
Friendly web development tutorials for complete beginners - ssijak
https://internetingishard.com/
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have_faith
I'd be interested in your definition of complete beginner? As I think some of
the language could be simplified further. For instance:

> Think of HTML as the abstract text and images behind a web page, CSS as the
> page that actually gets displayed

Is actually quite a nuanced way of looking at a webpage. What does 'abstract
text' mean to an absolute beginner? And it makes CSS sound like what I imagine
people intuitively would think HTML is. As in HTML is the content that gets
displayed and CSS is what adds colour, structure, design etc. It also sounds
like images are HTML, but maybe I'm nitpicking a bit too much.

Regardless, it's a good effort and no doubt a useful resource for the right
learner.

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jimcsharp
When I was a complete beginner, in childhood, I didn't understand why the code
I copied from a random library book into WordPerfect was not 'running'.

That's what I think of when I read 'complete beginner' \- and people seem to
shy away from those very important tooling concepts.

~~~
volkk
Exactly. My girlfriend always wonders what i actually do at work (she's a
fashion designer) and she can't even comprehend what code _is_ nor how its
run.

Common questions include: "So do you just sit there all day and type code?",
"would you be able to code facebook?", "Can you please use your code skills
and fix the TV? (it was set on a different HDMI input after I finished playing
PS4 and forgot to switch it back)"

It's cute, but a complete beginner literally can't even fathom what a computer
loosely does inside/how it runs code aside from utter magic

~~~
overkalix
Ah, yes, good ol' could you code facebook.

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exodust
While there's some good basic stuff here, I'm not a fan of the layout. They
talk about responsive design, but use a very thin column for the main content,
leaving an ocean of blank white space on either side, at least on desktop.

I'm also taking issue with their advice to "disable viewport zoom" for mobile
sites, which is not cool. There is no need to disable zooming for your
responsive site to load and display correctly. Taking away the user's right to
pinch and zoom is an accessibility issue.

If you're learning HTML and CSS, I would suggest you ignore their advice to
disable zoom. Your viewport meta tag should be something like <meta
name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> but you
shouldn't be adding "maximum-scale=1.0" to that, because it prevents pinch and
zoom.

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Rzor
As a beginner currently going through this tutorial, grasping the how is
vastly less difficult than knowing when to use. I noticed last night that I
was spending too much time going through the tutorial (and the examples)
without actually practicing what I was learning. I realized that I wasn't
exactly sure when to use Flexbox in this simple page¹, or why to use it at
all, if I should stick to directly customizing elements or how to divide divs
(header, presentation, button). The editor tells me that the universal
selector (*) is slow, what should I use then? I want to use best practices,
but I have no reference since it seems that CSS has many ways to achieve the
same result. Well, I think I'll have to grok it for now.

¹ [https://cyberneets.neocities.org/](https://cyberneets.neocities.org/)

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exabrial
Anyone have something similar for js/angular? I have a buddy that's extremely
motivated (works in the sun all day every day), but wants to change his
fortunes to something that's a bit less sweat inducing.

~~~
tomelders
The best advice you can give to someone staring out from scratch is "Don't try
to learn programming. It's boring, frustrating, and pointless. Instead, think
of something you want to make, and learn how to make that. Start small
though."

~~~
xorduna
Give the learner some project he might be interested in. Some website he would
like to see online.

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lprd
This looks really neat and well designed. Looks like they only cover HTML and
CSS at the moment. I'm curious if they will add some (basic) modern Javascript
in the future.

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kristerv
I wonder what motivates creation of this as there are so many materials out
there already?

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FuckOffNeemo
OP, is this your site? Oliver James?

Gorgeous looking site. I really appreciate the feel of the site, stands out in
a non-obnoxious way and is strikingly unique.

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Numberwang
Looks good. Does it have chapters on Grid as well as Flexbox?

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jfreax
There is at least a chapter about flexbox ->
[https://internetingishard.com/html-and-
css/flexbox/](https://internetingishard.com/html-and-css/flexbox/)

~~~
Numberwang
Yes thank you. What I meant was does it also have grid? Grid seems to be more
useful than flexbox in most cases.

