My Little Project Journey
Okay, so I had this idea buzzing around in my head the other day. It wasn’t anything grand, just a simple little thing I wanted to try building. Felt like getting my hands dirty with some code again, you know? Just for fun.
I started off pretty basic. Fired up my text editor, nothing fancy. Decided I’d just use plain old HTML to get the structure down first. Needed a place for my main element, maybe a button to kick things off. So, I roughed out a basic HTML file. Just the bare bones.
Then, I thought about how it should look. Didn’t want it to be completely plain. Added a CSS file. Started styling things up a bit. Gave the page a simple background. Found a basic car image online – nothing copyrighted, just something free to use. Placed the car image using CSS. Positioned it so it looked like it was on a starting line, more or less.
Making it Move
This was the core idea, really. The ‘luck’ part. I needed the car to move a random distance when I clicked a button. So, JavaScript time. Wrote a small function. When the button is clicked, this function runs.
- First, I grabbed the button and the car image using their IDs.
- Inside the function, I used `*()`. This little guy gives you a random number.
- I multiplied that random number by some value to decide how far the car should “drive”. Didn’t want it flying off the screen, but needed some variation.
- Then, I used CSS transitions triggered by JavaScript. Added a class or directly changed the `transform: translateX()` property to make the car slide smoothly across the screen to its random spot.
Getting the movement speed right took a few tries. First, it was too fast, then too jerky. Played around with the CSS transition duration until it felt okay. Not perfect, but okay for a quick practice run.
Did it Work?
Yeah, mostly! It was pretty satisfying seeing that little car zip across the screen a different amount each time I clicked. It’s funny how simple things can be quite engaging. I spent maybe an hour just clicking the button, watching it go. Felt a bit like a kid again.
Of course, it’s super basic. No fancy graphics, no scorekeeping, nothing like that. But that wasn’t the point. The point was just to build something, to follow an idea from start to a simple finish. To get that feeling of making a thing work, even a silly little web thingy.
Sometimes you just gotta tinker, right? Get your hands messy with the tools you have. Didn’t need complicated stuff. Just HTML, CSS, and a sprinkle of JavaScript. Good practice, and honestly, good fun. Cleared my head a bit.
