I was randomly surfing the net when I was reminded of several interesting sites that I’ve used in the past to generate random placeholder text for web applications. Here are 10 sites that I think can be useful to both web designer & developers. They help you to get a realistic idea of what the page will look like should it have a full set of text and images.
Dummy Text Generators
There’s no need to type your own random text when it can be done for you. Just copy and paste the generated text. It’s as easy as that.
- http://www.lipsum.com/ – This site has been around for quite a long time and is very useful when wanting to place random paragraphs (of Lorem Ipsum) on your website. You can customize the amount text to generate by paragraph, word, bytes and even lists. Sample text:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Mauris non metus sem. Vivamus at eros justo, id convallis velit. Suspendisse ut odio nisi, quis rutrum lectus.
- http://lorem-ipsum.perbang.dk/ – This site, similar to lipsum.com, provides original Lorem Ipsum text and provides a few more options as well. While good, I find the design of the site to be distracting, especially with the advertisements surrounding most of the page. I’d probably stick to the simpler site. Sample text:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, non metus ipsum, molestie morbi nam arcu quis, tortor nec sed mauris pellentesque integer, nostra vestibulum corporis ligula tellus.
- http://adhesiontext.com/ – This site takes a different approach to random text. It allows you to choose the letters used in your generated text and gives you some control over punctuation, case and language. The letters you choose are matched up against a dictionary and work quite well. One option that is lacking is the ability to choose paragraph length, but you can just copy and paste what you want, so this isn’t really an issue.
Plat indisciplined, swap, it, gory a art. Dagame chancroid nonfading, heir asweve. Phosphammonium, ruthenous, regroove kittar to, marl, dam wanters. Sternknee scatter, labefy byes poret hi befoam unstress.
- http://www.lorizzle.nl/ – On a more comedic note, lorizzle.nl site generates “gansta” Lorum Ipsum text. They seem to have a following on Facebook, and take a more humourous side to random text generation. If you listen to Snoop Dogg, you’ll be familiar with the generated vernacular. The first random sentence I received was “You son of a bizzle ipsizzle dolizzle sit check it out”. Pretty hilarious.
Crackalackin shiz velizzle, my shizz volutpat, suscipit quis, gravida vizzle, arcu. Pellentesque yippiyo tortor. Sizzle eros. Dawg that’s the shizzle tellivizzle dapibus dizzle tempizzle boom shackalack. Mauris pellentesque pot fizzle ma nizzle.
Customizable Image Placeholder Sites
These customizable images keep your site looking clean without any distractions. You’d probably use these when you don’t want actual images to distract from the page design.
- http://placehold.it/ – A simple placeholder site that lets you choose the dimensions, color, text and file format for your site. It seems to work quite well, but the text can be too small when working with some dimensions. I find the instructions to be adequate, but it’s difficult to view them as you have to mouseover the attribute you want to modify and can easily lose your place.
- http://dummyimage.com/ -This site is probably the best one I’ve seen. The text seems to be much larger than placehold.it, which makes it more useable for me. You can customize pretty much anything, and choose from a selection of pre-defined image sizes as well. Created by Russell Heimlich (@kingkool68), he offers his source code in PHP format and still actively updates the site! The best feature about this site is the ability to use the form to generate your image and then copy and paste the generated URI.
![]( "Test 250 x 100 Image with Color Background and Text")
- http://placehold.us/ – This site is as simple as they get. You cannot customize anything but the image dimensions. The image you get is not pretty to look at, but it does the job and I like the simplistic approach. The instructions are almost non-existent!
Random Image Placeholder Sites
Some of these are silly, but they are random and give you something to look at.
- http://placekitten.com/ – Place cute Kitten images of any size on your site. Once thing I noticed: once an image loads, it seems that that same image stays. I prefer puppies to kittens, so let’s move on…
- http://placedog.com/ – Place cute Dog images of any size on your site. I like dogs a lot, so if I had to choose, it would be puppies all the way. From what I’ve noticed, each image is random on each page load.
- http://flickholdr.com/ – This site uses images from the popular flickr.com to get you images based on keywords. I found it’s a little slower than the simpler kitten or puppy sites, but you do get a larger variety of images to choose from. The image generation form is simple as well – enter your dimensions with tags, and the generate image link is provided for you. For the images below, I chose the “space” keyword.
