I got to know about Hack Club through a friend, and when I found out you can build projects and actually get cool rewards for it, I thought why not give it a shot! So here’s my first project on Stardance.
I picked the WebOS mission - basically building my own little web-based operating system from scratch. The idea is to make something that looks and feels like a real desktop OS but runs in the browser, with my own twist on the design.
I started by building the desktop itself with a custom dark blue-purple theme, a top bar, and a live clock powered by JavaScript. Later I expanded it into a multi-window system where apps can be opened, closed, and moved around the screen just like a real operating system.
So far, MyOS includes draggable windows, desktop icons, a functional dock, an About app, a Terminal app, and a Clock app that displays a large live clock and date. I also implemented window focus management so active windows move to the front, making the desktop feel much more realistic.
One of the biggest additions was a custom right-click context menu. Users can right-click anywhere on the desktop to quickly open apps or refresh the desktop, similar to traditional operating systems. I also updated the top bar to display both the current date and time in real time.
A surprising amount of development time went into debugging small JavaScript mistakes. Things like misspelled variable names, incorrect event listeners, and reserved keywords caused features to silently fail, forcing me to carefully trace through the code and learn how browser debugging works. Those issues ended up teaching me as much as the actual feature development.