So, I’ve been working on this project, codenamed “zzz,” and we’re finally getting close to launch. It’s been a wild ride, and I wanted to share how I set up a simple countdown timer to keep everyone on the same page, especially me!
First, I brainstormed what I really needed. I didn’t want anything fancy, just a clear display of days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the release date. No need for complicated libraries or frameworks – just plain old JavaScript would do the trick.
I started by setting the target date. I hardcoded it for now, just to keep things simple. You know, something like:
javascript
const releaseDate = new Date(“2024-12-31T23:59:59”).getTime();
Yeah I picked a date far far away in the future, just for testing purpose. you could use other date as you like.
Then, I created a function to calculate the time remaining. This is where the magic happens. I used `setInterval` to update the countdown every second. Inside that function, I grabbed the current time, calculated the difference between the release date and now, and then broke it down into days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
javascript
function updateCountdown() {
const now = new Date().getTime();
const timeLeft = releaseDate – now;
const days = *(timeLeft / (1000 60 60 24));
const hours = *((timeLeft % (1000 60 60 24)) / (1000 60 60));
const minutes = *((timeLeft % (1000 60 60)) / (1000 60));
const seconds = *((timeLeft % (1000 60)) / 1000);
The most important and a little bit tricky part is those `*` and the formula, I spent quite a few minutes on this one, to be frank.
Next, I needed a place to display the countdown. I just whipped up a simple HTML structure with some `div` elements to hold the values:
Back to the Javascript code, I added the following line to the end of `updateCountdown` function:
javascript
*(“days”).innerText = days;
*(“hours”).innerText = hours;
*(“minutes”).innerText = minutes;
*(“seconds”).innerText = seconds;
Finally, don’t forget to call the `setInterval` with our function, like this:
javascript
setInterval(updateCountdown, 1000);
And that’s pretty much it! I ran the code, and boom, a working countdown timer! Of course, I added a little CSS to make it look presentable, but the core logic is super straightforward.
It’s not perfect, and there’s always room for improvement. For instance, I might add some handling for when the countdown reaches zero, maybe display a “Released!” message. Or, I could make it more robust by fetching the release date from a server instead of hardcoding it. But for now, this simple timer does exactly what I need it to do, and it keeps my excitement (and stress) levels in check as we approach the “zzz” release!
