Link tags: learning

Zonelets Home

Zonelets is a simple HTML blogging engine with scrappy, DIY spirit! I made it because I really want everyone to blog, but I felt that the existing options were generally overcomplicated and commercially-focused in a way that made web creativity feel intimidating and arcane.

I love the philosophy behind this blogging tool, which actively encourages you to learn a little bit of HTML:

Plenty of services can help you to “create a professional-looking website without writing a single line of code.” Now, thanks to Zonelets, you can create an UNPROFESSIONAL-looking website by writing NUMEROUS lines of code!

Copying is the way design works || Matthew Ström: designer & developer

A people’s history of copying, from art to software.

Designers copy. We steal like great artists. But when we see a copy of our work, we’re livid.

CSS Vocabulary

This is a nifty visual interactive explainer for the language of CSS—could be very handy for Codebar students.

Why you should have a blog (and write in it) | Leticia Portella

Having your independent blog is an excellent way to share what you think in a decentralized way, independent of any major company that may add a paywall to it (Medium, I am looking at you).

What is CSS Specificity? Sarah Chima - Front-End Developer

An excellent and clear explanation of specificity in CSS.

HTML Tutorial for Beginners 101 (Including HTML5 Tags) - WebsiteSetup

A really great one-page guide to HTML from Bruce. I like his performance-focused intro:

If your site is based on good HTML, it will load fast. Browsers incrementally render HTML—that is, they will display a partially downloaded web page to the user while the browser awaits the remaining files from the server.

Modern fashionable development techniques, such as React, require a lot of JavaScript to be sent to the user. When it’s all downloaded, the user’s device must parse and execute the JavaScript before it can even start to construct the page. On a slow network, or on a cheaper, low-powered device, this can result in an excruciatingly slow load and is a heavy drain on the battery.

There’s a voice inside your head that prevents you from sharing ideas—punch it in the face. - Airbag Industries

When I challenge the idea of topics—especially when I suggest writing about a design topic—the “I don’t know what to write about” excuse goes to level two: Someone has already written about [design topic]. And that might be true, but by Great Gutenberg’s Ghost, if that was a hard requirement for publishing, we’d have one newspaper, a few magazines, and maybe a thousand books. Hollywood would be a ghost town because we got to the end of all of the movie tropes by 1989. We’d have seventy-five songs with lyrics, but re-recorded in every music style and everyone would still hate Yanni. The point is you can’t let the people who have come before you be the excuse to stop you from writing or, frankly, creating.

The Curse of Knowledge · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer

A great explanation of the curse of knowledge …with science!

(This, by the way, is the first of 100 blog posts that Matthias is writing in 100 days.)

S01E04: Cassie Evans - Behind the Source

This is a lovely little interview with Cassie—it really is an honour and a privilege to work with her!

Today’s Javascript, from an outsider’s perspective | Lea Verou

This is a damning and all-too typical example of what it’s like for someone to trying to get to grips with the current state of the JavaScript ecosystem:

Note that John is a computer scientist that knows a fair bit about the Web: He had Node & npm installed, he knew what MIME types are, he could start a localhost when needed. What hope do actual novices have?

I think it’s even worse than that. Not only are potential new devs being put off ever getting started, I know plenty of devs with experience who have pushed out by the overwhelming and needless complexity of the modern web’s toolchain. It’s like a constant gaslighting where any expression of unease is summarily dismissed as being the whinings of “the old guard” who just won’t get with the programme.

John gives up. Concludes never to touch Node, npm, or ES6 modules with a barge pole.

The End.

(Just watch as Lea’s post gets written off as an edge case.)

CSS Tips for New Devs | Amber’s Website

Never mind Kevin Kelly’s 68 bits of advice, here’s Amber’s 24 nuggets of CSS lessons for people new to web development.

What is a resilient website? (with Jeremy Keith) | A Question of Code

I really enjoyed having a chat with Ed and Tom on their podcast. It’s aimed at people making a career shift into web development, but that didn’t stop me banging on about my usual hobby horses: progressive enhancement, resilient web design, and all that jazz.

Available for your huffduffing pleasure.

How I’m teaching the kids coding for the web

I love how Remy explains front-end development to his kids:

The bones are the HTML. Each bone has a name, we call them tags (or elements).

…the skin and the paint on the skin, this is CSS.

Finally, the brain and behaviour, the way the website can be interacted with is using the third layer: JavaScript.

Twitter thread as blog post: Thoughts on how we write CSS | Lara Schenck

CSS only truly exists in a browser. As soon as we start writing CSS outside of the browser, we rely on guesses and memorization and an intimate understanding of the rules. A text editor will never be able to provide as much information as a browser can.

Why is CSS frustrating? ･ Robin Rendle

CSS is frustrating because you have to actually think of a website like a website and not an app. That mental model is what everyone finds so viscerally upsetting. And so engineers do what feels best to them; they try to make websites work like apps, like desktop software designed in the early naughts. Something that can be controlled.

Selectors Explained

I can see this coming in very handy at Codebar—pop any CSS selector in here and get a plain English explanation of what it’s doing.

Why is CSS Frustrating? | CSS-Tricks

Why do people respect JavaScript or other languages enough to learn them inside-out, and yet constantly dunk on CSS?

The headline begs the question, but Robin makes this very insightful observation in the article itself:

I reckon the biggest issue that engineers face — and the reason why they find it all so dang frustrating — is that CSS forces you to face the webishness of the web. Things require fallbacks. You need to take different devices into consideration, and all the different ways of seeing a website: mobile, desktop, no mouse, no keyboard, etc. Sure, you have to deal with that when writing JavaScript, too, but it’s easier to ignore. You can’t ignore your the layout of your site being completely broken on a phone.

Inspiring high school students with HTML and CSS - Stephanie Stimac’s Blog

I love, love, love this encounter that Stephanie had with high school students when she showed them her own website (“Your website? You have a website?”).

I opened the DevTools on my site and there was an audible gasp from the class and excited murmuring.

“That’s your code?” A student asked. “Yes, that’s all my code!” “You wrote all of that?!” “Yes, it’s my website.”

And the class kind of exploded and starting talking amongst themselves. I was floored and my perspective readjusted.

When I code, it’s usually in HTML and CSS, and I suppose there’s a part of me that feels like that isn’t special because some tech bros decide to be vocal and loud about HTML and CSS not being special nearly everyday (it is special and tech bros can shut up.)

And the response from that class of high school students delighted me and grounded me in a way I haven’t experienced before. What I view as a simple code was absolute magic to them. And for all of us who code, I think we forget it is magic. Computational magic but still magic. HTML and CSS are magic.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

An app can be a home-cooked meal

I am the programming equivalent of a home cook.

The exhortation “learn to code!” has its foundations in market value. “Learn to code” is suggested as a way up, a way out. “Learn to code” offers economic leverage, a squirt of power. “Learn to code” goes on your resume.

But let’s substitute a different phrase: “learn to cook.” People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But far more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably, or in a specific way.

Lightning-Fast Web Performance: an online lecture series from Scott Jehl

You know that this online course from Scott is going to be excellent—get in there!