Building Your First Typing Game with JavaScript - Part 1

This is a step-by-step beginner's guide to building a minimalist typing game with JavaScript.

You'll learn how to set up an intuitive interface and manipulate the Document Object Model (DOM) with key concepts like modules, event listeners, event handlers, and dynamic styling that constitute the backbone of responsive and engaging webpages.

By the end of the tutorial, you'll have built a fun, interactive tool and acquired an enhanced practical understanding of the fundamentals of Javascript.

The tutorial is split into three (3) parts:

• Part one covers the following:

  • Pre-requisites
  • Project environment setup
  • Project Deliverables
  • Project structure
  • Page markup and layout of interactive elements

• Part two discusses Modules, why they are important in web development, and establishes key functionalities in module components.

• Part three focuses on building the game's logic, integrating the established modules, and ensuring the game works as expected.

Pre-requisites

We presume that you have (at least) prior markup experience with HTML and CSS, and a rudimentary understanding of the language of the web - Javascript.

Specifically, you should be familiar with:

• Creating a form and a submit button (HTML)
• CSS styling using classes and IDs (CSS)
• the following Javascript concepts:
  • Creating and manipulating Arrays
  • Getting a Random number
  • Getting the current time

Tools You’ll Need

• An IDE (Integrated Development Environment): We will use Visual Studio Code (VS Code) alongside helper extensions.

• A Web Browser: Install MS Edge, Chrome, Firefox, or any other modern browser to view and test the output of your code.

• Generative AI Assistant: A free version of ChatGpt will suffice.

Setting up your project environment

Before beginning any project, it is conventionally regarded as a good practice to organize the development environment in a way that eases general workflow. Setting this up could involve downloading assets, installing required components, and configuration files.

Installing VS Code Extensions

Extensions are assets that assist development processes. They provide essential technical support so you have a smooth and efficient programming experience.

Install the following VS Code extensions:

• Prettier - Code Formatter: Enhances code readability with consistent formatting styles.

• ESLint (Code Linter): Identifies and fixes common errors.

• Live Server: For real-time, development-phase code test.

Here, we illustrate the extension installation process with ESLint.

To install any extension,

• Click on the Extensions icon on the left sidebar of VS code or press Ctrl + Shift + X.

• Enter the extension name in the search bar and click on the most relevant result (usually the one with the most downloads).

• Click "Install".

We recommend restarting Visual Studio code after installation for proper IDE integration, although some extensions may not require it.

Project Deliverables

Pause for a minute and think about the features that make up a typing game. If you have played one in the past or used any typing tool, you will concur that they primarily:

• Provide an intuitive and interactive interface to the user or player.

• Display a randomly generated word, quote, or sentence for the player to type.

• Track and compare the player's input against the presented text or group of texts.

• Highlight correct and incorrect submissions, and signal erroneous input in real-time.

• Alert the player upon game completion and report tracked data.

• Store typing records.

More advanced features could include measuring typing accuracy and typing speed in Words Per Minute (WPM); however, we'll focus on the elementary.

Now that we are clear on the game's deliverables, let's begin by initiating a basic project structure.

Creating the Project Structure

Start up a new project folder and create the following files in the root directory:

• index.html
• style.css
• script.js

index.html houses all our markup. It is the file the web browser loads by default, and the resulting webpage which players interact with.

style.css serves as our webpage stylesheet.

script.js will hold all the underlying logic governing the typing game's behaviour.

Marking up with HTML and CSS

Open the index.html file in a new tab.

In VS code, use the exclamation mark (!) Emmet Abbreviation on the page of a newly created HTML document. This automatically populates the page with a basic HTML boilerplate.

If you use an IDE different from VS Code, you can grab and use the code snippet below.

Modify the page title to suit the project's purpose and use this image as the page logo. Download the image to the project's root directory and save it as favicon.jpg.

<!-- index.html -->
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html lang="en">
      <head>
        <meta charset="UTF-8" />
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
        <title>Typing Game | My First Typing Game with JavaScript</title>
        <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="./favicon.jpg" />
      </head>
      <body class="container">
      <!-- Interactive content goes in here -->
      </body>

Notice below the <head> element we instantiate the body of our typing game webpage. This is where all the interactive content will be embedded, starting with the page Header.

Header Element

The header HTML section comprises a collection of information (mostly) statically positioned at the top of a webpage. It is typically used to convey a website's theme, display announcements, promotions, and useful links for easy navigation.

We use the header element a little differently here to keep things simple.

Copy the following code block and insert it in the body element:

....  
<body class="container">
    <header>
        <nav class="reset-btn">
          <div class="reset-div" id="reset-div">
            <p id="reset-msg">reset typing records</p>
            <button id="reset">
              <i class="ri-reset-left-fill"></i>
            </button>
          </div>
        </nav>
        <h1 id="welcome">Welcome to typing game!</h1>
        <h1><time id="timer" class="timer none" datetime=""></time></h1>
      </header>
....

.... indicates unchanged code.

The above <header> tag contains the initial set of the game's interactive content and has three main elements:

• A h1 element to display a welcome message to the player.

• Since the game will store typing records as mentioned in the deliverables, we include a reset button within the nav element so a player can erase all records and revert to a clean slate when they want to.

• Lastly, a second h1 element that wraps the element <time>. This h1 element holds the timer value, and will only be displayed when the game begins.

The <i> tag implements a reset button icon sourced from a third-party style package called remixicon.

Style Sheet and Reset Button Icon Import

We'll look at what we have done so far, but before that, let's add some styles to make our webpage look appealing.

Head to the style sheet and implement all the styles here. Copy everything on in the code space and paste it inside your style.css file.

Next, revisit the HTML document and link the stylesheet (styles.css) in the head element.

Also, include the link to the remixicon webpack as this will allow us to use the custom reset button icon within our markup.

<!-- index.html -->
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Typing Game | My First Typing Game with JavaScript</title>
    <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32" href="./favicon.jpg" />
    <!-- style.css file linked!-->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <!-- Remix icons imported!-->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/remixicon@4.3.0/fonts/remixicon.css"/>
  </head>
  ....

Having imported the required styles, let's see what our webpage looks like.

On the bottom right of Visual Studio code, click on Go live. This should load up all the content in index.html.

If the page does not load automatically, open your web browser and go to this address http://127.0.0.1:5500/.

You should see this in browser window:

Keep the browser and live server running as we'll need them for feedback as we progress.

Prompt and Quote Elements

Back to our markup in VS code, add the following directly under the header element:

....
<div class="quotes">
  <div>
    <p id="prompt_start">
      Practice your typing skills with a quote from Professor Dumbledore.
      <br />
      Click the <strong>Start button</strong> to begin!
    </p>
    <p id="prompt_again" class="none">
      Click the <strong>Start button</strong> to play again!
    </p>
    <p id="quote" class="quote"></p>
  </div>
</div>

Here, the paragraph with the ID prompt_start provides instructions to the player on how to start the game.

There is also secondary paragraph with the ID prompt_again (initially set to hidden). This prompts the user if they want to play another game at the end of every session.

An empty paragraph with the ID quote displays a random quote fetched from a quote module.

Summarily, the above code block contains elements that guide user interaction.

Typing Area and Start Button

The typing area of the webpage is a form with the class form, designated for players to type into in an attempt to match a presented quote.

Beneath the form, we place the start button which a player clicks to initiate the game.

Insert the following code under the <div> with class quotes

....
<div class="input">
  <form action="" class="form">
    <input
      type="text"
      aria-label="current word"
      id="typed-value"
      class="form-input"
    />
  </form>
  <button type="button" id="start" class="form-btn">Start</button>
</div>

The typed-value ID assigned to the text input field is crucial in the game's context. It will enable tracking of the characters a player is typing or has already typed. The corresponding typed value determines the player's in-game and typing completion status.

Here's what the webpage should look like at this point.

Note: Live server automatically reloads the webpage and displays the updated content whenever project's components get modified.

Notice a missing element in the just-added code?

One dominant feature in the game's logic is the alternating display of most components between visible and hidden when the game is being played and when it is in a non-active state.

In this case, we set the form element directly to hidden without using the class none as we did with a few elements earlier (timer, prompt_again, etc.).

The idea of having a style identifier for the 'no-display' purpose is to avoid repetition and redundancy in the stylesheet, so, whenever you need to make an element invisible, you simply apply the none class to it.

Recap

So far, we have established a solid foundation for our typing game.

We outlined the game's core deliverables, set up the development environment, and integrated helper tools like Prettier, Eslint, and Live Server in our IDE.

We designed the game's layout defining the header section, quote section, and typing area in index.html.

Finally, we styled the page in style.css and attached the necessary external links to the markup. With all of these in place, we can begin implementing the game's functionalities as we move to working with Javascript in the next part of the tutorial.