I do a lot of front-end development these days, but I still feel that my CSS skills are weak. CSS is (for whatever reason) hard for me. Does anybody have any CSS learning resources that have exercises? There's plenty of books out there, but I really need a guided, hands-on learning experience.
Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
101–110 of 112 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes and at the same time all devs should learn assembly so they have a better idea what's going on with their program.
My advice is to always understand the layer below what you're working with. Learning assembly is worthwhile if you're programming in C. Learning CSS is worthwhile if you're designing websites using Bootstrap. Perhaps even more importantly though, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML have a longevity that's tremendously longer than any given framework. My understanding of these technologies from 15 years ago remains relevant tod…
>> My understanding of these technologies from 15 years ago remains relevant today,
I have almost the exact opposite experience. I use next to nothing I learned eight years ago today when I'm building apps and websites.
- Float based layouts? Nope, everything is a grid system these days.
- Browser inconsistencies? Nope, they're almost all gone except if you still have to support legacy browsers. All the quirks of every IE version I used to have memorized? They're all but forgotten now and I don't need them.
- I used to be a whiz with Flash. Nobody uses flash anymore. CSS animations, transitions, and better javascript rendering libraries have rendered my Flash skill set irrelevant.
- I used to only have to worry about how my sites rendered on desktops. Now, everything is mobile, mobile, mobile and has to be responsive. More and more media queries to handle all those weird outliers of screen sizes.
- I never had to think about UI/UX patterns. Now, it's almost all I do nowadays. Make sure this is touch enabled, how can a user use this app on a phone? Are you hiding menus when you should be showing them? Does a desktop user even know what a "hamburger" menu is? A/B testing out the ass to make absolutely sure you have the right color/shade/hue of a button so the user clicks on it.
- When I first started, I never had to know Javascript. The places I worked had JS plugins all written for you. All you had to do was copy/paste a snippet and you were done. Prototypical inheritance? Closures? A functions "this" keyword and how it works? Never, ever had to know that stuff. Now I have to know all that, and a TON more.
I'd say on average my skill set tends to do a 100% turnover about every 2-3 years. That's not to say I don't still use some of the basic understanding of HTML and CSS that I learned right off the bat such as selector classes and pseudo classes or the difference between elements and tags. But on the whole, I'm constantly having to learn new techniques, new standards, and generally anything that's being added to the HTML5 or CSS3 specs. I've actually quit jobs because I felt like what I needed to know to do the work was too easy and my skills were just eroding while I was there.
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, I might not be aware of that type of CSS framework. Can you point me to some examples? I was thinking of frameworks like Bootstrap and Semantic UI.
FYI: https://coderwall.com/p/wixovg/bootstrap-without-all-the-deb... I.e., used properly, Bootstrap itself is "that type of CSS framework".
Thanks! That's fantastic. CSS frameworks should talk about this idea more!
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#104I'd recommend you to learn BS3 as there are more tutorials available.
You can always switch to BS4. BS3 is not something that's getting obsolete.
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a backend dev, I wish somebody had told me this exact advice earlier on in my career. CSS does have a fair amount of silly legacy shit, but it's really not all that bad once you dive in. Another good project's source code to learn from is Skeleton. (more simple than bootstrap) CSS version: https://github.com/dhg/Skeleton Sass version: https://github.com/WhatsNewSaes/Skeleton-Sass Edit: For more of a tutorial appro…
Good stuff. I did notice that the normalize.css of Skeleton hadn't been updated since 2014. Is there a more update version of "normalize" out there, or is it still pretty much apropos today?
Yea there have been updates to it, I dunno why they included it like that. What I do is use a forked version of Skeleton-Sass and include normalize.css as a dependency, so that npm always pulls down the latest version.
The changes to normalize are listed here (Skeleton includes v3.0.2): https://github.com/necolas/normalize.css/blob/master/CHANGEL...
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
My advice is to always understand the layer below what you're working with. Learning assembly is worthwhile if you're programming in C. Learning CSS is worthwhile if you're designing websites using Bootstrap. Perhaps even more importantly though, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML have a longevity that's tremendously longer than any given framework. My understanding of these technologies from 15 years ago remains relevant tod…
Agreed. The biggest thing I look for when interviewing new developers isn't "how much do you know about X framework", it's "could you implement all of that without the framework?". Knowing bootstrap won't do you that much good if you don't understand how/why it does what it does. Similarly, I demand that Java developers are able to describe the underlying 'how' of Spring, rather than regurgitating tutorials from the…
I interview developers also. I don't expect developers to be great designers. I expect them to know the basics of CSS and how selectors work, but that's about it. I'm fine if they aren't advanced CSS whizzes. I do expect them to know JavaScript including how prototypes work, scoping, etc.
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#107If you have time, force yourself to do a small project with both. Whichever feels more natural to you is probably the route you should take.
Personally, I would be hesitant to go with v4 because of losing support for older IE browsers HOWEVER v4 is built on flexbox, so it should in theory be a little bit more of a sane implementation.
I would do some more research on what are the differences, it seems like with v4, they are making the API a little bit more simpler, but I haven't dived into it yet.
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#108Bootstrap 5 Will be Best to learn in the future.
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you should learn CSS. Whether or not you should roll your own bespoke CSS/JS for interface components depends on the project. You will learn a lot more about CSS if you do it yourself. However, I encourage most folks to just use Bootstrap (or Foundation). They're not hard to learn, handle a lot of browser issues for you, are easily customizable, and are very well documented. If someone ever tells you that Bootst…
If you're starting from a vector design (designed in Sketch for example) and need to convert it into a design, would you recommend using Bootstrap's components and overriding them, or is it easier to roll everything yourself?
This depends on how closely your designer's ideas can be mapped to existing Bootstrap components. If it's a very conceptual project (maybe an infographic or product advertisement) it may be better to start from scratch.
Most of the time though, I try to limit the extent of my designer's vocabulary by having them use a sketch template and see how far they get. There are iOS, Android, and even a Bootstrap template that they can start with: https://www.sketchappsources.com/free-source/349-bootstrap-3...
All of those usually resolve into components that can be mapped to something in Bootstrap or Foundation. If your designer can't solve an interface problem with something from those templates, that's often a sign that there's a bigger problem in your app's structure.
Re: Ask HN: Should I learn Bootstrap 3 or 4 at this moment?
#110Take a look at Bulma[1]. I prefer its simplicity and flexbox first approach. http://bulma.io/
+1 for bulma, everything is better: design, implementation, documentation, semantics, ...