How to build a stopwatch with HTML, CSS, and plain JavaScript (Part 1)

Omar Benseddik

@bnsddk

Updated 2023-11-13 · 7 min

#tutorial #html #css #series

Table of contents

This series of articles is made out of two parts:

In this first part, we build the stopwatch's user interface with HTML and CSS.

In the second part, we'll make the user interface functional with JavaScript (the stopwatch works).

Final result

This is what we will build:

Here's the link to the GitHub repo.

Here's the link to the stopwatch itself.

1- Folder structure and set-up

Our folder contains an HTML file, a CSS file, a JavaScript file, and a folder (called "icons") with 3 SVG icons:

├── icons
| ├── pause-button.svg
| ├── play-button.svg
| └── reset-button.svg
├── index.html
├── script.js
└── style.css

Here is a link to iconify to download the SVG icons.

HTML DOCTYPE declaration

In the index.html file, we include the HTML DOCTYPE declaration at the top of the page to inform the browser that the document being rendered is an HTML document:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Document</title>
  </head>
  <body></body>
</html>

💡 Tip: you can easily generate the DOCTYPE declaration on VSCode by typing "!" and hitting ENTER in an HTML file.

Link HTML file with CSS file

Next, we link our HTML file with our CSS file by adding the following to our head:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />

💡 Tip: you can easily generate the link on VSCode by typing link:css .

We get:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Document</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

Link HTML file with JS file

Lastly, we connect our HTML file with our JS file by adding the following script before our body closing tag:

<script src="script.js"></script>

We get:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Document</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
</head>
<body>
    <script src="script.js"></script>
</body>
</html>

Great, we are now ready to code the stopwatch.

Note: the script.js file will be empty in this article since we only will implement the functionality in the next part of this series.

2- Create the HTML markup

First, we change the content wrapped by the title tags so the browser's tab's name is more relevant.

We write "Gold Stopwatch" instead of "Document":

In the body, add an h1 that says "GOLD STOPWATCH" and add a span that says "00:00:00".

This is the code:

<body>
    <h1>GOLD STOPWATCH</h1>
    <span>00:00:00</span>
    <script src="script.js"></script>
</body>

We get:

Next, we add buttons so we later can click on those and have a functional stopwatch. Our buttons have SVG images stored in our icons folder.

Add button s this way:

<body>
  <h1>GOLD STOPWATCH</h1>
  <span>00:00:00</span>

  <button>
    <Img src="icons/play-button.svg" />
    <Img src="icons/pause-button.svg" />
  </button>
  <button>
    <Img src="icons/reset-button.svg" />
  </button>
	<script src="script.js"></script>
</body>

On purpose, we include two icons in the first button (both the Play and Pause icons) because we will configure this button to serve both the Play and Pause functions later in the JavaScript part.

When we'll click on the Play icon, it will disappear and the Pause icon will appear instead. Vice-versa, when we click on the Pause icon, it will disappear and the Play icon will appear instead.

This is what we get:

Voilà! We are done with most of the HTML. We are now going to style it with CSS.

3- Style the HTML with CSS

Add Google Fonts

We want to use the Montserrat font for most of the text on the web page. For the numbers in the stopwatch, we want to use Roboto Mono.

To add these fonts, we search for them on Google Fonts and repeat the following steps for each one of them:

1- Click on + Select this style.

2- A window containing the font's link tag will pop up on the right. We copy the link tag and paste it in the head of the HTML document.

This is how it looks like:

This is the result:

<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Gold Stopwatch</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Montserrat:wght@200;900&display=swap"
    rel="stylesheet"/>
    <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto+Mono:ital,wght@0,300;1,300&display=swap"
    rel="stylesheet"/>
</head>

Setting the first colors

Let's start by setting our page text and background colors. Our page text will be in white and background color in dark blue.

We target the body selector in style.css:

body {
  background-color: #31394c;
  color: #ffffff;
}

This is what we get:

Style the h1

Next, we want to give more importance to "GOLD STOPWATCH". Let's style it:

h1 {
  font-size: 48px;
  font-family: "Montserrat", sans-serif;
  font-weight: 200;

  text-align: center;
  line-height: 59px;

  padding: 0;
  margin: 0;
}

Note: the h1 tag has some built-in margins in the browsers. We override them using margin: 0.

We get:

Style one single world in the h1

If we recall, our h1 is not uniform, "GOLD" appears in yellow with a glow effect while "STOPWATCH" appears in white.

To achieve that, we wrap GOLD around a span and give it a class that we name gold:

 <h1>
    <span class="gold">GOLD</span> STOPWATCH
  </h1>

  <span>00:00:00</span>

Now let's style this new class:

.gold {
  font-weight: 900;

  color: #f2c94c;
  text-shadow: 0 0 0px #fff, 0 0 50px #f2c94c;
}

We get:

We use text-shadow to create a glow effect. To understand how it works, here's a w3schools explanation on how to achieve that.

Style the position of elements

If we look at our final result, we can think of the stopwatch app as a column of three blocks:

Separating the stopwatch app in three blocks

We add a class to the span containing "00:00:00" and name it time:

<div class="stopwatch">
  <h1>
    <span class="gold">GOLD</span> STOPWATCH
  </h1>

  <span class="time">00:00:00</span>
</div>

Now let's style "00:00:00" to make it larger and with the right font:

.time {
  font-family: "Roboto Mono", monospace;
  font-weight: 300;
  font-size: 48px;
}

Here's the result:

Create a circle with CSS

To get a circle around "00:00:00", we wrap it around another div that we call circle:

<div class="stopwatch">
  <h1>
    <span class="gold">GOLD</span> STOPWATCH
  </h1>
  <div class="circle">
    <span class="time">00:00:00</span>
  </div>
</div>

To make a div look like a circle, we give it border and add a 50% border-radius.

We get:

We use border and border-radius to create a circle

To make it look like a circle, we give it exact proportions. We will set both the height and width to 270px:

Give the circle the exact width and height

To center the time inside it both horizontally and vertically, we use Flexbox.

We give a display of flex to the circle div.

To center the time vertically, we use align-items: center:

Style the buttons

Let's now focus on styling the buttons:

button {
  background: transparent;
  padding: 0;
  border: none;
  margin: 0;
  outline: none;
}

We get:

We create a space between our first and second button

Recall both the Play and Button SVGs are in the same button. For now, we only want to show the Play button and hide the Pause button.

Let's give ids to those SVGs (and to the Reset Button too, since we'll use it later):

<body>
  <div class="stopwatch">
    <h1>
      <span class="gold">GOLD</span> STOPWATCH
    </h1>
    <div class="circle">
      <span class="time" id="display">
        00:00:00
      </span>
    </div>

    <div class="controls">
      <button class="buttonPlay">
        <Img id="playButton" src="icons/play-button.svg" />

        <Img id="pauseButton" src="icons/pause-button.svg" />
      </button>

      <button class="buttonReset">
        <Img id="resetButton" src="icons/reset-button.svg" />
      </button>
    </div>
  </div>
  <script src="script.js"></script>
</body>

And use the display property to show the Play icon and hide the Pause icon:

#playButton {
  display: block;
}

#pauseButton {
  display: none;
}

We get:

Note: we could use classes for playButton and pauseButton, but we use ids because it will be helpful in the second part of this series.

Style the cursor

Let's make our buttons have a hand/pointer cursor:

button {
  cursor: pointer;
  background: transparent;
  padding: 0;
  border: none;
  margin: 0;
  outline: none;
}

Here is the result:

(Bonus) Add a favicon

As a final touch, let's add a favicon, so our page has a proper tab icon in the browser:

We can do this by adding a link tag to the HTML head that points to our icon svg:

<link
  rel="icon"
  href="data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 viewBox=%220 0 100 100%22><text y=%22.9em%22 font-size=%2290%22>⏳</text></svg>"
/>

The head looks like this now:

<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />
    <title>Gold Stopwatch</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css" />
    <link
      href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Montserrat:wght@200;900&display=swap"
      rel="stylesheet"/>
    <link
      href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto+Mono:ital,wght@0,300;1,300&display=swap"
      rel="stylesheet"/>
    <link rel="icon" href="data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns=%22http://www.w3.org/2000/svg%22 viewBox=%220 0 100 100%22><text y=%22.9em%22 font-size=%2290%22>⏳</text></svg>">
  </head>

Test responsiveness

Our stopwatch is also responsive. This is because we relied on CSS layouts like grid and flexbox to style the positioning of our elements.

Let's test it.

If we are on Chrome, we open the console (⌘+SHIFT+C for Mac or Ctrl+SHIFT+J on Windows) and select iPhone 5 SE (which is a small display size):

Great, it works.

Functionality (JavaScript)

In the next part of this series, we'll focus on the functionality of the stopwatch with JavaScript.

Contact

hi@tinloof.com

How to build a stopwatch with HTML, CSS, and plain JavaScript (Part 1)

Final result

1- Folder structure and set-up

HTML DOCTYPE declaration

Link HTML file with CSS file

Link HTML file with JS file

2- Create the HTML markup

3- Style the HTML with CSS

Add Google Fonts

Setting the first colors

Style the h1

Style one single world in the h1

Style the position of elements

Create a circle with CSS

Style the buttons

Style the cursor

(Bonus) Add a favicon

Test responsiveness

Functionality (JavaScript)

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