Style Class, Session #1: Class Intro

[foxfirefey]

Welcome to the DW Styles Class! From the number of people answering the poll, this is going to be a fairly large class, even if a lot of you can't make it. Lurking is, of course, okay! I do want to encourage lurkers to ask questions if they have them, however--you don't have to stay out of sight.

This class is geared around learning by doing. The main project of the class is to create a style of your own! The lessons are tools to help you along the way, so the syllabus is subject to change if I feel we're going over a subject too fast and people need more time to adjust. At the end, I'll have treats for people who share layouts with others at dreamwidthlayouts.

Your mentors are, in no particular order: afuna, ninetydegrees, liv, seleneheart, monarchist, exor674, and, well, me. Mentors are here to help me review lesson plans before they go live and help answer student questions--some are CSS only, others know S2. But! If you know the answer to another student's question, please feel free to help them. We all can work together to learn things.

This class is split up into three "tracks" for different experience levels and goals.

Simplified CSS

Designed for people who want an easier introduction in CSS. It involves making style changes to an existing layout with the base CSS included.

CSS only

Designed for people who want to make a layout from scratch based on existing layout HTML--you can do a lot with just CSS. People might need help with an S2 override or two in order to achieve the effect they really want, but overall the goal is to work with CSS.

S2/CSS

Designed for people who want to be experts in changing both the HTML and CSS of their layout, or building in interesting behaviors. S2 is a programming language and once you know it you'll have few limitations (no JS, some CSS cleaning) in making a style exactly the way you want.

Poll #6596 Original Student Desires and Experience Levels

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 151

View Respondents

My class track will be:

View Answers

Simplified CSS
20 (13.4%)

CSS only
17 (11.4%)

S2/CSS
94 (63.1%)

Observation only
18 (12.1%)

I'm interested in this class because:

View Answers

I want to customize my own style
114 (79.2%)

I want to make styles I can share with others
76 (52.8%)

I want to be able to help others with their styles
56 (38.9%)

It's a good way to learn skills I'm interested in, like HTML/CSS or basic programming concepts.
108 (75.0%)

If you have another interest in this class, what is it?

View Answers

CSS Experience

View Answers

None or very little
47 (31.1%)

Beginner
51 (33.8%)

Experienced
44 (29.1%)

Advanced
9 (6.0%)

HTML Experience

View Answers

None or very little
13 (8.6%)

Beginner
51 (33.8%)

Experienced
69 (45.7%)

Advanced
18 (11.9%)

S2 experience:

View Answers

None or very little
107 (70.9%)

Beginner
35 (23.2%)

Experienced
7 (4.6%)

Advanced
2 (1.3%)

Browsers I use or have access to:

View Answers

Chrome
91 (60.3%)

Firefox 3.x
90 (59.6%)

Firefox 4.x
80 (53.0%)

IE6
10 (6.6%)

IE7
12 (7.9%)

IE8
40 (26.5%)

IE9
38 (25.2%)

Opera
54 (35.8%)

Safari
62 (41.1%)

Mobile browsers/devices
66 (43.7%)

Other
13 (8.6%)

My main browser is:

View Answers

Chrome
26 (17.2%)

Firefox 3.x
56 (37.1%)

Firefox 4.x
44 (29.1%)

IE6
0 (0.0%)

IE7
0 (0.0%)

IE8
1 (0.7%)

IE9
1 (0.7%)

Opera
9 (6.0%)

Safari
9 (6.0%)

Mobile browsers/devices
2 (1.3%)

Other
3 (2.0%)

If you answered "Other" for any of the browser questions, what browser(s)?

View Answers

Alright students, as your first exercise I would like you to:

• Say hi, and greet others! Also ask any questions you would like to know before Friday's class on "S2 Background and the Customization Wizard".
• Fill out this poll--it will help me know who has what experience level, and the different reasons people are taking the course for.
• Think about what you want your style to look like, if you'll be making a style for the course!

And now, I'm going through and checking to make sure that all people who answered the original interest poll and don't already subscribe get a reminder to watch this community (unless they have different methods of keeping track)! Hope to hear from you all!

---

Previous: Syllabus

Comments

[sofiaviolet]

Hi, I'm Sofia!

My CSS and HTML skills are pretty decent but I am entirely self-taught through online tutorials and code snippets, and when I do stuff, it's all trial-and-error until I get results that don't suck.

My S2 experience is pretty much pasting other people's code snippets into layers, and modifying them to do other things. Probably the coolest thing I ever did with S2 was modify someone's code snippet for randomized - I think it was backgrounds or headers, and I made it work for whichever of those it wasn't, and also for text. The hard parts were figuring out where in the layer it needed to go, and how to get it to display text properly.

[foxfirefey]

Sounds like you managed to get really far with S2 on your own!

[liv]

That sounds about like my level of experience :-) I'm quite good at fiddling with other people's code by trial and error, but I'd like to be able to think of a concept and decide how to implement it in a more systematic way.

[ex_wolfborn415]

Your CSS and HTML skills sounds a heck of a lot like mine! :)

[turlough]

You sound almost exactly like me.

Except that the only S2 modification I think I've done "on my own" is to shuffle things around in the comment bar :-)