Last week, instead of writing a blog post, I spent my entire Friday (or 10 hours of it at least), making a site of questionable usefulness called Quackoverflow.com. Technically this blog is supposed to be about doing new things and learning along the way, so I suppose this counts as content! 😀
Other than a quick HTML-only one page site that I made last year to see how web hosting works, I’d never made a site from scratch… At least not with all of the typical elements you might find on one. I figured if I was going to make something that’s mostly meant as a joke, I might as well learn from it!
The site consists of a rubber duck, and it squeaks if you click on it! There’s also a hidden Easter Egg that may or may not be a bug. 😉
For those who aren’t involved in the tech world or who are just getting their feet wet in it, there’s a very popular site amongst developers called Stackoverflow.com where anyone can post a development question and probably get an answer from the community. As for the rubber duck, it’s also a common fixture in the developer world, and even has its own Wikipedia article. It’s used in something called “rubber duck debugging” which involves meticulously explaining your programming problem to a rubber duck (or other object) in the hopes that the act of explaining it out loud and in detail will help you find a solution yourself.
My brain loves finding patterns. Every time I make a pun or find some other interesting and possibly unknown way of connecting the dots, I feel that shot of dopamine rush through my temples. Ok not literally, that’s ridiculous, but I really like this kind of thing.
Thus, one day at work while doing something completely unrelated, my brain produced the diamond in the rough that is Quackoverflow.com … which amazingly wasn’t taken!
Though I’m sure it’s for lack of experience, I found that building layouts on the web was more difficult than on Android. My first attempt looked pretty good with one browser size, but on mobile everything was tiny and hard to read.
Then my attempt at using Forklift (an app) to upload my changes via FTP failed miserably, and led to everything I’d done being deleted. It was just as well since it was pretty bad, but still kind of discouraging.
Take 2: I’m armed with an espresso and redo everything, using a “mobile first” approach. It worked way better and although it wasn’t as smooth sailing as I though, I’m happy with the final result.
It’s mostly responsive, it looks good on mobile, and it squeaks… who could ask for more!SUBSCRIBE TO GET THESE BLOG POSTS SENT TO YOUR INBOX!🦆