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Modern Scholarship - Web Development

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  • #31
    Originally posted by George
    This looks like a reasonably good start: https://internetingishard.com/html-and-css/
    I gave this a quick scan. The content likes good and it covers topics I wish had been covered in the two MOOCs I completed, such as advanced positioning, responsive design and more detailed info about the box model. I'm going to start working through the lessons and I'll give a little review later on.

    --------------

    Originally posted by George
    Better to do something simple even if it is not very good then not do anything at all
    Originally posted by The page George linked to
    As you start creating your own websites, youÂ’ll eventually add more tools to your toolbox, but itÂ’s important to start out minimal and thoroughly learn the fundamentals of HTML and CSS.
    --------------

    Originally posted by George
    How long it takes depends - hard to say without concrete content and design details.
    If we're talking about the amount of time to allow for a total beginner with a full-time job to learn enough HTML/CSS to make a page that includes headings, text, images, external links and a navbar with internal links, what would be long enough? Six months?

    After a little searching, here's one example of a pretty simple site that looks good and most of the layout can be mimicked with only HTML/CSS

    https://www.prettyproduction.com

    Andrew
    Love, and do what you will.

    - St. Augustine

    Comment


    • #32
      Originally posted by Andrew R View Post
      If we're talking about the amount of time to allow for a total beginner with a full-time job to learn enough HTML/CSS to make a page that includes headings, text, images, external links and a navbar with internal links, what would be long enough? Six months?
      I'd say 2-4 weeks depending on the student.
      George / Юра
      Shaolin Wahnam England

      gate gate pāragate pārasaṁgate bodhi svāhā

      Comment


      • #33
        In terms of predicting the time, my main input would be to try to calculate or define it in terms of hours as well as weeks. Ie if someone has 15 mins per day 4 days a week, or let's say 10 mins per day 6 days a week, then that is 1 hour a week, and it might take them 10 weeks to learn something at that rate, whereas someone who has 10 hours a week might be able to learn the same thing in 1 week.

        When things are going well at my work I could probably put in 8-10 hours a week, but when they are not going so well and I'm working late most nights including weekends I would struggle to put in 1 extra hour a week.

        When I did formal distance learning modules they would tell you how many weeks the course would take and how many hours they expected you to put in per week.

        Comment


        • #34
          Originally posted by drunken boxer View Post
          In terms of predicting the time, my main input would be to try to calculate or define it in terms of hours as well as weeks.
          Good idea - 14-28 hours would be my guess.
          George / Юра
          Shaolin Wahnam England

          gate gate pāragate pārasaṁgate bodhi svāhā

          Comment


          • #35
            Originally posted by George View Post
            Good idea - 14-28 hours would be my guess.
            Thanks George. I might have spent more time than this in an unfocused, scattered kind of way (on unfocused, scattered material) without getting very far, but have long suspected that with more focus it could be done much quicker, so those estimates sound reasonable.

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            • #36
              Re time management, a study plan might be a good idea, I have used that in other courses with some success. Ie a spreadsheet planning what times I will study for the next 4 weeks for example. Maybe I might commit to one hour every saturday, and 15 mins every tuesday and thursday evening for example. There will be days when I can't make my scheduled study time, and other days when the 15 mins becomes 30 mins, then 1 hour, then 2 hours etc but the spreadsheet can help to track whether overall I am doing as much, more or less than I had planned. I bet it sounds lame to everyone, as it did to those on my course including me! But I must admit it eventually came in useful when I had a big assignment to hand in, I broke it down into sub tasks, estimated the time they would take, scheduled that time and it helped me get it over the line. First time ever that planning actually helped me (I've tended to previously believe that 'planning' just wasted time that could be spent on 'doing')!

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              • #37
                I think there is too much thinking.

                Each chapter in that link I posted earlier takes 15-20 minutes to read. Just read each one, more than once if necessary, and start playing about in jsbin or locally after reading each one. For me at least the key is to be able to get instant feedback on making changes - it is not the most efficient way to actually develop but for learning it works very well. You can always keep referring back to the document as you do - it's not a closed-book exam situation.

                HTML and CSS are really really easy. Once you get the idea of the tree of elements, opening and closing tags and class selectors it's pretty much just learning the HTML tag / CSS property names and what they do. Think of it as a word processor, except instead of clicking on tool bar buttons to apply formatting you describe the format in text.

                15 minute blocks is fine for reading but not enough for actually writing code - you need at least 45 minutes to 1 hour blocks from experience to really get into the flow.

                Planning can be very very useful but here the subject matter just doesn't justify the overhead.
                Last edited by George; 31 July 2017, 10:38 AM.
                George / Юра
                Shaolin Wahnam England

                gate gate pāragate pārasaṁgate bodhi svāhā

                Comment


                • #38
                  Or if you prefer videos -> https://www.edx.org/professional-cer...eb-developer-9

                  I haven't done that course, but have done others in edX, and they are really good, with easy to follow videos and assessment exercises.

                  And it has a planning there already for you: 4-6 weeks per course, 6-10 hours per week, although those courses are all self-paced, so that doesn't mean you have to commit that time every week, just that it will take you 4-6 weeks to complete each course if you dedicate 6-10 hours each week, less if you dedicate more hours and longer if you dedicate less. And you don't have to do all courses, starting with the 1st one (HTML5 and CSS Fundamentals) is enough, and if you like it, you can keep doing the other courses, which are more advanced, but build on top of the previous ones.

                  And the courses are free, there's the option to pay for a certificate upon completion of the courses, but if you don't care about the certificate, they are free.

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                  • #39
                    Originally posted by rodrigo View Post
                    I haven't done that course, but have done others in edX, and they are really good, with easy to follow videos and assessment exercises.
                    Agreed, but they are quite time consuming. For the first course on this they recommend 4-6 weeks, at 6-10 hours per week, meaning somewhere between 4x6 and 6x10 hours altogether, ie 24-60hrs altogether. I guess the lower end of that is not too far from George's estimate.

                    Originally posted by George View Post
                    I think there is too much thinking.
                    Originally posted by George View Post
                    Planning can be very very useful but here the subject matter just doesn't justify the overhead.
                    Maybe so. I suppose it has been useful for me in this case only in terms of working out I don't really have time to do this at the minute! But I hope it goes well and maybe at a later date I can follow some of the steps others take.

                    Comment


                    • #40
                      While I learned a lot from both the Codecademy and FreeCodeCamp courses on HTML/CSS and the format was enjoyable, I will say neither gave me a solid understanding of what "divs" do.

                      From one beginner to another: you must understand what divs do.

                      It looks like the tutorial George linked to gets into more specifics about them, which is great.
                      Love, and do what you will.

                      - St. Augustine

                      Comment


                      • #41
                        The Proposal

                        Thanks to everyone that has weighed in so far. Now that we've had some input from our local computer wizards, I would like to propose a scholarly challenge for those that decide to learn HTML/CSS (at this point basically Paul and me ).

                        In three months, learn HTML/CSS and build a website from scratch.

                        I'm going with three months to allow flexibility for learning speeds and various life circumstances. George said it could be done in a total of 14 - 28 hours. If we say 28 hours, at one hour per day, that's a month, so allowing three months should offer plenty of cushion, but not too much.

                        The resources you decide to use to learn the material are up to you. Some good ones have been mentioned in this thread and any of them will teach you almost everything you need to know to meet the requirements of this challenge. Regardless of what you decide to use in the end, they will at least be good starting points. Also, Google.

                        Questions can of course be placed here and, if you are so inclined, video chat with some techy Shaolin siblings can be very beneficial.

                        ******************************

                        Requirements

                        - A navigation bar with basic CSS animation when the cursor hovers over the links
                        - Headings
                        - Paragraphs
                        - Internal and external links
                        - Pictures
                        - One embedded video
                        - Website must be mobile responsive
                        - Host your website on GitHub

                        ******************************

                        That's it!

                        The challenge will start Saturday August 5, 2017 and final websites will be due Saturday November 4, 2017.
                        Love, and do what you will.

                        - St. Augustine

                        Comment


                        • #42
                          Hi Andrew I think it might be just you for now! I would be lucky to put in 1 hour per week at the minute let alone 1 hour per day. Working long hours, but also we have been mandated to do some reading and training outside of work toward our objectives which takes up the time I would otherwise use on this. I have 6 books to get through to meet this objective, and am currently about halfway through the 2nd one of them.

                          I can't really plan it well, but what I will try to do at some point is work out which of the training resources mentioned here are the fastest to work through, and try to go through the fastest one. Then maybe the next one and so on, depending on how far I get. It is not really in the spirit you intended but is probably the best I can do for now.

                          If for example I get on top of work one week, then on a saturday morning I get through a couple of hours of my extra work reading in the morning, I will try to spend a couple of hours on one of those training resources in the afternoon. Or better yet if I could set aside a whole day for a kind of bootcamp/dojo/hackathon type attempt at it, but don't know when at the minute.

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                          • #43
                            And thus, the web dev challenge has come to an end. It lived a short yet fulfilling life, and will now enjoy its next phase in another plane of existence.

                            If one day you do find the time, Paul, I think working through either the Codecademy or FreeCodeCamp course would be the fastest. Given the fact that you're already a tech professional, you should be able to burn through it. The page that George linked to I would say has more clarity and depth regarding content, but will take more time to work through.

                            Andrew
                            Love, and do what you will.

                            - St. Augustine

                            Comment


                            • #44
                              Oh, you're not going ahead with it yourself Andrew? Sorry I couldn't join at the present time on reasonable terms. And surprised that no one else has expressed an interest!

                              I know there are loads of techie people in Wahnam, but also I know there are loads more people who are interested in building websites, in using tools to work with web content etc, thought they would have liked a chance to have a look "under the bonnet". Maybe the thread has just not reached them yet?

                              (One "web" observation of mine is that some people are more active in posting kungfu stuff on facebook than on here, so maybe that is how to reach them. Personally I don't like facebook but I seem to be in a small minority of global citizens with that!)

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                I'm still continuing my personal web development studies. Actually I took a step back from the FreeCodeCamp Javascript course to work on learning some CS foundation. I liked the learning guide from GitHub that Alex posted, so I'm slowly going to make my way through the "Get Job Ready" route since it covers more than enough for my needs, and then also working out of this online book: Learn Enough To Be Dangerous

                                Maybe in the future some more people will get interested in web development and we can give it another go. My guess is a lot of people make the same assumption I made before learning any web dev: must be difficult! This is ***FALSE*** and also a good example of why it's foolish to make assumptions.

                                It's been said several times in this thread, but learning and using HTML/CSS really is quite simple.
                                Love, and do what you will.

                                - St. Augustine

                                Comment

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