To solve the issue with travelling, I needed a way to add pages when I don’t have access to a PC. I actually managed to do it already in December, but from restarting the challenge, three things stopped me.
- Migrating to the new solution
- Various bugs in the new solution
- Forgetting the key features of the story
So what is the big update that made all that waiting worthwhile now? I actually switched from pure HTML/CSS/JS to React, learning it along the way. This way, I could realize a few key features I always wanted for this project.
- Being able to add pages to the story, even through the phone, without accessing the server directly.
- Being able to update/add pages and alert anybody who would be interested. I thought about using cookies for that however, that would limit users to one device and introduce other problems, which is counterproductive for the future of this work.
- Being able to dynamically change the user experience based on content.
- Being able to add features that would allow the user to customize the experience (this is still a work in progress at the moment) – navigation‑wise, colors, sounds, etc. All of those will be coming one by one, depending on the story requirements.
Unfortunately, the new version had a lot of problems. Some of them I still wasn’t able to fix — like proper and consistent rendering across various resolutions. The old version was fixed in px width/height, meaning it always looked the same across all resolutions. Additionally, in it I had much better control over the placement of objects on the page. Since I would love to stop using HTML tags when writing — which were also the main deal‑breaker when migrating — I will need to find a better solution for those problems.
Because of that, I was kind of reluctant to migrate to it. However, I decided that unless I do it and restart the challenge, I might never feel the need to finalize it. Either way, here we are, and I will probably add another blog post about the development itself. However, when it comes to the statistics:
94 (85 in new) pages in total –
This month: 0 points.
Current balance: 0 points.
Visual style update
<Will be added at the beginning of May>
With the application change, the legend should also be adjusted to make sure the yellow color is not overused.
- Black – out of the scope of the challange
- Green – page done successfully (+1)
- Yellow – holiday (+0 if pages are done up to 3 days)
- Red – failed to write the page (-3)
New version is available at https://dreambook.oldwisebear.com/Firebase_new/
However, for now, once in a while I will update the old version as well at https://dreambook.oldwisebear.com/.
Rules
- Only on special occasions – holidays, illness etc. it is allowed to prepare pages in advance/after the day.
- Pages has to be published somewhere public everyday to count, no date stamps are needed.
- Using AI is forbidden apart from grammar/syntax reviews and corrections.
- This challenge has point system to keep it more interesting. Every day that it is done is +1 point, every missed day is -3 points. Will be marked as completed only after reaching 365 points and after a year has passed.
- It will now be possible to publish “overdue” pages without losing points in the challenge, as long as they are completed no later than 3 days following the end of “holiday” period.
- There is no set amount of words or page dimension, however it has to be in a viable to print book format.
Let the challenge continue!
