Future chapters cover the various types of coding you need – HTML, CSS, JS, and the various combinations of those things. This chapter, on the other hand, covers more fundamental things – where do you write your code, how do you publish the code for others to use, and so in. So this guide covers:
- The Custom Sheet Sandbox: The best tool Roll20 provides for making your sheets.
- Using a Code Editor: Get error checking and syntax help as you write.
- Validating Your Sheet: How to find errors in your sheet (and why you shouldn’t trust Roll20’s built-in preview)
- Inspect the Browser: Every modern browser has a built-in feature which lets you examine a sheet, and you can see why the code isn’t working properly. This is amazingly useful for CSS and Sheet Workers.
- Publishing To Github: How to upload your sheet to the Roll20 sheet repository, and keep your sheets and your own repo updated.
- Publishing Sheet Images: How to handle custom images in your sheet, and avoid missing images errors.
- Sheet Default Settings: Add custom properties to your Sheet, and what they are. These properties affect all characters created after the property is changed, and the GM can apply them to all existing sheets with the press of a button.
- Sandbox Glitches: There are a couple of glitches that sometimes crop up when switching campaigns or working on custom sheets. Here’s how to deal with them.
- Divitis and Style: Things to avoid when writing a sheet. This heavily overlaps with CSS.
- Making Changes to Community Sheets: What to do when you want to make changes to a sheet created by or maintained by someone else.
- Sheet Accessibility: Some things to think about when you are making a sheet available for others.
I originally planned to make this Chapter 3 of the guide, after HTML and CSS, but it makes more sense to have it as Chapter 1. It’s true that some of this Chapter’s contents only matter once you have a sheet ready to upload, but all Sheet Authors should be using parts 1-4.
