browsertoolkit.com

About Browsertoolkit.com

How did browsertoolkit.com get started?

I've had a deep interest in topics like search and text mining for years. I also have a ritual of reading for a few hours when I wake up every morning before I start my work day. Over time, I began having to wade through too many pages, too many sites to get to what I was looking for. To stem this ever expanding virtual mass of info-goo I decided to buckle down and actually create a tool that would help me get through it.

That explains search; what about the resources like icons and UI Scrapbook?

Like any side project worth having, it eventually absorbed several other projects that I'd been working on, slowly but surely. Namely, the collection of user interface element screenshots in the UI Scrapbook, the icon collection, the palette collection, the ... other collections I've yet to index yet. The other, non-text collections are coming a bit slower because it's sometimes trickier to really find good ways to index them. Things like text (bite my tongue), colors, some types of pictures, and some types of sounds are a bit more straightforward (especially in context of web development, except for maybe sound ;) .. right?) than the "general cases" required by a search outfit like Google or Yahoo!.

Who are you?

Just another thinker, tinkerer, musician and developer living somewhere in Cambridge, MA. You can email me if you like. You could even call me John, instead of "browsertoolkit" or somebody that's concerned.

What did you use to make this site?

PHP, jQuery for the front-end. Lucene, MySQL, and a staggering raft of mine and other people's bits and pieces of code. I do have a list of people and institutions who deserve credit; my wife, however, deserves most of the credit for being infinitely patient and understanding.

Anything cool in development? Any other sites?

Yeah, plenty :). Check back often. I have two more major additions joining Browsertoolkit Labs, and one Labs project graduating in a few weeks. Suggestions always welcome.

"An image, icon or article in your search engine should be X because of Y."

No problem. I will honor most reasonable requests (or tell you why I can't, or won't, if that's the case). Please email me and I'll respond as soon as possible. Keep in mind I do work a 40+ hour a week job at a startup, and have a wife and multiple cats.