Create Image Thumbnails with ImageMagick
ImageMagick is, for lack of better term, magic. You can throw just about anything at it and succeed. With that in mind, I was recently using Google Page Speed to see how I could improve my website and it occurred to me I wasn't generating thumbnails for my post lists -- I was simply scaling down preview images with CSS. Certainly not the most efficient technique you've ever heard of. ImageMagick to the rescue -- now I can parse for images and generate thumbnails to make my site much faster to download!
ImageMagick is loaded with options but the syntax to generate a thumbnails is dead easy:
convert billboard.png -trim -resize 32x32 thumbnail.png
Instead of simply scaling down an image with CSS, I should be generating a thumbnail and serving that up instead. And since it's so easy to do so, there's really no reason not to!
![Create Namespaced Classes with MooTools]()
MooTools has always gotten a bit of grief for not inherently using and standardizing namespaced-based JavaScript classes like the Dojo Toolkit does. Many developers create their classes as globals which is generally frowned up. I mostly disagree with that stance, but each to their own. In any event...
![7 Essential JavaScript Functions]()
I remember the early days of JavaScript where you needed a simple function for just about everything because the browser vendors implemented features differently, and not just edge features, basic features, like addEventListener
and attachEvent
. Times have changed but there are still a few functions each developer should...
![Rotate Elements with CSS Transformations]()
I've gone on a million rants about the lack of progress with CSS and how I'm happy that both JavaScript and browser-specific CSS have tried to push web design forward. One of those browser-specific CSS properties we love is CSS transformations. CSS transformations...
![Create a 3D Animating Sidebar]()
Mozilla's Christian Heilmann is an evangelist that knows how to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. You'll often see him creating sweet demos on his blog or the awesome Mozilla Hacks blog. One of my favorite pieces...
There is a
-thumbnail
option to create, you’ve guessed it, thumbnails : http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-options.php#thumbnailAnd if you need to do it on the fly, here’s a chainable wrapper for GD (PHP): https://github.com/claviska/SimpleImage