Classbook

In this project, we’ll create our very first HTML page; a profile of ourselves.

Target

First, make a page that looks like this (with your own content):

http://classbook.matchthetarget.com/first_target.html

Then, add CSS to your HTML to make something that looks like this:

http://classbook.matchthetarget.com/second_target.html

Structure with HTML

Raw Content

Type in your own content:

  • Your name
  • Where you’re from
  • Some of your app ideas
  • Some of your prior experience (jobs, education), and your LinkedIn URL
  • The address of yourfavorite nearby haunt (coffee shop or restaurant or pub)

Add Semantic Markup

Next, let’s tag our content to let the browser know what each thing is. Useful HTML elements include:

  • Headings: <h1>, <h2>, … , <h6>
  • Paragraph: <p>
  • Unordered list: <ul>
  • Ordered list: <ol>
  • List item: <li>
  • Link: <a href="http://www.addressofsomepage.com/whatever">

Add Images

Let’s add some images to the page:

  • A profile photo (you can grab a fake one from UIFaces)
  • A cover photo (you can grab a stock one from Stock Up)
  • A few of your photos (you can grab fakes ones from Stock Up)

Save the images somewhere with your code (I usually put them in a subfolder called images or something like that). To make them easy to identify, perhaps name them descriptively:

  • [first name]-[last-initial]-profile.jpg
  • [first name]-[last-initial]-cover.png
  • [first name]-[last-initial]-1.png
  • [first name]-[last-initial]-2.jpg
  • [first name]-[last-initial]-3.png

Then, add them into your document using the img tag:

<img src="images/whatever.jpg">

Or, if it’s located somewhere out on the internet rather than in our own code:

<img src="http://www.somewhere.com/whatever.jpg">

Tables

Let’s put your experience data into a table. In HTML, the <table> element is used to represent two dimensional data. A simple table looks like this:

<table border="1">
  <tr>
    <td>First</td>
    <td>Last</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>John</td>
    <td>Doe</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Jane</td>
    <td>Doe</td>
  </tr>
</table>

which would produce this:

First Last
John Doe
Jane Doe

The things to keep in mind about tables are:

  • Every piece of data must reside within a cell, a <td> (table data) element.
  • Every <td> element must reside within a row, a <tr> element.
  • Every <tr> must have the same number of cells, or things get out of whack.

Despite this last rule, you can, however, “merge” cells using the colspan attribute:

<table border="1">
  <tr>
    <td colspan="2">People</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>John</td>
    <td>Doe</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Jane</td>
    <td>Doe</td>
  </tr>
</table>

produces:

People
John Doe
Jane Doe

You can see that we’ve merged two cells in the first row together; the colspan="2" on the first cell ensures that we don’t violate the “every <tr> must have the same number of cells” rule.

Your task: Try to create a “What I’ve Done” section similar to the one you see here.

Embedding Objects

  • Add a Google Map of your favorite nearby haunt
  • Add a YouTube video that you like

Styling with CSS

Now that we have our content showing up, and we’ve added some basic structure with HTML, it’s time to customize the styling of the page.

The basic syntax of CSS looks like this:

<h1 class="greeting">Hi there</h1>

<style>
  .greeting {
    font-size: 24px;
    color: darkgrey;
  }
</style>

The rest is just practice, and expanding our vocabulary of what CSS properties are available to us.

Below are some resources that might be helpful as we go along:

.top-cover {
  background: url("cover.jpg") no-repeat center bottom;
  background-size: cover;
  height: 300px;
}

.some-thing {
  box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.12), 0 1px 2px rgba(0,0,0,0.24);
  transition: all 0.2s ease-in-out;
}

.some-thing:hover {
  box-shadow: 0 10px 20px rgba(0,0,0,0.19), 0 6px 6px rgba(0,0,0,0.23);
}

  • HTML5 Element List

  • An abbreviated list of other useful CSS properties and example values:

/* Typography */

color: orange;
font-family: 'Playfair Display', serif;
font-size: 18px;
font-weight: bold;
letter-spacing: 0.4em;
line-height: 1.86;
text-align: center;
text-decoration: none;
text-transform: uppercase;

/* Box Model */

border-color: rgb(240, 240, 240);
border-style: solid;
border-width: 5px;
border: thick white solid;
height: 200px;
margin: auto;
padding-bottom: 20px;
padding-left: 20px;
padding-right: 20px;
padding: 20px;
width: 100%;

/* Table */

border-spacing: 10px;
vertical-align: top;

/* Other */

background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5)
box-shadow: 0 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.12);
list-style-type: square;