Guides on Analytics, Development and Everyday Tools
HTTP Security Headers: 7 Real Myths, Clearly Fixed
HTTP security headers are widely misunderstood. See 7 common myths corrected with facts, a severity table and a quick audit you can run in a minute.
XML Sitemap Explained: 5 Simple Facts for Beginners
An XML sitemap is a file that lists the pages you want found. Learn what it is, how it is built, the 50,000 URL limit and how to use one, step by step.
Volume Converter Mistakes: 8 Easy Fixes for Exact Results
Most volume converter mistakes come from US versus UK units. See 8 common errors with before and after numbers for gallons, pints, cups and barrels.
Compare Two Texts: 6 Easy Ways to Spot Every Change
Compare two texts side by side and see every added, removed or reworded line. Six real tasks by role, with settings, examples and size limits explained.
Color Picker Terms: 12 Essential Words Explained Simply
A color picker shows HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV and CMYK for one color. This glossary explains every term with a real example so you pick the right format fast.
Body Fat Percentage Chart: 5 Exact Bands, Healthy Ranges
A body fat percentage chart for men and women, with Navy method and skinfold lookup tables, fat mass math and quick rules to read your own number.
Take Home Pay Explained: 5 Easy Steps, No Nasty Surprises
Take home pay is what reaches your bank after tax. See how gross becomes net, with exact 2024 US examples at four salaries and plain definitions.
CSV to JSON for Every Role: 6 Real Uses, Made Easy
CSV to JSON explained for developers, testers, analysts and shop owners. See the right output shape and type setting for each job, with real examples.
Japanese Date Converter: 3 Methods Compared, Best Pick
Which Japanese date converter method is right? Compare the add 2018 shortcut, a lookup table and a full boundary converter, with a clear decision table.
Binary to Decimal: 3 Easy Methods Compared, Best Pick
Binary to decimal three ways: powers of two, double and add, and grouping by four. See worked examples, a decision table and when signed mode applies.
The reasoning that does not fit on a tool page
Every tool on ConvertNow answers one question in a second. This is where the longer answers live: why the number came out that way, what the format was designed for, and when the tool is the wrong thing to reach for.
A tool page has a job and that job is to get out of your way. It should load, take your input and give you an answer before you have finished reading the heading. What it cannot do is explain why a 20 percent discount followed by a 20 percent rise leaves you short, or why your hard drive shows 931 gigabytes when the box promised a terabyte, or why the same JSON file parses in one language and fails in another. Those answers need paragraphs.
So the writing here sits deliberately behind the tools rather than in front of them. Each post is anchored to a real task, usually one that somebody emailed about after losing an evening to it, and it links to the tool that does the job so you can test the idea on your own data while you read.
Twelve categories run in parallel with the tool library: developer topics, unit conversion, finance, text and content, image and design, dates and time, security, health and fitness, SEO and marketing, maths and numbers, files and documents, and networking. A handful of posts sit across several at once, which is usually a sign the topic is more interesting than its category.
There is no publishing schedule and no filler. Posts appear when there is something worth explaining, which in practice means most weeks.
What you will find here
- Explainers that go past the definition into why it works that way
- How to guides tied to a specific tool you can open alongside
- Comparisons run on one identical scenario, so the difference is visible
- Myth busters, for the advice that gets repeated and was never true
Questions about this blog
Who writes it, how topics are chosen and how the posts connect to the tools.
One person. Prateek Zare, an independent software developer based in Berlin, who also builds and maintains every tool on the site. There is no content team and nothing is outsourced, which is the main reason the posts stay tied to problems that actually came up rather than to a keyword list. More on the about page.
Mostly from email. Somebody describes an evening they lost to a problem, and if the explanation they needed does not exist anywhere decent, it becomes a post. The rest comes from questions that keep arriving about a specific tool, which usually means the tool page is not explaining itself well enough.
Not for most of them. Categories such as finance, health, dates and maths are written for anyone. Developer, security and network posts assume more, but each one states its assumptions at the top rather than letting you discover them halfway through.
They are drafted and edited by a human who has done the thing being described. Where a tool result or a code sample appears, it has been run rather than imagined, and where a standard is cited it has been read. That is the bar, and if a post ever falls short of it, tell us and it gets fixed.
Directly. Almost every post is anchored to one or more of the free tools, and links to them at the point where you would want to try the idea yourself. The tool gives you the answer, the post tells you whether the answer means what you think it means.
Short quotes with a link back are welcome and no permission is needed. For anything longer, or for translation or syndication, email [email protected] first. The tool output itself is a different matter and is entirely yours, with no attribution required.
Most weeks, without a fixed schedule. Existing posts also get corrected and updated when something changes, and a post that is materially out of date is either fixed or removed rather than left to quietly mislead people.