I’ve been away from the lessons for a while. But I am going to start again. I completed the HTML. Now I’m on to CSS.
What is the best way to memorize coding?
Repetition and reading documentation and specifications, recommendations, accessibility guidelines, style guides, etc. Did I mention repetition?
Learn the ins and outs of HTML as thoroughly as possible. This is the one markup language to study to the extreme. Know this and CSS and JS are a much smoother learning experience, and what you are learning will make sense right away.
As for deliberately memorizing, forget it. Let it grow on you, and you with it. Try everything possible without styles, and keeping building documents of various forms, outlines, essays, tables, definition lists, forms, to name a few. Practice, practice practice.
When you do get into CSS, ignore the appearance aspects for now and focus on layout and position. Learn how to tranform a table layout to a CSS layout, and back again. Powerful knowledge to have, and you won’t forget it once you put it to use a few times.
What you will learn is that there is no such thing as rote learning when it comes to this language (and CSS, and JS). It sticks to us with usage, and we learn a lot simply through discovery or deduction.
How do we know if something will work? We try it. Note the difference between expected and actual and keep trying other ways to get the same result, assuming it is expected; else solve the problem before moving on. That’s also part of memorizing… Don’t walk away from an unsolved problem or it will never be solved, or you will be tricked in the future into thinking you did solve it only to discover you didn’t.
There is a mountain of stuff to disseminate, so take it in strides, starting with looking up every new tag name, or CSS term, and so on. Make homework 5/6th’s of the time spent on a lesson. This is over time, of course. Learn, study, practice, review. We might go over each lesson at the end of a unit, for instance, and do some reading up on the information to clarify and reinforce it, practicing some examples along the way.
Personally, I think way too many people race ahead to the eye candy and the bells and whistles, and miss out on all the tremendous value to be gained by just concentrating on HTML, early on, and gradually taking on CSS while still gaining more knowledge in HTML, and eventually inching toward JavaScript. We need the other languages to be well entrenched in our minds when it comes to adding behaviors to our documents.
The biggest thing to remember is that we call all the shots. There is no guess work. HTML and CSS are strictly declarative, and everything that can apply will apply. We are at the controls of the design machine. Both of these languages simply aid in that process as fasteners, doors, drawers, carcase and style would do for a cabinetmaker. We get do-overs, which is one advantage. Try everything.
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It’s all about practice. Just like any other language(like spanish) you can only become fleuent if you practice.
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Thank you for your reply.
I completed the HTML tutorials and was planning on moving ahead to CSS. However, I am wondering if I should go over the HTML tutorials again before moving ahead. Of course, my pro membership ends in December, so perhaps I should go over all the tutorials (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) and then start them over again, instead of going over the HTML tutorial now again.
I would guess keeping a graft note pad a smart move to right down issues as a help in retaining the information.
If you are on a timeline, then it will dictate a little bit how you schedule. HTML will always be in the spotlight where CSS is concerned so just keep learning more about it as you pick up CSS and experiment with it. They are part and parcel. One takes care of the document structure and content, the other layout and presentation. The better you understand HTML, the simpler it is to style it. Lots to learn. JS makes the most sense when we see it in terms of the document.
JavaScript is an amazing API for manipulating the DOM. It is not really intended for presentation though a lot of authors lean on it for that. My attitude is that CSS should be stretched to the limit and the page should not depend upon JS for any presentation other than to add another layer for enhancement. Every page should display fully in absence of script.
It can takes years to fully understand HTML and CSS and the myriad ways they can be utilized to design amazing webpages and user interfaces. No one course can cover everything, but what is taught here should be reviewed and followed up with much more reading and practice. Keep up the reading long after you are done here.
When we get to a webpage project, much of the work has been done already and if we examine the document and the style sheet there will emerge a tonne of mysteries. It’s a daunting task to reverse engineer the work already done and follow up with reading about the many components. Bootstrap, CSS Grid, Flexbox, jQuery, etc… All depend upon our basic understanding of the rudiments of HTML and CSS (and JavaScript). As you move forward, go back and cover the fundamentals over and over until you can write from scratch your own pages with layout and behaviors. Work with the least and slowly augment. Like I said earlier, your homework will be 5/6ths of the learning and practice.
Happy coding!
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mtf thank you for your feedback.
I’m going to be honest. While reading the lessons here on HTML an CSS it’s difficult to retain. Perhaps I should be writing notes while reading the exercises. That might help.
But I do find I start to understand it a little better once I ponder what I have read. But it takes so much practice to know if I truly understand it.
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