Weeknotes 26:07

Posted 3 days ago

Week of February 8–14

I need to commit my code more often

One thing I realized this week is that I need to commit my work to Git more often. I am not sure if it was my year hiatus or just not thinking about it and being intentional, but I have gotten in the habit of not committing my work at important junctures when working on bigger projects.

For example, this week, I wanted to try to add a carousel within a carousel. I should have committed my work to that point. I had a good working solution that I was trying to push farther. As I pursued the solution, I came to the realization that it was not possible to do the carousel inside another carousel. The bullet navigation kept affecting the parent carousel and not the child. I tried several different things but it seems like the event kept propagated on the parent regardless of what I tried (even using stopPropagation() in my script). I came to the point where I decided I needed to abandon this idea.

If I had committed my earlier code, I could have easily just reset my code. But instead, I had to figured out what I had added and delete it from the codebase (because I had not committed changes before pursuing this enhanced solution). Fortunately my changes were evident and it was easy to undo. But what if it had been more complex? It would be a good point of practice to commit my changes to the repo before trying new solutions. It is something I was better at doing in the past. Just need to get back in the practice of creating those benchmarks. I think my future self will be much happier if I do.

Kill your darlings

One of the hardest things to do as a creative is to “kill your darlings.” It means to abandon an idea or work that you done that you really like but realize that it just does not work. Either it is not a good fit for the client or the solution does not work out for some reason.

I had this come up this week. I was creating a timeline for the new version of the Wonder of the Word page on Revive Our Hearts. I have already created two versions of the timeline in the past year. A few weeks into the job at Revive Our Hearts, I created a tabbed content solution after considering several different approaches.

At the end of the year, I created a scroll-driven animation timeline with a fallback to horizontal scroll for our annual report. That solution was closer to what I originally had wanted to do on the Wonder of the Word page. Our communication director liked it so much that she had me implement that solution on the Wonder of the Word page.

Last week, I met with my team leader and Emily. She wanted to update the Wonder of the Word page to reflect how the initiative has evolved over the last year. One of the changes she asked for was to rethink the scroll-driven timeline. She felt like readers might visit the page frequently to see updates and didn’t want them to have to scroll through the timeline each time. I agreed that it was time to rethink it.

I ended up deciding on a direction that was a hybrid of a carousel and things I liked about the original tab solution. Using Glide JS, I created two sliders/carousels that were synched. The first carousel was for each year and the second carousel showed what we were doing in each of those years. The idea was inspired by a solution I had created for a freelance project several years ago. This synchronized timeline was the project I was trying to enhance with a carousel within a carousel.

This was a video recording I did to show the solution to Emily. I removed the audio because it was only relevant to what I was trying to show her. You could also move the carousel with the arrows to the right and left of the main content. I didn’t have any of the images yet for the different projects that are a part of the Wonder of the Word.

As much as I liked how this solution turned out, it just didn’t work well on mobile. And most of our traffic comes from mobile. I decided it was best to go with a straight carousel.

I am glad I attempted the timeline solution. I don’t see it as a fruitless exercise and it is part of the creative process of coming up with the best solution. In this case, the timeline was not the best solution. You have to be willing to kill your darlings and let go of ideas and solutions that are not the best or don’t work out the best for the project.

Articles I read

Caught my eye

Nic Chan’s personal site

I came across Nic’s site when I read the Wishcessibility article. I love the transitions that makes this feel like a desktop. I enjoyed clicking around on the different desktop icons. The mobile version works pretty well also.

Sticky Header – Pure CSS (Codepen)

See the Pen Sticky Header – Pure CSS by Adir (@Adir-SL) on CodePen.

What I watched

  • Never* use git pull (YouTube) – My team leader sent this to me and it seems like a good practice.
  • Making a Frontend Masters workshop – Day 1: Travel & Tech Check (Kevin Powell, YouTube) – I enjoyed watching Kevin’s adventure.
  • The West Wing (Netflix)
  • Miracle: The Boys of ’80 (Netflix) – I enjoyed this documentary, commentary, and reunion of the 1980 US Olympic hockey team that stunned the Soviets and revitalized this spirits of the nation.
  • 2026 Winter Olympics (NBC and Peacock)
  • Super Bowl 60 (NBC) – I had the game on but it was not very exciting until the fourth quarter. Neither team scored a touchdown till the 4th quarter. I think the Chiefs Super Bowls over the past 6 years were much more exciting than this one (even the two that they lost).

Books I am reading

What I listened to

Walking

  • Thursday – 3.12 miles in 1 hour 3 minutes
  • Saturday – 3.78 miles in 1 hour 10 minutes

What I played

  • NBA2K25 (Nuggets) – I finished the regular season with a win and kept my winning streak in tact. I finished with the best record in the league. I will play the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs.
  • MLB The Show 23 (Orioles) – After finishing my season with the 2020 Twins, I decided to play with the 2023 Orioles. The real team had a great season with 101 wins. I liked Adley Rutschman and wanted to play with this team. I played 3 games to start the season on Saturday and swept the Red Sox in Boston.

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