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WDX-180

Web Development X

Week 04 | CSS 2 & Performance

Week 03 ⇦

Updated: 10/11/2023

⇨ Week 05

Week 04 - Day 1 | Styling Tables, Debugging and Organizing CSS

Schedule

Study Plan

Important As you’ll notice, after finishing an MDN article, there are suggestions on what to study next. We strongly advise you to ignore this part and follow our curriculum’s flow that you’ll find on this document.

Exercises

  • Create a file named azure_table.html and try to recreate the table below using your HTML and CSS skills.

  • Create a file named german_table.html and try to recreate the table below using your HTML and CSS skills.

IMPORTANT: Make sure to complete all the tasks found in the daily Progress Sheet and update the sheet accordingly. Once you’ve updated the sheet, don’t forget to commit and push. The progress draft sheet for this day is: /user/week04/progress/progress.draft.w04.d01.csv

You should NEVER update the draft sheets directly, but rather work on a copy of them according to the instructions found here.

Extra Resources

Week 04 - Day 2 | Styling Text

Schedule

Study Plan

Inspirational quote of the day: How learning works.

One fourth 1/4 from the teacher

One fourth 1/4 from your own intelligence

One fourth 1/4 from your classmates

One fourth 1/4 from time

With the basics of the CSS language covered, the next CSS topic for you to concentrate on is styling text — one of the most common things you’ll do with CSS. Here we look at text styling fundamentals including setting font, boldness, italics, line and letter spacing, drop shadows, and other text features. We round off the module by looking at applying custom fonts to your page, and styling lists and links.

Exercises

IMPORTANT: Make sure to complete all the tasks found in the daily Progress Sheet and update the sheet accordingly. Once you’ve updated the sheet, don’t forget to commit and push. The progress draft sheet for this day is: /user/week04/progress/progress.draft.w04.d02.csv

You should NEVER update the draft sheets directly, but rather work on a copy of them according to the instructions found here.

Week 04 - Day 3 | CSS Layout Part 1

Schedule

Study Plan

Reminder: If it feels too much at this point, don’t worry. It takes time, lots and lots of practice and constantly going back to the concepts again and again in order to build confidence and become comfortable with the multitude of Flexbox properties.

Exercises

As for the Flexbox Defense(1) and Flexbox Froggy(2), if you’ve enjoyed the experience and it has helped you learn something, do not forget to star (⭐) the repos (1 & 2) of these awesome games!

IMPORTANT: Make sure to complete all the tasks found in the daily Progress Sheet and update the sheet accordingly. Once you’ve updated the sheet, don’t forget to commit and push. The progress draft sheet for this day is: /user/week04/progress/progress.draft.w04.d03.csv

You should NEVER update the draft sheets directly, but rather work on a copy of them according to the instructions found here.

Extra Resources

Sources and Attributions

Week 04 - Day 4 | CSS Layout Part 2

Schedule

Study Plan

Exercises

IMPORTANT: Make sure to complete all the tasks found in the daily Progress Sheet and update the sheet accordingly. Once you’ve updated the sheet, don’t forget to commit and push. The progress draft sheet for this day is: /user/week04/progress/progress.draft.w04.d04.csv

You should NEVER update the draft sheets directly, but rather work on a copy of them according to the instructions found here.

Extra Resources

Week 04 - Day 5 | Web Performance & CSS Pre-processors

Schedule

Study Plan

  • TIP: let’s bookmark and use a really useful tool that will our compress images, cutting down their size oftentimes to more than 50% thus improving the loading times of our web pages. Find an old (group?) project, drag and drop all the images into the TinyPNG page, then download the compressed version and compare the difference in size and loading times. Keep in mind, that TinyPNG can compress all sorts of images types, not just .png.

  • Read: Perceived performance
    • Level: Beginner
  • Watch: CSS Preprocessors to learn about an important Frontend family of tools called CSS Preprocessors such as LESS, SASS, Stylus, etc.
    • Description: In this video we look at the wonderful world of CSS Preprocessors and a few of the awesome things that you can do with CSS Preprocessors, and look at a few of the more popular ones; LESS, Sass (SCSS), and Stylus.
    • Duration: 12min
    • Notes: if you are wondering about the vendor prefixes mentioned in the video (-webkit, -moz, etc.), make sure to check out the related MDN article.

  • Let’s add a powerful tool to our Web Dev toolset before moving on: install the Live Sass Compiler VSCode Extension

  • Now watch the Learn Sass In 20 Minutes video and code along in SASS!
    • Duration: 20min

Exercises

There a lot of tools that can help a web developer check how good the performance of a website is. One of the best out there, and open source, is Google Lighthouse. Check the video below that covers the absolute basics of this simple but helpful tool

Watch: What Is Google Lighthouse and How to Use It?

After watching the video, it’s time to give it a go by following these steps:

  • Head over to your GitHub Page where your solution from the Styling the world’s first website exercise is published.
    • If you have not completed this exercise, now it’s time to do so!
    • If you followed correctly the instructions provided you can find your solution following this link https://<GITHUB_USERNAME>.github.io/WDX-180/user/week01/exercises/day04/cern/index.html by replacing <GITHUB_USERNAME> with your username.
  • While on this page, open Lighthouse, in any way you prefer (we’re suggesting using the Chrome Dev Tools), and initiate a report for Desktop device by checking the following categories: Performance, Accessibility, Best Practices, SEO.
  • After the report is finished, check thoroughly what changes can be made to increase the score in any of the 4 categories, and try to improve your site’s performance as much as possible!

The goal is to have a score on all categories over 90. Let’s start analyzing this webpage!

IMPORTANT: Make sure to complete all the tasks found in the daily Progress Sheet and update the sheet accordingly. Once you’ve updated the sheet, don’t forget to commit and push. The progress draft sheet for this day is: /user/week04/progress/progress.draft.w04.d05.csv

You should NEVER update the draft sheets directly, but rather work on a copy of them according to the instructions found here.

Weekly feedback: Hey, it’s really important for us to know how your experience with the course has been so far, so don’t forget to fill in and submit your mandatory feedback form before the day ends. Thanks you!

Week 04 - Weekend Suggestions

If you are in the mood of enjoying related content during the weekend, check out our weekly recommendations here.

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