CSS can be fun. I promise.
For a lot of front-end developers, CSS is the most frustrating part of their work.
When you make a mistake in TypeScript, you get a helpful tooltip telling you exactly what you did wrong. In CSS, by contrast, you're left in the dark, without any clues about why you're not getting the result you expected.
These constant bewildering surprises take us out of flow state, and shake our confidence. No wonder so many of us don't enjoy writing CSS!
Despite all appearances, though, CSS is actually a deeply consistent and robust language. It feels unpredictable because there are complex systems involved, systems that are totally invisible to us.
CSS is an implicit language.
It doesn't matter how many years you spend practicing CSS—if you don't learn how its underlying systems work, your mental model will always be incomplete.
Think about how most of us learn CSS: we learn how individual properties work, instead of focusing on how layout algorithms use those properties as inputs. We learn “cool tricks” for specific situations, instead of concepts that can be applied broadly to any situation.
It's like trying to solve a puzzle when you're missing pieces. Except it's even worse, since we blame ourselves!
Nobody is born with CSS skills.
We assume that we're missing some sort of “CSS gene”, that we're just not good at this stuff. And it's the most unfair self-criticism in the world. If you learn the rules of CSS, you can be good at it too!
Becoming proficient with CSS is game-changing. All of a sudden, the most frustrating part of your job becomes fun! As JS developers, we spend so much energy trying to avoid writing CSS, when we could be embracing it, and using it to build world-class user interfaces.
So how do you learn the rules of CSS? Well, you can spend countless hours spelunking through MDN documentation and CSSWG specifications, and then spend a few years practicing. That's what I did. It was undeniably effective—the end result is incredibly worthwhile—but the journey was long and arduous.
I want to help expedite that process for you. Over the past year, I've been packaging up all that knowledge and experience into a comprehensive self-paced online course.
","This curriculum teaches everything you need to know to build modern, polished web experiences. It's a no-fluff distillation of the skills I've learned over 15 years.
This module fills in any gaps you may have, and ensures we're all working from the same solid foundation.
We pop the hood and see how the browser renders items in flow layout
We continue our exploration of the browser's layout modes by examining positioned layout.
How does CSS fit into modern JS webapps? In this module, we learn how to take advantage of the JavaScript ecosystem.
Flexbox brought an incredibly powerful layout algorithm to the web. We learn how to make the most of it.
CSS has become a really dynamic language! We'll see how to use modern CSS features to build resilient layouts.
The most important part of any webapp is the content! We'll learn how to wrangle text and media.
CSS Grid is a revolutionary layout system for the web. We'll see how to use it responsibly, to create next-level user interfaces.
Animation is a vital part of all web applications. We'll learn how to build beautiful, lush animations.
In this jumbo-sized module, we'll cover a bunch of tips and tricks to create standout experiences on the web.
And so much more…