Today is the 29th of January, 2024, and I spent more than 16 hours testing HashX and have made a significant number of changes to make it exceptionally beautiful. I am extremely proud now that it is looking super seamless, and I'm pretty sure all the Hashnode users will love using this extension. I can't wait to put this into production so that people can use it and give me some valuable feedback about the UI and features of HashX.
The testing phase is one of the crucial phases when it comes to building solo products. I found a lot of bugs that I have already fixed now, but along with that, I have made some changes in the UI and also added some more features that I found should be useful to all the users of HashX.
So, the first new feature that we now have on HashX is that you can explore the profile of the Hashnode user directly from the feeds. So once the user clicks on the name of the user on the feed cards, it will take them directly to the profile, and in that profile, they can also explore and read the blogs that these authors have written. This was a challenging feature, but now I have pretty much covered the entire Hashnode platform with this small extension.
The next UI change that I made is that now I have different cards that I show in the profile of users, similar to what we have on feeds.
I have also implemented a copy-to-clipboard feature. This feature will allow the user to copy the link by clicking on the share button, and they can later share it with anyone they want.
Along with that, I have added some error boundaries and added snack bars for the errors that occur when the user enters an incorrect personal access token or incorrect username while searching them in the search user section.
The major work that I did today was the style fixes. The challenge while building Chrome extensions is that you never know when the styles of the website on which the extension has opened up can be overlapped by the styles of the extension or vice versa. I have pretty much fixed all the overrides of styles, but I am pretty sure something will come up in the future, and I will have to fix them later.
The best thing that I did today, which is making me happy right now, is the implementation of gradient colors in the application, which has taken this application to a different level now.
Let me quickly show you all the gradient screens.
I also spent some time creating posters and banners for the extension that I had to upload while I published the extension on the Chrome store. I have also written all the necessary content that I have to publish on different platforms like YouTube, websites, etc.
One major task that I was about to do tomorrow, I did today because I want to launch the extension on the web store as soon as possible. I have completed building the website for HashX, which is a simple Next.js website along with all the features and themes of the entire Chrome extension.
The sad part is the issue with the payment on my credit card, which is not allowing me to pay the initial $5 that you need to pay before you publish the Chrome extension on the Chrome store, and that is the reason it has been delayed. But now, tomorrow, I'll try my best to get a different debit card so that I can get this extension published as soon as possible.
Today, I have to take some rest now, and tomorrow, let's see how it goes.
