Cool Links Vol. 13: July, 2025

Hi there! This month's Cool Links are all about the web.

Fun

Draw a Fish Dot Com, by fifteen.games

This is what the web was made for. Just draw a fish. Then watch your creation swim with fishes from all over the world. Beautiful.

Deep Reads

Netstuck, by Mark Pitblado

This article talks a bit about the Netstuck effect, when you feel forced to use a service or platform just because everyone is there, and how that’s different from a monopoly.

As someone with no commercial social media accounts, I relate to this a lot. And even though I can live without a Facebook or Instagram account, I tried not using WhatsApp in Brazil for a couple years and just had to concede at some point, because there’s just no way of getting in contact with anyone (especially businesses) in here without it.

Dev

new Date("wtf")

This game tests your knowledge on JavaScript’s Date class. It’s funny because it’s sad.

Don't animate height!, by Jim Fisher

Neat article in which Jim explains why a seemingly harmless CSS transition property (using height) was spiking up CPU usage. It goes through the thought process of identifying the issue, understanding it, and solving it. (spoiler: animating transform is much cheaper!)

A Friendly Introduction to SVG, by Josh W. Comeau

I know SVGs are amazing, and I've done some cool things with them. But I never really knew what I was doing. This fantastic post by Josh Comeau goes over the basics and focuses on SVGs you can create yourself through code, instead of relying on vector editing softwares like Figma or Illustrator.

I haven't tried these tips in practice yet, but hopefully I'll have a neat idea I can use them on soon 👀

Tech

(pt-br) Como eu salvo links e preservo conteúdos no mundo pós-Pocket, by Augusto Campos

This article (in Brazilian Portuguese) was a huge inspiration to me in reworking how I save my Cool Links, starting this month. I’m using the Obsidian Web Clipper instead of the custom solution the author had, but the principles are still the same.

Building up a weekly routine to organize things has also been a good change, as I don’t have a lot to do at the end of the month when I’m putting this post together.

Wrapping up

I hope you enjoyed the links this month! Life's been busy with all the move preppin', but I'm glad I was still able to grab some links.

I've changed how I save the links to make it easier to organize them at the end of the month, and I'm planning to build an archive of all links I've posted so far, in a single page. No promises as to when though; my August looks really busy already 😵

Anyway, see you next month!