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Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by jasonkester on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:11AM (#2579300)
Nice.

One thing that's obviously missing is a way to link to the image you've just created. I have a nice looking photo sitting there, but seemingly the only way to share it is to view source, copy, paste into a new HTML file and upload it to a server somewhere.

Have it start each new session at a random URL that you can share, and this will get very popular very fast.

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by hakim on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:15AM (#2579405)
Thanks for the comment. Will definitely add functionality for sharing images. I also just purchased textify.it and will be moving this project there.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by ssdsa on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:29AM (#2579334)
I did something similar in 1997 (!): http://home.wtal.de/ss/html/pnmtohtml/baby_032.html What do you think?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by jasonkester on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:51AM (#2579368)
That's awesome. It's amazing how much we could actually do back in the days of Netscape and IE version 4 and below.

Performance on the machines of the day was actually better than modern HTML5 stuff on modern hardware because the DOM was so much simpler and tuned toward performance. I could actually watch the little games I made using DIVs/LAYERs and pixel art images slow down during the 2000s as new browsers came out. It's only now, with quad core processors that they're back up to the speed they used to run on a Pentium.

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by owenmarshall on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @09:26AM (#2579684)
I had a similarly amusing moment years back when I saw a bit-blit demo in the browser. All this excitement about something that was state of the art on Commodore 64s.

(And yes, I do understand how the ubiquitous nature of the web actually makes this important... but I still find it funny!)

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by aerotrain on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @01:20PM (#2580714)
Aha! this is amazing. Is there a web interface to upload and try ?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by ssdsa on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @03:57AM (#2583281)
Sorry, but I didn't create any web interface for that back in 1997. :-) Instead, I wrote a C program to generate those HTML files. More information on that is here: http://home.wtal.de/ss/html/pnmtohtml/pnmtohtml.html - Sorry, in German. Maybe Google translate might be of some use: http://translate.google.de/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl...
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by highace on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:56AM (#2579377)
"Convert images to HTML text. Drag and drop images on to the page to start murdering your browser!"
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by hakim on Wednesday May 25, 2011 @03:55AM (#2583275)
I added an option for rendering on a canvas element instead of adding elements to the DOM. It performs a lot better this way since there's no DOM reflow/layout to worry about.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by geekzgalore on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:32AM (#2579426)
I agree. The tab hogs memory and kills the browser.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by hartror on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @09:36PM (#2582522)
Works fine for me.

Ubuntu 11.04 - Chrome 11

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by geekzgalore on Friday May 27, 2011 @12:59AM (#2590481)
Windows XP - Firefox 5.0a2. Works today though.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by michael_dorfman on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:21AM (#2579323)
Maybe it's me, but I can't get this to work (in either Chrome 12 or IE9).
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by AgnesLam on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @02:53PM (#2581064)
For me, it works in Chrome but not IE.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by pmanacas on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @09:41AM (#2579737)
Try deleting all characters from "Character set" and click APPLY SETTINGS :-)
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by joshaidan on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:29PM (#2580498)
I love the quality of the image when you set the character quantity to max, but I notice the speed of the rendering gets progressively slower with each pass.

And now I start pondering the scalability of the algorithm.

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by antihero on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:28AM (#2580187)
Using • you can recreate pointillism :)
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by wtracy on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:54PM (#2582779)
I got some neat painterly effects with /\|

(Be prepared to crank it up to something like 50000 characters if you don't want half the image to be background color, though.)

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by fcolaco on Sunday May 29, 2011 @08:11AM (#2596494)
We released an App for Android/iPhone/iPad/iWhatever a few weeks ago with the same concept, but using artwork elements to recreate the photo, instead of text. It's called Pixeroid :) http://pixeroid.com Update coming soon
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by HardyLeung on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @11:40AM (#2580251)
This is cool! If you could use characters with different font sizes it may look better. Also kinda slow. You wanna explain a bit what you do? Is it just image -> choose a random point set -> draw? Is this based on Canvas or CSS?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by jaredwill on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @01:00PM (#2580635)
http://textify.it/js/hakim.textify.min.js: "Recreates bitmap images using HTML text. Images are drawn onto a canvas element so that the pixels can be read. Letters, with colors matching the image pixels, are then placed at random locations on the screen."

Looks like it also uses dat.gui for drawing.

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by VMG on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:20AM (#2579320)

    Fatal error: main(): Failed opening required 'server/util.php' 
    (include_path='.:/hsphere/shared/apache/libexec/php4ext/php/') in 
    /hsphere/local/home/hakim/hakim.se/experiments/html5/textify/index.php on line 3
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by hakim on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:23AM (#2579326)
You must've reloaded just as I was uploading a small update.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by hartror on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @09:38PM (#2582527)
Best way to do updates is to deploy new versions to separate directories and just change a symlink. Bonus is you can quickly revert to the older version if you find an issue.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by JoachimSchipper on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:19AM (#2579319)
I was expecting automatic ASCII art, like http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/gallery/, but this is nice too.

The submission needs a lot of characters, though.

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by gojomo on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @02:27PM (#2580955)
I somewhat expected JS-based OCR. But this is cool, too!
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by romain_g on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @12:28PM (#2580490)
That is really great! Besides export options, what would it take to be able to modify the density over certain areas of the output image?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by cygwin98 on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @09:33AM (#2579709)
Not exactly the ascii art I expected. But still very cool anyway.

Also, it would be great, if someone implements figlet[1] using html5.

[1] www.figlet.org

Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by arkem on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @06:21AM (#2579325)
This is cool! There's a typo in the controls, it says "Back & White" when it should be "Black & White"
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by Flam on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:35AM (#2579434)
Hakim, you always make cool things. :)
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by hbrouwer on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:29AM (#2579424)
I dragged in a screenshot of OSX. Makes the dock look cool ;-)
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by SonicSoul on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @09:04AM (#2579621)
worked great for me. awesome! i've been wanting to learn Processing so i could create public apps like this that do fun things to photos.. has anyone done that?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by justatdotin on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:09AM (#2579397)
I really like it. well done.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by jzting on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @08:06PM (#2582271)
Love it.
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by how_impressive on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:37AM (#2579435)
Why?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by tincholio on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @08:13AM (#2579499)
Why not?
Re:Textify: Convert images to HTML text by elliptical on Tuesday May 24, 2011 @07:47AM (#2579451)
And the purpose?