Tools: I Turned Images Into 10,000 Tiny HTML Elements Because Why Not

The Premise ## Does It Work? ## Why Though? ## The Tech ## What I Actually Learned ## Should You Use This? ## Try It Yourself Sometimes the best projects are the ones that solve problems nobody has. Last weekend, I found myself staring at my screen, thinking about images. Not in a productive way. Not "how can I optimize image loading" or "what's the best format for web." No, I was thinking something far more unhinged: What if every pixel was just a tiny HTML element? And thus, IMGML was born. Here's the concept: take an image, read it pixel by pixel, and generate an HTML file where each pixel is represented by a 1x1 <hr> element with a background color matching the original pixel. That's it. That's the whole thing. No <img> tags. No <canvas>. No SVG. Just thousands upon thousands of microscopic horizontal rules, arranged in a grid, pretending to be an image. Practically? That's a strong word. Upload a 100x100 pixel image and you get 10,000 HTML elements. A 200x200 image? 40,000 elements. Your browser will render it. Your browser might also ask you why you've done this. But here's the thing — it does look like the image. Open the HTML file and there it is, your photo, reconstructed entirely from styled <hr> tags. It's beautiful in the way that a Rube Goldberg machine is beautiful. Unnecessarily complex, deeply impractical, and yet somehow satisfying. I get asked this a lot. "Why would you do this?" "What's the use case?" "Are you okay?" The answers are: because I could, there isn't one, and debatable. This is a "what if" project. It exists in that space between curiosity and questionable judgment. The space where you wonder "can I do this?" before asking "should I do this?" Some might call it a waste of time. I call it a learning experience wrapped in absurdity. For those curious, it's built with Laravel 12 and Livewire. Upload an image, the backend processes it pixel by pixel, and you download your freshly minted HTML monstrosity. Here's what the output looks like — just a wall of <hr> tags, each with an inline background color: The code is straightforward. PHP's image functions handle the pixel reading, a loop builds the markup, and Livewire makes the upload/download flow seamless. Nothing revolutionary — just reasonable tools applied to an unreasonable idea. Despite the silliness, building IMGML reminded me of a few things: Constraints breed creativity. Limiting myself to just HTML elements forced me to think differently about rendering. Performance matters everywhere. Processing images pixel by pixel taught me to respect the work that actual image libraries do. Side projects don't need purpose. Not everything has to ship, scale, or solve a real problem. Sometimes you just build something weird and smile. Well, maybe. If you need to: Then yes, IMGML is for you. The project is open source. Clone it, run it, upload an image, and watch your browser question its life choices as it renders your photo one <hr> at a time. Will it change the world? No. Will it make you briefly happy in a "wow, that's dumb" kind of way? Almost certainly. And sometimes, that's enough. Here's my GitHub avatar in IMGML format if you want to see it in action. IMGML is available on GitHub. Star it if you appreciate the absurdity. Templates let you quickly answer FAQs or store snippets for re-use. Are you sure you want to hide this comment? It will become hidden in your post, but will still be visible via the comment's permalink. Hide child comments as well For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse CODE_BLOCK: <r> <hr style="background:#cad5d9" /> <hr style="background:#c5ced3" /> <hr style="background:#cdd6db" /> <hr style="background:#dde4ea" /> <hr style="background:#e4ebf1" /> <hr style="background:#e1e6ec" /> <hr style="background:#dadfe5" /> <hr style="background:#d7dadf" /> ... </r> Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode CODE_BLOCK: <r> <hr style="background:#cad5d9" /> <hr style="background:#c5ced3" /> <hr style="background:#cdd6db" /> <hr style="background:#dde4ea" /> <hr style="background:#e4ebf1" /> <hr style="background:#e1e6ec" /> <hr style="background:#dadfe5" /> <hr style="background:#d7dadf" /> ... </r> CODE_BLOCK: <r> <hr style="background:#cad5d9" /> <hr style="background:#c5ced3" /> <hr style="background:#cdd6db" /> <hr style="background:#dde4ea" /> <hr style="background:#e4ebf1" /> <hr style="background:#e1e6ec" /> <hr style="background:#dadfe5" /> <hr style="background:#d7dadf" /> ... </r> - Constraints breed creativity. Limiting myself to just HTML elements forced me to think differently about rendering. - Performance matters everywhere. Processing images pixel by pixel taught me to respect the work that actual image libraries do. - Side projects don't need purpose. Not everything has to ship, scale, or solve a real problem. Sometimes you just build something weird and smile. - Confuse a web developer - Create the world's least efficient image format - Prove a point about HTML being turing complete (it's not, but this feels adjacent) - Kill time on a Saturday