A number of sites I've worked on have dynamic Userbars available for elements around the site. These are really useful for creating dynamic counters/countdowns etc.

To make it easier for myself so I could very quickly make more Userbars wherever I wanted, I built a PHP class that creates a GD image object containing a custom Userbar. With that object, you can save it to an image, output it to screen, store it in memory, store it in a database or whatever you need.

Here is an example that the given library produces by default (note, this example is saved and not dynamic itself):

Features

• Customisable:  Text Background gradient colours Icon  
• Reasonably efficient
• Returned as a GD object, so you can do what you wish with the result
• Includes font for creating the famous block text-effect

Usage

To use this library, first check out the code on my GitHub

Tips

Check out the infamous Silk Icon Set for some fantastic icons that fit perfectly in the userbar size

Display simple event countdowns for websites that span multiple timezones