The Art of Doing: Web Development for Beginners

I always wanted to learn the fundamentals of web development.  I’m drawn to how easy and quickly one can create visuals to be displayed within a web browser.  Coming from a background in Python where the vast majority of my learning took place in a terminal, web development seemed so enticing!

However, there was one glaring problem in my web development journey.  I began learning these basic concepts: what is an HTML tag, what is the CSS box model, how do I access HTML elements in JavaScript; all isolated, on an island, with absolutely zero idea how to wade through the thought process of actually putting them all together, designing, and building a website.

I felt overwhelmed and lost.  Sure, I thought I had the technical know-how and ability to make a website thanks to all of the tutorials that are out there.   However, these other tutorials are lacking in one key area: How to tie the concepts together.  What I craved after learning a collection of new concepts was an example website to try and build.  I wanted a template, a challenge…”here is this site, now go see if you can build it.”  I wanted support so that if I struggled, I could see only what I needed to see and then be back on my way.  Lastly, I wanted an explanation of how all these seemingly isolated concepts came together and worked together to create the final product of the website.  I’ve worked really hard to try to give you that experience that I wanted so badly, here in this course.

Over these 10 sections I spend time first introducing various concepts.  We discuss key ideas, syntax, and how to implement various HTML, CSS, and JavaScript concepts.  Then, at the end of each section I challenge you to recreate a website I have built using your knowledge up to that point in the course.  I give you all the assets, the color schemes, and walk through the thought process of what the website should look like and do.  Then, I leave it up to you to recreate it….or I challenge you to make something all on your own.  Lastly, I go through step by step how I built my sites, what design choices I made, and how and why I made them.

We will cover the following HTML topics:

• Heading and paragraph tags

• Formatting text with various styling tags

• List and Table tags

• Tag Attributes

• Anchor Tags

• Image Tags

• Various Input Tags

• Form Tags

• Proper HTML structure

• Block Level and Inline Elements

• Divs and Spans

• Semantic HTML Elements

We will cover the following CSS topics:

• CSS Styling Rules

• CSS Selector Methods

• Element Width and Size

• Defining Color

• The Box Model

• Styling Text

• Styling Lists and Tables

• Various Display Values (block, inline, inline-block)

• Flexbox

• Grid

• Pseudo Classes

• Transforms

• Transitions

• Animations

We will cover the following JavaScript topics:

• Declaring Variables

• Various Data Types

• Working With Arrays

• For Loops and While Loops

• Conditional Statements and Switch Cases

• Writing Functions

• Document Object Model

• getElementById()

• querySelector()

• JavaScript Events

• Getting values from Input Fields

• Getting Values From HTML Forms

Each unit is sequential so the content we cover in unit 1 is still used in unit 10.  This provides great scaffolding allowing you to really hone your skills and understanding of the material.  I hope that by the end of this course you feel that each unit, each video, and each final project are of value and that you are well equipped to come up with a design idea and implement it using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript alone!