

Learn Foundation with interactive lessons  - imkevinxu
http://www.tryfoundation.io/

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nichodges
This is something that I've always felt Foundation needed. I'm a side-project
hacker, and as much as I love Twitter Bootstrap I always wanted something
different. I used Foundation for a few projects but found myself gravitating
back to Bootstrap because of the abundance of tutorials that have built up my
familiarity.

The structure of these lessons is great - probably more useful than Bootstrap
'getting started' pages. The use of JSFiddle style learning is awesome.

The only thing I don't like is that it requires email/password - however given
it's not built by Zurb I can see why the makers have gone down that path.
Perhaps a better method would have been to only ask for those details once a
user wants to go beyond the first few lessons?

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imkevinxu
Thanks for the honest feedback, we tried to place a lot of emphasis on
interactivity and problem-solving based learning.

Asking to create an account later makes sense, the lessons are open to try
without creating an account here <http://www.tryfoundation.io/learn/>. We
wanted users to create accounts in order for them to save progress and code
especially for further bigger projects, thoughts?

~~~
nichodges
I did not see that link initially, I think it would be worth a/b testing a
version where the option to play without signing up button is visually as
dominant as the signup.

Visitors that know that they don't know enough will always signup. I knew that
I'd like to learn more Foundation, so immediately submitted my email address.
But I would suggest that a decent slice of your users don't know what they
don't know - ie. that there is a Bootstrap alternative that is just as
flexible, powerful, and easy to learn. Getting those people three steps down
the path before giving them a hurdle of signup would, in my opinion, result in
a larger user count and greater project impact in the long run.

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danso
I think the requirement of account creation is a hinderance to helping spread
the word of the site...I don't really have any intention of following these
lessons (because I've used Foundation before and know CSS pretty well) but I
would recommend them if, after skimming them, the site's implementation is
well done.

I understand the desire to gauge user interest and get their contact info, but
why not let the signup process be more organic (i.e. you sign up after the
first few lessons because you recognize the value of the service), as it is
for Codecademy?

(there is a "view lessons" in the top right, but it's not intuitive, given the
signup modal)

~~~
biscarch
You also get to more lessons if you complete the button example on the landing
page.

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mcintyre1994
I'd definitely add the examples pane from the actual lessons to the home page
tutorial. My impression after trying <button>Button</button> was that I need
to go read the Foundation docs instead. They're pretty impressive, I doubt I'd
have come back if I'd left to do that.

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showerst
I have to say I've been using foundation 4 for some side projects since it was
released, and really love it.

It's well documented, gets out of the way, and is just much more
intuitive/less crufty to me than bootstrap or skeleton.

~~~
edoloughlin
I'm using it too and find it really nice to work with. The one reservation I
have is the lack of keyboard navigation on custom form elements (e.g.,
checkboxes, combo boxes).

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brebory
I'm running into a bug on the second lesson. Unless there's something subtle
I'm not noticing.

<http://i.imgur.com/n2WcCzY.png>

~~~
imkevinxu
Oh that had a little trick, the last button was actually a "large alert
_radius_ button".

Sorry for that! Just pushed a fix to make it more fair, no longer a radius.

~~~
sek
Funny how fast that was, I just did it and wondered what was wrong with his.

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seivan
This is impressive wants me to start using Curb just because it's easier to
pick up this way. I am still waiting for the grid parts for now though :)

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dkimdkimdkim
Great splash page with clear demo. I've been looking to stretch out my
Foundation knowledge, this sounds like a good place to start.

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scottmagdalein
Had a tough time getting passed the first lesson. It's not clear that you want
me to duplicate the buttons in the lesson exactly.

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ricardobeat
I wish zurb would invest the time to improve the documentation instead, or
upgrading the javascript modules to work with v4.

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rahilsondhi
Looking forward to advanced lessons on writing semantic markup using grid
mixins + their options (eg nest, collapse, etc).

~~~
pault
Why use semantic markup with a CSS framework? It makes your CSS increase
linearly with your content.

~~~
rahilsondhi
Well what I meant is HTML with minimal presentational classes like span6 push1
or something. I'd like the CSS classes in my HTML to be related to the object,
not whatever grid framework I happen to be using.

I'm using SASS and the Foundation grid mixins to define visual components of
the site (eg tag, display-picture, etc) that can be put on any page and have
different sub classes (eg tag-small, display-picture-large).

With this, the goal is _not_ to have CSS increase linearly with the number of
pages/content because I've defined all the visual components of the site and
they can be shared across pages.

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deweller
Nice signup process. Very low friction.

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msluyter
For me, it's hanging on the create account splash screen (using Chrome). The
HN effect, perhaps?

~~~
imkevinxu
Should be fixed! Please let me know if theres any other bugs :)

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eranation
Oh how I wish if Bootstrap had something like that!

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swat535
This is really great, can you make the same thing for bootstrap?

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jfunez
cant submit password. Http Error 500.

