1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:00,690 2 00:00:00,690 --> 00:00:05,380 VIDEO: So web pages are composed of HTML tags or more properly, elements. 3 00:00:05,380 --> 00:00:06,790 DOUG LLOYD: Not exactly true. 4 00:00:06,790 --> 00:00:09,540 But we spent about six or seven hours on C. And we spent about six 5 00:00:09,540 --> 00:00:11,836 to seven minutes on HTML. 6 00:00:11,836 --> 00:00:12,960 DAVID MALAN: Yeah, perhaps. 7 00:00:12,960 --> 00:00:17,490 But I don't think it really warrants a whole lot of time in class. 8 00:00:17,490 --> 00:00:20,331 I think we do spend time on what it is, this interpreted language. 9 00:00:20,331 --> 00:00:23,580 We explain to students that the browser reads it top to bottom, left or right, 10 00:00:23,580 --> 00:00:24,120 so to speak. 11 00:00:24,120 --> 00:00:27,780 We find that it is the payload that's transmitted via HTTP. 12 00:00:27,780 --> 00:00:29,530 So all of the big picture items. 13 00:00:29,530 --> 00:00:31,530 And then we dive in a little deeper pointing out 14 00:00:31,530 --> 00:00:33,360 the symmetry of most of the tags. 15 00:00:33,360 --> 00:00:35,790 Open tags have close tags and so forth. 16 00:00:35,790 --> 00:00:38,770 How attributes can extend the definition of an element. 17 00:00:38,770 --> 00:00:42,390 But once you have that basic vocabulary, I'd liken it more to scratch. 18 00:00:42,390 --> 00:00:44,876 Like once you understand what the constructs are 19 00:00:44,876 --> 00:00:46,750 and what the puzzle pieces are that you have, 20 00:00:46,750 --> 00:00:48,541 you can go figure out how to assemble them. 21 00:00:48,541 --> 00:00:51,120 And you can Google and look at online references 22 00:00:51,120 --> 00:00:53,850 to figure out what more functionality the language has. 23 00:00:53,850 --> 00:00:57,050 But for the most part, it's the concepts that matter, I think, in the class. 24 00:00:57,050 --> 00:00:57,160 DOUG LLOYD: Right. 25 00:00:57,160 --> 00:01:00,060 And it's not all that intellectually compelling like you said. 26 00:01:00,060 --> 00:01:02,662 As a programming language, it's not a programming language. 27 00:01:02,662 --> 00:01:03,870 It doesn't have control flow. 28 00:01:03,870 --> 00:01:06,349 It's really just markup. 29 00:01:06,349 --> 00:01:07,890 DAVID MALAN: And we do introduce CSS. 30 00:01:07,890 --> 00:01:11,550 And we do use this as an opportunity to explain good design principles. 31 00:01:11,550 --> 00:01:13,410 Albeit with very simple examples. 32 00:01:13,410 --> 00:01:14,885 DOUG LLOYD: Abstracting away the CSS files for example. 33 00:01:14,885 --> 00:01:16,676 DAVID MALAN: Indeed, you can embed it first 34 00:01:16,676 --> 00:01:18,960 as a first pass with your style attributes. 35 00:01:18,960 --> 00:01:20,920 But that's a little messy, as we point out. 36 00:01:20,920 --> 00:01:22,170 And students start to realize. 37 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:23,430 And you've been at the top of your file. 38 00:01:23,430 --> 00:01:25,679 But then it's not really shared across multiple files. 39 00:01:25,679 --> 00:01:27,000 And therefore can't be cached. 40 00:01:27,000 --> 00:01:30,510 And so we use this as we do many examples as an opportunity 41 00:01:30,510 --> 00:01:34,100 to go from version 0 to 1 to 2, and so forth. 42 00:01:34,100 --> 00:01:36,900 To get to a place that is the right way to do something, 43 00:01:36,900 --> 00:01:39,960 even though it's with fairly small examples early on. 44 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:42,210 DOUG LLOYD: Both HTML and CSS give us an opportunity 45 00:01:42,210 --> 00:01:45,420 to indeed encourage students to do that look up on their own. 46 00:01:45,420 --> 00:01:48,510 Even though I've been programming myself for a long time, 47 00:01:48,510 --> 00:01:52,020 I still look up HTML tags and what attributes I need to set. 48 00:01:52,020 --> 00:01:54,584 To make things happen, I have to look up CSS selectors. 49 00:01:54,584 --> 00:01:57,375 DAVID MALAN: It's fun but it's not that intellectually interesting. 50 00:01:57,375 --> 00:01:58,100 DOUG LLOYD: Yeah, exactly. 51 00:01:58,100 --> 00:01:59,100 DAVID MALAN: To store all of that in your head. 52 00:01:59,100 --> 00:02:00,240 And it's also changing too. 53 00:02:00,240 --> 00:02:03,000 So we want students to be going out and figuring out what 54 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:04,799 the latest is, especially with HTML 5. 55 00:02:04,799 --> 00:02:07,840 There's still a lot of older information where certain tags didn't exist. 56 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:09,690 And so getting that exposure is good. 57 00:02:09,690 --> 00:02:12,440 And I think too, we want to start to take training wheels off 58 00:02:12,440 --> 00:02:13,690 at this point in the semester. 59 00:02:13,690 --> 00:02:16,290 So that as students near the end of the semester, 60 00:02:16,290 --> 00:02:19,295 they're not completely beholden to us for everything they're learning. 61 00:02:19,295 --> 00:02:22,170 DOUG LLOYD: Right, they're feeling empowered to find things and build 62 00:02:22,170 --> 00:02:24,705 things that go far beyond the scope of the class that we even teach. 63 00:02:24,705 --> 00:02:24,930 DAVID MALAN: Exactly. 64 00:02:24,930 --> 00:02:27,763 We'll sort of help explain the world into which they were venturing. 65 00:02:27,763 --> 00:02:30,820 But it's up to them to go find what they need at that point. 66 00:02:30,820 --> 00:02:34,470 Otherwise they're too dependent on us by the time the term wraps. 67 00:02:34,470 --> 00:02:35,870 DOUG LLOYD: Right.