Wafy's Tools

No big updates on either site. Did add a QR code to WhereAreGames to help get new users to find the site. It turns out Google changes the search when you search for wherearegames or wherearegames.com and my site isn't even in the list. You have to click the "Search instead for" link below what they switched to. So lame, autocorrecting my domain. My site doesn't try to find a game, it shows where a game is.

Project update, things are moving slowly. I have it loading the files, I just need to merge them and create an couple interfaces. I am not going give a time frame, just didn't realize how complicated this can be. Though I have made a few updates this past month to the production site to make the dashboard a bit more usable on smaller screens. Also did a couple changes to the army list to also fix some small screen issues. 

Another month and some progress. I kind switch gear yet again. Sooner or later I will learn to stick to an idea and move to the next. Do have most of the roster idea done, but reused some of the ideas to work on a campaign tracker. Though I am making progress, not going to promise anything by the end of the month, but hoping to have something useful. I did put out an update this last month, to fix a couple issues with the Army List widget. 

New year and some progress with my apps. Not huge progress, but progress none the less.  There have been some upgrades and some usable changes to some interfaces. I was also able to convince some of the gamers to try the WhereAreGames app out. There are a couple that use it semi-regularly. SEO side of things are a little better. There are still some work that needs to happen, but there is some progress.

Making some progress on the WhereAreGames site. It is kind of slow going do to some of my ideas. I have been able to water some some of the ideas and making some progress. My current hurdle is learning how to apply the File System Access API. I am hoping to use it to save and load files from the system, to make templates easier to transfer from one browser to another. From what I can see it is a pretty straight forward API, the difficult part will be building and reading the file. Which is where I am at currently.

Finally made some progress on my next feature for the WhereAreGames site. I have been working on reorganizing some existing code so I can reuse it better. As I think have said before, there are reasons people use frameworks. Essentially I am putting together my own framework. Anyone that says they are using vanilla JavaScript or any language are basically building their own framework. A long time ago I started using a framework for PHP, only because I wanted a standard for other people to refer to when looking at the code.

Lots of ideas and no ambition or will to do much of any of it. Not say I won't do it, it will eventually get built, it is a matter of when. I am leaning more toward the tournament side. I know there are a few apps out there for that, but would like to take a shot at it. The tough part is getting started. I still have some breaking up of my main library into smaller and more general pieces. Which is more difficult than it sounds. I can see why people use existing frameworks, I guess I like to torture myself.

Well the SEO changes make things worse on Google's Search and semi-better on the Bing Search. It is really odd, the key words that I am getting impressions on in the Bing Search console are ones that I put in my last update. So maybe the users on Bing just search differently than the Google users? I don't know I guess, it is nice to see my traffic on the Bing search increase, just disappointed in Google's Search console.

Ok, to do lists suck and I need to build one. That is my excuse and going to leave that there.

Did some more changes to the WhereAreGames PWA and learned some new Web API's. Had a chance to try out the Web Share Target API and File Handler API. The Share Target API, was a bit tough to get going, as it requires the Service Worker to capture the request and save it. Then you have your app to check the Service Worker to see if there was a request and have it send it back. There are a lot of moving parts that seems over complicated. Given the complexity of the Share Target API, the File Handler API it much simpler and more direct.