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Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS

learn.shayhowe.com

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Re: Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS

#71

Post by akdetrick »

"One principle of development is D.R.Y., also known as don’t repeat yourself. Within CSS this principle can speak volumes as it is easy to continually write the same styles over and over again. Don’t. CSS was designed in a way to allow you to cascade styles and use classes so that you easily apply and inherent styles."

This is wonderful, useful advice to beginners and seasoned developers alike. In fact, anyone who works with CSS, regardless of how they write it (raw, sass, less), should be force fed this advice. At the end of the day, CSS is a declarative cascading language, and you must leverage it as such in order to optimize code reuse, performance, maintainability, etc.

Aside from this tutorial being beautifully designed, the notes about semantics and best practices are enough to make me feel good about recommending it to anyone who wants to learn more about HTML & CSS.

Re: Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS

#73

Post by yogsototh »

sequoia wrote: post #64
yogsototh wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you are right. The low color contrast on a small disabled part of this website seems to be the major shared point of view. Sincerely, it wasn't a personal attack. I am just sad a short comment about the look & feel make the top instead of a comment about the content. Even if in the end, I tend to agree with you that this color contrast is a design error. ps: Also, if you visit my website, you will see I am f…

Agreed: my comment should not be the top comment; it's just one small critique. I just see this so frequently (low low contrast, hard to read text) as well as other accessibility issues on sites linked from hn that I started griping about it. FWIW I don't just gripe about it, sometimes I actually do something: https://github.com/addyosmani/todomvc/pull/37 :) In the end I think it's important to remember that even if…

I know exactly this bad feeling when going to a website with great content and terrible design.

I am pretty sure you know about these, but just in case.

To address this problem I used readability from arc90. Now I use a solarized[^1] version of readable[^2].

Cheers :)

[^1]: http://ethanschoonover.com/solarized [^2]: http://goo.gl/jISPf => will go to http://readable.tastefulwords.com/ with solarized theme (my tiny contribution).

Re: Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS

#74

Post by ChadMoran »

capnrefsmmat wrote: post #12
ChadMoran wrote: post #9

I guess? It has a pretty small font size and for any modern monitor slides to the left and only takes up 50% or less of the page size. Meh...

Do you want it to take up the full screen width? I find that reading incredibly long lines is difficult, because when you finish one line and move to the next, you lost track of your position. This is why systems like LaTeX default to wide margins and narrow columns. Now, as for the font size, it could definitely use some expansion.

If it's not going to take up the full screen width it should at least be centered. It feels weird having 50% of the page to the right of the guide blank.

Re: Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS

#75

Post by jmilloy »

probitymike wrote: post #60
jmilloy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. "To put this into laymen terms, HTML determines the semantic structure..." doesn't sound like laymen terms to me.

Like Shay mentioned below, this website is a work in progress and still being tested out, but right now the website is a supplement to what Shay teaches in class. Shay uses this in class and we mix in lecture, demoing, and lab work to help the Code Academy students understand the content. The students also use this to reflect back on what Shay has taught in the previous classes. As of now, this is the best standalone…

That actually makes a big difference. As a supplement to what's taught in class, I think the language is probably appropriate as it is.

Re: Beginners Guide to HTML/CSS

#76

Post by natep »

tabaflaba wrote: post #69
natep wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False. At the very least, Reddit uses the strong tag, and so I don't feel like scouring the web for more bold text. I did do one search, and it turns out other people recommend strong over b in most situations, like this person: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/649305/alternative-to-the...

HTML describes a document semantically and using tags like and is bad practice. Styling, like what results from using and , should be done via css.

Well, if that's what you meant, you should have said that, instead of making false claims about what people do and don't do.

Now that we're back on track, If you're trying to make a semantic point in an article by emphasizing certain things, wouldn't you want that reflected in the HTML? Do screen readers do something special for bold-via-css or is the emphasis lost on the visually impaired?

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