Web Development for Beginners - A Curriculum

Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are pleased to offer a 12-week, 24-lesson curriculum all about JavaScript, CSS, and HTML basics. Each lesson includes pre- and post-lesson quizzes, written instructions to complete the lesson, a solution, an assignment and more. Our project-based pedagogy allows you to learn while building, a proven way for new skills to 'stick'.

Hearty thanks to our authors Jen Looper, Chris Noring, Christopher Harrison, Jasmine Greenaway, Yohan Lasorsa, Floor Drees, and sketchnote artist Tomomi Imura!

Teachers, we have included some suggestions on how to use this curriculum. If you would like to create your own lessons, we have also included a lesson template

Students, to use this curriculum on your own, fork the entire repo and complete the exercises on your own, starting with a pre-lecture quiz, then reading the lecture and completing the rest of the activities. Try to create the projects by comprehending the lessons rather than copying the solution code; however that code is available in the /solutions folders in each project-oriented lesson. Another idea would be to form a study group with friends and go through the content together. For further study, we recommend Microsoft Learn and by watching the videos mentioned below.

Click the image above for a video about the project and the folks who created it!

Pedagogy

We have chosen two pedagogical tenets while building this curriculum: ensuring that it is project-based and that it includes frequent quizzes. By the end of this series, students will have built a typing game, a virtual terrarium, a 'green' browser extension, a 'space invaders' type game, and a business-type banking app, and will have learned the basics of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS along with the modern toolchain of today's web developer.

By ensuring that the content aligns with projects, the process is made more engaging for students and retention of concepts will be augmented. We also wrote several starter lessons in JavaScript basics to introduce concepts, paired with video from the "Beginners Series to: JavaScript" collection of video tutorials, some of whose authors contributed to this curriculum.

In addition, a low-stakes quiz before a class sets the intention of the student towards learning a topic, while a second quiz after class ensures further retention. This curriculum was designed to be flexible and fun and can be taken in whole or in part. The projects start small and become increasingly complex by the end of the 12 week cycle.

While we have purposefully avoided introducing JavaScript frameworks so as to concentrate on the basic skills needed as a web developer before adopting a framework, a good next step to completing this curriculum would be learning about Node.js via another collection of videos: "Beginner Series to: Node.js".

Find our Code of Conduct, Contributing, and Translation guidelines. We welcome your constructive feedback!

Each lesson includes:

• optional sketchnote
• optional supplemental video
• pre-lesson warmup quiz
• written lesson
• for project-based lessons, step-by-step guides on how to build the project
• knowledge checks
• a challenge
• supplemental reading
• assignment
• post-lesson quiz

A note about quizzes: All quizzes are contained in this app, for 48 total quizzes of three questions each. They are linked from within the lessons but the quiz app can be run locally; follow the instruction in the quiz-app folder. They are gradually being localized.

Lessons

Project Name Concepts Taught Learning Objectives Linked Lesson Written Lesson Sketchnote Assignment Starting Quiz Ending Quiz Video Author 01 Getting Started Introduction to Programming and Tools of the Trade Learn the basic underpinnings behind most programming languages and about software that helps professional developers do their jobs Intro to Programming Languages and Tools of the Trade Jasmine 02 Getting Started Basics of GitHub, includes working with a team How to use GitHub in your project, how to collaborate with others on a code base Intro to GitHub Floor 03 Getting Started Accessibility Learn the basics of web accessibility Accessibility Fundamentals Christopher 04 JS Basics JavaScript Data Types The basics of JavaScript data types Data Types Jasmine 05 JS Basics Functions and Methods Learn about functions and methods to manage an application's logic flow Functions and Methods Jasmine and Christopher 06 JS Basics Making Decisions with JS Learn how to create conditions in your code using decision-making methods Making Decisions Jasmine 07 JS Basics Arrays and Loops Work with data using arrays and loops in JavaScript Arrays and Loops Jasmine 08 Terrarium HTML in Practice Build the HTML to create an online terrarium, focusing on building a layout Introduction to HTML Jen 09 Terrarium CSS in Practice Build the CSS to style the online terrarium, focusing on the basics of CSS including making the page responsive Introduction to CSS Jen 10 Terrarium JavaScript Closures, DOM manipulation Build the JavaScript to make the terrarium function as a drag/drop interface, focusing on closures and DOM manipulation JavaScript Closures, DOM manipulation Jen 11 Typing Game Build a Typing Game Learn how to use keyboard events to drive the logic of your JavaScript app Event-Driven Programming Christopher 12 Green Browser Extension Working with Browsers Learn how browsers work, their history, and how to scaffold the first elements of a browser extension About Browsers Jen 13 Green Browser Extension Building a form, calling an API and storing variables in local storage Build the JavaScript elements of your browser extension to call an API using variables stored in local storage APIs, Forms, and Local Storage Jen 14 Green Browser Extension Background processes in the browser, web performance Use the browser's background processes to manage the extension's icon; learn about web performance and some optimizations to make Background Tasks and Performance Jen 15 Space Game More Advanced Game Development with JavaScript Learn about Inheritance using both Classes and Composition and the Pub/Sub pattern, in preparation for building a game Introduction to Advanced Game Development Chris 16 Space Game Drawing to canvas Learn about the Canvas API, used to draw elements to a screen Drawing to Canvas Chris 17 Space Game Moving elements around the screen Discover how elements can gain motion using the cartesian coordinates and the Canvas API Moving Elements Around Chris 18 Space Game Collision detection Make elements collide and react to each other using keypresses and provide a cooldown function to ensure performance of the game Collision Detection Chris 19 Space Game Keeping score Perform math calculations based on the game's status and performance Keeping Score Chris 20 Space Game Ending and restarting the game Learn about ending and restarting the game, including cleaning up assets and resetting variable values The Ending Condition Chris 21 Banking App HTML Templates and Routes in a Web App Learn how to create the scaffold of a multipage website's architecture using routing and HTML templates HTML Templates and Routes Yohan 22 Banking App Build a Login and Registration Form Learn about building forms and handing validation routines Forms Yohan 23 Banking App Methods of Fetching and Using Data How data flows in and out of your app, how to fetch it, store it, and dispose of it Data Yohan 24 Banking App Concepts of State Management Learn how your app retains state and how to manage it programmatically State Management

Yohan

Offline access

You can run this documentation offline by using Docsify. Fork this repo, install Docsify on your local machine, and then in the root folder of this repo, type docsify serve. The website will be served on port 3000 on your localhost: localhost:3000.