A birthday page that opens like a cake

A birthday message gets read once and scrolled past. A birthday page gets opened, because opening it is part of the present.

Three designs

Each design has three palettes and three fonts, and you pick the text size too.

Paper party is bunting, streamers and confetti cut from paper, with the age in big paper numbers. Golden candles is an evening birthday in gold foil on a dark page, with lit candles and the age in gold numerals. Crayon looks drawn in wax crayon: a sun, a cake, friendly animals and an age written by hand.

The age is the centre of all three. The page counts the years, months and days since the date of birth, and under it says how many days are left until the next birthday. On the day itself that line becomes a greeting.

In colours, Paper party comes in Coral, Teal and Plum; Golden candles comes in Obsidian gold, Navy and Burgundy; Crayon comes in Coral, Teal and Sage. The fonts are your choice too: Paper party has Marhey, Lalezar and Cairo, and the other designs have three of their own. You can also set the text size to smaller, normal or larger.

How the birthday person opens it

You choose one of five openers. The first is the default.

• Cake and candles. A cake appears and they tap each candle out.
• Blow out the candles. They blow toward the phone and the candles go out. It always has a tap alternative, so nobody is stuck if the microphone is refused or the phone can't do it.
• Gift box. They pull the ribbon and the box opens.
• Balloons. They pop three balloons.
• Scratch card. They scratch the card with a finger.

The blowing one is the only opener that asks the phone for anything. When you pick it, you see the message the phone will show first. The sound is analysed on the device to detect a blow and is never recorded or sent anywhere. For a child, I would pick the cake and let them tap.

What to write

The form asks for a name, the date of birth and who the gift is from. There is one optional field for a nickname, up to 30 characters, which is the name people actually use at home.

Then there are two places for words. One collects short notes from up to eight people, each signed, so a grandmother, a cousin and a best friend can each get a line of their own. The other is a photo gallery of up to twelve photos with a caption under each. Captions are where the page gets funny: "Age 4, cake in hair" does more than a long paragraph.

The page also comes with stock lines in case you are stuck, such as "Having you is the best gift" and "The world has been better since you came". Replace them with something only you would say.

Before you send it

Open the preview on your own phone first and blow into it yourself. If you picked the blowing opener, check that the candles go out and that the tap alternative also works. Then look at the page with the sound off, because many people will open it at work. The names, the age and the captions should still make sense without the music.

The link goes out on WhatsApp like any other. Whoever taps it sees the page open in the phone browser, with nothing to install and no account to make.

Making one

Start at the birthday pages, try each design with its palettes, and press start when one fits. The page is built and previewed before you pay. After you publish it, anyone with the link can open it free for 24 hours. Then it needs a one-time payment by Instapay or a mobile wallet, and the price is shown on the occasion page.

The form asks which day you will give the card. You can edit until that day, or for 72 hours after you first publish, whichever comes first. After that the page stays online and stops accepting changes, and we can reopen it if you ask.

The page has an Arabic version and an English version, so it works for relatives in both languages.