Passende Entschuldigungen auf Knopfdruck
• Magazine Cover Generator
  Magazine:Create a customized magazine from your digital photographs
• Mondrian Machine
  Mondrian art generator
• M O N D R I M A T
  The MONDRIMAT is a simple system which lets you experiment with space, color and visual rhythm in accordance with the theories of Piet Mondrian.
• Ribbon Image Generator
• StripGenerator
  Make your own cartoon online
• Vinyl Record Generator
  Make your very own simulated stacks of wax! Just enter some text and click the ‘Go’ button. A picture of a record will be generated for you…
• Warning Label Generator
  The Warning Label Generator is a fun way to generate your own warning labels!
• Web Economy Bullshit Generator

graphics & image generators

• Ajaxload
  Ajax loading gif generator
• Background Image Maker
  A background image maker that lets you choose the type, margin, linecolor, background color, size and transparency.
• Button Maker
  A quick and easy tool that automatically creates an 80×15 or 88×31 button by your specifications.
• Button Maker :: Adam Kalsey
  Create 80×15 stickers for your blog with any text or color you desire.
• Brilliant Button Maker by LucaZappa.com
  A web application to create customizable 80×15 brilliant buttons
• PHP/SWF Charts
  is a simple, yet powerful PHP tool to create attractive web charts and graphs from dynamic data.
• ACME Label Maker
  Make a label!
• Create A Graph
  Create Graphs and Charts
• iGal
  Online Image GALlery generator
• Web2.0 Logo Creator
  Web2.0 Logo Generator
• Cool Text (Logo Generator)
  Logo and Graphics Generator
• Online SiGGy Maker
  Online Signature Maker
• phpThumb()
  The PHP thumbnail creator
• PixelButton
  PixelButton is an Antipixel online generator, easy and fast to use.
• Portrait Avatar Maker
• Portrait Illustration Maker
  Let’s make an original icon!
• RSS Button Generator
  150 Fonts, 144 Colors - 80×15 Pixel Button Maker
• Sparklines
  You can start right away by dynamically creating a sparkline using the Sparkline Generator Web Application
• StripGenerator
  Make your own cartoon online
• Texture Maker
  Texture Maker is a seamless texture generator and designer…..
• Thumbnail Generator
  An easy way to process thumbnails from a large amount of images
• Tile Machine 1.0
  A web generator for designing graphic tiles
• Typogenerator
  typoGenerator is a random generator for ‘typoPosters’. the user types some text; typoGenerator searches images.google for the text and creates a background from the found images….
• Wallpaper Generator
• Web Album Generator 1.8
  Create Online Photo Albums

htaccess generators

• Htaccess Disable Hotlinking Code Generator
  If people are ‘hotlinking’ to your image files, they are using your bandwidth which you will ultimately pay for. You can stop this from happening by placing a ‘.htaccess’ file in the folder where your images are stored…
• .htaccess File Generator
  Apache htaccess file generator
• .htaccess Generator
  .htaccess generator - will generate the files you need (.htaccess and .htpasswd) to password protect a directory of your website.
• .htaccess Generator
  Create Encrypted Passwords in seconds
• mod_rewrite RewriteRule Generator
  Our mod_rewrite RewriteRule generator will take a dynamic url given to it, and generate the correct syntax to place in a .htaccess file to allow the url to be rewritten in a spiderable format
• URL Rewrite (mod_rewrite)
  With this tool you can generate dynamic urls to search engine friendly urls..

metatag generators

• META builder
  This form will generate HTML META tags suitable for inclusion in your HTML document.
• Meta Tag Generator
  Use this tool to generate a search engine friendly Head Tag for your web site
• Title & Meta Tags Generator
  his code generator will build the title and meta tags for your site to help improve your website’s search engine ranking using our Meta Tag Generator
• META Tag Generator
  Fast track creating your META tags with our advanced META tag generator. Just select the META tags you would like and let our META tag generator spit out the code for you
• META Tag Generator
  Here‘s an easy to way to generate your META tags. Fill in the form and hit ‘submit‘

misc generators

• amazonbox
  Create RSS or Atom feeds for Amazon wishlists.
• Backlink Builder
  Building Quality backlinks is one of the most important factors in Search Engine Optimization…
• FontEditor BitfontMaker
  Online bitmap font editor
• HTML to JavaScript Convertor
  This tool takes your markup and converts it to a series of document.write() statements that you can use in a block of JavaScript.
• Insta-Select
  Insta-Select - An easy “select” list generator
• Pretty Printer for PHP, Java, C++, C, Perl, JavaScript, CSS
  This is a source code beautifier (source code formatter), similiar to indent. Please make a backup before you replace your code!
• Quick Escape
  It’s a tool that lets you quickly paste in HTML and for that to be converted to escaped characters which can be pasted back in to your HTML source code so that it renders on screen.
• Response.Right
  Response.Right converts text/HTML to server-side write statements in PHP, ASP, JavaScript and Perl.
• Screenshot Generator
  Screenshot generator to see your site on a Macintosh G5 in Safari, MacIE or Mozilla.
• XFN (XHTML Friends Network) Link Creator
  Create XFN-friendly links at the press of a few buttons
• Yes No Now!
  It’s a tool for quickly generating accessible, XHTML-compliant yes/no radio button choices from a list, that’s what.
• Browsershots
  Free screenshots of your web design in different browsers
• iCapture
  Safari Screenshots
• Screenshot Generator
  Screenshot generator to see your site on a Macintosh G5 in Safari, MacIE or Mozilla.
• Webimpressum-Assistent (German)
  Webimpressum schnell erstellen

password generators

• Free Password Generator
  Free passwords for all purposes
• hashapass
  Hashapass automatically generates strong passwords from a master password and a parameter.
• Perfect Passwords
  GRC’s Ultra High Security Password Generator
• Phonetic Password Generator
• PASSWORD GENERATOR
  online Password Generator
• Password generator
  this is a little Javascript program that will concatenate two fields and MD5 them…
• Password Generator
  This tool lets you use one “master” password to create unique, complex passwords for each website you visit.
• Perfect Passwords
  Ultra High Security Password Generator

pdf generators

• html2pdf
  Type the URL of a Webpage of your Choice to generate a PDF file
• Notepad Generator - 1.0.0a
  This tool allows you to customize a PDF notepad.
• PDFCreator
  PDFCreator is a free tool to create PDF files from nearly any Windows application.
• PDF Online
  Quickly and easily convert your documents into PDF from anywhere in the world
• RSS 2 PDF (Beta)
  Free Online RSS, Atom or OPML to PDF Generator

php & MySQL generators

• MyDBO Code Generator
  MyDBO is a powerfull and open object-oriented code generator for PHP/MySQL web application developers
• MySQL Backup to Strongspace Script Generator
  This script generates a MySQL backup script for any number of databases that you enter into the first field
• PHP Classes - Class: PHP MySQL class generator
  Generate classes to manipulate MySQL table rows
• phpCodeGenie - Database Driven Applications Code Generator
  phpCodeGenie is a code generator for database backed applications. It can communicate with different database servers and generate code in many programming languages from them
• PHPMaker
  is an automation tool that can generate a full set of PHP scripts quickly from MySQL database. Using the generated PHP, users can view, edit, search, add and delete records in the database easily on the Web.
• phpMyEdit - Instant MySQL Table Editor and PHP Code Generator
  phpMyEdit generates PHP code for displaying/editing MySQL tables in HTML
• phpThumb()
  The PHP thumbnail creator
• PHP FormMail Generator
  A tool to create ready-to-use web forms in a flash
• POG - Php Object Generator (v1.6 rc2)
  Php Object Generator, (POG) is a PHP code generator which automatically generates tested Object Oriented code that you can use for your PHP4/PHP5 application.
• WWW SQL Designer
  visualisiert Datenbanken und Strukturen

popup generators

• Accessible Pop-up Window Generator
  Create pop-ups that are accessible and search engine-friendly
• Popup Window Generator
  This code generator will make a script that you can add to your page using the Insert HTML Element which will pop up a window for you.
• Popup Window Generator
  Use Eric’s Popup window Generator to easily add popup windows to your site!
• Popup Window Maker
  Fill out the specifications of the popup window you would like to use, including the URL and the various options such as menubars, toolbars, scrollbars, etc, and click the generate button

robots.txt generators

• Robots.txt Generator
  Robot Control Code Generation Tool
• Robots.txt Generator
  robots.txt Generator (german)
• Robots Txt Generator
  Use this tool to generate a simple robots file for your website…
• Robots.txt syntax checker
  This robots.txt syntax checker checks the contents of a site’s robots.txt…

rss generators

• amazonbox
  Create RSS or Atom feeds for Amazon wishlists.
• ListGarden
  RSS Feed Generator Program
• RSS Button Generator
  150 Fonts, 144 Colors - 80×15 Pixel Button Maker
• RSS GENERATOR
  Web-based RSS Generator for sites not supporting RSS. Utilizing regular expressions, free to use.
• RSS 2 PDF (Beta)
  Free Online RSS, Atom or OPML to PDF Generator
• RSSxl Beta - RSS Generator
  Convert an HTML Web Page to RSS

sitemap generators

• Free Sitemap Generator
  “Our tool creates a sitemap as defined by Google™ for your site.”
• Google Sitemap Generator for WordPress v2 Final
  This plugin generates a Google Sitemaps compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog.
• Google Sitemaps beta
  Google sitemap generator
• ROR Sitemap Generator
  This free tool will crawl your website and generate a ROR Sitemap with up to 1,000 URLs for ALL search engines, not just Google
• Sitemap Generator
  Free Online Sitemap Generator - Build your Site Map online (XML, ROR, Text, HTML)

text generators

• Lorem Ipsum Generator
  Generator for randomized typographic filler text
• Lorem Ipsum
  All the facts - Lipsum generator
• Malevole - Text Generator
  This text generator has been developed based on years of careful research and is guaranteed to improve even the most lacklustre of designs.
• Typetester
  The Typetester is an online application for comparison of the fonts for the screen.

tooltip generators

• DHTML Tooltip Generator
  Sometimes the HTML “alt=” isn’t enough to relay the detail you’d like it to. Here is a tool that will allow you to give your users more interactive tooltips.
• Flash Tooltip Generator
  Free online flash generator create a flash tooltip

weblog generators

• Blogger archive script generator
  This page will generate a Blogger archive script with your choice of date formatting, creating either a select (dropdown) menu, or a list of links….
• BLOGPOLL
  free blog poll for your weblog
• Eris’ Template Generator
  Free Blog Templates
• Firdamatic
  The Design Tool for the Uninspired Webloggers
• Movable Type Style Generator
  Create a Movable Type Style visually with this generator.
• PsycHo
  Free weblog template generator
• Weblog Name Generator
  Random Title Generator For Blogs

xml generators

• XMLBuddy
  Supports XML and DTDs. Generates DTD from XML instance. Validates and provides code assist based on DTDs or document contents (no DTD)…
• XML Forms Generator
  A standards-based, data-driven Eclipse plug-in that generates functional forms with XForms mark-up embedded within an XHTML document from a XML data instance or a WSDL document
• XML Generator
  To Generate XML from any data source