APOD New Tab

Sometimes, when you take two things you love and mash them together, it turns into something even more awesome.

Astronomy Picture of the Day is a website that has been running since 1995. Two former NASA scientists curate pictures related to astronomical phenomena and post a new picture every day along with an easy to read description. Starting with fourteen visitors, APOD (as it is affectionately known) now has a wide fanbase across the world.

For as long as I’ve used computers, I’ve been a sucker for filling screens with beautiful imagery. Only an insane person would have an ugly desktop background; you see that image tens of times a day, how could you let it be an eyesore! That also applies to web browsers, especially as computer users now spend most of their time surfing the web. We open new tabs constantly. Why not make that new tab screen enjoyable?

APOD New Tab helps me meet my daily recommended value for informative astronomy pictures, while satisfying my never-ending craving for jaw-dropping pictures. Building it was simple and fun. The new tab is just displaying a webpage, afterall, so I only needed my basic knowledge of HTML/CSS/Javascript. To make my life even easier, NASA has a super simple APOD API.

I really enjoyed setting personal deadlines/goals and shipping this to the Chrome Webstore, even when I was a bit uncomfortable. It is fun to play with design and iterate on the product. Even though there are already several extensions that accomplish the same thing, I’m glad I made my own (and I even think it’s better than the rest ;) ).