JavaScript basics

At this point, you're probably in one of two camps: designer or developer.

If you're a designer, you're incredibly excited by all of this CSS stuff. You have begun to appreciate the power of CSS and can't wait to continue to unravel the mystery of how to make web pages that don't look awful. If that's the case, congratulations! You should continue on the path to be a front-end designer, but unfortunately, the rest of this course is much more heavily weighted towards programming, not design. I'd still recommend you learn programming (especially JavaScript), because it will make you a better designer and help you collaborate better with back-end programmers. But you might want to take a break from this site and continue to work on your HTML and CSS skills.

If you're a developer, you are sick and tired of all of this design stuff. Sure, you like websites to look nice, but you really don't want to spend your time fiddling with colors or fonts - you just want to build something. Well, the good news is, we're about to move on!

If you fall into both camps, that's pretty awesome. You're unusual and your talents are in high demand. I'll continue to teach you the programming side of things, and afterwards, you should make it your business to get good at the design side as well.

Whether you want to focus on programming or design, a great way to continue to learn HTML and CSS is to copy other people. If you see something you like, check it out in the Chrome inspector, and try implementing it yourself. One caveat to this is that there is a lot of bad code out there, so make sure you understand what it is doing, rather than just blindly copying and pasting. Bootstrap is a fantastic framework, so it's a great place to learn from.

Sometimes, you just need a reference on how a certain CSS property or HTML tag should work (such as when you're trying to understand a style that you want to copy!). The Mozilla Developer Network is one of the best sources; it has references on CSS and HTML elements and HTML attributes. Be wary of other sources, as there is a lot of bad information out there.