Ask HN: Best way to learn HTML and CSS for web design? A friend is a graphic designer who specializes in print (e.g., product packaging) but wants to learn html and css to get into web design. Which books and/or online resources would HN recommend for a person with a non-technical background? |
The web is built using three technologies: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Literally every other technology that gets used with the web has to interface to one or more of these three, so focus your learning on the foundational technologies. If you try to learn React and Bootstrap and Flux and Grunt and Parse and Node and SASS and everything else you’ll get worn out just trying to get started. By learning the foundational technologies you can quickly adopt any tool you truly need to use, but you could never keep up with all the tools available out there.
Here are some simple rules and attitude changes I adopted in my own discipline that resulted in rapid learning in CSS, then HTML, then JavaScript:
- when building new projects, don’t automatically include bootstrap, or other libraries. Only include what you need AS you need it
- don’t look at other people’s code before trying to write your own solution first, this helps you clarify your needs!
- when you do look at other people’s code, NEVER copy/paste it, read and earn and rewrite what you need
- only ever copy/paste code you have personally written in the past
- don’t be afraid to rewrite code at any time
- code is expendable, and the more code you write the better you will write code
- avoid preprocessors and compilers, they create extra work
- anything that can be built depending on a library can be built more efficiently without it
HTML Questions for Learning:
- can I still do it without that containing <div> as a wrapper?
- is there any HTML like <div style=clear:both></div> trying to solve CSS problems using markup?
- how could this be rewritten without using any classes at all?
- what’s the fewest amount of tags I would need to mark up this design from scratch?
- what’s the most relevant or correct HTML5 tag for this ([and there are a lot of them!) https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Web/HTML/Element
CSS Questions for Learning:
- how could I write this CSS without using any classes at all?
- if I remove this line, does anything break?
- what styles can this element inherit from other CSS rules?
JS Questions for Learning:
- if jQuery does this, what regular JavaScript does jQuery use internally to do this?
- if jQuery didn't exist, what would the solution designed to meet my needs look like?
And in addition to that, all I can say is that the more you do it the better you will get! Create some basic templates and get used to creating throwaway HTML pages to test one thing, or check something. Don’t get invested in and finesse and polish every project or page you build or you’ll have a very shallow level of skill and spend too much time on too few pieces.
One good habit would be to start pushing code to Github. You can view the traffic there, so if people are viewing and using your code you can be motivated by that.
Also, CodePen is like a social front-end coding playground. I would highly recommend you check that out and get the habit of testing and trying things out in the open.
The other last thing I will say is this: simplify! in 2013 my idea of a barebones HTML page was a whole site template like this: https://github.com/tomhodgins/5keleton
By 2015 I had it pared down to this: https://gist.github.com/tomhodgins/c09dd6f9485d77d14e55
But that was still so heavy it was slowing down my learning. Now when I want to test something here’s the HTML snippet I pop into a new text file:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset=utf-8>
<title></title>
<style></style>
</head>
<body>
<script></script>
</body>
</html>
Resources:
- Mozilla Developer Network for CSS: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference, and JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe... Reference
- HTML5 Specification for HTML reference: https://www.w3.org/TR/html5
- You Might Not Need jQuery for learning JS: http://youmightnotneedjquery.com
- Ditching jQuery for learning JavaScript basics: http://gomakethings.com/ditching-jquery
Here's a blog post I wrote about learning web design: http://hypertexthero.com/logbook/2012/04/web-design-where-to...
Plus the website is also open source :)
It (a) assumes no knowledge coming in, (b) provides a linear progression from no knowledge to a portfolio of web applications, (c) lets you move as fast or slow as you want, (d) lets you skip lessons and topics you're already familiar with, and (e) has phenomenal online support. (EDIT: and it's free)
Once your friend has the fundamentals, I'd also suggest checking out http://flukeout.github.io/ and http://flexboxfroggy.com/ . They're fun little games to introduce lots of css and flexbox features.
My only gripe on the subjects covered is that they do jQuery before JavaScript. But if you're already competent, then let me just tell you jQuery is just a JavaScript library a lot of websites use instead of "pure JS" because it handles a lot of cross-browser issues and makes for a simplified/unified API. Instead of having to write one native DOM API method call for Chrome and another for IE inside an if (browser is IE) { ... }, you can just use jQuery's corresponding method and it'll do the right thing automatically. At least, that's the argument a lot of people use. That and the jQuery API just being more concise
However, jQuery is largely considered very cumbersome by more experienced devs, owing to being slow in performance and to being a large file include that slows page load times, and a lot of people try to avoid it for that reason. It's worth studying this link to see how you can do all common jQuery things with normal JS.
http://blog.garstasio.com/you-dont-need-jquery/
There's also "smaller" versions of jQuery, which provide the same/similar API without being huge, like Zepto. Zepto is 9.1kb, jQuery is 95. 95 is a lot.
So yeah, long speech on one little gripe, but I feel like it needed saying because that site is probably good for teaching most other stuff you'd need to know.
Someone suggested bootstrap below, which I disagree with for a beginner but has a strong usecase for a programmer who needs to wrap their backend in something presentable. I would consider learning by using something like milligram or skeleton grid or even something much more opinionated like zurb foundation or bootstrap.
This is because, at least for me, most of the difficulty was around 3 things:
* modularity and structure
* actually positioning things
* terms and concepts
The browser is a processing engine which I think is in c++ or C but the point I am getting at is the big issue with onbboarding new programmers/designers is that they have a massive amount of peripheral knowledge to gain.
So, I personally liked envato http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/courses/30-days-to-learn-html-... which as a complete beginner took me 10 days. A competent programmer could probably finish in a day and get the relevenet bits, then use a grid and be pretty good.
tl;dr you can learn 90% of html/css in ~24-48 hours, that other 10% will take years.
On a side note, is it okay just to know Flexbox, or would a requirement be that you can manage without? Without ready made grid classes as well?
- choose a small project. Something that creates discomfort but not crippling anxiety (this will require self-awareness - too small, you won't learn much, too big, you may give up and take a confident hit).
- split the project into parts so you have a bunch of questions. 'How do I build a site in HTML/CSS?' is fairly broad. Perhaps "how do I build a header?" is too. Break it down until you either know how or you can find the answer quickly, i.e 'how do I insert an image?' or 'how do I set a width, background colour and consistent space inside the edges of a box?'
- have someone who you can call upon to answer questions or help convert what you are trying to do into a phrase that uses industry terminology for which you can find ample resources. Forums/IRC can help here - there are some jerks who will kick off about you not using google but many will be understanding if you explain you are new and still need to pick up terminology to make searching easier
- repeat the above endlessly, expanding your skills and integrating new discoveries
An interesting example of this is of someone who built 200 or so Rails projects over a year. I may have got the numbers wrong.
Good books can help get started and reading certainly helps but making the process multi-modal by reading from many sources, listening (such as videos or a local web meet), doing via projects and experiments and seeing your results will be most effective.
I don't have recommendations for books - the only thing about HTML I read in a book was a small section of a cheap internet guide that got me started when I was a kid. This wasn't required when training an apprentice but probably useful.
http://htmldog.com/guides/html/beginner/gettingstarted/
He will get context on what HTML is, and how it interacts with the browser. It's much easier to internalize knowledge with this website than it is elsewhere.
Keep the link as a reference but it also provides some good quizzes to learn and practice basic concepts. 8 years ago that's where I started learning HTML/CSS/PHP.
http://headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/
It will give them a good foundation and confidence to setup a website from scratch.
http://headfirstlabs.com/books/hfhtml/
Have them purchase a domain and setup a simple shared hosting account to publish a website. Shared hosting like hostgator is good enough to start, learn the basics, use FTP (recommend, MAMP/WAMP, sublime text, filezilla).
Then they can move on to more advanced topics.
It has alot of good resources and a wealth of information. As a seasoned web developer, this is still one of my go-to sites for documentation on web related stuff.
1. Check out Jennifer Dewalt's project 180 websites in 180 days - http://jenniferdewalt.com
2. Free Code Camp is quite good (but the focus is more on coding rather than design) - http://www.freecodecamp.com
3. Nathan Barry's books are great - http://nathanbarry.com/books
4. [Plug] - I'm starting a new site for online courses and need beta testers for some HTML and CSS courses which go from scratch to pro level. Happy to give your friend early access for free - http://learnetto.com
Or is it like with LaTeX that you just start and on-demand google the pieces?
All the tutorials & videos are available there as well as the curriculum and assignments for each week.
https://www.bento.io/tracks/front-end - front end track
https://www.bento.io/grid/ - all their tutorial recommendations
They hand-pick some of the best free tutorials for each of the technologies you might need (including the other ones mentioned here) and even have curated tracks for front end.
Best online resource: http://learn.shayhowe.com/
I've read several HTML/CSS books and gone through half a dozen courses. I'm comfortable with your basic HTML/CSS page, have a basic handle on Javascript (assuming I'm not doing anything more complicated than using getElementById to change some attributes on a click), and I can use jQuery/Bootstrap when I need to.
Right now the biggest hump for me is figuring out how to make mobile-friendly sites WITHOUT resorting to a framework. I feel like the vast majority of books or e-courses right now will go the following route:
1) Teach basic HTML/CSS for barebones basic and legacy pages
2) Introduce HTML5 syntax
3) Briefly show how to do a "pure" mobile-friendly page using viewports, flexbox, and media queries.
4) Spend fifteen minutes on the above, and then say, "But that's too much work. So now we're gonna use Bootstrap and never do Step #3 again!"
That above has happened consistently, and it disappoints me. I can do Bootstrap, but frankly I hate writing it. I feel like I have to go five or six div's in deep before I'm actually writing any text that's going to be visible to the end-user.
I'd really like to find more resources on making a mobile-friendly webpage that doesn't rely on Javascript to resize itself. In particular, I've got a few webpages that I built as past projects or coding exercises that I otherwise think look fine, and I'd like to figure out how to easily retro-fit them so that, say, the images don't stretch more than 100% of the screen width without having to rewrite the entire page using jQuery.
Anyone have any suggested resources for building mobile-friendly pure HTML/CSS sites?
It's not always the case but for html/css, learning by doing is amazing.
I found it very helpful to look at how other people implemented certain components.
The videos spell things out nice and slow, sometimes a bit too slow but you can fast forward if you already know a section.
It's meant for web designers, so I'd imagine it would work for your friend. The site also has courses for a few web programming languages and Wordpress etc.
Anyone else used this?
Imo it is the best editor you can use to learn HTML and CSS.
Also, are you on OSX? I never use Ctrl + → but rather emacs shortcuts like option + f, option + b, ...
It is my opinion that this leaves a large gap in ones education, and so supplemental / lower-leveled resources should be sought out if one wants to have an "expert-level" understanding of HTML and CSS.
"To save your name type:"
var name = "Sergio";
Respectfully, OP was asking for resources related to learning HTML and CSS from a non-technical point of view. From a standing start, JavaScript is a way down the line in the web development part -- not the beginnings of HTML and CSS for web design.
Sure, Codecademy is not the be-all solution, but they're accessible enough to get started for a broad section of non-technical folks, hence my recommendation.
Edit: italics.
Once I know how it works, I can look at the technical description and fill in any gaps that W3S had.
There is not a lot of utility in HTML + CSS on its own, unless you want 1996 style web pages that are static.
Knowing HTML is one thing, being able to build something in Wordpress will be far more CV worthy.
don't! Just use boostrap studio ( https://bootstrapstudio.io ) or something (there exist free alternatives if you don't like paying 25 bucks) :)
Keep your layouts flexible: * Avoid specifying widths and especially heights of individual elements unless really necessary. Allow the content to determine dimensions. * Set percentage based widths on overall containers (columns / grids). Allow these to constrain the dimensions of elements within. (Simplify your page structure as much as possible and don't overuse these.) * Use max-width to prevent elements from exceeding the dimensions of their containers: img {max-width: 100%;}
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Media_Queri...
I whole heartedly disagree. Experienced devs consider jQuery a tool and know when to use smaller frameworks like vanillaJS or something heavier such as React/Aurelia. Also, in terms of web libraries/frameworks, 100kb is not that big.
"Copy paste this to pass this lesson" - No context given, just do this to pass. That's not good learning.