Okay, so today I’m gonna walk you through how I tackled this little project: a countdown timer themed around Genshin Impact. I’m calling it “4.2 countdown genshin” because, well, it’s for the 4.2 update. Nothing fancy, just a fun little thing I wanted to build.
First things first, the idea. I wanted a webpage that shows how much time is left until the Genshin Impact 4.2 update drops. It should be clean, easy to read, and maybe have some cool Genshin-y visuals.
Next up: the tech. I kept it simple. HTML for the structure, CSS for the styling, and JavaScript for the countdown logic. No need to overcomplicate things, you know? Plus, I wanted to practice my vanilla JavaScript skills.
HTML Structure: I started by setting up the basic HTML. A div for the whole countdown, then separate divs for days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Gave them some IDs so I could easily target them with JavaScript later. Something like this:
- <div id=”countdown”>
- <div id=”days”></div>
- <div id=”hours”></div>
- <div id=”minutes”></div>
- <div id=”seconds”></div>
- </div>
Styling with CSS: Then I jumped into CSS. Picked a Genshin-inspired color palette (think blues and golds), chose a nice font, and made sure the countdown numbers were big and centered. Added a background image of, like, a cool landscape from the game. Made it look kinda nice, if I do say so myself.
JavaScript Magic: Okay, this is where the real work happened. I had to figure out the date of the 4.2 update. Did some googling, found the rumored release date, and plugged that into my JavaScript code.
Here’s the breakdown of the JavaScript:
- Get the target date: Figured out how to create a `Date` object for the update date. Something like `new Date(“October 23, 2023 06:00:00 UTC”)`. Had to make sure I got the timezone right!
- Calculate the time difference: Wrote a function that calculates the difference between the current time and the target date. Got the difference in milliseconds.
- Convert milliseconds to days, hours, minutes, seconds: This was a bit fiddly. Used some math to convert those milliseconds into human-readable time units. Had to remember the order of operations!
- Update the HTML: Used `*()` to grab those divs I created in the HTML and then set their `textContent` to the calculated time values. Easy peasy.
- Set up the timer: Used `setInterval()` to call my update function every second. That way, the countdown actually counts down in real-time. Important stuff!
Gotchas and Fixes: Of course, things didn’t work perfectly the first time. I had a problem where the timer would show negative numbers after the update date. Fixed that with a quick if-statement to stop the timer when the difference between the dates was zero or less. Also, had to make sure the time zones were correct, or the countdown would be off by a few hours!
Final Touches: Added a little message that appears when the countdown reaches zero: “Genshin Impact 4.2 is here!”. Just for a little extra flair.
And that’s it! A simple Genshin Impact countdown timer using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Nothing groundbreaking, but a fun little project that helped me brush up on my coding skills. Feel free to use this as inspiration for your own projects. Happy coding!
