Monkey Notes
Things we noticed while fixing annoying things.
New tools, annoying problems and the thinking behind them.

Why your file stays in your browser when it can.
A simple resize should not quietly turn into an upload. Where practical, OutMonkey does the work on your device.
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Search the job, not the tool name.
People usually know what is annoying them. They do not always know the technical name of the operation that fixes it.
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A black box isn’t necessarily redaction.
If the text is still sitting underneath the rectangle, you have hidden it from your eyes. You have not necessarily removed it from the PDF.
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Why we added MP4 → WebM.
We had a landing-page animation. It looked right. It was also much heavier than it needed to be.
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A Monkey is a recipe, not a place to store your files.
The useful thing worth saving is often the order of the steps, not another copy of the document, image or video.
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One little job shouldn’t need a whole app.
A tiny digital task should not turn into a software decision, an account, a tutorial and twenty minutes of clicking around.
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