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Learn HTML5 before you learn Rails
“You cannot be a Ruby on Rails developer if you don’t know HTML and CSS.” I realized that 30 minutes before I was supposed to teach someone Ruby on Rails yesterday. Even if she is a computer science graduate, if her knowledge of HTML and CSS is not good enough then it becomes an exercise in futility to teach Ruby on Rails or even Unix. So on my way, I tried to recall links to resources for HTML5 and CSS3. Jsfiddle helped me out to teach basics of HTML5, CSS and jQuery! Yes, I taught DOM manipulation and how to “google fu.” Those were not necessary but I wanted her to understand classes, ID’s and how jQuery works. Within one hour and 30 minutes, I also explained the importance of using CSS frameworks and grid design. Most designers are fixated with the idea of designing without a framework/ grid in mind and it is bad for us all.
I am not a teacher or even a speaker. I hardly have any free time and best I can do is blog about these things for someone. There are several opportunities I know of which may be interesting for someone. If there are any freelance front-end developers who are reading this, let me know if you need work. Thanks.
For beginners:
Learn HTML, CSS and Javascript by trying it yourself using Jsfiddle or w3schools. Essential for beginners is knowing what tools and browsers you’d use. For web browsers, you obviously need all major browsers installed including Firefox and that Firebug plugin.
Dive into HTML5 and Google’s Web Fundamentals Program are good free resources for learning HTML5.
Question: Why HTML5? Progressive thinking.
Forget about IE6. Or even clients who like IE too much.
CSS frameworks are essential in my opinion. There’s nothing more annoying than fixing issues as trivial as an “inconsistent gap between logo and navigation on different browsers.” We’ve got better things to do.
In addition to the 15 responsive CSS frameworks worth considering, you might want to try Twitter Bootstrap.
For designers who are familiar with PHP, I am preparing a presentation for discussion tomorrow with a frontend developer. It may be useful for understanding Rails frontend development.
October 4, 2017 Update: Thank you to those who read this. I added a link one of you have suggested.
Other resources for learning HTML5: