An Intro to Learning & Asking Questions
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Since we published this website and tutorial we have talked to a lot of people about learning web design and development.
Its been great talking to such a wide range of people, from those setting out on a journey to work in the web, to others that have changed career or that have reskilled later in life to take on a new role.
A highlight has been hearing from kids afterschool groups and home schooled students that have built something for the first time, the next gen designers and developers.
Across this large set of people one thing has become very clear, that this web design and development field is immense with so much to learn, which can be a little overwhelming at times. Which then raised the question of, how do you break it all down into manageable pieces so you can keep learning and growing without becoming overwhelmed.
Another common thread was, how do you know the material you are been shown is up to date when researching topics across the web. To be honest this is quite hard to give a firm answer to.
But if its CSS advice you're looking for then entering the property into caniuse.com is a great place to start. This will show you the browser support for that feature, if its 85-100% then it should be safe to use in any current project, we are releasing a bit more background into this in another sprout of wisdom in this current release of sprouts.
These are all great questions so lets take a look and break them down a little...
Web Design & Development there's so much to learn
We structured the first part of this tutorial with two things in mind to show how you structure an HTML page and think about the content you need in each part of a website and as an intro to refer people to complete tasks against a Git Repository on GitHub as this then allows for collaboration on a common platform with a team of people this workflow follows closely modern working practices.
However we thought it would be more fun if you are building something that you can see growing before you, as you learn the basics of HTML and adding your content. To make this more straight forward we shipped a starter CSS file, so you could also show your content off in style without having to worry about writing CSS as well as you start out.
We hoped that breaking these down into small tasks would be more useful to learn from and I have to say the general feedback has been good. Not everyone is happy we started with HTML we had a fair bit of "You should have used WordPress" or Tailwind CSS! However we feel that trying to learn WordPress or Tailwind CSS without any web knowledge would be quite an ask for anyone and not a very transferable skill if you end up not using either in your day to day job.
We have lots of plans to release more content across the website in the following year like an intro into CSS and a gentle introduction to JavaScript but only if we can break each section into small straight forward steps that don't require you to spend money to follow along.
We have also been asked to cover some design and page layout concepts, which we are exploring at the moment to see how they'll fit in across what we want to release over the next year.
Lets define the steps to getting started & learning in this field...
Well the biggest take away we can give you on this is to build something that you really want to.
Start by writing down what it is you want on paper or in an editor.
Work to split it down into small parts that you think might make sense keeping the tasks small.
Then get started building just that tiny bit, and carry out whatever research you need to make that tiny part work or come to life.
Next repeat that step until you get to the bottom of the list.
If you find that one part of the task is just too large to get on top of, break it down into smaller parts.
Once you get into this type of pattern you are learning, but also seeing something coming to life along the way, which is a great reason to keep going.
Learn to ask structured questions.
Asking questions is an important step of learning, but setting yourself up for the best chance of getting it answered is also a skill you learn the more you do it.
Firstly there are no silly questions, if you don't know the answer chances are someone else has exactly the same question. However you are asking your question be it via email, contact form, raising a support ticket or an issue, if you ask it in a structured manor chances are you are going to get an answer that is tailored to helping you move forward. But what do we mean by structured questions?
Well if we just send a message saying:
nothing works its too fiddly
Now the person reading this feedback is like, where do I start with this one and do I even reply!
On the other hand had we sent the question of:
On my new page I have linked the stylesheet but its not showing up on my page? I've added it like this <link rel="stylesheet" href="style/style.css"> in the head any chance you can help?
The person reading this feedback could maybe reply with:
Oh sorry to hear the styles are not showing up is your style.css file in the folder named CSS or style?
Now both of us have common ground to offer you the best out come.
Another really powerful feature to learn is breaking a problem down into the smallest part so lets say we have a outer div with two div's inside but we don't want the same background on all div's
We could build a very small test case using a tool like CodePen, including a little HTML & CSS of our none working code.
Then we can ask the question but include this test case URL on CodePen, now the person replying is on the same page as you, as this extra information allows them to provide much better options for you to move forward to a solution.
Also a key point when asking for help is to remember, on the end of each email, ticket or issue is a person with all the same feelings and stresses as you. Being polite goes a very long way in the world and costs you nothing.
Nowadays though we have AI popping up everywhere, so it may not be a human at the other end you are asking for help. Whether its a company support bot or you are using a LLM (Large Language Models) tool like Microsoft Copilot which is available from the Bing homepage in the browser, the more concise your question is the better it will be able to give you an answer that is more helpful to you. We'll be exploring using an LLM tool and its responses in another sprout of wisdom sprouting soon.
Where can you go to get up to date information
- Our extras page has resources that we think are useful whilst working on the web daily.
- MDN is a great resource for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Adding MDN in front of the topic you are searching for can narrow search results down.
- GitHub Doc's are full of up to date information for working with Git and GitHub.
- web.dev from Google provides Guidance to build modern web experiences that work on any browser.
As always should you have any questions or want more details on any of the areas covered, feel free to reach out to us via our Contact form.