What Tools, Experiments, and Games Are on javierbyte (javier.xyz)?

Updated

javier.xyz is the personal site of Javier Bórquez, a software engineer at Vercel who describes himself as enjoying "frontend experiments, design tools, and small games." The site is a portfolio-style index: each project links out to a live website and, for many, its source code. Projects are grouped by popularity and under a "Tools and components" section, so you can browse by what's trending or by category. Everything listed is a self-contained browser experiment — there's no account, download, or install described on the page.

Games and interactive experiments

These are the playful, browser-based pieces:

  • astroboi (2021) — a rhythm game where you "hop through the walls at the rhythm of the music."
  • sombras (2021) — make art with shadows by playing with shadows, lights, and 3D objects.
  • clashjs (2015) — a battle game where you command your battleship by writing a JavaScript function. Source code is linked.
  • mojilisa (2023) — uses AI to illustrate events with emojis.
  • fluid-triangle (2025) — an exploration of fluid physics with ASCII rendering. Source linked.

Visual and image tools

Tools that transform images or generate visual output:

  • pintr (2021) — creates single-line illustrations from your pictures. Source linked.
  • img2css (2015) — converts any image to pure CSS, recreating it using only box-shadows.
  • droste-creator (2021) — creates recursive images with the Droste effect.
  • morphin (2016) — makes pixel-art interpolations from your own sprites, embeddable with only CSS.
  • startrails (2026) — builds star-trail images from timelapse photography.
  • background-transparent (2025) — a transparent browser-window simulator using screen sharing. Source linked.
  • depth-mask (2024) — a 3D mask built with CSS. Source linked.
  • depth-of-field (2024) — a depth-of-field proof of concept using layered masks. Source linked.

Scale and comparison toys

A recurring theme is putting familiar things at relative scale:

  • pokemon-to-scale (2021) — explore Pokémon at their relative sizes and compare heights.
  • emoji-to-scale (2021) — emojis rendered at real-life scale, "more or less."
  • emoji-to-speed (2026) — emojis mapped to relative speed.

Design tools and components

Grouped under "Tools and components," these are aimed at designers and frontend developers:

  • cohesive-colors (2015) — helps you build more cohesive color schemes by adding a tint to existing colors. Source linked.
  • visual-center (2016) — aligns logos better in the center of a container. Source linked.
  • react-number-easing (2015) — a React component to interpolate number rendering in the frontend. Source linked.
  • react-blur (2015) — a React component that blurs image backgrounds using canvas. Source linked.

Other projects

  • traduct (2026) — live, local, and free screen translation using eSearch OCR plus the Chrome Translation API. Source linked.
  • resorte (2023) — a custom-size phone/book stand generator for 3D printing in vase mode. Source linked.
  • brutalita (2021) — an experimental font and font editor that exports OTF. Source linked.
  • control-user-cursor (2017) — a small experiment to "control" the user cursor with JavaScript and CSS. Source linked.

How to browse the site

The homepage lists projects in two ways: a "By Popularity" ordering and a "Tools and components" grouping, with a "Show more" control to expand each list. Each entry gives a short description, a year, and links to the live Website and often Source. The site also has sections for Photography, More about me, and a From the blog feed, plus a link to Javier's GitHub for code.

If you want a quick starting point: pintr and img2css are the most distinctive image tools, astroboi and sombras are the most game-like, and cohesive-colors and visual-center are the most directly useful for design work.