Code Platoon Week Five – Learning the Web: Structure, Style, Function.

Code Platoon offers a complete full-stack curriculum. In week five we take our first look at front-end web development. Students learn the basics of HTML and CSS, how to implement third-party libraries that will help them create dynamic and visually appealing websites, and will finally see their code run in the browser.

Rules of the Road

In order to build anything for the web, it is essential to understand how it works under the hood. The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the foundation for communicating on the web. It’s how web browsers like Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer, and Edge talk to servers and vice versa. Students will get hands-on with HTTP by creating several small applications designed to teach the ins and outs of server-to-client communication. This is an exciting week because students start to see how all that data they have been creating and saving in databases on the server side finally gets into a browser and becomes a web application that a user can interact with.

All About Structure – HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is the foundation for every web page on the internet. It’s what gives web content structure and provides it with meaning, and it is a need-to-know for programmers of any kind. Students will learn how to properly structure an HTML document and how to create common content tags for things like images, links, lists and forms. We’ll discuss how the browser reads and renders the HTML we write, learn the basics of the box model, and best practices to make the code we write readable and the content we create highly accessible.

Adding Style with CSS

HTML may be the nuts and bolts of any web page, but Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is what gives a website character. Everything about a website’s appearance has CSS code behind it. Students will practice adding color, fonts, and animations to website. We’ll look at the principles behind responsive web design and see how frameworks like Bootstrap can make creating professional looking websites easier.