ad-free ascii codes

2023-02-07

While working on aretext, I often need to lookup ASCII character codes. Unfortunately, the top search results for “ASCII codes” are absolutely filled with ads. This makes me sad for the state of the world.

To fix this, I have created my own page of ASCII codes: ascii.html

Here’s what it looks like in Firefox:

Screenshot of ASCII codes

As far as I can tell, this is – objectively – the best ASCII code page on the entire Internet. (Better ones may exist, but I can’t find them due to SEO and ad-based economic incentives.)

The following key features differentiate my ASCII codes page from the competition.

Searchable

There is a search box at the top that allows you to search by character or numeric value (decimal, hex, or octal). Handy for finding a particular code quickly.

Dark mode

Both dark and light mode are supported through prefers-color-scheme CSS media queries.

Small and self-contained

The HTML page is just 28 KB, uncompressed, including CSS and JavaScript in the <head> tag. The only external links are for the favicon images, but the page still works without these.

Ad-Free

There are zero ads on the page. There are no analytics scripts. There isn’t even a link back to this blog. Just pure, unadulterated ASCII codes.