Mozilla Developer Network This is generally accepted as the definitive web platform documentation now, but in case you're not aware of it...
jQuery API Reference jQuery - still in the background of lots of sites, even as it grows old and its API clashes with modern Javascript in various minor ways. I still have to flick through this every so often - even if only to check what the heck those callback functions' optional second or third arguments are, or what the jQuery 'normalised' event object does.
ECMAScript Compatibility Table I contributed a lot of code and tests to this in 2016, and while ES6 itself has reached 98% conformance across the big two browsers, you'll want to use this to track the newest features the JS committee deigns (or is compelled by Google) to include in next season's releases.
Ladder of Abstraction A lot of Bret Victor's interaction design articles on his site are still OK, albeit markedly dated in terms of tech-optimism (now cast in deadly irony by the latter half of the 10's) and regrettably focused on input methods that require fully abled hands. This one is essentially all you need from him - explaining in basic interactive visuals what abstraction (in a data space) is, how to control it, and most importantly, realising that you can and should control it.
Software
Ninite This service provides you with alternative installers for various open-source programs, which opts out of coercive adware options, and uses the default option for all other settings. I still trust this service, even in the 20's.
OneCommander I'm kicking myself for not switching to an alternative file manager sooner instead of suffering under Windows Explorer for all these years. This one is exceedingly customisable, barely fast enough to not be a pain, and has a functional Dark Mode out of the box.
MSYS2 This is one of those bundles of POSIX tools for Windows. I don't use this for development, just so that I can get relatively current builds of each tool easily.
NuShell I've adopted this as my personal-use shell. Even though it's currently extremely rickety, the ability to do medium-level tasks like 'renumber every JPEG file by last modified date' using modern data structures is incredible.
ImageMagick It's hard for me to believe a command-line program to do basic batch image manipulation isn't just part of every OS at this point.
FFmpeg There's such a sheer amount of stuff you think you need VLC Media Player to do that can actually be done in one line with this (like downloading a video from just a .m3u8 URL).
7+ Taskbar Tweaker One of the major Windows 10/11 tweakers I've grown dependent on. It's amazing how many extremely minor (yet nonetheless personally important) visual tweaks this is capable of.
WinAero Tweaker Another of the major Windows 10/11 tweakers I've grown dependent on. I use this almost entirely to remove features from Windows 10.
Restic A command-line backup app I've taken a liking to recently.
WinCompose Lets you create custom keystrokes to print useful Unicode characters that aren't available from OS emoji palettes. My personal favourite is binding Right Alt + the arrow keys to produce arrows ←↑→↓. Never again shall I type an 'alt-code' on this OS.
Iosvmata Very good programming font that I've become accustomed to immediately.
Aseprite A pixel art drawing program. I appreciate that it has relatively modern mouse-smoothing and line-smoothing technologies, unlike most other paint programs, but I still wish its feature set (in particular regarding layers, gradients and shapes) was a bit more comprehensive.
ColorPicker This provides the Color Picker tool found in [PowerToys](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/), without having to install the entire PowerToys suite.
Firefox Addons
Stylus Being able to tweak the CSS of commonly-used websites to suit your needs is, to me, a fundamental right of all web users. I can't use any browser that doesn't permit something like this. Plenty of times I use this just to add a hacked-in 'dark mode' to sites via html { filter: invert() hue-rotate(180deg); background-color:black; }.
Easy Image Blocker Ever since the early versions of Opera allowed images to be globally blocked and selectively unblocked, I've never looked back from using plugins that allow it. Only allowing images for sites that strictly need them (such as webcomics, art sites and reference material) while prohibiting them for sites that do not (most everything else) makes a much safer and visually tranquil browsing experience.
GreaseMonkey Any tweak that Stylus can't accomplish, this well-known addon (usually) can. I use it to remove ads and distractions from Twitter, unwrap wrapped URLs on links, and other stuff.
ViolentMonkey That being said, in recent times I've had to switch to this fork in order to perform a couple of unsafe code transformations… but for most cases, this isn't necessary.
Yomichan Quite good for the first-time Japanese learner.
Web Services
Wayback Machine This is, to me, one of the fundamental services of the Web - a second chance to recover vanished web pages, or get a glimpse of the past. When, not if, we lose this service will be a tragic day.
DuckDuckGo Sadly, this search engine has lately advanced down the road to becoming another bloated ad-first service, but I still won't switch back to Google.
Webcomic Services
Piperka I've used this as an update tracker for my followed webcomics for many years.
Comic-Rocket I do not use this, and its database is much more brittle and loaded with broken links and false positives than Piperka, but it covers a much larger swathe of comics, and I use it for random browsing occasionally.
Games Services
Itch.io As of 2020, this is the most relevant freeware hosting service and indie game storefront out there, thanks in no small part to its good governance and focus on honest service, without the consumer manipulation and algorithmic manipulation that plague Steam and its ilk. And, it has more than a few webcomics as well.
Freem An all-freeware 'storefront' for Japanese indie games. Contains a number of well-liked titles, including the light horror RPG Amayado Bus Stop and the difficult resource-management RPG NonStories.
Twine I help make this. It's a hypertext-focused interactive fiction game-making program.
Fightcade A comprehensive emulator netplay service, which offers auto-generated matchmaking lobbies for a very large segment of MAME games. It's free to use, so at any time you can grab a friend and get a taste of what Land Maker's versus mode (or something) might have been like in the day.
hello wordl A clone of Wordle, offering the ability to customise games with advanced difficulty options and increased word counts.
Games Media
noclip Lets you peruse and scrutinise various console 3D videogame maps (mainly of mid-2000s Nintendo games) in your web browser.
The Video Game Atlas Contains a very impressive and wide selection of hand-stitched 2D videogame maps across many consoles and decades. This site has impressed me for many long years.
Puchi Carat Palace English language fansite for Taito's 1997 videogame Puchi Carat. Features a number of original Taito-created Puchi Carat story and character documents for download.
Panel De Pon Home Page The official Japanese-language site for Panel De Pon, featuring story and world design details, official art, and a copious selection of 90s-era fanart and fanfic. A rare 90s web design relic!
Puyo Nexus Wiki Basic gameplay and strategy wiki for Compile's 1990's competitive colour-matching falling-block extravaganza, Puyo Puyo.
Netrunner DB Card database and deckbuilding information site for the cyberpunk collectable card game, Netrunner.
Scryfall Card database for Magic: The Gathering. Generally considered (as of 2024) to be more feature-rich than the official card database site.
DeepSID At last, an online chiptune player just for the SID, 'the king of chips'. Having every entry in the High Voltage SID Collection available at its own URL is convenient for recommending entries to others, as I occasionally do.
High Voltage SID Collection Of course, I personally prefer having a local copy of the HVSC to shuffle as I please.
MODArchive MODArchive remains a valuable source of free 90's and 00's music to this day. It also has an online player, but it's much clunkier than DeepSID's. (Yes, the music I use for my Game Maker games is sourced from this archive, without permission.)
Radiooooo This is a barebones music site that organises music by decade and country, simulating a 'radio through time'. Its straightforward interface is easily the biggest reason I use it.
Zophar's Domain In the 00's, being able to play console game music in its original format - emulating the ROMs' sound data - was important to me, in an era when MP3s were hard to come by and YouTube uploads of game music were incomplete. In a way, both of those are still true to this day, so I continue to use music from Zophar (coupled with the Game Emu Player component for foobar2000). Plus, it saves on disk space.
VGMRips A counterpart to Zophar's Domain, for finding MAME music rather than console music.
SMWCentral This is a site dedicated to Super Mario World (SNES) ROM hacking. However... it has a small embedded community of chiptune artists producing original works for the SPC700 chip. This also has a rudimentary online player, so you can just browse this page and click the play buttons at will.
Pxtone Web A community of chiptune artists producing works for Pixel's pxtone format. The online player for this site is surprisingly detailed.
Blogs
FilesFound! A blog by PIXELATEDCROWN documenting various amusing software artifacts found in late-90s Japanese freeware and shovelware disks.
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