Fuck Lorem Ipsum
August 31, 2010 11:38 AM   Subscribe

Fuck Lorem Ipsum
In my line of work, I have to do a lot of html mockups of website designs. I've been using Malevole's text generator instead of Lorem Ipsum boilerplate for years, but always yearned for a more feature-rich version - one that could insert tags and filter the sources of dummy text. I finally got around to making my own.

Currently there are about 80 snippets from various retro TV show jingles, commercials, and voice-overs. My goal is to get that bank of fragments up to a few hundred, possibly pulling from iconic song lyrics and/or literature as well.
posted by davelog (17 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite

That is awesome and I will use it. +1 for adding the option of p tags on there.
posted by genial at 11:58 AM on August 31, 2010


The first thing I do when I insert Lorem Ipsum after wrapping in Ps is to turn part of the text (normally the last 3 words) into a link. If your thing did that (as an option) it would be my favouritest website in the world. Linking to "" or # or google or the wikipedia article for the show the quote is from would be fine.
posted by gregjones at 2:56 PM on August 31, 2010 [1 favorite]


Excellent suggestion, thanks! I'll get that implemented soon.
posted by davelog at 3:55 PM on August 31, 2010


Any chance of an alternative hyperlink that isn't going to raise the eyebrows of my work IT department?
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 5:55 PM on August 31, 2010


Sure, you can also get to it here, but shhhhhh. Mum's the word.
posted by davelog at 7:49 PM on August 31, 2010


Sweet.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 8:18 PM on August 31, 2010


This is great, and I'm deeply honoured to have inspired it!
posted by malevolent at 3:28 AM on September 1, 2010 [4 favorites]


No sir, the honor is entirely mine - your generator has been used in nearly every web project I've been a part of for 6 or 7 years now, and I deeply thank you for it. Your blessing on this project means more to me than any praise the faceless web could provide. You da man.
posted by davelog at 4:18 AM on September 1, 2010 [1 favorite]


The first paragraph I got was Firefly. This website is awesome.
posted by lholladay at 9:23 AM on September 1, 2010


Heard about this in Gomichild's tweet yesterday, just as I was doing a mock posting for a screencast teaching a neophyte how to post with pictures to her new WordPress site. This made it so much less dreary for me.

Love, exciting and new. Come aboard, we're expecting you. Love, life's sweetest reward. Let it flow, it floats back to you. The Love Boat soon will be making another run. The Love Boat promises something for everyone. Set a course for adventure, your mind on a new romance. Love won't hurt anymore. It's an open smile on a friendly shore. Yes, love! It's love!
posted by planetkyoto at 6:45 PM on September 1, 2010


Ok, at gregjones' request, I have added the ability to pepper your output with dummy hyperlinks. I considered pointing those links to the wiki entry for the snippet source, but then it would no longer be dummy text. It would be entirely too informative and distracting from the pitched design.

I'm glad so many people have found this this doohickey useful - I certainly know the secret thrill of slipping subtle personal touches into a mundane, repetitive process. I cranked out freebie value-add websites to our media company's cable clients for 6 years before scoring my current gig, and lemme tell you, they all caught the A-Team or Knight Rider in their comps and mocks.

It's the little things in life, ya know.
posted by davelog at 10:40 PM on September 1, 2010


I already build prototypes and demos of galleries and other image/data manipulation tools to display album covers, cereal box images, and the like -- this will be a good adjunct to that. Well done (and please add quotes from CHiPs)
posted by davejay at 12:22 AM on September 2, 2010


If I was still designing layouts for clients I would use this SO HARD.

But I'm not, so I just support it on general principle.
posted by The Whelk at 4:46 PM on September 3, 2010


This is awesome, I will use it, and I look forward to the first comment from a confused/indignant client (I don't want to think my clients are clueless but they keep trying to convince me otherwise)!
posted by Mick at 5:14 AM on September 4, 2010


Hmm. I really want to be able to use this, but I just know any text that isn't "Lorem ipsum..." or "Xxxx xxx xxxxx..." is highly likely to pass all stages of "QA" with my so-called clients and end up going live. I've learned this the hard way in the past, forgotten it, learned it the hard way again, etc.
posted by dickasso at 3:20 AM on September 5, 2010 [2 favorites]


At least twice at my former day job a client complained their demo site was broken as it was "full of funny foreign text". So you can't win whatever you use.
posted by malevolent at 2:58 AM on September 6, 2010 [1 favorite]


So you can't win whatever you use.

And if you let them enter their own data, they immediately enter a 500 character string with no spaces. Or maybe that's just my experience...
posted by inigo2 at 8:02 AM on September 8, 2010


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