Are you struggling while starting learning CSS and HTML? Do you feel overwhelmed with sooooo many properties? Don’t they look like the same? Haven’t you tried with a couple of tutorials (that you feel they are easy to do at the moment) but feel you don’t have the knowledge to start from the scratch?
You are not the only one, happened the same to me!!! And to many others…
Now that I can say I’ve almost mastered CSS and HTML, I would like to share my experience.
There I was, doing my fourth tutorial, step by step, thinking “this is bloody easy”, seeing and understanding all the little exercises I was doing. But when I wasn’t inside of the frame the tutorial gives you, where you have to put an answer between a couple of choices inside a related topic, I was completely LOST!
So, what to do? How you should move forward?
First of all with patience!! Tons of patience.
Second, get your hands dirty. Stop with the tutorials and start cracking your head with a simple project. The simplest you can find. Here you have an example, another, and another one.
There is no easy way. Its gonna take you a couple of days at first. You are gonna try properties here and there, its gonna seem nothing works. You will piss off. You will rest, clear your mind and continue again. But your idea it’s not gonna work this time either, so you will piss off again. And again. And there is no way to avoid the hurdles, the struggles.
You will have to face them.
You will have to face them.
BUT, luckily for you, we have been there first, with the same problems you’ll face. And YES, there is help. It doesn’t matter the problem you have, you can GOOGLE IT, and I bet you the answer will be between the firsts links you find.
So, your first and best friend, its always gonna be the search tool, because all you need, all the answers you might need, you'll find them there, you only have to learn how to search, and how to filter the information that's in front of you, because its gonna be a lot.
There you are back with your project. After fighting a couple of hours with positioning a tiny little thing that you think “what the hell is this doing here”, and suddenly, you write the magic words (actually the correct ones) and everything is in its place.
You feel proud. Truly proud. Like a father seeing his child learning to walk (this is an entire supposition, I’m not a father). Yes, nothing can erase the smile in your face.Or at least that’s what you think, even though I bet you’ll have another tedious struggle soon.
You did it!!
It took you a couple of days the simplest one of the projects but you did it. And you did learn a lot. And because of that new knowledge, if you have to do a similar project again, its gonna take you half of the time it took you the first one. And less time the following ones, because all the knowledge you have gained.
Long story short, there is no trick. You’ll have to crack your head against the wall and dedicate hours, lots of hours to learn. But it will worth it. So go ahead, and remember to google everything, cause all the answers are there, waiting to be found.