A blogger, a text editor, and a bench of tools.
I write about the web and I build the small things I kept needing while writing about it. Bench is where those two habits ended up in the same place.
The short version
My name is Moana Crab. I blog, mostly about the ordinary end of web work — file formats, colour, text, the small decisions that take longer than they should because nobody wrote them down anywhere.
I built Bench because I kept opening the same kind of page and closing it again. A converter that wanted an account. An image tool that uploaded my picture to a server I had never heard of to do arithmetic my own laptop could do in a tenth of a second. A colour checker buried under three pop-ups.
So this is the other version. Single-purpose pages, one job each, no account and nothing to install. It is the site I wanted to find.
Small pages, built to be checked
Two rules decide what gets built and what does not. Both of them are about size rather than features.
What gets built
- One page, one job If a tool needs a second screen to explain itself, it is two pages pretending to be one, and I have not finished thinking about it yet.
- No account, ever Nothing here asks you to sign up, log in, or hand over an email address to use it.
- Files stay put The work happens in the page you already have open, and your files stay on your machine because there is nowhere else for them to go.
- Working from disk Save a tool page and open it locally and it still runs. That is the test I use when I am not sure whether a page is honest about itself.
What gets refused
- Anything that needs a server The moment a tool needs something running behind it, it stops being a page you can save and keep.
- Tools that want your whole document A text tool should take the text. If it is asking for your account instead, it is a product, not a tool.
- Advice dressed as arithmetic A contrast ratio is a number and I will give you the number. What to do about a brand colour is your call, not mine.
- Numbers I have not checked Every figure on this site is either arithmetic you can repeat or something I have cited. If one is wrong, that is a bug.
The writing
The blog is the long-form half of this site. Each piece takes one question — which image format to pick, why a hash you were told was fine is not, how a contrast ratio is actually worked out — and answers it properly, with the arithmetic shown rather than summarised.
Every article ends at the tool that does the thing being described, so the reading and the doing are never far apart.
Getting in touch
Write to moanacrab7610@gmail.com. A wrong answer, a page that breaks in one browser, a claim on this site that is not true — all of those are worth an email and all of them get a reply.
The contact page has a short form if you would rather not open your mail client, and says what is worth sending.
The things people ask
Do I need an account to use any of this?
No, and there is no way to make one. Every tool opens and works the moment the page loads. There is nothing to sign into, nothing to subscribe to and no email address required at any point.
Is it really free, and what is the catch?
It is free, and the catch is that there is not one. There are no accounts to upsell, no paid tier holding features back, and no upload quota to run out of. The site carries advertising, which is what pays for it, and the privacy policy says exactly what that means for you.
Can I use the output in my own work?
Yes. Anything a tool produces — an image, a colour value, a generated password, a converted document — is yours to use however you like, including commercially. Nothing is watermarked and nothing is licensed back to me.
Something is wrong with a tool. What should I do?
Send the settings you used and what you expected to see instead. If the input was a secret, send the settings rather than the secret. A wrong number or a broken page is a bug and I want to hear about it.
Will you add a tool I need?
Possibly. The ones that get built are single pages with no login, no upload and nothing running behind them. If that describes what you have in mind, send it over.