Devlog #1

Hey everyone!
This is my first time participating in Stardance and my very first devlog. I decided to build a WebOS from scratch. But not just a normal one… a cat-themed one. I named it HTMeow. (Get it? HTML + meow… okay, I know, it’s terrible, but I love it).

1. The Tracking Glitch
   My first real fight wasn’t even writing code; it was time tracking. I had this weird glitch where the tracker was logging my time under totally wrong project names instead of HTMeow. It took a bit of head-scratching to figure out how to make it point to the right folder, but we finally got it working! Oh, and I chose the MIT license for my repo. Basically it means: “You can use my code, but if your PC turns into a cat, it’s not my fault.

2. The CSS Boss Fight
   I started by creating the UI. I wanted a clean, Linux-style topbar. Sounds easy, right? Nope. My topbar looked huge and terrible because HTML paragraphs have secret, invisible margins. Once I fixed that, I designed the main app window. Then, the real nightmare started: the minimize function. At first, I made the window “roll up” so only the top header was visible. But my header background was semi-transparent! Because of this, the text inside the window was “bleeding” through the dark header. It looked like a weird text ghost. I had to use some CSS magic to actually hide the internal elements when the window is minimized. CSS: 1, Me: 1.

3. Making it alive
   Next, I used JavaScript to make the window draggable (honestly, dragging a fake window inside a browser is incredibly satisfying). I also built a real taskbar. Now, clicking the yellow button shrinks and fades the window, and a little button pops up on the topbar. Click it, and the window comes back to life. It took some brain power, but it works flawlessly!

What’s next?
Right now, HTMeow is basically just a standard white window with a picture of a cat doing math. The biggest challenge for next time is completely overhauling the design to make it actually look and feel like a cat OS. I also need to replace the boring text in the taskbar with real app icons.

Stay pawsitive! 🐾