Okay, so I wanted to make picking NFL teams more fun for our weekly football pool. Forget drawing names from a hat – I decided to build a “random wheel of NFL teams.” Here’s how I went about it.
Brainstorming and Setup
First, I needed a basic idea. It’s a spinning wheel, right? So, I figured I’d use some simple web stuff to get it done. I’m no coding expert, but I’m pretty good at figuring things out.
I decided to go with basic HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript. I wanted to keep it simple and not get bogged down in anything too complicated.
Building the Wheel
I started by creating a simple HTML page. The main thing was a `div` to hold the wheel and a button to spin it.
Next up was the CSS. I used it to style the wheel to make it circular. I used a bunch of pie slices, each one for a team. This part was a bit tricky, but with some trial and error.
- Used CSS transforms to rotate.
- Making the slices looked well.
I made sure all 32 NFL teams got their spot on the wheel, with their team colors and maybe a small logo (I just found these online). It took a bit of tweaking to get everything aligned and looking decent.
Making it Spin!
This is where the JavaScript came in. I needed a function that would make the wheel spin randomly and then pick a team.
- I added a click event listener to the button.
- When the button is clicked, The function use a random number generator to decide how much to rotate the wheel.
- Then apply a CSS transform to rotate the wheel that amount.
I played around with animation speeds and easing to make the spin look somewhat realistic. I didn’t want it to just jump to the result; I wanted that anticipation!
Final Touches
After a few test spins, I added a little “You Got:” message that pops up after the wheel stops, showing the selected team in big letters. Makes it clear who got what.
The whole thing isn’t super fancy, I added some basic styling, mainly just to make it look presentable.
The project, It’s a fun little tool, and it definitely makes our football pool picks more exciting!.
