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basic-html
A basic HTML, CSS, and JS starter project
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basic-nodejs
A basic Node.js Express server with templating
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basic-p5
A basic HTML, CSS, and JS starter project with P5 installed.
This is the code platform for Binoculars to Binomials. It's a place where you can make and share fun web projects that are about birds and data.
If you're part of the Binoculars to Binomials community, you can sign up for an account. If you're not part of the BtB community you can request an account, too. If I know you or if you reach out I will approve it.
If you already have an account, just log in:
But if you don't, and the above all sounds reasonable, then you'll probably want to sign up.
Note that your user name is "what you want people to see". Whether you will be able to register that will be based on whether or not that name's "slug" equivalent (i.e. a url-safe equivalent) is already taken or not.
Also note that you can add additional authentication methods once your account has been enabled, so that even if you lose access to a service, you're not suddenly also locked out of your account here.
Accounts are created in a "disabled" state, requiring an admin to enable them before they can actually use the editor (beyond what anonymous visitors can do). If we know each other, shoot me a message saying you signed up and I'll immediately enable your account, but if I have no idea who you are, it's quite likely that I'll just delete your account...
This instance comes with a bunch of starter projects that you can remix so you don't have to start from scratch, including a basic "single page" HTML/CSS/JS website, a Node.js site that uses Express to run a simple webserver, and even a web graphics demo that lets you write interactive graphics code in JS:
A basic HTML, CSS, and JS starter project
A basic Node.js Express server with templating
A basic HTML, CSS, and JS starter project with P5 installed.
And if none of that sounds appealing, there's also an "empty project" that comes with Node.js (with npm) and Python (with pip) preinstalled, and an empty run script so that you can set up whatever you need in order to do that crazy thing you're thinking about. Just remember that folks trust you to not abuse the platform: don't hog the bandwidth, and don't eat all the disk space. If that's what you want to do, just go run your own instance, and then you can do literally whatever you want!
If you just want to see some cool stuff that's happening on this instance, here are the five most recent projects that people have been working on. You can fire each of them up in the editor view (although of course as a random visitor you will not be able to edit anything), or you can open the associated websites by clicking the link at the bottom of each project card.
Draws feathers for birds from nearby on eBird
Created 2025-10-29, last updated 2025-11-04
Extracts colors from wikipedia bird descriptions
Created 2025-10-13, last updated 2025-11-04
A basic HTML, CSS, and JS starter project with P5 installed.
Created 2025-10-14, last updated 2025-11-04
Based on Jer Thorpe's Crows CBC. Trying to animate (learn to animate?) some data ... from Christmas Bird Counts.
Created 2025-10-10, last updated 2025-11-04
A basic HTML, CSS, and JS starter project with P5 installed.
Created 2025-10-30, last updated 2025-11-03
✨ You better believe it ✨
Head on over to https://github.com/Pomax/make-webbly-things to read about the platform itself, and see all the code for it so you can check whether you trust that or not. Or even dive in and help implement new features or fix bugs!
In fact, things are so open source that even the projects folks make on this platform are open source. If you don't want people to see your code, this is not the place for you, but if you want to make cool stuff in a way that others can learn from, can remix into their own projects, or that you could even collaborate with on group projects, then this might very well be the thing for you.
It's me, Jer Thorp!