Tips, Expertise, Articles and Advice from the Pro's for Your Website or Blog to Succeed
Congratulations! You’ve decided you want to learn to code. Whether it’s because you’re interested in tech, or you want a high-paying career — you’re in the right place. How do you learn to code? It’s a...
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Sometimes, it feels like people who can code seem like they have superpowers. But what is code, anyway? Code is all around us. Code is used in things like computers, phones, self-driving cars, and all other...
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Thinking about learning Python? That’s a great idea. What is Python? Python is a general purpose programming language that is used for a variety of different web applications. It was designed to be very easy to...
The post Why You Should Learn Python appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Did you know? 1.3 million new developer jobs will be created in the next 10 years. No matter your background or previous experience, there’s never been a better time to start your journey toward one of...
The post Tech Jobs: An Explainer appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
Did you know that you can learn computer science and programming online from institutions like Harvard, MIT, Berkeley and Microsoft on edX.org? The nonprofit site offers 2,000 online courses from 140 institutions worldwide. Courses are free to try.
Here are some of the most popular courses and programs offered on edX:
The most popular course on edX gives you an introduction to computer science and programming. Learn how to think algorithmically and solve programming problems efficiently. Gain familiarity in a number of programming languages including C, Python, SQL, JavaScript, CSS and HTML.
W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) is the organization that develops web standards. It was founded by the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee. In this 5 course program, learn how to code with modern HTML5 tags, draw and animate fun web graphics, and play audio and video elements. Learn CSS best practices for web page design and the fundamentals of JavaScript to help you develop interactive web apps.
In this 4 course program, learn the fundamentals of computer science in one of the field’s most popular programming languages, Python 3, including writing code, executing it, interpreting the results, and revising the code based on the outcomes. Rated as one of the most in-demand and beginner-friendly programming languages, a background in Python will give you a solid foundation to build your career. Short videos (2-3 minutes each) are rapidly interwoven with live programming problems and multiple-choice questions to give you constant feedback on your progress and understanding.
Did you know that smartphones, your car’s navigation system, robots, drones, trains, and almost all electronic devices have some C-code running under the hood? Along with the C programming language comes Linux, an essential operating system that powers almost all supercomputers and most of the servers worldwide, as well as all Android devices and most “Internet of Things” devices.
In this 7-course program, develop and debug code in the C programming language. Discover the foundations of computer programming and Linux, manipulate the command line, manage processes, files and memory, and compile C code with Linux.
Data science is one of the hottest fields in programming. Learn key data science essentials in this 9-course program, including R and machine learning, through real-world case studies to jumpstart your career as a data scientist. Also learn statistical concepts such as probability, inference, and modeling and how to apply them in practice. Gain experience with data visualization with ggplot2 and data wrangling with dplyr. Become familiar with essential tools for practicing data scientists such as Unix/Linux, git and GitHub, and RStudio. This is one of the most popular programs on edX.
Everyone has heard of blockchain, but most don’t understand how it can apply to their business. Learn exactly what a blockchain is, its impact and potential for change around the world, and analyze use cases in technology, business, and enterprise products and institutions in this fundamental course from the experts at the Linux Foundation.
Some of the popular Microsoft courses include:
Want to write organized code for your website that you can easily manage and maintain? TypeScript is the answer to building scalable web applications. TypeScript lets you write JavaScript the way you want to. TypeScript is a typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript. It works on any browser. Any host. Any OS.
Bootstrap is an open source project originally created by Twitter to enable creation of responsive, mobile first web pages. Bootstrap has a standard set of classes that allow developers to quickly create applications that scale to devices of all sizes, and incorporate common components such as dialog boxes and validation. Bootstrap has become a de facto standard for web design.
jQuery is the most popular library for JavaScript. In this course, you will learn how to use jQuery to add additional power and interactivity to your web pages. You’ll see how to take advantage of jQuery in your web pages, how to work with the HTML document, and even make server-side calls.
In this course, you will learn about the basics of how Angular works, and why Angular has emerged as a popular framework for JavaScript/TypeScript application development. You will also learn how to properly set up your development environment for creating an Angular app, including installing VS Code, Node.JS, TypeScript, and the Angular CLI.
ReactJS is the latest JavaScript framework to capture the hearts and attention of the frontend developer community. Developers love ReactJS because it’s highly performant and renders changes almost instantly. The best part about ReactJS is that it is a relatively small framework and does not take too much time to learn!
If you are looking for something else, edX offers beginner to advanced programming courses in C++, C#, Java, Power BI, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Cybersecurity, IoT, Cloud Computing, AWS, Azure, DevOps, and more. View more courses here.
If you’ve used CSS, you might have worked with CSS filters before. Sadly, these are somewhat limited, so you’ll often need to break out Photoshop to get the effect you’re looking for. That’s where SVG filters come in!
SVG filters are simply effects that can be applied to images and even text, but you can do much more than is possible with CSS. Blurs, drop shadows, animations, and other effects that you can often only find in advanced graphics editing programs are all available to you.
Ready to learn? These resources, demos, and tutorials will teach you to use these super helpful filters.
For those looking to learn SVG filters, this page is the best place to start. Codrops introduces you to SVG filters with its helpful online tutorial. It’s not a short read, but by the end, you should have a basic understanding of SVG filters and be ready to apply them on your own site!
This tutorial gets a bit more into the meat of things, showing you primarily how to style text with filters. There’s code for lighting effects, noise, strips, outlines, and all sorts of other neat effects. This normally takes a fair bit of skill with outside programs to get it right, but you can do it just with some lines of code.
Here’s a cool example of what you can pull off with these filters. This “Stranger Things” logo is rendered in nothing but SVG, complete with the spooky flicker effect and neon lighting.
Looking for a cool image distortion effect? Three interesting hover effects are showcased here, along with a few tutorials so you can learn to create your own.
This is a tremendous resource for new programmers. Here’s a sandbox for you to test out and play with various SVG filters, applied to both images and text! And if you like the effect you made, you can even copy it and try it on your own site.
Duotone images are quite popular thanks to Spotify, but you don’t need to learn how to use gradient maps to create one. Just pop in this code and you can create your own gorgeous duotone images!
The “gooey” filter is used to create a blob-like object similar to a cell. You can also use it to make a rounded background for your text. And the best part is, it’s a dynamic filter that changes to fit the text size!
Here’s a weird, colorful ripple effect made with a combination of SVG and CSS! It might make a great background or banner for part of a webpage. Here’s the magic: it’s just a bunch of straight, rotating lines with a displacement map filter.
Sick of boring blurs and slides in image transitions? Here’s something more interesting: a dynamic dissolve transition effect that cycles between multiple images.
Another cool transition effect, this one is a slider that applies a motion blur and squishes the image as it transitions. No more simple sliders; make your site stand out with a pleasing animation.
For web designers and developers, it’s important to always be learning new skills. SVG filters can save a lot of time that might have been spent in a graphics editing program. Instead, just pop in some code and you have a professional image filter effect – simple as that!
Now that you’re a master of SVG filters, it’s time to get out there and start designing a beautiful website.
In early March, Treehouse and Dribbble announced a partnership to create job-ready designers through the User Experience (UX) Techdegree program. Considering that design is one of the most in-demand skills in today’s workforce, this partnership pairs...
The post Meet the Dribbble + Treehouse UX Techdegree Scholarship Winners appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
The frontend ecosystem is dominated by React.js. It’s one of the fastest rising JavaScript frameworks on the web with no signs of slowing down, and there’s plenty of job opportunities for a skilled React developer.
But this library comes with a steep learning curve which can take weeks or months to understand. The best way to learn is to practice building stuff, but these free guides can help you learn a bit quicker and offer some structure to your React practice sessions.
The Egghead website has tons of courses on many different JS libraries. Some of these courses have a mix of free and premium videos, but many are totally free which is great for newbie developers.
I recommend their React Fundamentals course which is free and spans 60 minutes over a few dozen videos. It’s definitely an intro course, but it’ll cover a lot of crucial subjects that you’ll have to learn to pick up React.
Egghead video quality is also exquisite so this is definitely a site to bookmark for other courses too.
There are dozens of React.js video tutorials on YouTube so it’s tough knowing where to start. This React Crash Course video covers all the basics including MVC architecture and the very foundational structure of React.js applications.
This video is just over 1 hour long and it’s certainly not a complete guide, but I think it’s a solid introduction to the library if you have no prior experience and little-to-no idea what React even does.
If you go searching for free React resources you’ll undoubtedly stumble onto the Facebook documentation.
These docs can be terse and difficult to work through initially, but the quality is great and the writing is aimed towards people who don’t know much (or anything) about React development.
I specifically recommend this tutorial. It’s a true guided tutorial rather than a documentation overview, but you should try reading through both since there’s a lot of knowledge you need to absorb.
All the tutorials on Scotch.io are phenomenal. The writing, the results, and the actual code quality equates to the best self-taught guides you’ll find online.
Out of all their guides I specifically recommend their simple to-do app since it guides you through a typical workflow and teaches common practices for building webapps.
But the Scotch React category has dozens of similar tutorials you can pick up and work through. Many of them target intermediate-level developers so as a complete newbie you may struggle. But Scotch gets into so much detail that it’s easily one of the best blogs to revisit for future lessons.
The open source React Enlightenment guide is one of the better sites to use throughout your journey. It’s terse but straight to the point. And since it’s open source the whole thing is free to read online or download locally.
Every page of this guide is hosted for free on GitHub and it covers a lot of best practices for new developers. You’ll learn about ES6 and JSX/templating along with basic DOM manipulation and components.
Just note this guide does not hold your hand or wait for you to keep up. You’ll need to do a lot of Googling to answer questions you have along the way. But this guide can take you pretty far and it’s frequently updated with new information.
Every tutorial I find on the TutsPlus site is phenomenal. They publish incredibly detailed content solving very specific problems, and most of the time you can follow these guides in a step-by-step fashion which is handy for beginners.
The TutsPlus React category has dozens of tutorials ranging from the complete basics to more advanced app dev guides. For a newbie I recommend Getting Started With React. It offers a solid introduction to all the tooling & workflows that come along with a React.js environment.
One other YouTube video tutorial I like is this one by Dev Tigris. It’s a complete guide for beginners and the teaching style is very clear.
This vid is only one hour long but it should get you comfortable with the basics of React. This video won’t make you fully independent or able to craft detailed apps from scratch. But you will walk away knowing how React functions and thinking in a more React-oriented manner.
Tip: check the related videos you see in the sidebar of this video. Many of those are also great and well worth your time.
The React Training site is yet another half-free and half-premium resource for learning React. And if you have time to go through the free content you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
This works like an online course series where you can study topics along with other students, and the best free course is React Fundamentals.
All the course material spans a total of 4+ hours long with a master list of 48 different lessons. The course gets updated frequently with new React techniques and best practices so it’s worth checking back every so often.
The idea behind Codementor is pretty simple. You pair up with a digital mentor who helps you work through different projects and libraries. But these sessions usually cost money, so to help beginners without a budget, Codementor shares free written tutorials on their blog.
You can browse through all their React tuts and pick through any topics that interest you. Some cover basic React setup guides, others cover React Native for mobile apps, and others cover wacky ideas like a React Pokédex app.
It’s good to have a little background in React before following these tutorials. They get into so much detail that it can be hard for complete newbies, but I guarantee you’ll improve your skills just by following some of these guides.
Lastly, I have to include this massive React.js links list because it really is the ultimate place to find React.js learning resources.
Developer Mark Erikson curated this huge list of tutorials & guides organized by skill level and subject matter. You’ll find plenty of beginner guides on React, ES6 and JS app design patterns.
Keep this bookmarked for later reference because as your skills improve you’ll find a lot of value in some of the more advanced tutorials.
These free resources are just my personal recommendations but the React community is constantly changing and awesome new tutorials are published every year. Take a look through these links to see if any can help you get started, but if you’re looking for more alternatives definitely hit Google and see what else you can find.
Have you ever wanted to make your own font? Maybe you need an extra personal touch for a design project, or perhaps you want to sell fonts commercially. Either way, there are solutions out there that can help you get started. All you need is an idea, good handwriting, and some font creation software!
Firstly, if you would rather generate or build a font than create your own from scratch, try out an app like Prototypo or Fontstruct.
To begin creating a font, you have a few decisions to make. The first should be easy: Serif, sans serif, script (calligraphy), decorative or symbol type? There’s all sorts of sub-types, but this is a good beginning.
Start studying fonts you like. What makes them look so good? Why do you like them? You don’t want to copy, but you may want to start putting together references and sketching out early drafts.
What is this font for? A public or personal project? If it’s for yourself, you may only need to design the basic alphabet and some symbols. But if you’re releasing this font commercially, you’ll want to include many symbols and characters.
You might also want to consider including other typeface families like bold, italic, thin, light, condensed and so on. But if this is your first font, don’t worry about that and start simple.
Once you have an idea, start practicing by hand! Draw the letters over and over until you’re happy with the design.
What you do next depends on your preferences. You can scan your handwritten work and trace it in a program like Illustrator or Photoshop, or you can skip right to font creation software. Either way, you will need a program to help you compile the font. Here are a handful of the best.
If you want a quick, easy and free solution to creating fonts, Calligraphr might be what you need. Just fill out the template and you’ll have a font that looks like your handwriting! There’s even a quick test version, no registration required, for when you need to make a font fast.
You can use what you create commercially without credit, but to access features like special characters, variants and ligatures, you’ll have to upgrade your account.
FontForge is free, open source font design software. You’ll be drawing your letters right in the program. If you’ve used vector graphics programs before, you’ll get the hang of it quickly. And since it’s open source, you can download or create scripts and utilities!
Fontself is the easy and cheap font maker. Available with a one-time payment as an addon for Photoshop and Illustrator, you won’t need to be hopping between programs. Just make the font in your software of choice, optimize your letters and export! You can even use Catapult for Illustrator to host your fonts and start using them online immediately.
This app for MacOS has some serious power. If you’ve worked with fonts before and are ready for a solid upgrade, Glyphs is the solution. Every tool you’ll ever need, plus some super helpful tutorials and documentation so you’ll never feel lost.
If you like the look of Glyphs but need something a little less complicated, you can try Glyphs Mini instead. It’s got the same professional look and extensive functionality, but it’ll better ease you into the world of font creation.
If you’re serious about font creation, FontLab is the way to go. It doesn’t come cheap, but you’ll never want for a more robust font tool. The revolutionary tools will turn previously impossible tasks into a breeze, even for beginners. It’s a big commitment, but one you won’t regret.
Creating a font isn’t too hard. The real difficulty comes during the design process. If you’re not sure where to begin, study your favorite fonts and ask yourself what makes them look so great. And make sure to practice a lot, both on paper and in your art program of choice, so you can nail those letters when it comes time to digitalize.
Creating and running a website is not an easy task. You have to know programming, SEO, marketing, and a handful of other things. Luckily for you, WordPress makes it so much simpler. Whether you are an aspiring businessman or a blogger, learning the WordPress basics is essential to your success. There are five key areas Read More →
The post 5 hacks for students on how to quickly learn the WordPress basics appeared first on WPArena.
Every modern website needs to be mobile friendly. You can accomplish this by using responsive techniques, one of which is the CSS flexbox feature.
Flexbox lets you define layout elements as flexible boxes that can adjust based on the container. So you can decide how much room a certain element should take up, where it should move when the container is resized and how to arrange that content accordingly.
If you’ve never used the flexbox property before it can be really confusing. This list is here to help you come to terms with all the major flexbox methods. From there, you’ll be able to implement this powerful layout feature into your own projects.
I’d argue that this is the best tutorial for complete beginners who want to get their hands dirty. Flexbox Froggy is a free open source coding game where you learn the ways of the flexbox…froggy.
You progress through various levels – with the first few being super easy. They introduce the absolute basics of flexbox and teach you the fundamental properties. From there, you’ll move through 30+ levels that get increasingly more difficult and will push the limits of your knowledge.
This game is great even for experienced developers who want a recap of what flexbox can do. You can skip ahead to the later lessons if you need more challenging work, so it’s perfect for all developers.
What The Flexbox?! may sound like a weird trivia game show but it’s actually a great way to learn. This is a free set of video courses built by developer Wes Bos.
He takes you through everything related to flexbox properties, including resizing containers and how to create fully-responsive interfaces from scratch. The videos require an email address to sign up, but the course is totally free.
The best part is that these videos teach practical examples you can follow along with to learn the ropes. I still think one of the best ways to learn is to build real projects and this course does just that.
If you prefer a written tutorial, then have a look at this CSS-Tricks guide. It covers pretty much everything you’d need to know, starting from the absolute basics of flexbox.
You’ll find plenty of visuals along the way explaining flexbox terminology, layouts and content organization. It’s not the best guide in the world, but it’s probably the best for beginners who just want to read and learn.
It’s much easier to consume than most of the W3 specification documentation and acts as a nice starting point.
I’m also really keen on this tutorial, written for the website Interneting Is Hard. It’s a site dedicated to online web development tutorials, with the goal of helping everyone understand coding.
Each chapter has beautiful diagrams explaining the syntax and terms you run into when studying HTML and CSS. And I have to say their flexbox stuff is fantastic.
The guide is absolutely massive, with over 12 chapters organized onto a single page. The tutorial uses a table of contents, which is quickly becoming the norm for lengthy articles. The sheer length may put you off at first – but it’s really worth a read.
Graphics and visuals always explain things a little better than words. That’s why this guide by Scotch.io is one of the better introductory tutorials for studying flexbox.
Note this does use a lot of code snippets to explain the concepts, so it’s not just a visual guide. But there’s also plenty of graphics and diagrams to go around.
If you want a clear-cut technical guide to flexbox, then you’ll really like the Scotch guide. It does lean heavier towards developers, so it really helps if you’re already familiar with CSS syntax.
I know that many people learn better through watching videos and there’s a lot you can find on YouTube. Granted, the Wes Bos video series above is also a great choice. But if you want something quick, have a peek at this video by Traversy Media.
It does a beautiful job of explaining the flexbox syntax in just 20 minutes. You’ll walk away with a much stronger understanding of why the flexible box model can so easily replace floats and why developers are so gung-ho about this new setup.
To get into a more practical video example, you might like this video tutorial recorded by developer Kevin Powell.
It’s a rather short video, totaling just about 11 minutes. But it’s also more straightforward and to-the-point when it comes to explaining the flexible box model.
If you want a video you can easily follow along with, then this is worth watching. You won’t learn everything about flexbox, but you’ll learn enough to use it for custom web layouts.
This is perhaps one of my favorite video tutorials because it goes so in-depth with teaching you how to create a whole project from scratch.
YouTube channel DevTips created this Dribbble coding tutorial, which shows you how to rebuild the entire Dribbble layout using CSS flexbox. This is the exact type of tutorial I recommend for beginners who want to really dive in and learn how this works.
Memorizing CSS properties is great and will help. But with this kind of tutorial, you’re learning practical techniques on how to code layouts from scratch. And that’s the kind of experience you can bring into every future project.
My last pick is lengthy tutorial which also covers flexbox quite well. In this video, you’ll find over an hour of guided instruction on building a custom website from scratch with flexbox.
You’ll learn how to code a grid and how to design the entire page to be mobile friendly.
However, this is much more detailed than other video tutorials. Therefore, I really recommend watching this video later on – once you understand the basics. It will cover a lot of the fundamentals of CSS flexbox properties but it also moves pretty quickly.
Either way, this list has plenty to keep you busy and will get you started on the right track with flexbox layouts.
YouTube is the best place to teach yourself anything in the modern era. Techie subjects are covered in greater detail because most tech-savvy people also know how to record videos and get them online.
One of the newer design programs, Sketch, has been giving Photoshop a run for its money. This is an OSX-only program, but it’s made specifically for web and mobile designers.
It can feel a little strange coming from an Adobe background, but with the right tutorials anyone can learn it, and in this guide, I’ve curated the best Sketch tutorials to get you started with the basics and beyond.
Mobile iOS apps are simple to design because they come with screen restrictions and clear guidelines for the designer. That’s why this iOS video tutorial is a great place to start learning Sketch.
Over the course of a half hour you’ll learn the fundamentals of icon design, vector creation, color selection, and keyboard shortcuts. The narration is easy to follow, and you can do all of this on your own with just a copy of the program.
If you’re hoping to learn more about icon design or mobile app design, then this video is for you.
Alternatively you might be looking to use Sketch for website design. In that case you’ll love this brief intro from London designer Charli Marie.
If you’re a complete beginner then picking up Sketch can be a hassle, but this is particularly the case for websites where you need to consider responsive layouts, grid systems, and more intricate nuances like textures/patterns on the page.
Granted this video will not make you a complete Sketch master or an expert web designer. But it’ll offer a very clear introduction to the program so you can get up and running fast.
Diving into the more detailed side of design is this Sketch 3 tut covering how to make a sliding nav menu.
This video follows a very simple process of designing a slide out menu on top of an existing interface. Most mobile designers need to do something like this since the sliding menu is the most common choice for responsive menus.
And you can follow this tutorial with the newer version covering another method of designing a vertical slide-out menu.
Another way to practice design is by re-creating interfaces. For example this tutorial teaches you how to redesign a Nike product page in Sketch 3.
It spans about half an hour with guides on working with vectors, basic page shapes, color schemes, textures, and pretty much everything else you’d need to learn.
This video will not make you an expert, but it’s definitely a fun way to get started in this design software.
Here’s another cool example from the same YouTuber teaching you how to redesign Dropbox in Sketch. It’s just about the same length of time, and the process feels similar, but there’s also a very unique methodology in this video.
You’ll learn more about matching the colors/textures/icons with Dropbox’s branding and how to design around the company’s image. So you’re not just learning how to use Sketch, but also how to design with specific goals and criteria.
Definitely a unique tutorial for web designers and the final result is fantastic.
If you’re looking for a simpler introduction, you might try this tutorial created by Hacksaw Academy. It’s one of the newest videos in this list, and it teaches you how to create a minimalist website mockup from scratch.
In total the video spans 15 minutes which isn’t too long for a design tutorial.
But the final result is also very simple, so beginners won’t feel too overwhelmed. This makes for an excellent starting point to pick up Sketch, but I recommend going beyond this tutorial if you really want to master the program.
Designer Adam Rasheed went above & beyond with his landing page video tutorial covering all the major aspects of Sketch.
This tutorial breaks up into five parts with the very first video totaling over 90 minutes long. Talk about detailed!
You’ll learn about the proper workflow used to create a web page mockup and how you can follow this in future projects. Plus Adam gets into detail on how to create certain page elements like navigation menus, signup forms, and thumbnail galleries.
The entire SketchCasts YouTube channel is full of great advice for beginners and experts alike. Sketch has a lot of features, and this channel covers all of them in practical lessons.
I specifically recommend starting with their iOS app mockup tutorial which feels more like a wireframe than a mockup. But you’ll learn all the fundamentals of designing a page by setting dimensions, grids, and proper alignments.
All the techniques you’ll learn in this video apply to professional design work no matter what type of interface you’re creating.
If you wannt to get a little more technical then check out this tutorial on nested symbols in Sketch. This is a unique property of the software and you could learn it through other guides online.
But this 30-minute tutorial shows you visually how to create a Sketch library of buttons using nested symbols in your work. It’s an incredibly practical approach to nested symbols, and you’ll take a lot away from the experience.
However this is not really made for absolute beginners. You should at least have some comfort tinkering in Sketch before diving into this video.
Modern web designers need to follow responsive techniques. This holds true for frontend development and basic mockup design/wireframing.
In Sketch this process is super easy and this tutorial shows you how it’s all done. This video guide uses the auto-layout plugin made solely for Sketch as a responsive design tool. If you’re a web designer moving into Sketch then this video is a must-watch.
But you can also read through the written article if you prefer that instead.
Before tackling a full mockup you may want to prototype your website or application. This is like a visual plan for how all your pages fit together and how users traverse the interface.
With this video tutorial you’ll learn how to setup Sketch and how to connect it with two other programs: InVision’s backend along with the free Craft plugin.
An excellent guide for skilled designers who want to work more with prototyping in their day-to-day.
These are my top picks for free Sketch video tutorials but there are many more released each year. If you want to continue the search, try browsing YouTube to see what else you can find.
