ah teaches web design & development (Styling the Webs lecture)

Styling the Webs

Lecture outline

Thinking about our websites as modular components and the fundamentals of styling websites. Lecture slides will be made available on the day of the lecture (September 19).

Critique sign-up

Please sign up for critiques before 4:45pm. Sign-up will not be permitted after that point.

Critiques will run starting around 6:30pm.

A very ornate gold and blue curtain

Styling the Webs

In preparation for lecture...

Please close up any laptops, cellphones, Super Pockets, Pagers and other 'beep-boop' devices.

Extra IAT-235 bridging support

We recognize that some of you may not have gotten much time working with HTML and CSS in IAT-235. If you need additional support getting up to speed please reach out to us.

I will be on Discord and most available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays if you have quick questions or concerns.

Appropriate Alt Text

Does the alt attribute need to describe the image's function?

<a href="home.html">
<img src="banner-image.jpg" alt="Home page">
</a>

Or the image's content?

<img src="banner-image.jpg" alt="A photo of shoes walking themselves across the street">

Set a lang

We need to make sure that we set a language for our HTML documents:

<html lang="en">
ah.link/339s
A burning piece of paper

We want to try and move away from the language of 'pages'

Web design and development

You have to learn to embrace flexibility, failure and iteration.

A series of screenshots illustrating how to use the web browser on a smartwatch

Web browsers are everywhere...

CSS3

Cascading Style Sheets

While HTML defines the structure of the content on the page, CSS styles the page to ensure the user get's something usable. Good code will clearly separate semantic markup from styling.

Keeping them apart

A real Romeo/Juliet scenario

Rules for keeping them separate

Let's talk CSS

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/ee24f2587ef3b5062ca772d9dd7dd589

Smart CSS

You want to aim for CSS stylings that are scalable and modular. Here are some divisions suggested as a framework:

  1. Base rules: direct styling of elements for normalizing or defaults
  2. Layout: structural styling for the page (i.e. .grid, .grid-column)
  3. Modules: styling for different components (i.e. .nav-bar, .nav-button)
  4. State Rules: styling different states (i.e. .is-current, .is-opened)

Coding conventions

When you get started on planning out elements

More things to ensure:

CSS sampler

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/62ada58a7aeb3895c7c88edaac85deed

ID vs. class

IDs must always be unique, <section id="kittens"> they can only be specified once. While classes can be used as many times as needed — <section class="group">

Specificity

The order in which things are read

  1. Inline styles: should never be used
  2. ID's: #home, #cool-stuff
  3. Classes, attributes & pseudo-classes: .home, [class], :hover

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/eef2d2786f3f1ca27c334b30f38d66f3

Units in CSS

In the journey to responsiveness, we want to aim for relative and scalable units as much as possible.

Rems

Rems — root-ems — are units responsive to the font-size set by the browser which help us establish easy relationships in type.

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/4f1412454dca14e42d3e5d678d364aaf

A red and white picnic blanket

The web is just blocks

The box model

content-box vs border-box

Oops, this code did not quite load. Please view it at https://codepen.io/andrewhaw/pen/a63b4e018122c1404ed8ff7999cafc1f

Developer tools

Your new best friend

Ever wanted to know what the slides would look like with a red background? Right-click and 'Inspect Element' opens up the development tools to mess around with things in.

The display property

Block, inline, and inline-block

Block elements break to the next line, can have a height and width, and by default are full-width.

Block One
Second Block

Inline elements stay in-line with other inline elements, and listen to their content for their sizing.

Inline One
Second Block

Inline-block elemetns stay in-line with other inline elements, can have a height and width, and listen to their content for their sizing.

Inline-block One
Second Inline-block

Efficiency

Why we care

At the end of the day, it's about your mental sanity. But good clean, clear coding conventions, page and file structure typically loads and runs faster.

P1: Process

P1 materials

Some things to think about

You are not required to generate your own images and icons for this project. That being said, the branding must still be your own work. Here are some recommended suggestions:

Break-time

Please make sure you have today's starter kit — available at 339.ah.link/t02

This week's exercise

While we critique...

We recommend exploring the following tools available to you:

1/1